Majority of Americans continue to favor moving away from Electoral College
Majority of Americans continue to favor moving away from Electoral College
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.
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.
Part of this piece has an excellent insight into the dichotomy of the Republican Party. Of those highly engaged with politics, only 27% want to ditch the electoral college! These people understand the party is unpopular and the tactics used to hold power are a necessary way to get their policies.
The rest of the group feels otherwise, probably NOT because they don’t care if their candidate gets elected, but rather that they don’t understand how crucial it is to their party (along with gerrymandering). And their first gut instinct is that popular vote is justified/rational/logical whatever.
Now for a little thought experiment: What would happen if this became an actual campaign issue? I’d put my money on those 27% being able to convince the rest of the party how important it is, flipping their view. Maybe I’m wrong, but since many R voters tent to put self interests above all else, it logically follows that they’re just not understanding how critical the electoral college is. If their talking heads went on air/TV each day and stopped talking about how immigrants are stealing jobs or poor people are taking their hard earned money, and instead focused on the importance of the electoral college, they’d flip. Not because they think it’s right or justified. Because they think it’s best for themselves and their party. And it’s the current rallying cry.
Now apply this across an entire party, with those highly engaged telling the others how to vote, what to think about policy, and what the outcomes will be. Bring together uneducated people already susceptible to misinformation, and pair them with intelligent and extremely vocal/active groups who can sell snake oil like the best of them. Take that minority vote and put some real numbers behind it… likely not enough to get a majority, but enough to win a sophisticated electoral college or gerrymandered district.
Americans, lobby your state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact
If the president was chosen by popular vote, I think you could make a reasonable case that the last Republican president would have been George H.W. Bush in 1988. George W. Bush did win the popular vote against John Kerry in 2004, but he lost it to Al Gore in 2000 so it's debatable whether or not he would have beaten an incumbent Gore in 2004 I think.
National Popular Vote Interstate Compact
Introduced in 2006, as of August 2023 it has been adopted by sixteen states and the District of Columbia. These jurisdictions have 205 electoral votes, which is 38% of the Electoral College and 76% of the 270 votes needed to give the compact legal force.
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.
I propose the National Popular Vote Interstate compact. Cgp grey has an amazing video on it. It's a "petition" of sorts that basically says that states that sign it will have its elective representatives vote with the majority vote of their said state.
Here's the video if anyone wants to watch it: https://youtu.be/tUX-frlNBJY
First we need a federal initiative/ referendum system. Because the existing politicians will never vote to limit their own power.
After we have this, we can start with initiatives that set maximum ages, fix the voting systems. Fix Roe. Dismantle the terrible stranglehold the two party system has on getting anything done.
Do all the things that are popular but politicians will never do.
Something something, “Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.”
I would modify the electoral college rather than get rid of it. Make it so that states are obligated to assign their electoral votes to candidates in proportion to the number of votes received. For example, Maryland might go 60% blue and 40% red, so they would give 6 of their 10 votes to blue and 4 to red.
This would de-emphasize the importance of swing states, not completely disenfranchise rural voters, and would return a result that more closely mirrored the popular vote. It might also pave the way for a 3rd party to be relevant if the stars aligned elsewhere.
By "the electoral college" most people seem to mean that each state has influence disproportionate to its population, because every state gets two electors regardless of size. Ignoring that that is independent of the electoral college, disproportionate power isn't where most of the problem arises. The problem is that most states do not allocate their electors proportionally to how their citizens voted. Almost all states give all electors to the majority winner in the state. It's not required to do it that way, and Maine and Nebraska allocate at least some of their electors based on the proportion of the vote.
If states allocated their electors solely based on the proportion of votes in the state, that would achieve what a national popular vote would achieve and more. For example, Trump won despite losing the poplar vote, but if states had instead allocated their electors proportionally to voters within the state, Trump would have lost.
Why do this instead of a national popular vote? First-past-the-post voting systems result in two party systems with a lot of conflict. Ranked choice systems elect representatives that are more agreeable to everyone. A national popular vote entrenches a bad system, making it harder to ever get a rank choice system.
More importantly from a pragmatic standpoint, it's much harder to get a national popular vote implemented. To work, almost all of the states would need to get on board, but there's no individual-level incentive for citizens of a state to agree to it. Why would the majority of citizens of Montana agree to send their electors to the national popular vote winner when it's likely not the person they voted for? How are you going to convince them to join? The majority of people there won't want that, so they won't pass the law.
If states allocate based on proportion, individuals won't be concerned that their votes will ever support a candidate they don't like. It also doesn't matter whether other states hop on board. Maine and Nebraska are proof of this. They changed their allocation schemes without regard for any other state. At the individual level, the choice is easy; no one wants their vote to go toward a candidate they don't like, and the current system AND the national popular vote system both do that. If you think about your own views, are you in a state that the majority of the time the majority of people vote for a candidate you don't like? Wouldn't you rather have your state allocate proportionally? Are you in a place where the majority of the time your state goes the way you do? Are you happy that your neighbors' opinions are suppressed? It's pretty easy to get on board at an individual level, so that makes it easy to pass within a state.
People should give up on national popular vote and focus on getting their state to switch to proportional allocation. If you really want progress, target some key states: Florida, Ohio, Texas, Michigan, Arizona, Georgia, California, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois.
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.
I fucking hate how Americans divide politics between liberals and conservatives. The pollster could have at least given a third 'neither' option.
Well of course they do, the electoral college was made specifically so that states with the most population aren't the ones solely determining the outcome. If you got rid of the EC, the elections would come down to California, Florida, New York, and Texas.
Which ironically, given how Florida and Texas lean, would not "kill the Republican party" as some are claiming here.
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.
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 tribe will never allow this. Specially with whites becoming a minority, who will protest, blacks and blue haired people? lmao
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.
Oh for fucks sakes, it isn't going away, so you can stop fantasizing about something that won't happen.
Learn to win by the rules of the game.
In basketball you don't win a game by scoring the most 3-throws. The game is won by scoring the most points. Period. Stop acting like we don't have a way to win. If one side is gaming the system, then find a way to work around it. Clearly they were smart enough to game the system, so find a way to game it back. Goddamn it these polls are incredibly annoying. Americans will find any excuse not to vote.