65% of U.S. adults say the way the president is elected should be changed so that the winner of the popular vote nationwide wins the presidency.
They told me in high school that the electoral college was still necessary because counting the popular vote was too hard…
Did your teachers perhaps get their college diplomas in the 1870s? Because that predates the first tabulating machines being invented. Add that invention to the telegraph machine (ca 1837), and you’ve got a stew going.
I wish I was kidding! My school district wasn’t too bright.
You’re either in your 90’s or 100’s, or that was a complete lie.
Oh I know it was a lie. My school district sucked.
Every other country in the world manages it but the Americans fuck it up. Like healthcare.
Every other country in the world?
Did you forget places outside Western Europe, Canada, and Australia exist?
I live in a Central European capital with worse healthcare than the US. (I have lived in both countries and have elderly relatives living under state funded healthcare in both systems.)
First, there’s a big difference between cities in both places. I could believe that if you compare California to Bratislav, but Oklahoma to Vienna would already be a different matter.
And in any case, it depends how much worse it was. In the US, even if it’s “state funded”, you have to pay for it, and quite a lot. Chances are if you went to a private clinic in Central Europe paying that same amount of money you could’ve gotten the same, if not better treatment.
I might as well just say it, I’m mostly comparing Louisville, KY and Los Angeles to Prague, Czech Republic and a midsized city in Poland. I have relatives who travel to the US for treatment because at least in CZ the elder care in hospitals is abusive/negligent.
Edit: To clarify I’ve lived in Kentucky and Czech Republic, but spend a lot of time in Poland and Los Angeles because of family/personal ties.
I mean, I can believe public hospitals in Prague not being top-notch, but flying to America to get treatment seems surreal. Like, that’s a lot of money and I can’t believe for that amount they couldn’t find a private to do it better in CZ or at least in Germany.
I haven’t personally been in America so you’re probably more knowledgeable than me under that aspect, but from all the shit I’ve read online I don’t get why should anyone from Europe go get treatment there instead of a Scandinavian country.
No. It’s because states that have huge populations would choose the president with basically zero say from most others. Technically a non representative government.
You solve the ‘problem’ of ‘tyranny of the majority’ by having a strong constitution and good rights and protections for minorities, not by switching to the indisputably worse option of ‘tyranny of the minority’. Because that causes the exact same problem, but for even more people instead.
The issue is while a strong constitution is nice, it’s necessary to have at least some people in office who would respect the constitution to be effective, including at least a partially originality supreme court.
Alternatively, more clearly written constitutional laws. It’s wild that you have judges who cannot agree on what an article of the constitution really means, and the language should have been amended years ago.
In the Netherlands, we have a clearly written constitution, but no real ‘supreme court’ in the American sense. And that setup seems to work quite well.
Agreed some should be clarified, but a lot are pretty clear but are denied as unclear for political reasons. One obvious example is the 2nd amendment of the bill of rights. Also, keep in the mind the US constitution is the oldest constitution still in use, so language does evolve somewhat.
The version of the tyranny of the majority that he’s warning against is already solved in the American system. The ward against it is the Senate. Every state has exactly 2 votes in the Senate and no legislation can be passed and enacted into law without passing a vote in the Senate.
The senate is a terrible way to deal with it though. But it’s at least better than the EC.
So instead, states with populations smaller than some cities get to completely override the will of the majority of the country.
What we have now is non-representative. Rather, it’s representative of land, not voters.
Rather, it’s representative of land, not voters.
Horse feathers. There are 535 total EC votes and only 100 of those come from the Senate. The other 435 are come from the House whichis based on population.
The solution to this mess is to upsize the HoR and tilt the ratio back to where it was prior to 1929 when we fucked it up.
Except using the popular vote means that States wouldn’t decide who was president like they do now, the people would.
Under the current system if I vote Red in Chicago I just completely wasted my time. Cook County is so blue that I don’t have a voice. Get rid of the Electoral College, however, and now my vote worth just as much as everyone elses.
People seem to think that if we moved away from the College that the population of a blue state will 100% vote blue or a red state will only have red votes. It’s just not true. The northern half of California or the southern half Illinois votes way different than their counterparts.
