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 Ustrello wrote:
If it hasn't been asked was there a noticeable increase or decrease in voter participation in Maine and Nebraska in presidential elections after they implemented the splitting of EC votes by percentage?

Don't know about Maine and Nebraska in particular, but I know there's studies that have shown that there's a correlation between proportionally representative systems and higher voter turnout that is hard to explain with other factors, I'll see if I can find some of them.

Prestor Jon wrote:

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:

 whembly wrote:
Quite the opposite. Worked as intended. A majority of States chose the president. See: United STATES. Not NY and CA et al

I've explained to you multiple, multiple, multiple times that this simply isn't true. That's how how population distribution works in the real world. There aren't enough people in those too states to carry a candidate in a general popular vote election.

Going by the numbers on CNN (https://www.cnn.com/election/2016/results) Clinton beat Trump by 2,868,691 in the popular vote. Clinton also beat Trump by 4,269,978 in the popular vote in California. Therefore, simply by winning California by a wide margin Clinton overcame losing to Trump in the popular vote in the other 49 states (and DC) combined.

Which wouldn't have mattered if Clinton hadn't also gotten a bunch of votes in the other states, which is the entire argument.

13% of Clinton votes came from a state with 12% of the total US population

So what is the argument here, that a state with 2 million people in it should have equal standing to a state with 40 million because it's the united STATES?

Yeah sorry, that makes no sense. You are prioritizing an arbitrary border over the first, most sacred principal of a democracy, that every citizen gets a vote, and their vote counts.

If you think it is more important to make South Dakota equal to California or New York just because they are all states, while completely turning your back on THE CITIZENS OF THE COUNTRY that live in those states, sorry, but I think your priorities are horrendously out of wack. Country first. Citizens first.

 MajorTom11 wrote:
So what is the argument here, that a state with 2 million people in it should have equal standing to a state with 40 million because it's the united STATES?

Yeah sorry, that makes no sense. You are prioritizing an arbitrary border over the first, most sacred principal of a democracy, that every citizen gets a vote, and their vote counts.

If you think it is more important to make South Dakota equal to California or New York just because they are all states, while completely turning your back on THE CITIZENS OF THE COUNTRY that live in those states, sorry, but I think your priorities are horrendously out of wack. Country first. Citizens first.

Well... yes, that was the general intent behind the formation of the nation. Each State was an equal entity, no one state was supposed to be valued more then another. If it came down to just the people, then there would have been no need for the states.

Do you also hate the Senate structure by the same logic, Tom?

The structure of our government specifically is not just "majority rules", whether looking at the electoral college or the Senate. I personally think it's a good thing, as it spreads representation across the nation. If you went to the other extreme, it would be harder to keep the "union" intact, imo.

You have summoned the "we're not a Democracy..." beast!

 MajorTom11 wrote:
So what is the argument here, that a state with 2 million people in it should have equal standing to a state with 40 million because it's the united STATES?

Yeah sorry, that makes no sense. You are prioritizing an arbitrary border over the first, most sacred principal of a democracy, that every citizen gets a vote, and their vote counts.

If you think it is more important to make South Dakota equal to California or New York just because they are all states, while completely turning your back on THE CITIZENS OF THE COUNTRY that live in those states, sorry, but I think your priorities are horrendously out of wack. Country first. Citizens first.

That's just it, South Dakota and California are NOT equal.

South Dakota has 3 electoral votes.

California has 55 electoral votes.

It behooves a candidate to make their appeal across multiple states...rather than the high populous cities.

 whembly wrote:

 MajorTom11 wrote:
So what is the argument here, that a state with 2 million people in it should have equal standing to a state with 40 million because it's the united STATES?

Yeah sorry, that makes no sense. You are prioritizing an arbitrary border over the first, most sacred principal of a democracy, that every citizen gets a vote, and their vote counts.

If you think it is more important to make South Dakota equal to California or New York just because they are all states, while completely turning your back on THE CITIZENS OF THE COUNTRY that live in those states, sorry, but I think your priorities are horrendously out of wack. Country first. Citizens first.

That's just it, South Dakota and California are NOT equal.

South Dakota has 3 electoral votes.

California has 55 electoral votes.

