270-268 scenario
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NPV would be worse... way worse. Sure, maybe not at first... but come back in 10 years and see how much government support the sparsely populated states are given vs the population centers.
It is absolutely baffling to me that people want to abolish the EC because it is preventing the very thing it was designed to guard against.
The moment any politician starts talking down the EC, I immediately decide they're trying to buy votes at any cost rather than acting in the best interest of the country.
As soon as they do that the blue and red states will start to redistrict then the blue states would not have any red districts, and the red states would not have any blue districts. Politic is evil now. The founding fathers knew what they were doing when they added it to the constitutions. It would be almost impossible to change.
That would be the stupidest thing ever unless you are a Democrat. Los Angeles and New York would elect every president. There is a reason the electoral college was instituted. And no it doesn't have anything to do with slave states.
This is just as stupid as the people who say one play won or lost the game.
I got interrupted....I actually have a plan to convince Congress to increase its size, which won't be easy.
When Congress first passed the Bill of Rights as Amendments to the Constitution, it passed two other Amendments as well. The original Second Amendment delayed any laws affecting Congressional pay from being effective until the next Congress convened. It was ratified in 1992 and became the 27th Amendment.
The original First Amendment set a strict size for Congress. Congress would start at 1 Congressman per 30,000 people, until Congress had 100 members. Then they would have 1 per 40,000, then 1 per 50,000....unfortunately the Amendment stops at 1 Congressman per 60,000, which today would mean about 5567 total members of the House.
I don't think anyone besides me wants Congress to be that big, but what if states started ratifying the Amendment? 38 states would have to ratify, and I think 11 have so far. What if we could push that number close to 30? Would Congress get scared enough to increase its size voluntarily?
I would love to find out.
The electoral college was brilliance on the part of the founding fathers. Every once in a while there is a razor thin margin like 2000 where Florida was the epicenter of craziness.
But I want you to imagine 2 scenarios under a scenario where national popular vote wins.
1. You have one rogue state that just doesn’t give a rip and will stuff the ballot box to whatever result needed to flip the popular vote to our preferred candidate. The electoral college protects the system from that scenario. Doubt that could ever happen? Then you don’t understand human nature.
2. Imagine the chaos in a scenario where the popular vote ended in a razor thin margin. It would be endless litigation where 13,000 more votes were found in Alabama. Whoops, we found that same amount more in Vermont. Ooops, 25,000 provisional votes approved by the Florida courts. Here comes California now to save the day!
The electoral college is by its design an insulator from chaos. Long live the wisdom of of its designers!
That's easy to say from someone who wants PA to keep voting blue today. My opinion is that it's a hedge against majority rule, which is a good thing for both sides over periods of time, not just what I want to happen today.
You would kill it today, but then when the majority is voting in a way you don't like, what are you going to do? The federal government and the general electorate need checks and balances, even when it's not going in your favor.
Also I would say, just because it may come down to Pennsylvania in this cycle doesn't mean Pennsylvania by itself is "picking our president" today. There are numerous other states that are deciding to get it to the point of being tied. You could easily say NC, or AZ, or whichever other state, is deciding the outcome.
Yeah. Think about if the roles were reversed and we were looking to implement the EC - what would a commercial supporting it even look like? Would there be a king?
That’s actually not why its there at all. That’s why the Senate was created.
The electoral college system is no more friendly to the small population states than a popular vote would be. In fact, its arguably less friendly because it requires multiple small states to band together to have the same influence of one big state with the same total population as the small states.
LOL You'd never see the commercial, because all the political advertising would take place in about 5-6 cities. You think you're vote doesn't count now? Get rid of the EC and watch as Houstonians, Los Angelinos, New Yorkers and Chicagoans make all of our laws. I'm sure their ideas for farm subsidies are well informed.
Trump is a near 2-1 favorite in gambling markets if you want to see an actual poll that reflects reality. They aren't in the business of losing money.
Instead, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are picking the president today. Hope they get it right...
Yes, and that's why electoral votes were allocated as they are. the simple math says you are wrong about the rest. You can argue with the math all you want to.
Those "betting markets" still had Biden under 90% in December 2020, so I'm not sure the bettors are as in touch with "reality" as you think.
The only polls that ARE reality are the real ones with voting booths.
If they voted opposite of the rest of the country they wouldn't. Votes elsewhere count too. You are buying into too much media BS.