The Electoral College is an outdated system designed for a time when the US had relatively low Literacy and the public couldn’t be reliably counted on to be informed. There is no excuse for it nowadays.
As opposed to our current system, where 80% of states don’t matter because they’re not swing states.
What do you mean? They do matter? A democrat doesn’t campaign in California not because it doesn’t matter but because they know most Californians will already vote for them, same with Republicans in Texas
They don’t matter because most states use winner take all for their EC votes. Every additional vote past 50% is absolutely worthless, as is any vote cast in a state where there’s no chance to hit 50%.
With a popular vote system, every vote would still be worth something. It would be worth a politician’s while to campaign in California because even if they’d normally get 60%, as it’s still worth it to drive higher turnout or try to increase that to 65%. It’d be worth going to a hostile state because a vote is a vote. It doesn’t matter where it comes from; they’d all have equal worth.
Every vote past 50% just then wouldn’t matter at a national level. Yes it would increase the total number of votes that voted for the winning candidate, but it would also centralize power more into cities.
States with more diversity of opinion have more say. Seems reasonable to me.
Why should states have more say? We elect the president nationally. It’s not a state election, or it shouldn’t be.
Because we have 50 of them and not 350 million. It’s a simple and effective way to get a weighted average.
Why should there be a ‘weighted average’ for a federal election?
Because there’s a lot of people that don’t live in cities and they need different things from the people that live in cities.
This was more of a valid argument when Republicans were winning elections. I think we should keep the electoral college as long as there’s a republican candidate that wants to overturn our democracy.
The electoral college is good because it stops mob rule from taking over America and doing tyrannies against the minority of wealthy entrepreneurs.
You’re a stupid dumbass.
America wasn’t set up to be run by popular votes, for a reason, by the wise founding fathers. Do you hate the foundational tenets of liberalism?
From what I can gather, and this is after reading the letters from John Adams to his family and between himself and Thomas Jefferson, the wisdom of the founding fathers is suspect at best. They were neither fools nor geniuses, and they were contending with the issues of their time they best they could.
Many decisions were seriously entertained such as allowing George Washington, or rather the office of the President, as a lifelong term. They seriously considered the most oddball and seditious concepts we would revile today. They also changed the goalposts on what we think of as sacred tenets. They did not create the perfect union or the perfect republic. They simply did the best they could and adjusted their views as situations arose. I think that was perhaps the wisest thing they did out of everything.
To sit there and set in stone the concepts from 200 years ago under circumstances that look little like what we face today, is incredulous and idiotic.
For those reasons, I called you a stupid dumbass. Historic tenets are great and all, and widely vary. The United States of the late 1700’s was not the United States of the mid 1800’s, and is radically different than our United States of today.
💀
It’s an extremely tiresome troll account.
It’d be nice to go beyond and have some sort of ranked voting while we’re at it. Essentially being forced to pick between two parties or risk having your vote being wasted sucks.
I prefer score ballots over ranked ballots, expressing magnitude of preference is important!
Ranked choice specifically is one of the worst ranked ballot options out there and I hope we can push for something else
Isnt that what ranked choice is? Expressing magnitude by ranking your choices?
No, it’s not.
Given ballot options of Socialists, Democrats, and Republicans, I’d rank them 1, 2, and 3, respectively. However, when expressing my feelings about the election: I love the Socialists, dislike the Republicans, and prefer the Democrats slightly over the Republicans.
This nuanced opinion isn’t captured on a ranked ballot.
With a score ballot, like STAR voting, I’d give the Socialists 5 stars, the Democrats 1 star, and the Republicans 0 stars. This method not only captures my preferences but also the depth of my feelings for each party. This is then reflected in both the final score and the automatic runoff step of tabulation.
Ah. Gotcha. That makes sense, thanks for explaining!
Reminds me of the Blackadder episode where Baldrick won by 16,000 votes, even though there was only one voter:
H: One voter, 16,472 votes — a slight anomaly…?
E: Not really, Mr. Hanna. You see, Baldrick may look like a monkey who’s been put in a suit and then strategically shaved, but he is a brillant politician. The number of votes I cast is simply a reflection of how firmly I believe in his policies.
Unpopular opinion: ranked choice voting will do little to solve the USA’s democracy issues.