It behooves a candidate to make their appeal across multiple states...rather than the high populous cities.

You keep saying that, and people keep pointing out that it wouldn't be enough to win the big population centers, and you ignore it. Rinse, repeat.

With proportional representation you have to spread your efforts because every vote matters. The way it is now, with some states being "secure" for one party or another, you focus on a few swing states to win. The situation you're afraid of is literally already happening and would be solved with proportional representation.

The issue is compounded both by the electoral college system itself and by the fact that the individual States insist on using a winner-takes-all system that disenfranchises voters.

Again, it would not "solve" the issue of disenfranchisement, imo, it would only shift it...

Going to a popular-total-only system has major drawbacks too, but you're ignoring them as much as whembly is the drawbacks of the current system...

I'm definitely open to the idea of splitting the electoral vote totals of individual states like in the Nebraska example, though, that is very interesting!

Candidates still (safely) ignore the vast majority of the United State, they still only visit a small number of states.

The candidates ignore California for the same reason they ignore Oklahoma: our votes don't matter because everybody already knows what color the state will swing. Swing States don't get visited because the EC makes them some magical entity that makes them more important as a smaller state than California or New York. Swing states get visited because they are competitive states where turning a vote around can actually make a difference.

Take California as an example: ~4,000,000 vote advantage for the winning side. Why would the Republican party even try to do anything there other than doing some small visits to raise some money? They could spend some resources there and swing voters, and let's say they can get a 500,000 swing towards the Republican Party. With the EC the way it is right now, what does that accomplish? Nothing. The state is still blue, and the state electors still all vote for the Democrat.

But in the popular vote count, the Democrat still wins by the state by 3,000,000 but the national vote now drops from 2,800,000 to 1,800,000. The entire race becomes more competitive. Without the EC, each vote counts in every state.

Yes, without the EC candidates will probably focus on population centers, because that's where the most people live and some states might get ignored. But states already get ignored, the EC didn't fix that and all it did is change which states are the ones that get ignored. But ignoring states comes at a cost without the EC because 25,000 people voting one way or the other in a small state actually makes an impact rather than keeping states the same color no matter what.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 whembly wrote:

 MajorTom11 wrote:
So what is the argument here, that a state with 2 million people in it should have equal standing to a state with 40 million because it's the united STATES?

Yeah sorry, that makes no sense. You are prioritizing an arbitrary border over the first, most sacred principal of a democracy, that every citizen gets a vote, and their vote counts.

If you think it is more important to make South Dakota equal to California or New York just because they are all states, while completely turning your back on THE CITIZENS OF THE COUNTRY that live in those states, sorry, but I think your priorities are horrendously out of wack. Country first. Citizens first.

That's just it, South Dakota and California are NOT equal.

South Dakota has 3 electoral votes.

California has 55 electoral votes.

It behooves a candidate to make their appeal across multiple states...rather than the high populous cities.

You keep saying that, and people keep pointing out that it wouldn't be enough to win the big population centers, and you ignore it. Rinse, repeat.

I'm ignoring it as it's nonsense. The current system objective is to maximize the electoral votes. With something like a popular vote, the campaigns would look different in that the campaigns would functionally work to maximize the population centers.

With proportional representation you have to spread your efforts because every vote matters. The way it is now, with some states being "secure" for one party or another, you focus on a few swing states to win. The situation you're afraid of is literally already happening and would be solved with proportional representation.

The issue is compounded both by the electoral college system itself and by the fact that the individual States insist on using a winner-takes-all system that disenfranchises voters.

At the end of the day, this is the system that we have. Presidents who has lost the popular vote is not at all uncommon in our history.

The debate largely revolves around the idea that the popular vote (or it's variant) is a better system... and many disagrees.

The EC is about maximizing the Electoral Votes and campaigns are conducted as such.

If the another system is in placed, then the campaigns will adjust their tactics accordingly.

 RiTides wrote:
Again, it would not "solve" the issue of disenfranchisement, imo, it would only shift it...

How? How are you going to manage to disenfranchise millions of voters in a proportional representation system? Voters in more rural areas no longer running the show isn't them being disenfranchised, it's them no longer being propped up by the system. It's a disenfranchisement only relative to the current, constructed state that is explicitly constructed to favour the minority over the majority.

