This is the constitution we have, because that is the compromise that was struck to get the deal done. Otherwise CT and RI would have said “fuck it, King George is better than you assholes from the gigantic state of VA” and there goes the Union.
Convince people you have better ideas. You know, liberalism? CA is big. CA is also TOTALLY DYSFUNCTIONAL. So maybe it is a good thing they have Diane “99 is the new 29” Feinstein. They get to influence using Hollywood to ram things down the throat of KS instead of the electoral college.
I’ll take this system that stops people from trying to change shit too fast any day, even if we have to get a Trump every 50 presidents.
Jeff, I'm usually with you on this stuff, but not here. First off, I echo Grape's comment below about the big population centers. People who live different lives than they need a voice, or at least the ability not to be ignored. Second, the people who support the Compact don't care about it because of the popular vote, they care about it because by-and-large it would benefit Democrats, which is why the vast majority of the states that have signed up are uncontestedly blue. Third, the Interstate Compact is just that -- a compact, an agreement. It has no force of law unless its participants decide it does. The states involved can agree to change it whenever and however they wish. In the (agreed, unlikely) scenario you described, do you really believe there would be "faithful Compact states" as you describe? Hell no -- states like CA and NY and IL (where I live) would send their "standard" delegates instead of the "Compact" delegates, and when the inevitable howling began, they'd hide behind the until-then-despised Constitution and its Electoral College provisions.
Yes to ending the electoral college, but no to just letting the candidate with the most votes win. While we're fixing things, we need to fix the system so that people can just vote how they feel without strategizing about 'throwing their vote away' on minor party candidates. The best well-known solution to that is ranked-choice voting, not 'most votes wins' voting. A scheme that tells Cornel West not to run because he might split the anti-Trump vote is a bad scheme. A scheme that might elect a candidate tolerable to a majority, and not one beloved by a minority and loathed by a majority, is a good scheme.
What you deride as a bug of the system, some might consider a feature. To your example about Trump focusing his energies on Arizona and Georgia because he only needed to flip a small number of votes in a few key states to swing the result, the counterfactual is that you have a cross-country game of whack-a-mole wherein he tries to dig out additional votes anywhere/everywhere he can find them, which seems like it would be far more chaotic than armies of lawyers descending on Philadelphia for a decisive battle.
A national popular vote would also drastically change the incentive calculus for voter fraud. Chicago's notoriously dodgy election administration is tolerable enough when the consequences only really affect Illinois, but if they ever had the chance to decisively run up the score in favor of a democrat? Hoo boy.
Wondering the same. The assumptions baked in here are just as questionable as the ones criticized. The one argument for the electoral college is ignored: it’s an attempt to create a system where states that don’t align with the big population centers can have some political impact. In my book that’s a worthy goal. Are there other ways to do it? Perhaps the USA should break up into sovereign states. If any lefties truly want power to the people, think about how to accomplish that. It starts with actual people themselves, not voting for some bureaucratic borg that promises you the moon (Looky here, we’ll take care of all that bad weather. Just hand over all your freedom to us!) and doles out a few pennies that you earned (and borrowed) in the first place. And yes, everyone wants to win. But please, for once, think about WHAT you’re trying to achieve.
"in every federal, state, and local office in the United States except for the presidency."
To be pedantic, Mississippi governor elections have a pseudo electoral college component. To bolster your point, that system was set up as part of Jim Crow.
Not wanting to be The Nazi, and not that I don't like the idea of hostilities being conducted with flying lumps of flaming tar, but close combat is a "pitched battle", not a "pitch battle".
The thing I find hilarious is how much all voters in our system benefit from the federal structure in a myriad of ways and are more than happy to treat the United States as a singular whole when it benefits them and then all of a sudden get all Federalist when they want to minimize the impact of voters in blue states.
Lets start with we`re not a democracy. Once we establish that the whole "popular vote" house crumbles. Govern - and elect according to the Constitution... don`t like that? Amend the Constitution with the Constitutional procedure included in the document.
It’s funny. Democrats don’t have to worry about this if they just run candidates that can actually win a general election and not give a reality show host an actual chance.