For starters, there are plenty of countries that do use FPTP and still have plenty of third parties in their parliaments (Canada, UK, Taiwan, Australia off the top of my head). So FPTP does not inherently preclude third parties - rather, the USA simply doesn’t have any culture of multilateralism. I’d say this is mostly a byproduct of various cultural phenomena - the wealth gap, corporate media ownership, private campaign financing, win-or-lose mindset, etc.
But the greater issue is that RCV doesn’t really ensure proportionality. As long as you have a single winner from each district, there will be distortions between the proportion of parties for whom people vote and the ultimate parliamentary body. For example, even if you implemented RCV across the entire USA today, I’m pretty sure most legislative bodies would still be entirely dominated by a single party because of gerrymandering and single-member districts.
So if you want to fix the USA’s core issue, what you really need is a more proportional system - either have fewer, larger districts with multiple representatives from each one, or adopt something like MMP which is what Germany has (where you also cast a party vote to declare your preference for which party you most want represented in parliament and distribute proportionally along this tally across all voters). Not only does this make the final representation more fair, but it also does a much better job of making all votes matter, instead of only the lucky few in swing states or the rare competitive Congressional race.
But RCV on its own won’t do much. It is still a small improvement, and if you have the opportunity to adopt it, I say go for it. But at best, I think it would take decades, or maybe even generations, before it starts to improve things.
Also, while I know this doesn’t pertain quite so much to Presidential elections as the electoral college is used for, the USA is also fairly unique in that it has a directly elected head of government with much more power than other countries that also have a directly elected head of state. This is also a part of the problem - the executive branch is supposed to be the weakest of the 3 Federal branches - but it’s a discussion for another time.
Canada and UK third parties are still smaller parties, they have no possiblity of electing a head of state.
Same as I wrote on the other sibling comment. I think these countries all have terrible electoral systems. But the point is, they’re still ahead of the USA in terms of the fact that they will still have an awareness and understanding of third parties, whereas >90% of Americans are just programmed to believe there are only 2 options.
As a thought experiment, ask yourself what would happen if you could wave a magic wand and make every city, state and national legislative election use RCV over FPTP. Do you really think anything would change? I’m pretty sure 95% of the results would be exactly the same. Like I said above, RCV may make things better 20+ years from now, but there’s also a very good chance that so few people actually use their second options that it nothing ends up changing at all. This is why I think multi-member districts or MMP are better solutions.
But the point is, they’re still ahead of the USA in terms of the fact that they will still have an awareness and understanding of third parties, whereas >90% of Americans are just programmed to believe there are only 2 options.
Are you forgetting Ross Perot almost won? There is constant talk of Trump starting a third party, libertarian and green parties get a fair amount of attention, and not to mention the fact that the two major parties actually consist of many smaller factions in a coalition. There’s a reason primaries happen, and often congressmen vote against the majority of their party and votes are split on other lines than party lines. Most people are smarter than is popular to say on the internet, they just understand voting the lesser of two evil is their best option right now from a certain perspective. I prefer to vote third party to increase the viability of third parties in later elections.
While also true in Australia, we have preferential voting as well and whilst smaller parties dont have the numbers or votes to become the ruling parties you can vote 1 for a smaller party and 2 for a major party so the smaller party gets a funding boost for future campaigns.
And also if enough people vote for a smaller party them a larger party may have to team up with a smaller party to get the majority numbers to hold government.
Then the smaller party may have a bit of clout to get some of their values and opinions into parlimertary debate or passing bills meaning we get a wider variety of input than the major party line and its members falling into line to vote with their peers blindly.
I contest your usage of Canada as an example. While it’s certainly not as polarized as the US, the effects of FPTP are still prominent. There’s a ton of vote splitting at the federal and provincial levels. Eg, conservatives rule Ontario despite the majority of people voting for one of the two left-er leaning parties, since the two parties basically split the left vote down the middle, while conservatives only have one party.
I do completely agree that propositional voting is waaaaay better than ranked choice, though. Personally, I will take almost anything over FPTP, but some form of PR is vastly superior, as you noted.
But at least with ranked choice, people can start to vote for another party without it feeling like a penalty. As a Canadian, I basically have to vote strategic. I don’t get to vote for my favourite party because of FPTP. Ranked choice would at least remove that issue.