I think one of the issues with the pro-EC arguments is that they often rely on simple falsehoods like "it keeps candidates from focusing on only a few states".

http://adage.com/article/campaign-trail/states-where-trump-clinton-spending-most-on-advertising/306377/

 RiTides wrote:
Again, it would not "solve" the issue of disenfranchisement, imo, it would only shift it...

Going to a popular-total-only system has major drawbacks too, but you're ignoring them as much as whembly is the drawbacks of the current system...

I'm not ignoring it... it's something that's baked in the system. Everyone knows what's going on here...

I'm definitely open to the idea of splitting the electoral vote totals of individual states like in the Nebraska example, though, that is very interesting!

That's probably a more reasonable system, in which the 50 states ought to replicate.

 whembly wrote:

At the end of the day, this is the system that we have. Presidents who has lost the popular vote is not at all uncommon in our history.

It's happened five times since 1776, two of them in the last 18 years. That's five times in 58 elections, or less than 9%. "Not uncommon" indeed.

 whembly wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 whembly wrote:

 MajorTom11 wrote:
So what is the argument here, that a state with 2 million people in it should have equal standing to a state with 40 million because it's the united STATES?

Yeah sorry, that makes no sense. You are prioritizing an arbitrary border over the first, most sacred principal of a democracy, that every citizen gets a vote, and their vote counts.

If you think it is more important to make South Dakota equal to California or New York just because they are all states, while completely turning your back on THE CITIZENS OF THE COUNTRY that live in those states, sorry, but I think your priorities are horrendously out of wack. Country first. Citizens first.

That's just it, South Dakota and California are NOT equal.

South Dakota has 3 electoral votes.

California has 55 electoral votes.

It behooves a candidate to make their appeal across multiple states...rather than the high populous cities.

You keep saying that, and people keep pointing out that it wouldn't be enough to win the big population centers, and you ignore it. Rinse, repeat.

I'm ignoring it as it's nonsense. The current system objective is to maximize the electoral votes. With something like a popular vote, the campaigns would look different in that the campaigns would functionally work to maximize the population centers.

What? You're literally arguing that the alternative to the current system would be a system that you believe would mean candidates wouldn't campaign across multiple states, but rather in the high populous cities (ignoring the fact that the high populous cities are across multiple states too). This is pointed out as incorrect to you and then you for some reason start explaining how the current system works. We know how it works. We're saying that your characterisation of how proportional representation would work is actually how it works right now, and that proportional representation would be an improvement.

EDIT: Put it this way: is it more fair that the candidates spend their energy and time to convince 250,000 people, or 25 million, if we're assuming that it is beneficial when the candidates interact with more people?

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Ustrello wrote:
If it hasn't been asked was there a noticeable increase or decrease in voter participation in Maine and Nebraska in presidential elections after they implemented the splitting of EC votes by percentage?

Don't know about Maine and Nebraska in particular, but I know there's studies that have shown that there's a correlation between proportionally representative systems and higher voter turnout that is hard to explain with other factors, I'll see if I can find some of them.

Prestor Jon wrote:

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:

 whembly wrote:
Quite the opposite. Worked as intended. A majority of States chose the president. See: United STATES. Not NY and CA et al

I've explained to you multiple, multiple, multiple times that this simply isn't true. That's how how population distribution works in the real world. There aren't enough people in those too states to carry a candidate in a general popular vote election.

Going by the numbers on CNN (https://www.cnn.com/election/2016/results) Clinton beat Trump by 2,868,691 in the popular vote. Clinton also beat Trump by 4,269,978 in the popular vote in California. Therefore, simply by winning California by a wide margin Clinton overcame losing to Trump in the popular vote in the other 49 states (and DC) combined.

Which wouldn't have mattered if Clinton hadn't also gotten a bunch of votes in the other states, which is the entire argument.

No, the argument was that "There aren't enough people in those two[sic] to a carry a candidate in a general popular vote election" which is demonstrably false as winning 8 million votes in California is enough to offset losing all the votes in a dozen other states or offset losing the collective popular vote in the other 49 states. And there are enough voters in the top 9 states Electorally that if they all voted for the same candidate those 9 states would guarantee a victory by popular vote. so there are enough voters in "NY and CA et al" to give a candidate a popular vote victory.

