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Doesn’t matter to me. I’m not voting in this election anyway.
And they won’t let go of it because the Electoral College keeps the wealthy in power.
As loathe as I am to use a BS argument…
Both Sides are wealthy. ;)
This is such a lazy, circle jerk answer. And also patently wrong because both parties have wealthy interests, and one would love to get rid of the EC because it would give them more power.
The answer is much more obvious: it would require a constitutional amendment which would require a bunch of states and representatives voting to dilute their power and the power of the people they represent when it comes to choosing the POTUS.
The National Popular Vote movement is a shortcut around the need for a constitutional amendment. States that sign on to it change their EC allocation process so that their state’s votes go to the winner of the national vote – but it only kicks in when enough states sign on to constitute a majority of EC votes.
IIRC it has passed in enough states to be just over 200 EC votes, but getting the last 70 will be a tough process. Still, it is an easier lift than an amendment. And maybe if it ever passes and makes the EC irrelevant there might be more momentum around the amendment to get rid of it altogether.
The Conversation - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)
Information for The Conversation:
MBFC: Least Biased - Credibility: High - Factual Reporting: Very High - Australia
Wikipedia about this sourceSearch topics on Ground.News
https://theconversation.com/no-country-still-uses-an-electoral-college-except-the-us-240281
However, many other delegates were adamant that there be an indirect way of electing the president to provide a buffer against what Thomas Jefferson called “well-meaning, but uninformed people.”
How disappointed he would be to see his idea for protecting against decisions being made by the uninformed masses having been so subverted by the very system he supported.
The system he supported wasn’t one where the House was capped at a limit causing the Electoral college to be skewed towards the minority.
Issues with the electoral college can be resolved by getting rid of the Reapportionment Act and moving towards Star or RCV voting. Both are significantly easier to do than passing an Amendment to get rid of the EC.
Any system that remains static for decades inevitably gets gamed by the powers that be. Sadly it seems we might be past the point of no return for this country…this election is everything
Working as Thomas Jefferson intended. The “well-meaning, but uninformed people” were those who opposed slavery and today oppose the land owning class.
The title should probably specify “for a presidential election”. France uses an electoral college for its Sénat, it’s made of regional/departmental elected people.
does it work like us presidential election tho? or are senators in France in the same “level” as electors in the US (i. e. there is no intermediate step between a voting person and elected one)?
Senators are elected by a college of locally elected people. Those locally elected people were elected, during various kinds of prior local elections, by direct universal suffrage (one adult citizen = one vote).
This doesn’t really explain the difference, if any. Americans have one adult citizen = one vote. The core problem with their college is that it’s not representative of the population, so the number of electors from a low population state can be the same as a high population state, effectively giving those citizens significantly more control in federal elections. It’s geographical discrimination, and entirely anti-democratic. How is yours different?
Pretend democracy
USA! USA!
Look, I really do love my country. As unfashionable as that sometimes seems on the left. But it ain’t perfect. There are a lot of things that need worked on. Our healthcare situation is subpar. Our labor protections - bleh. Same for consumer protections. There are lots of things we could do to study other models and try to bring them here (except for the regressives here that hold everything back, that is).
But one of the very worst is our Electoral College and the way the House is capped. The Senate system should get an overhaul, too. Two Senators from every state, no matter how many people live there? The EC was a slavery era thing and should be abolished, but the Senate thing should get an overhaul as well. I don’t know the kinds of populations the 13 colonies had, but I doubt there was anything like the magnitude of California/Texas/Florida/New York/PA/etc vs. Wyoming. Maybe the makeup of states should get reconsidered if we cannot change the number of Senators - maybe split up California into smaller states, maybe combine some of the flyover states that have almost no one in them…
Forgot to mention the genocide you guys are funding, the millions of other brown people killed by your military and the wealth extraction you’re doing in Africa and South America.
Something something healthcare is a right elsewhere too something something
We can and should do better.
what other country ever did?
The article points out France, Finland, Argentina.
The Roman Republic.
No, really - the Tribal Assembly, the democratic legislature of the Republic, was divided by tribes, and tribes sorted according to geographic residence. Urban tribes got 4 votes, and rural tribes got 31 votes. Just like today!
[sobbing]
thx 4 the info. always nice to learn some history. one of my favorite subjects in school
I know there wasn’t exactly much else to go off of at the time, but it still blows my mind that the American Founding Fathers looked at an empire that collapsed largely due to political corruption and thought “oh yeah, this is what we gotta use!”
To be fair, no other democracy is even close to the size of the US. Most countries aren’t spread out enough for an electoral college to make a grain of sense.