I think the two party system of the US is basically where FPTP systems are all at risk to end up, especially since voting strategically gradually results in that. But the US GOP is so crazy that it’s almost a necessity for any progressive to vote strategically, whereas at least in Canada, things aren’t quite as bad, which makes it easier for people to take the risk of voting for who they really want to.
Look at third parties and their success in the UK and Canada.
The last general election in the UK was 2019. Conservatives got 43.6% of the vote but 56.2% of the seats. Labor got 32.1% of the votes and 31.1% of the seats.
The biggest national third party, the Liberal Democrats, got 11.6% of the vote but a mere 1.7% of the seats.
In comparison, look at regional third parties. The Scottish National Party got 3.9% of the vote and a whopping 7.4% of the seats. Irish regional parties like Sinn Feinn and the Democratic Unionist Party got a combined 2.3% of the seats with a combined 1.4% of the seats.
Previous elections have been quite similar. In 2015, the far right UKIP won only a single seat after getting a whopping 12.6% of the vote.
Canada is quite similar. The Bloc Quebecois consistently gets more votes than the national New Democratic Party, despite having gotten less than half as many votes.
Understood, all of these countries have terrible electoral systems, that was not my point. My point is that Americans only have a culture of voting for one of two parties, so switching to ranked choice voting will likely change nothing at all, because Americans already practically never even consider alternate options. Hell, I doubt even 10% of them could even name a third party, so why would they consider voting for them all of a sudden just because of the switch to RCV? They’re constantly blasted with the same message that you have one of two options, so chances are that they’ll just pick one and ignore the rest, just like they do now.
It might give independents more of a voice.
Parties work a bit differently in the US vs e.g. Israel.
In Israel, party insiders choose their politicians. If you want different candidates than an existing party is offering, you have to make your own new party with your own new list.
By contrast, in the US, parties run primary elections where voters pick the candidates. The specifics depend on the state, but in most states the election is held for registered members of that party.
Americans aren’t idiots. Most know third party candidates don’t do well in plurality elections. So smart progressives, alt-right etc. politicians don’t run as a third party candidate against mainstream Democrats and Republicans. Instead, they primary an incumbent Democrat or Republican, like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, or join the primary when the incumbent retired like Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Somewhere like Israel, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Joe Manchin would be in two very different parties. In the US, they’re in the same party.
In places where RCV is passed, you absolutely see more candidates running and getting decent percentages of the vote. Because that isn’t a terrible strategy any more. Someone like AOC might have run as a Progressive or something rather than primarying the Democrat.
Not “while we’re at it” - RCV is the real change we need.
RCV will do nothing to break the duopoly in America. RCV will basically allow you to vote for the Democrats or Republicans without bubbling their name on your ballot.
Contrary to what is stated, RCV falls apart as soon as more than 2 parties become viable. It suffers from the spoiler effect.
RCV, like plurality voting, only reflects your preference for one candidate at a time. In fact, it’s relatively accurate to say that RCV is just plurality with (literally) extra steps (rounds).
One of the better ballot changes we can make is to move to something like STAR voting, which can capture the nuance of magnitude of preference for ALL candidates at once.
However, changing voting method alone is not enough. Proportional representation and expanding the number of elected officials are two powerful ways to introduce new ideas and break up power structures.
And, of course, campaign finance reform such as democracy vouchers
I don’t think I get it.
As I imagine it it would be: Republicans HATE Democrats. Democrats HATE Republicans. If all Democrats rank the R candidate dead last and Republicans do the same for the D one, their votes pretty much nullify each other, and whatever third party that got less First-choice votes but also way less Last-choice votes has a better chance at winning. Isn’t that how it should work?
Mostly. Yes, RCV tends to elect compromise candidates, ones who may not be anyone’s first choice, but that most people can live with. I think Joe Biden is a good example of this. Everyone was rah-rah for some else during the primaries: Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee… but Joe Biden has broad tepid appeal.
Approval/STAR would be even better, but I’d take RCV over FPTP
Let’s just cut out the middleman and go straight to direct voting.
Vote directly on the issues that matter to you. Representative democracies only exist to protect the ruling class.
For anyone living in Utah, a bill to enable Ranked Choice voting will be in November 2023.