Clinton didn't campaign at all in many states and campaigned very little in other states and she still won the popular vote by a couple million because she won a lot of votes in very populous states. If the Presidential election was merely a popular vote contest that campaign trend would not be reversed it would be exacerbated. If you are bothered by the idea that "only a few states matter" a popular vote only creates a greater imbalance. Candidates don't campaign much, if at all, in states like Alaska, Hawaii, Montana, Idaho, Vermont, Maine, Delaware, Rhode Island, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and New Mexico and that's in a system that "makes rural voters count more than urban voters."

Which is still an improvement over the current situation because it means the campaigns reach more people. The government is supposed to be for the people of the US, not for the geographical territories of the US.

Prestor Jon wrote:


No, the argument was that "There aren't enough people in those two[sic] to a carry a candidate in a general popular vote election" which is demonstrably false as winning 8 million votes in California is enough to offset losing all the votes in a dozen other states or offset losing the collective popular vote in the other 49 states. And there are enough voters in the top 9 states Electorally that if they all voted for the same candidate those 9 states would guarantee a victory by popular vote. so there are enough voters in "NY and CA et al" to give a candidate a popular vote victory.

Depends on the definition of "et al." in this case, but winning by 8 million in California would only matter because there were people in the rest of the states that also voted Clinton. California would have "carried" the election in the sense that it turned a defeat into a win, but it wouldn't have "carried" the election in the sense that it single-handedly decided the election. I think we're talking past each other using two different interpretations of "carrying the election".

The question comes down to: do you believe every person's vote counts and is of equal value to every other person's vote? If so, then why are you willing to accept a system that denies that?

California, like the vast majority of states, is a chicken/egg situation:

Did voters vote for Hillary because the GOP really didn't do any campaigning there, or did the GOP not really do any campaigning there because voters would have always voted for Hillary?

What we do know is that with the current system, the GOP has ZERO reason to spend a single dollar in California because swinging the vote total by 3,000,000 people will make zero difference in how the election turns out. The state is still blue, and all the votes still go to Hillary.

So it's kind of pointless to look at vote totals for any state and decide that this is a good reason to argue in favor of any particular system, if our current system doesn't encourage either party to focus on voter turnout in most of them.

 d-usa wrote:
Yes, without the EC candidates will probably focus on population centers, because that's where the most people live and some states might get ignored. But states already get ignored, the EC didn't fix that and all it did is change which states are the ones that get ignored.

That's all I'm saying - and I'm actually in complete agreement with this.

Changing the system alters which states get the focus, but this isn't necessarily good or bad, just different.

You could accomplish the same "every vote counts" result by splitting the electoral college result of states, and my understanding is that each state has the right to make these rules themselves. So, California and Texas could follow the Nebraska and Maine examples, if they wish - and that's within the current system without needing a constitutional amendment that's likely never to happen!

Well, right now there is no reason to focus on many states because even a significant swing in votes doesn't matter. The electoral votes will be the same even if you swing the total by 10%.

I don't know if the majority of states will still be ignored if a system would use popular vote instead though. Maybe they still would because a 2% swing in North Dakota isn't a lot of votes. But maybe they would decide that a 2% swing across all the small states is worth it to swing the overall total vote.

And regardless of whether it changes the amout of states being focussed on it lets more people's votes actually matter.

But as I just posted, you can accomplish similar results of every vote mattering by splitting the electoral college votes of states. This is a viable alternative, whereas completely doing away with the EC is not, as enough small states will never support it. What did you think about this option?

It would have to be implemented on a state by state basis, but it's doable, unlike the amendment route.

 d-usa wrote:
I think one of the issues with the pro-EC arguments is that they often rely on simple falsehoods like "it keeps candidates from focusing on only a few states".

http://adage.com/article/campaign-trail/states-where-trump-clinton-spending-most-on-advertising/306377/

States like Wyoming are always going to be largely ignored by Presidential candidates because they lack enough Electoral votes to be important because they don't have enough people in them. That's never going to change unless tens of millions of citizens relocate to more sparsely populated states.