Canada right next for is larger than US lol
Geography has nothing to do with it. If your state has more electoral votes per capita than mine, then my vote doesn’t count as much as yours.
And a coastal state with a huge population and no understanding of things people in a landlocked state 700 miles away shouldn’t get to have more of a say in who controls the country. Without the electoral college, pretty much every president would come from one of the same 5 states every time, and the rest of the country would always get placed on the back burner, because “they never win elections”.
Each state should have more of an equal say in who the president is.
Putting aside the absurdity of the idea that people’s voices should be worth less if they live closer together… One of the most significant features of the electoral college is the existence of a handful of swing states. You don’t want a situation where the most populous 5 states decide every election, so your solution is to take like 5 less populous states and have them decide every election. Genius.
There’s currently about 5 to 7 swing states because that’s currently how all the other areas vote, and those change a lot more often than population by state. By your argument of doing away with the electoral college, California, new York, Texas, and Florida would decide the elections and no one running for office would care about doing anything in about 40 states.
Areas with larger populations would have more influence, because there are more people there to represent. That’s how democracy works. It’s not, I don’t know, landocracy.
But every vote would be equal, so there would be more incentive than there is now to campaign across a wider cross section of people, including in less populated areas, because as it is now, the majority of those areas are in safe states where there is zero advantage whatsoever to a politician trying to win their votes.
You only think in short terms. You have a problem now, so you want it changed now. Later, it will turn into a bigger problem and you’ll want it changed again, only it will be harder.
You think the answer to get democrats to win is to change a process to something that would currently benefit democrats. There’s no reason to believe that it would continue to benefit democrats after the change, and it also doesn’t get rid of the 2 party system, because while the demols are a bit better overall for most of the country, both parties are still bought and owned by the wealthy. The rich have been on a downward tax paying slide for the last 75 years, regardless of who was in office.
It wouldn’t fix the system at all but it would still be a move in the right direction.
I have no idea how this could be called “thinking short term” or how getting rid of the electoral college would “turn into a bigger problem later.” It’s possible that at some point in the future, it could benefit Republicans, somehow, but only if a majority of the people were voting Republican. There is never going to be a situation where I would miss the electoral college, lol, get rid of it and it’s gone forever and we can continue addressing other ways our elections are messed up.
And a coastal state with a huge population and no understanding of things people in a landlocked state 700 miles away shouldn’t get to have more of a say in who controls the country
Agreed, that’s why a 1-person, 1-vote system unlike the EC is a good idea!
Without the electoral college, pretty much every president would come from one of the same 5 states every time
Lol, what the FUCK gives you that idea? Why is it that EC supporters imagine states vote as a unified block if we end the EC? Are you literally incapable of understanding that different people in a state vote differently (an idiot), or are you purposefully pretending that you are (faking being an idiot, which is being a bigger idiot)
Each state should have more of an equal say in who the president is.
Exactly, end the electoral college
You have a broken interpretation of things.
Agreed, that’s why a 1-person, 1-vote system >unlike the EC is a good idea!
No. Coastal states are vastly more populated by a large margin. Texas, Florida, and California hold 1/3 of the entire population. A straight vote means that those will be the states that swing and win elections.
Lol, what the FUCK gives you that idea? Why is >it that EC supporters imagine states vote as a >unified block if we end the EC? Are you literally >incapable of understanding that different people >in a state vote differently (an idiot), or are you >purposefully pretending that you are (faking >being an idiot, which is being a bigger idiot)
Because it’s a gimme that politicians from their home state do very well when running for a higher office. Democrats and Republicans will always nominate a candidate from a very populated state for this reason, because it’s always free votes. Surely you aren’t too dumb to have not noticed that?
Exactly, end the electoral college
Lol. No. I guess you are an idiot. The electoral college is literally in place to give states a more equal power in picking the president. That’s literally the reason it exists.
Yawn, more garbage arguments
Keep arguing for the system of minority rule while claiming you’re against exactly that, the rest of us will point and laugh at you as you deserve
B-But… BIG country! BIG people. BIGLY BIG. It just won’t work. /s
Well, the UK. Although the UK is a constitutional Monarchy and the prime minister isn’t elected by popular vote, but by MPs
The UK? You have less land area than several of our individual states. You’re smaller than Colorado.
This shit has to go.
Yep, but you also need to get rid of FPTP.
Without that gerrymendring won’t work, and you’ll actually be able to get more than two parties as realistic optiobs to vote for.
the inherent problem is you’d need some of the less populous states to voluntarily give their disproportionate power away. Even if they agree at the time that a popular vote is in their favor, that doesn’t mean it will be forever. It’s in their best interest to never give that power up.