So anyone there please register to vote sooner rather than later.
Currently people are being told it’s too confusing and too liberal, so they really could be more young people votes to help the cause.
RCV is a rebrand of the voting method IRV, which was used by many cities in the early 20th century. Due to inconsistent results, it was repealed. So, unfortunately, conservatives have a leg to stand on when they attack RCV.
For clarity: their specific attacks take things to the extreme and often have some racist underpinnings, but there is a kernel of truth to attacking specifically on the method itself.
That is why I support something like STAR voting, it doesn’t suffer from many of RCV’s issues
I wish your ballot measure luck however, because at the end of the day it still is, mildly better than FPTP
I wish for something like STAR as well, but much like voting now it’s all about the lesser of two evils between current voting and anything besides the current voting method haha
Well the thing about that is, RCV has been repealed in 6 states and counting for producing poor results. And it’s also given right wing groups like the heritage foundation a foothold to attack it. I’m actually seeing negative RCV sentiment on the ground when I talk to people about STAR so their message is spreading. When I explain STAR and how it fixes several of RCVs issues they come around to it, so it may in fact be better to push that instead of tag along with RCV if it’s going to end up being a waste of political capital
Neat! I am all for that? What are the left or rights views on STAR currently?
I don’t see it being on the radar of the major parties at the moment. RCV is in the spotlight so far. But that can change very soon because in Eugene, Oregon this week they are finishing up getting STAR on the ballot for their elections, then they’re also pushing for it to appear on the state ballot in May. The effort is led by non-partisan groups like the equal vote coalition.
So far my conversations with both sides of the aisle have been fruitful, and I hope that is how it continues
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I don’t know how the american system works, but voting for small parties should not considered a wasted vote. It helps the party even if they don’t get elected
If a party receives 5% of the popular vote, they start to receive funding from the FEC. That hasn’t happened in a while for a third party.
Well then people should organize. I don’t understand why americans only vote for two parties if they don’t like either of them
First past the post incentiveses two party systems, which is why people are desperate for ranked ballot, or something that can allow other parties to exist.
45% of the country doesn’t vote at all, so.
Part of that is due to the feeling that one’s vote doesn’t matter. IMO having the president be elected by popular vote would bring a lot more people to the polls.
Yup. In states that are not swing states, why would those voters even bother?
Because in first past the post voting, whomever gets the score first, wins. Combine that with mostly voting against a specific party, and you’re railroading people into a de facto two-party system when people vote for the “best bet against _____”.
But even if a party gets, say, 5% of the vote and gets funding, that level of vote splitting can influence who gets a seat now. That might be fine and dandy when the short term doesn’t matter too much, but right now, the stakes are very high in the US, since the right straight up wants to dismantle democracy, kill trans people, and completely ban abortions.
Those are high stakes just to likely get some more funding for a third party (much less win even a single seat).
IMO any political pressure that could go towards pushing third parties should first to towards electoral reform. Only then can third parties be voted for without putting a lot of people at risk.
It’s worse than wasted. It’s effectively a half-vote for the major candidate you like the least.
Works in places with coalition governments.
Not in America. In America it’s an utter waste. The elections are too close.
Ranked choice still doesn’t solve the winner-takes-all situation that is the presidential election. Instead it should be appointed by a group of competent people, who in turn are voted in by something like ranked choice or whatever.
The original intent from the Constitution was that the winner was president and the second place was vice president. Since the vice president also is the tie breaking vote in the Senate, that doesn’t sit very well with the president. So they changed it to the running mate system.
The group your talking about would essentially be the cabinet? Right? They get approved by Congress. So indirect approval by the people.
The cabinet doesn’t appoint the president, so no. More like Congress members members get voted in by ranked choice, and they vote on someone to represent the country in international affairs.
Americans, lobby your state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact
The better plan would be institute the Wyoming Rule or something similar to it. The HoR is simply too damned small which not only limits the number of EC votes it also has the representative to citizen ratio fucked up 90 way to Sunday.
We broke the EC in 1929 by capping the size of the HoR and it’s well past time to fix it.
This could be either a fake or a real ad by those people. It is amazing how hard it is to distinguish parody and real news theses days.