What the EC is supposed to do is level the playing field by having all States participate with a minimum number of Electors so that even sparsely populated States can have an impact collectively even though they aren't as important individually. Wyoming has less people it has 3 Electors, California has a lot of people it has 55 Electors, California is more important to candidates than Wyoming. That's the advantage that CA voters have, they are far more desirable and important to candidates than voters in Wyoming. It would be difficult to make Wyoming matter any less to the Electoral process without just removing the State from the process completely. The only sense in which California voters don't have a louder voice in the process than Wyoming voters is the ratio of voters to Electoral Votes and that problem isn't caused by the Electoral College it's caused by Congress.

Congress decided to put an arbitrary cap on the number of representatives in the House and consequently put a cap on Electoral Votes. If Congress wasn't so intent on messing around with apportionment to enable their gerrymandering the number of Representative/EC votes per state could grow organically and not be limited to robbing Peter to pay Paul. Current Federal law only stipulates that Congressional districts should be approximately the same size in population (within 15%) within the State so there is a huge variance nationally. Representatives in the House should all be representing roughly the same number of people but because Congress can't stop themselves from fething stuff up we've had the same disparity problem in regards to population per Congressional district/EC vote since 1929. It never gets addressed because the only time it gets talked about is when a President wins the Electoral vote but not the popular vote and that only happens about 9% of the time.

Fixing the Federal law so that every X number of people in every state equals 1 Congressional district/EC vote will fix the unfairness in the system.

 RiTides wrote:
But as I just posted, you can accomplish similar results of every vote mattering by splitting the electoral college votes of states. This is a viable alternative, whereas completely doing away with the EC is not, as enough small states will never support it. What did you think about this option?

It would have to be implemented on a state by state basis, but it's doable, unlike the amendment route.

As I said earlier:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:


Proportional representation on a State level could work as a compromise; you wouldn't make people's votes worthless and the smaller states would retain their advantage.

It'd probably somehow have to change the current number of EC delegates though so that there's some granularity in the smaller states.

Future War Cultist wrote:America doesn’t have a parliamentary style system right? So there is no ‘leader of the Democratic Party’ in a similar vein to leader of the conservative or labour parties in the uk right? Who’s a prominent enough democrat to take him on?

Eldarain wrote:Is there any realistic chance the two major parties will ever lose their stranglehold on control? There seems to be some rather substantially undemocratic barriers in the way of competition having it's voice heard currently.

For the record: https://www.factcheck.org/2008/01/why-only-two-political-parties/

Q: Why are there only two major parties in the U.S.?

Taken from the Full Answer: "The U.S. political system is based on what political scientists call a single-member district plurality (SMDP). That’s a fancy way of saying that the U.S. elects representatives from particular districts, with the person who gets the most votes in a district (also called a plurality) winning the seat. Each district is winner-take-all, and votes in one district have no effect on other districts. Presidential elections, though nationwide contests, are likewise really state-by-state races, thanks to the Electoral College, in which every state except Maine and Nebraska awards all of its electoral votes to whichever candidate wins a plurality of the state’s votes."

The United States does not adhere to a democratic system. In actually, the nation is a "federalist republic" whereby government and governance are cultivated via 50 'mini-countries' vs many other democratic systems where provinces are not nec. "states", legally speaking {for example: States in the U.S. have their own secretaries of state, speakers of the house, vice governors, etc etc. [In the late 1700s early 1800s, the original states were very much mini-countries which chose to band together for self-preservation]}. The nation is quite literally, as the saying goes, E Pluribus Unum, "out of many, one".

This is why the U.S. never holds nation-wide referendums on issue like same-sex marriage (as has been done in other democracies) because there are no mechanisms for such actions. Rather, if one were to try something akin to a "national referendum" it would look more like a constitutional amendment process whereby the individual states would vote and the results within said states would be tallied one way or the other {35 states yay, 15 states nay for example}.

The Federalist Republic system is partially why it is difficult for smaller parties to make headway: because they are actually trying to gain ground in 50 individual mini-countries rather than promoting themselves on a nation-wide system.

This is also why, as opposed to every other "democracy" on the face of planet earth, the leader of the executive branch is not the person who receives the most votes. Rather- it is the person who wins the "most states". In this way, one could rightfully argue that the president can in fact be undemocratically chosen [see: 2016], since they can "win" the office without accruing the most votes. This can easily happen in Republic Systems and has happened multiple times in the U.S. just during my young life-time.