Sounds like you've got a good chance to make some money. Also, bettors don't set the lines. Per bookmakers review, gambling markets have correctly predicted 77% of elections over the past 35 years. They have been wrong 1 time in the past 11 presidential elections. So yea, I'm sure they are just throwing sh*t against the wall.
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One of the main purposes of the Electoral College was our Founders didn't trust the common man to cast an intelligent vote for a national office. That's why electors were chosen by the legislature and NOT elected.
Your fears of a chaotic popular vote scenario may be avoided by the use of yhe Electoral College, but that is not why it was designed.
Had the Dems ( you know those valiant defenders of democracy) taken the time to choose their candidate the traditional way this thread wouldn't exist because they would be so far ahead due to just the anti-Trump vote if nothing else. Instead they let their party "leaders" select someone who is at best a simple minded sock puppet to continue to carry out their party's policies.
The EC legitimizes the winning candidate and diminishes the incentive for vote stealing. It, most importantly in my opinion, requires national candidates to court areas of the country that might otherwise be forgotten. Now you may say, "The Red team never has to worry, Wyoming will always go red (or New Hampshire will always go blue)." But let Trump mess around and lose Iowa or Harris lose New Hampshire and watch how quickly the their teams start paying attention to it. Our country is an amalgamation of different states and cultures. The EC wisely reflects that. The same with the bi-cameral legislature. The gridlock is the point. You must compromise and draw consensus to govern. Or, at least, that was the intention.
This is correct, the Electoral College was born from the compromise between the large and small states as to how the President would be elected.
Not to mention that if any single state (like CA or TX, or even the 2 of them together) attracted a large enough percentage of the population, those states by themselves could more or less pick the president every 4 years.
It’ll be interesting how the timing of results/states being called differs from 2020. I’m not sure we know tonight but I don’t think it drags on until Saturday either.
Everything I’ve read is GA, NC, MI are expected be the first swing states called. Those three may be a split that doesn’t tell us a ton or it could be essentially game over (sweeping those three puts Harris over 270, a Trump sweep would have him not quite there but really close and only needing one other swing state).
Everything I’ve read is GA, NC, MI are expected be the first swing states called. Those three may be a split that doesn’t tell us a ton or it could be essentially game over (sweeping those three puts Harris over 270, a Trump sweep would have him not quite there but really close and only needing one other swing state).
The other primary purpose behind the EC was to prevent like 10 candidates with regional popularity only from all running for president, and none being able to achieve a majority….then having to award the presidency to someone that got like 20% of the nationwide popular vote. That was the biggest risk to nationwide free elections in the 1700’s - the winner having no mandate to lead. Also, national campaigns were difficult / costly and also information traveled much more slowly.
The 2-party system of today, as well as colossal economic and technological advances, render all that totally obsolete. We’re no longer in this farmers vs. city folk competing interests of 250 years ago. Case and point, California has the largest electoral college representation at 54 votes. On the opposite end, it takes the combined electoral votes of DC, Delaware, Alaska, Hawaii, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Rhode Island, West Virginia, and New Mexico to get the same number of votes. Those are the 15 smallest electoral blocks. Well, do the red / blue analysis, you still have more blue electoral college votes than red in those 15 states. Alaska and Washington DC are opposite in every way imaginable geographically, politically, and economically. Both get 3 votes. Rhode Island and Montana, same deal. This notion that states with smaller populations still have far different interests than states with large populations like they did 3 centuries ago is just not true any longer.
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And He was -187 this morning and has not changed on my book. Lot more juice to place something on his side
It'd be so much easier to rig if you only had to a few large cities to jimmy the vote.
exactly, if the electoral college helped them win elections, they would be for the electoral college.
Money line bets on the underdog hit all the time though and in much deeper markets. If the betting markets were deep, I would trust them probably more than anything, but I'm not sure they're deep enough to really aggregate information any better than the polls do. Now as actual information comes out, such as data on early voting and maybe data on participating in certain precincts, I would expect them to adjust faster than a lot of pollsters and pundits, but I still think so many old patterns are breaking down that they're not going to be hugely better than pollsters and pundits.
This is definitely true, but as posted previously they have been right just under 80% of the time for the past 35 years and 10 of the last 11 elections. It's been a pretty good indicator on how it's going to go in the past.
For President of the United States, votes should count the same, regardless of where people live. The President oversees all citizens in all states.
A large state doesnt have more power than a small state when each vote counts the same because states arent even considered.
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