UPDATE: For some unknown reasons, this comment appeared under the wrong article. I’ve seen the “Electoral College” article, but didn’t even open it, so this is not even a case of “postet in the wrong window” or so.
What? Seriously, what? What are you talking about? Who is “they,” the Pew Research Center?
For unknown reasons, my reply appeared under the wrong article. So no, there is no connection of what I said to the topic of “Electoral College”.
Ok, no worries! Kbin and lemmy sometimes just freak out, so it’s all good. Thank you for clarifying!
The whole thing is absurd and overly represents rural areas and Republicans. We already have a huge problem with the “2 senators per state” thing and the House representing Republicans far too much in relation to their numbers.
But but but why should cities get to determine everything? Don’t you know that not only does land vote, everyone in a patch of land votes the same? So, why bother giving everyone in a city a vote, you know?
Also, be sure to let the vice president cancel the whole thing if they don’t like the results.
(Please tell me my sarcasm is obvious.)
We should just abolish the Senate. With the current formulation of the US government there’s no reason why a State should have extra power like that. Let the people make the rules. Expand the House, abolish the Senate, and remove the electoral college. And since we’re wishing for things that will never happen anyway, go ahead and use some kind of proportional vote (ranked choice, star, whatever, just literally anything but FPTP).
The Republicans are the main reason we still have it … they know they’d never win if they had to play fair.
I’m 100% okay with the 2 senators per state thing. That’s a feature, not a bug. Even though cities are on the right side of history right now, I don’t want to completely silence the rural vote forever.
However, arbitrarily limiting the number of House reps is absolutely absurd and counter to the purpose of the House. That is a bug.
Well, then, maybe we should start considering splitting up some states and joining others together then. A place like California is more future-minded and it’s where a great deal of the people are, as well as much of our economy. Also, it’s where a lot of our food is grown. And it gets 2 Senators.
The 2 Dakotas have more than that, and what do they really represent for the future of America and the world? More fracking?
Maybe states with really large masses and hardly anyone in them are combined. Idaho, Montana and Wyoming - one state. North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska, another.
Again, you’re intentionally defeating the purpose of the Senate. The entire point is to give rural, less populous areas more of a voice.
It feels like a compromise from a period of time that is no longer relevant to these times when we are trying to push this country into the future. I don’t want rural regions to have more of a voice, FFS. Look at what it is doing to this country. Having fewer people have an equal say with the majority of the people is also not great, the majority should win out. Why the fuck should tracts of land be voting?
How is it no longer relevant? Do you know where your food comes from?
You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the legislative branch of the US government is structured, and why.
Your concerns are valid, but you’re not aiming them at the correct House.
I’m not understanding the food part here.
I understand the history of compromising with states that had less (free) people because of slave states; I’m saying it’s no longer relevant in modern society. It turns out rural areas are usually better represented by Democratic policies in any case. Ironically.
We should never completely silence the voice of a group of people for all time, even if right now they’re pushing some heinous shit.
Part of the reason for the phenomenon of Trump was the failure of politicians to care about the legitimate problems that rural voters have.
In any case, if the House and Electoral College functioned like they should, the majority would win a lot more often. Don’t focus on the Senate, focus on the two institutions that weren’t designed to give rural people an outsized choice but have been manipulated to do so.
completely silence the voice of a group of people for all time
I don’t think anything proposed here by anyone would do that? What is being proposed is to stop prioritizing the votes of people occupying vast tracts of land over the majority. To have a vote cast by someone in the hinterlands equal someone’s vote in more populous parts of the country is putting them on par with everyone else. I’m not so sure what is so magical about someone living in a remote area that their interests should not align with everyone else’s.
It’s nothing magical. They will inherently have different priorities, and they deserve a voice in the political process.
That’d be an easier sell if the rural areas less consistently used their voice to shit up the world.
True, but it’s not always guaranteed to be that way. We should never give one group absolute power.
To be honest bud, your point of view is very frustrating in the times we live, but it is an extremely sound argument and I begrudgingly can get behind it.
Seems like giving one group more power than another group would be bad for equality.
That’s why we are supposed to have House members representative of pure population, and not land. Senate gives more power to rural areas, House gives more power to urban areas. It’s supposed to even out. Checks and balances.
It’s crazy how many people in this thread don’t seem to know the absolute basics of how their own government is structured and why.
