This just tries to split the baby between the current EC setup and allowing each vote to count the same as every other vote in the country. For President, why parse it down to district, but not down to individual?
270-268 scenario
- Thread starter pseudonym
- Start date
- Status
So and so presidential candidate is dumb is one of the worst takes. Yeah, her mother was an endocrinologist from UC who researched breakthroughs in breast cancer treatment and her father an economist at Stanford while she herself went to Howard and UC Hastings College of Law rising to Attorney General and then US Senator from California. Sure, she's stupid. ***
Just because something was put in place nearly 250 years ago doesnt mean it needs to still exist. I think we can both agree there are obvious examples of this.
So given that, the argument of 'well its how it was done when the country started' is not a valid argument for why it should continue.
As for it giving people in small states more power/influence- that simply isnt something that I think should exist when voting for our President. Everyone's vote should count the same and nobody should have more impact or influence than anyone else.
The President leads us all. We should all have an equal say in who the President is.
Same goes for Congressional leaders- everyone in my District has equal say in who is elected- people from one county or town dont have their vote count more than people from another county or town within that District.
I agree. 1 voter = 1 vote is the best possible system. My proposal to take the electoral votes down to congressional district would be a compromise. And a huge improvement over the winner-take-all that 48 states use now, which is NEVER what the electoral college was intended to be.
No, those cities wouldnt elect every President. Each person across the country would have the same impact on the Presidential election.
Since you referenced large cities in CA and NY- currently all the Republican voters in those states have 0 power and their votes effectively dont count. A Republican could vote or not vote and it wouldnt matter. Thats an issue- they should count and matter.
Way too much civil discourse going on in this thread…
As it is, candidates straight up ignore entire states and regions that they know they will win or know they will lose. If every vote counted equally, then you could get candidates to care more and visit more places. Areas of the country that are forgotten would be in play and not ignored.
She got into Howard on a hardship case, not on merit. She failed the bar at least once... She had earned 0 electoral votes before today, including the last presidential election when she quit halfway through. She was appointed to coattail Biden purely as he said for demographic reasons. And I am sure you don't want to talk about her meteoric rise (in Mayor Brown's pants) to be AG.
Have you actually heard her speak? I don't care how smart her mom was, that means absolute bupkis when it comes to her daughter.
Please concentrate on her outstanding policies and how great the economy, border, and foreign affairs are going to be if elected. I'll address those points anytime you're ready, but FFS, please let's not pretend that anyone, including her mom, believes she is smart.
Please read this in its entirety. It's a good start on why the EC is so valuable to our union. The union between states. That is referenced in our name. The United States of America.
That consistently changes. In 2016 Ohio and Florida was swing states. They are no longer swing states. Penn, Michigan and Wisconsin were solid blue states up to 2016. They became swing states and Ohio and Florida stop being swing states. I suspect in 15 years Texas will be a blue state but at the same time Wisconsin and Penn will become red states.
Interesting. So why and how did she get into UC law school on a "Disadvantaged Minority" scholarship .
I'm not sure you've heard. She grew up in a middle class family.
I didn't mean for this thread to become an argument about the Electoral College. It is pretty obviously one of the reasons this Republic has survived as long as it has. You could argue it is one of the most ingenious things the Founding Fathers gave us.
I have. It, along with similar articles, is filled with a bunch of justifications that basically say 'the EC is good because the other way would be a different process.'...haha, like, ok then, way to make a point.**
People are more mobile now than they were 250 years ago. People commonly move to multiple states through their lives now and states no longer have the identities they had when the country began.
Further, having each vote count the same as every other vote will elect a President who fairly represents everyone. <--see how easy it is to make a declarative statement without needing to provide proof its true or would happen as claimed?
Giving the states the same impact(so 1 vote for each state) would actually help increase the impact even more states have...yet we dont do that.
The EC makes sense if you view electing the President with states in mind. Remove having states in mind and focus on citizens. Citizens are represented by the President and citizens should vote equally for the President.
States have representation in the government thru the Senate and House and small states still have increased impact in those parts of the Federal Government.
How much attention did Trump, Biden, and Harris pay to Mississippi? If candidates have to compete for votes in MS because each vote will now actually matter, then they may show up more often in places where they are largely absent.
It promotes legitimacy by placing more impact on the margin of victory?
I mean...what?! That doesnt create legitimacy.
Well yeah! Ha, I mean...yeah, that is how it should be. They are basically stating the other way to do this and saying its bad because its bad. Of course candidates should try to get as many votes as they can thru campaigning. Thats like the entire reason we have elections.
Under the current system, stolen votes could actually impact the outcome MORE than if the EC didnt exist. If a large EC state had a close count and vote fraud tipped the count one way, then that could actually have a LARGER impact on who is elected.
Again- this justification is weak.
It was and is an essential component of the compromise that preserved this country. The forces that led to the compromise are even more in evidence now than they were then.
Yes it does constantly change. That wouldnt matter if 1 vote counted for 1 vote everywhere. Candidates would travel to wherever they thought they could successfully campaign and gain votes. There wouldnt be swing states and there wouldnt be 'locked states'.
That would be a good thing.
Oh good grief. Large states already have more power simply because of their size. Ask rural residents in California, Illinois and New York how they like being dominated by the huge cities in their state. Oregon and Washington too.