The democrats have yet to apologize for crowning trump by running an all time embarrassing candidate in a sexually transmitted presidential candidacy that everyone saw as BS a mile away (you know. The woman who was supposed to run and win in 08 but even inside the Democratic Party people ran from her. And ran to Obama).
She made it close. Every other democrat annihilates trump. Now democrats are all bitchy and keep running “this is why we lost” grifter articles to make the party feel better about itself so it doesn’t actually do any soul searching so the party doesn’t have to wonder why, for instance, running a Clinton was a bad idea.
Is the electoral college problematic? Sure. It ain’t the reason trump won.
This is the “all things being equal” fallacy. Which is the idea that I’d the electoral college didn’t exist trump wouldn’t have won. Yes he would have. Because the campaigns would have run differently. Voters would have turned out differently (do you honestly think California Republican voters bother showing up to vote in November for republicans? Or any of the other states where democrats are a slam dunk electoral win?) and Hilary Clinton would have remained insanely unpopular among all but the most hardcore democrats (which she objectively is and always was).
And even with how insanely unpopular Clinton was. She still could have won if she hasn’t run the most impotent “I really wanna lose” campaign I have seen in my adult lifetime.
Until democrats can admit their hubris led to trump there ain’t no reform that fixes the system.
This post is so well-founded in principle[1], consistently framed, supported by the evidence, and generally fucking outstanding, that I am reduced to proofing it.
"sew chaos" --> "sow chaos"
"voter access is" --> "voter access in"
"pitch battle" --> "pitched battle" (2 locations)
That's it. If I ever write something this good and only make four typos, I intend to get drunk for a week.
[1] Those would be the same principles Jeff Maurer has already flogged us with repeatedly and correctly -- so there's no valid complaint possible that he just now sprung them on us.
You seem to have gotten a lot of idiots whining in your comment section, so I'll just point this out: that the Electoral College puts the electoral balance point at around 52/48 is far from the *only* problem with elections in the United States. Plurality voting is better than arbitrarily-weighted plurality, but not by much. Observing that Americans presently live under the second system, well ... I hope you're willing to acknowledge that we need to go well beyond the first to arrive at something that will function reliably.
Yeah... No.
This is the constitution we have, because that is the compromise that was struck to get the deal done. Otherwise CT and RI would have said “fuck it, King George is better than you assholes from the gigantic state of VA” and there goes the Union.
Convince people you have better ideas. You know, liberalism? CA is big. CA is also TOTALLY DYSFUNCTIONAL. So maybe it is a good thing they have Diane “99 is the new 29” Feinstein. They get to influence using Hollywood to ram things down the throat of KS instead of the electoral college.
I’ll take this system that stops people from trying to change shit too fast any day, even if we have to get a Trump every 50 presidents.
Jeff, I'm usually with you on this stuff, but not here. First off, I echo Grape's comment below about the big population centers. People who live different lives than they need a voice, or at least the ability not to be ignored. Second, the people who support the Compact don't care about it because of the popular vote, they care about it because by-and-large it would benefit Democrats, which is why the vast majority of the states that have signed up are uncontestedly blue. Third, the Interstate Compact is just that -- a compact, an agreement. It has no force of law unless its participants decide it does. The states involved can agree to change it whenever and however they wish. In the (agreed, unlikely) scenario you described, do you really believe there would be "faithful Compact states" as you describe? Hell no -- states like CA and NY and IL (where I live) would send their "standard" delegates instead of the "Compact" delegates, and when the inevitable howling began, they'd hide behind the until-then-despised Constitution and its Electoral College provisions.
Yes to ending the electoral college, but no to just letting the candidate with the most votes win. While we're fixing things, we need to fix the system so that people can just vote how they feel without strategizing about 'throwing their vote away' on minor party candidates. The best well-known solution to that is ranked-choice voting, not 'most votes wins' voting. A scheme that tells Cornel West not to run because he might split the anti-Trump vote is a bad scheme. A scheme that might elect a candidate tolerable to a majority, and not one beloved by a minority and loathed by a majority, is a good scheme.
What you deride as a bug of the system, some might consider a feature. To your example about Trump focusing his energies on Arizona and Georgia because he only needed to flip a small number of votes in a few key states to swing the result, the counterfactual is that you have a cross-country game of whack-a-mole wherein he tries to dig out additional votes anywhere/everywhere he can find them, which seems like it would be far more chaotic than armies of lawyers descending on Philadelphia for a decisive battle.