FTR: Governorships and state-level offices are usually elected democratically with the winner being the individual who receives the most votes.

If any part of that made you feel incredibly frustrated Welcome to my world: WHY DO YOU THINK I PLAY ORKS?! CATHARTIC RELIEF- THATS WHY!!

Wow, we managed to get all the way to page 5 before "the US isn't a democracy it's a republic" popped up.

I'll just let Merriam-Webster answer that one for me:

Merriam Webster wrote:
Is the United States a democracy or a republic?

One of the most commonly encountered questions about the word democracy has nothing to do with its spelling or pronunciation, and isn’t even directly related to the meaning of the word itself. That question is “is the United States a democracy or a republic?” The answer to this, as with so many other questions about meaning, may be phrased as some form of “it depends.”

Some people believe that a country calling itself a democracy must be engaged in direct (or pure) democracy, in which the people of a state or region vote directly for policies, rather than elect representatives who make choices on their behalf. People who follow this line of reasoning hold that the United States is more properly described as a republic, using the following definition of that word: ”a government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law.”

However, both democracy and republic have more than a single meaning, and one of the definitions we provide for democracy closely resembles the definition of republic given above: “a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.”

So if someone asks you if the United States is a democracy or a republic, you may safely answer the question with either “both” or “it depends.”

As for this:

 Whazgog Da Despot wrote:


This is also why, as opposed to every other "democracy" on the face of planet earth, the leader of the executive branch is not the person who receives the most votes. Rather- it is the person who wins the "most states". In this way, one could rightfully argue that the president can in fact be undemocratically chosen [see: 2016], since they can "win" the office without accruing the most votes. This can easily happen in Republic Systems and has happened multiple times in the U.S. just during my young life-time.

It's technically correct, in that it's happened twice in the last 18 years. It's, on the other hand, rather misleading, since it's happened a total of 5 times since 1776; claiming that this can "easily happen" and using the word "multiple" instead of just saying "twice" is just blatantly misleading.

It can "easily happen" in the sense that such an outcome is impossible in parliamentary systems, which, I would argue, are more democratic (so long as the party which gains the most votes has an absolute majority)

As for the Merriam-Webster description: it is correct that "it [very much] depends" on the context. The United States, at a national level, IS a republic. The representatives of said republic are elected democratically, but we do not vote for parties, we vote for representatives from individual mini-democracies.

This drastically alters how we make laws, how those laws are enforced, and what mechanisms are available to us regarding governance over the entirety of the country.

Which doesn't mean that the US isn't a Democracy, only that it isn't a specific type of democracy. Fair enough on the comparison to parliamentary systems though.

 djones520 wrote:

 MajorTom11 wrote:
So what is the argument here, that a state with 2 million people in it should have equal standing to a state with 40 million because it's the united STATES?

Yeah sorry, that makes no sense. You are prioritizing an arbitrary border over the first, most sacred principal of a democracy, that every citizen gets a vote, and their vote counts.

If you think it is more important to make South Dakota equal to California or New York just because they are all states, while completely turning your back on THE CITIZENS OF THE COUNTRY that live in those states, sorry, but I think your priorities are horrendously out of wack. Country first. Citizens first.

Well... yes, that was the general intent behind the formation of the nation. Each State was an equal entity, no one state was supposed to be valued more then another. If it came down to just the people, then there would have been no need for the states.

That's hopelessly simplistic. First of all, the state is a jurisdiction entity and a governance entity. But you are a resident of the state, you are a citizen of the country. When it comes to the country, your citizenship is what matters, not what state you live in. States exist to perform a myriad of functions, thousands each, and forms one of the 3 main tiers of government, municipal, state and federal. By the same logic, might as well wipe out municipalities and cities right? Don't conflate something so complex down to a single function. Nothing in the composition of a country is singular. One can vote as a resident of the state for state level elections, because they are a resident in that state. One can vote federally, because they are a citizen of the country.

They are not mutually inclusive. They are separate systems explicitly designed to have jurisdiction over seperate levels of administration and law. What does your passport say? Your birth certificate? Citizen of South Carolina? OR the United States of America?