Maybe it’s time to re-randomize the map. Six Californias, merge a couple Dakotas, and a new state called “Steve” in the middle of Texas for no good reason.
States seem to be a classic seemed-sensible-in-1790 hack, goofier and less relevant as time goes on. At best you get arbitrage plays, finding the most comfortable jurisdiction for your particular graft. At worst, it seems to be a great line for the scum too stupid and/or crooked to get a federal position to settle at.
I wonder if a UK-style model, where the regional governments are devolved narrow lists of things they can play at government with, would work better.
Luv me states. Luv me history. But realistically speaking, if they could be abolished and replaced with nearly any other modern system of national/regional government organization, it would be massive improvement.
Not entirely. An act of congress is all that is needed to repeal the Reapportionment Act of 1929 and allow more members of the house to be seated. Increase the number of house members from 437 (approx 750,000 citizens per rep) to 1093 (2.5x increase yielding approx 300,000 citizens per rep). This is roughly the same ratio of house reps to citizens when this bill was passed nearly 100 years ago.
A capped house significantly broke the balance between populous states and small states further in the favor of the small states. Ending this imbalance would move both the executive branch and the legislature to more accurately represent the will of the people.
You “only” need to convince enough of the current states to elect a president, then they can just join that compact that has states always give their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote.
It’s only as hard as electing a president, but you need to get a lot of state officials on board.
I’m not convinced that interstate compact will work. it would be hugely controversial, and with the way the SCOTUS is stacked for the foreseeable future it would probably be deemed unconstitutional.
It would also probably be a constant battle to keep it in effect anyway, because every state that has entered the compact can always leave. As long as you can shut off the compact by getting removing one or two states from it, it will be an unstable mess.
Are there many other countries locked in a two party system?
It’s a product of our fptp voting system, so any country that has this is going to trend towards two parties.
It’s not just the electoral college that causes that issue though, first past the post is the culprit in Canada and our lack of precedent for minority alliances doesn’t help.
US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and some other smaller countries.
Canada
Not Canada. The NDP is more than just a spoiler. They hold the balance of power right now!
How many NDP ministers have we had at the federal level in Canada’s history?
What parties have had their leader be the prime minister?
The NDP kept what party in power longer than any other minority government in Canada’s history?
What part would have taken power had the NDP not postponed the elections?
What party will take power to replace the one in place come next election?
That’s not what determines whether a country is a 2 party system or a multi party system. There are plenty of countries that have small parties which have never formed government themselves but nevertheless have held real power in coalitions or minority parliaments.
Canada’s public health care system was created by Tommy Douglas, an NDP MP and party leader. If Canada were strictly a two party system like the US then that would never have happened.
Douglas implemented it in… Saskatchewan. At the federal level it was implemented by a Liberal majority government.
At the federal level the NDP and Bloc only have power insofar as the Liberals and Conservatives choose to entertain them, the Liberals could have decided not to implement any of the NDP demands and then the Conservatives would have taken their place and then all of the NDP objectives would have been buried and forgotten.
Australia’s isn’t based on FPTP or anything explicitly, nefariously, anti-democratic — except the part where media ownership is one of the most monopolised of all western “democracies”, or the part where most state and federal politicians are financed by the wealthiest individuals and corporations (not in the American direct payment, openly corrupt, kind of way. More in the golden parachute, regulatory capture, quid pro quo kind of way).
Interesting how 5 eyes are all stuck in a plutocratic two-party system, huh? Almost like the MIC and most advanced mass surveillance apparatus in history has a lot more influence over our politics than any of us realise…
Goddamnedfascists
This isn’t news. I mean, even if it is just now true, the United States being a “Democratic Republic” that promised citizens the vote and then kept a body who basically sat around to subvert the popular vote when things got close was largely considered to be another aspect of the USA’s rather f****d up interpretation of “freedom”.
Well yea, this country is held hostage by the shitbag wealth class. Get rid of them. Tax them out of the wealth they lied, cheated, and stole via tax schemes, loopholes, and other criminal activity. We still have the power.
What are you talking about, Bozos and Muskrat absolutely earned the 100 billion increase in their wealth over the last 10 years! They just Work Harder™ and are More Valuable™ than us!
/Wrist
Problem is that half the population is willing to keep the wealth class in power. And, ironically, many in that half of the population are among the poorest in the nation who believe the wealth will eventually trickle down to them.
As long as they’re able to mislead a bunch of stupid idiots to think that things that don’t affect them, such as trans rights, they’ll keep winning. Class solidarity is impossible when your fellow-poor believe that immigrants are the reason they’re poor. Unfortunately, they’ve succeeded in keeping people stupid and uneducated.