But if you dont have a system where votes are awarded by state, then it doesnt matter if a state is large or not.
Eliminating the EC would mean those rural residents who vote Republican in CA would finally have their voice heard and vote count in the Presidential election.
Same with rural Washington- Republicans in rural and urban parts of Washington would finally have their voices heard and vote count in the Presidential election...something that hasnt happened in 40 years.
You complain about something, I provide a way for that issue to be resolved, yet that way is also complained about because it isnt how the current way is...even though you complain about the current way.
That is dizzying.
This is just a fundamental disagreement we have about how things are supposed to work. The president doesn't lead me. He is the head of the executive branch of the federal government, which has dual sovereignty with the states. I think your position definitely has a lot more merit when taking into account the reality that our federal government has been bastardized by allowing the executive branch to do a lot of legislating and just generally the president accruing wayyyyy too much power over time because of the administrative state and cultural and political reasons.
That said, even with our bastardized system, the states still matter and it is a bad idea to just throw away one of the key compromises that was necessary to get a diverse group of states across a wide geographic area to agree to function under one federal government. Hopefully states wouldn't be dumb enough to ratify an amendment doing away with it, and hopefully the national popular vote interstate pact doesn't create a constitutional crisis by states trying to apply it when it is adopted decades apart.
The fraud isssue is that each state has an incentive to police it's own fraud and if they fail, they can only effect their electoral votes. Yes, that increases the "return" on committing a successful fraud by making the electoral votes of an entire state the reward, but it makes it much easier to predict where fraud will be attempted and to focus fraud prevention efforts in those places. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with anything with why it exists, but it is a net benefit of it.
If we don't win, it's the EC's fault, let's abolish it.
If Roe is overturned, we need to pack the Supreme Court.
If we can't legislate the way we want, let's get rid of the filibuster.
There's no way all this sour grapes rule changing will come back to bite us right in the ol' keester is there?*****
If Roe is overturned, we need to pack the Supreme Court.
If we can't legislate the way we want, let's get rid of the filibuster.
There's no way all this sour grapes rule changing will come back to bite us right in the ol' keester is there?*****
Hey, 17 you, Xenomorph. You shouldn't even be allowed to vote. Your freakin' name literally means "Alien".
Yes, please, read this completely impartial article on my right wing think tank site.
I think the funny thing about the Electoral College is that it was, in part, a safety rail established to keep a populist demagogue from rising to power, yet, here we are.
You provided a recommendation on how our government should be structured and somebody had the audacity to disagree ???
I see. Sort of like how the government currently pours support into Maricopa County, AZ and Clark County, NV and neglected everywhere else?
It seems infinitively easier to “buy” an election through the EC. Elon is handing out checks in PA right now. That wouldn’t work if 1 vote was just 1 vote.
It also seems way easier to just intimidate a couple critically important officials in swing states like Trump did with Raffensburger in 2020.
I know this isnt directed only at me, but since I have been arguing that the EC is antiquated and needs to change, I will say that I have thought this since I became a voting adult who had learned about why the EC exists. So it isnt new, and I know that is similar for many others who dislike the EC.
My argument has continually been that everyone's vote should count equally because it encourages participation and allows ignored voices to be heard and counted.
I do not think the EC should be abolished simply because 'my side lost'.
For the record, I also dont think the Supreme Court should be packed with additional Justices. With that said, I do think Congress should operate ethically and fairly consider SCOTUS nominees. That sort of political crap is what further divides the country.
Show me the lie in that article. You can't. First, because you didn't read it. You looked at the address and made a decision. Second, because there aren't any.
Sure. But go watch Kamala's very own senate speech about the vulnerability of the Dominion voting machines.
I agree here. What they did to Kavanaugh "radicalized" me. And guess who was one of the ring leaders? Mrs. Cackler herself.
It isnt that he disagrees, its that he disagrees by referencing the same thing he complained about as justifcation.
So the same thing is both the issue and the benefit. When that happens, there is nothing more to say that to identify it as absurd and move on.
If there were no Electoral College, LA, SF, Chicago, NY.....all the big cities (with terrible politics) would decide every pres. election.
Little ole Mississippi (and several other states) would have NO SAY in the matter.
The founding father knew what they were doing.
good one.**
The Kavanaugh hearing was a clownshow.
The fact that someone else was denied the rightful opportunity to even be considered because of political crap is a disgusting mark on Congress.
Dems want to make Puerto Rico and DC states.
That would mean 4 more deep blue senators and however many congressmen & women based on population.
The GOP would never have majority in the senate....and possibly not the house either.
Dems want to pack the high court as well. Might as well, they control most every other court.
Since 2000, between 22% and 36% of LA County voted Republican in Presidential elections. That means more than 1 out of every 4 votes has not mattered each election. 0 weight to those votes. Meaningless votes.
Allowing every vote to count the same would make those votes actually count.
I did read it, actually. It's a pretty simply 5th grade level article. Doesn't really do anything to dissuade me though.
It's not that there's a lie. It's just that it's not a compelling argument.
Keep telling us how these Republicans are being disenfranchised and they'd be much better off if their candidate lost a NPV. It's a solid argument.
Well I guess we'll update the record. The Founding Fathers of the most successful democratic republic ever and a 5th grader vs. dawg with two g's. Tough to decide who knows best really.
- Status
Get unlimited access today.