The only reason the Senate is such a problem right now, is because the House of Representatives needs to be properly reapportioned so it’s actually representative.
On this, we definitely agree. The House is being held down to an arbitrary number and it is patently absurd.
Something something, “Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.”
Whatever else, I’m sure we can all agree that the current performative, pro-forma electoral college meetings are not what was intended by the framers.
Two things I’d love to see. Eliminating the electoral college and then getting rid of superdelegates. Two fundamentally anti-democratic concepts.
Well superdelegates aren’t exactly something the government can legislate away because they’re just an internal thing of the DNC.
Abolish parties.
Abolish parties.
Ranked-choice voting.
How?
How do you do that without violating the First Amendment right to freedom of association?
Under the 2018 rules, in the Democratic National Convention superdelegates can’t participate in the first vote and can participate only in a contested convention. Seems reasonable to me.
Wikipedia also reminded me about this little bit of Bernie hypocrisy that I’d forgotten about: “Sanders initially said that the candidate with the majority of pledged delegates should be the nominee; in May 2016, after falling behind in the elected delegate count, he shifted, pushed for a contested convention and arguing that, ‘The responsibility that superdelegates have is to decide what is best for this country and what is best for the Democratic Party.’” Talk about unprincipled political opportunist.
I can disagree with something Bernie said, but still be a huge supporter of his for his many other things I fully agree with. I maintain that superdelegates being in place to deal with a contested convention is still a bad thing and undemocratic. The real unhelpful part was when the DNC chair stated that it can also quell unintended grassroots efforts. I thought grassroots efforts were an example of a good thing about democracy, not a bad one.
Bernie Sanders is emphatically not a Democrat and doesn’t want to do any of the work of building or supporting the party, but when he decides to run for president, he suddenly wants the party’s money and infrastructure, only to abandon the party ASAP after the election. He may be fine as a senator, but as a presidential candidate, he’s just so utterly loathsome. He’s got major entitled old white man syndrome and it makes me lose absolutely all respect for him.
If you’re on to a contested convention, you can’t directly reflect the will of the primary voters in the first place (because they didn’t pick a winner) so I can’t really find any reason to object to superdelegates, most of whom are elected Democrats and already literally representing their constituents in Congress, etc.
Yes Bernie is an unprincipled political opportunist.
Who’s this dude like casually smoking a cigarette in what appears to be some kind of war zone.
Two things I’d love to see.
Don’t forget “ranked-choice voting”.
My goodness, yes.
Pure popular vote = only large population centers matter because most of the people live there, meaning politicians can safely ignore rural areas that provide all of the food to the cities because they don’t matter votes-wise. Terrible idea for a large country that doesn’t (net) import its food. This also ignores the fact that stupid, easily manipulated people are also allowed to vote.
Electoral college = rural areas have a disproportionately large voice as they should, but large cities are now neglected. Rural votes are also easily influenced by bad actors, like how China is trying to buy African votes to have a bigger say in the UN.
rural areas that provide all of the food to the cities
I don’t understand this common argument and the framing that comes with it - as if they are doing it for free or for altruistic reasons.
Except nowhere is homogeneous. There are red voters that live in cities and there are blue voters that live in small farming towns. Right now they don’t have a voice because they are separated into districts that are overwhelmingly red or blue
but get rid if the College and now suddenly your vote is worth just as much as your neighbors, regardless of where you live.deleted by creator
politicians can safely ignore rural areas that provide all of the food to the cities because they don’t matter votes-wise
They already do. Politicians only focus on swing states, and the cities within those swing states.
They may on occasion visit rural areas, but 9 times out of 10 they are in a city when they are campaigning.
All votes should count equally. Anything less is bullshit.
Direct voting should be the end-goal of a democracy.
Why?
You mean referendums?
Not sure what the guy you replied to meant, but I don’t think we should have referendums about every little thing. I know some of the stuff that pops up in my friend’s state’s referendums they say they don’t feel qualified at all to vote on. But I agree that major stuff, like who gets to be President, probably should be direct voting.
I asked what kind of direct voting. Referendum is direct voting on laws.
like who gets to be President, probably should be direct voting.
It’s direct elections. Direct voting is more broad.