A national popular vote would also drastically change the incentive calculus for voter fraud. Chicago's notoriously dodgy election administration is tolerable enough when the consequences only really affect Illinois, but if they ever had the chance to decisively run up the score in favor of a democrat? Hoo boy.
Wondering the same. The assumptions baked in here are just as questionable as the ones criticized. The one argument for the electoral college is ignored: it’s an attempt to create a system where states that don’t align with the big population centers can have some political impact. In my book that’s a worthy goal. Are there other ways to do it? Perhaps the USA should break up into sovereign states. If any lefties truly want power to the people, think about how to accomplish that. It starts with actual people themselves, not voting for some bureaucratic borg that promises you the moon (Looky here, we’ll take care of all that bad weather. Just hand over all your freedom to us!) and doles out a few pennies that you earned (and borrowed) in the first place. And yes, everyone wants to win. But please, for once, think about WHAT you’re trying to achieve.
Respectfully I have to disagree. I fully support the Electoral College. Frankly it’s the politicians who are the problem.
"in every federal, state, and local office in the United States except for the presidency."
To be pedantic, Mississippi governor elections have a pseudo electoral college component. To bolster your point, that system was set up as part of Jim Crow.
Not wanting to be The Nazi, and not that I don't like the idea of hostilities being conducted with flying lumps of flaming tar, but close combat is a "pitched battle", not a "pitch battle".
The thing I find hilarious is how much all voters in our system benefit from the federal structure in a myriad of ways and are more than happy to treat the United States as a singular whole when it benefits them and then all of a sudden get all Federalist when they want to minimize the impact of voters in blue states.
Why did I subscribe to this? Bye.
Lets start with we`re not a democracy. Once we establish that the whole "popular vote" house crumbles. Govern - and elect according to the Constitution... don`t like that? Amend the Constitution with the Constitutional procedure included in the document.
It’s funny. Democrats don’t have to worry about this if they just run candidates that can actually win a general election and not give a reality show host an actual chance.
The democrats have yet to apologize for crowning trump by running an all time embarrassing candidate in a sexually transmitted presidential candidacy that everyone saw as BS a mile away (you know. The woman who was supposed to run and win in 08 but even inside the Democratic Party people ran from her. And ran to Obama).
She made it close. Every other democrat annihilates trump. Now democrats are all bitchy and keep running “this is why we lost” grifter articles to make the party feel better about itself so it doesn’t actually do any soul searching so the party doesn’t have to wonder why, for instance, running a Clinton was a bad idea.
Is the electoral college problematic? Sure. It ain’t the reason trump won.
This is the “all things being equal” fallacy. Which is the idea that I’d the electoral college didn’t exist trump wouldn’t have won. Yes he would have. Because the campaigns would have run differently. Voters would have turned out differently (do you honestly think California Republican voters bother showing up to vote in November for republicans? Or any of the other states where democrats are a slam dunk electoral win?) and Hilary Clinton would have remained insanely unpopular among all but the most hardcore democrats (which she objectively is and always was).
And even with how insanely unpopular Clinton was. She still could have won if she hasn’t run the most impotent “I really wanna lose” campaign I have seen in my adult lifetime.
Until democrats can admit their hubris led to trump there ain’t no reform that fixes the system.
This post is so well-founded in principle[1], consistently framed, supported by the evidence, and generally fucking outstanding, that I am reduced to proofing it.
"sew chaos" --> "sow chaos"
"voter access is" --> "voter access in"
"pitch battle" --> "pitched battle" (2 locations)
That's it. If I ever write something this good and only make four typos, I intend to get drunk for a week.
[1] Those would be the same principles Jeff Maurer has already flogged us with repeatedly and correctly -- so there's no valid complaint possible that he just now sprung them on us.
You seem to have gotten a lot of idiots whining in your comment section, so I'll just point this out: that the Electoral College puts the electoral balance point at around 52/48 is far from the *only* problem with elections in the United States. Plurality voting is better than arbitrarily-weighted plurality, but not by much. Observing that Americans presently live under the second system, well ... I hope you're willing to acknowledge that we need to go well beyond the first to arrive at something that will function reliably.