Gotcha, I misunderstood.
What differentiates it from mob rule?
Instead of tilting at the windmill that is removing the EC how about we do something much easier and simpler and simply expand the House of Representatives? Not only would this add votes to the EC and make the Presidential Elections more representative it would also, you know, make the HoR more Representative! For extra fun it would also diminish the returns of gerrymandering since there would be so many more districts.
All we need is a change to the Re-Apportionment Act of 1929. There is no good reason that the size of the HoR is fixed at 435. None.
That’s a long way around to get to fair representation. It amounts to a distraction from the real issue.
We can achieve that now through fairness in redistricting.
We can achieve that now through fairness in redistricting.
No you can’t.
Your way doesn’t return the ratio of EC votes between the HoR and the Senate to what it should be. It keeps it stuck in 1929 and every year that goes by makes it worse.
Your way doesn’t scale the number of total EC votes as our population grows.
Your way ALSO doesn’t return the ratio of Citizens to Representatives to anything resembling sanity. Ratios of nearly 800,000 to 1, and growing, are irrational and break Democracy.
You could redistrict the ever loving hell out of the other 49 States but Wyoming would keep it’s 3 EC votes and its outsized vote for President. It would keep it’s outsized influence in the HoR and it would keep it’s ranking as #1 in the Citizen to Representative Ratio.
So much of what everyone hates about our Federal Government today is DIRECTLY tied to a vastly undersized HoR. The body is simply too small to adequately represent a population of over 300,000,000 people.
There are only so many ways to divide 435 seats while still guaranteeing at least 1 seat per state.
In 1929, each representative represented about 283k Americans. Now each representative represent about 762k Americans. That’s almost a 300% increase. This means each American’s voice is only about 1/3rd as powerful as it was in 1929. To have as much political power as they did in 1929, we’d need about 1200 Representatives.
Would there be any way to have everyone keep the same voting power while the population tripled?
Sure, you just define the problem differently. Instead of saying that there are X representatives in total, you just say there should be 1 representative for every 283K citizens. In this way the number of representatives naturally scales with the population.
This is basically what the Wyoming Rule does. It sets the ratio in the lowest population State, currently Wyoming, as the ratio for everywhere. Wyoming currently has 500,000 people and 1 Representative. That means the HoR would expand to something like 580 Seats.
We could change the math, and the name, to the “1929 Rule” and set the ratio 280,000 to 1. I’m actually fine with an HoR that has 1,200 people in it but either way the Re-Apportionment Act of 1929 needs changed and the HoR needs expanded.
Good point - it’s not about power because everyone else also gets that extra power up. It’s about equity.
And we can achieve now that through fairness in redistricting.
And yet, having more representatives fundamentally reduces the power of each as well. Your vote is fundamentally worth less as the population increases. Something you’re just gonna have to come to terms with.
I’m ok with my vote meaning more or less as long as it’s the same vote everyone else gets…that’s not the case with the current system.
To have as much political power as they did in 1929, we’d need about 1200 Representatives.
I don’t see a problem with that.
For extra fun it would also diminish the returns of gerrymandering since there would be so many more districts.
you should lead with this
Republicans would never win a nationwide election again. They’d actually have to come up with policies people want. Not gonna happen anytime soon.
I’ve had family that votes Republican say this, they will literally defend the minority vote winning. They see democracy as “mob rule.” Well, if a bunch of rich assholes getting to decide who’s president, and a system where the people with the least votes win, how is that not mob rule?
And yet, none of them will support using an Electoral College to elect the governor of their state. I guess mob rule is fine when it comes to governors, senators, mayors, and sheriffs, but not presidents.
“As long as the party I identify with is in charge then it’s fine.”
It’s really not surprising when they support going full dictator.
We have lots of minority protections in place to avoid mob rule and the tyranny of the majority. The Electoral College is the tyranny of the minority.
The cons really showed their hand more recently when arguing over things like suppressing the vote, and mail-in voting and telling everyone that “voting is not really a right enshrined in the Constitution”.
Well, tell us how you really feel.
Wait, are you implying that only crafting policy around what the elitist of the elite want and waging stupid performative culture wars for the clueless gop base is unpopular with most Americans?
We could start by reconsidering the Reapportionment Act of 1929…
