Should the United States scrap the electoral college?

[Ball Security]

1 minute ago, PleaseBlitz said:

 

A majority of Republicans think Trump won the popular vote in 2020. 

Well, everyone knows a conservative vote is popular. And a liberal (read Commie) vote is unpopular. So, yeah, checkmate libs.

[Fergasun]

I am bumping this because I have been doing some deep research on this.  What I found was surprising.  Multiple times,  our 20th century Congresses, expressed grave concern over the fact that a President could be elected without the popular vote.  But, some of the ops were like -- "Gee, it hasn't happened since 1888, so it's just a theorhetical problem."  Particularly, there was some concerns about third parties coming in and screwing things up. 

 

In the wake of George Wallace getting electoral college votes in 1968 and potentially getting more votes in 1972, A Constitutional Amemdment was even passed in the House, and pushed by Nixon.  The amendment was filibustered in the Senate -- falling 6 votes short and never was thrown to the states.

 

The old go-to for opponents were Senators from small states concerned that they would lose voting power under the new system and folks concerned about the rise of 3rd parties.  Incidentally, all of the advocates were okay with electing somone with a 40% plurality.  

 

Not only has the popular vote winner lost 2 elections going back to 2000 - 60,000 vote swings in Ohio could have thrown the election to Kerry in 2004 and nearly 400,00 votes across 4 states could have thrown it to Romney.  

 

One of the other complaints of proponents of direct election revolves around some "tyranny of the majority" (I need to research more this concern).  Yet, I don't think any of the older arguments mention the potential implications for an unpopular judiciary.... 5 Supreme Court Justices rule -- having been put on the court by a minority President. 

 

Additionally, concerns of ignored states are also laughable.  If 2012, 2016, and 2020 are indicators... the states that will matter are going to be Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Georgia, New Hampshire, and North Carolina.  Sorry Ohio, Florida and Colorado. You are no longer swing states. 

[China]

The Electoral College system is bad. New data shows it’s getting worse.

 

American politicians love to boast that the United States is the greatest democracy in the world. But a little humility is in order. The way the U.S. elects presidents is not the method any self-respecting democracy should use to select its head of state, as our Electoral College system holds us hostage to the whims of a shrinking portion of the electorate.
 

A new Washington Post report tracing the modern trajectory of the Electoral College has the latest sobering data and finds that the 2024 White House race is “likely to target a smaller share of Americans than at any point in the modern era, despite massive increases in spending due to online fundraising.”

 

But a quick refresher on our election system before we dig into just how bad those numbers are: Under the Electoral College, American voters do not directly elect the president but instead choose a set of state-specific electors to represent their vote. The distribution of electors is not fully proportional to state populations and greatly overrepresents the voting power of citizens in small states. And due to the winner-take-all system for electors in every state except Maine and Nebraska, presidential candidates view states that consistently skew heavily toward one party as not worth engaging with.

 

Before our polarized era, this resulted in White House hopefuls ignoring a bunch of the citizenry, but still engaging with quite a lot of it: As the Post explains, political scientists Daron R. Shaw, Scott Althaus and Costas Panagopoulos have found that between 1952 and 1980, presidents targeted 26 states on average during their campaigns. That number has plunged since then, and during the last election Republicans and Democrats running for president focused on merely 10 states and two congressional districts. In that first era, presidential campaigns targeted areas that covered about 3 in 4 Americans, but by 2020 that had fallen to 1 in 4. And it’s likely to get worse: “If the major parties do not contest Florida in 2024, as is widely expected, only 18 percent of Americans would live in battlegrounds,” the Post reports.

 

Click on the link for the full article 

[PleaseBlitz]

The Post's report is here, but it's probably paywalled:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/12/08/electoral-college-votes-swing-states-decline/

 

Key finding, only 18% of Americans live in battleground states where their votes matter.  Obviously, many of them won't vote, so we're really we are talking about about 10%-12% of the adult population deciding the election. 

[Fergasun]

Would love to see a third party campaign a "protest vote candidacy" in California, Texas, Florida and New York with the intent on blocking a major parties safe electoral votes.  This would be done by those who want a popular vote. 

[Cooked Crack]

 

[PokerPacker]

I still think the real solution is to expand the house to grow with the population like it used to.  Artificially limiting the size of the house also artificially inflated the effect of the electoral college.  And also made representatives distant from their constituents due to just how many people they represent.

[China]

On 7/24/2023 at 9:12 PM, China said:

Congress Can Ameliorate the Electoral College Imbalance on Its Own

 

It has happened five times in the history of the country that the winner of the popular vote lost in the Electoral College. Two of the times were in the past quarter century. The last four times it happened (1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016), it was a Democrat winning the popular vote but losing the election, and the fifth time (1824) the victim was a guy who would become a Democrat shortly after the election (Andrew Jackson). Many Democrats have focused on abolishing the Electoral College, especially after Donald Trump arranged for false electors in some of the states he lost. The problem is, that would require 38 states to ratify a constitutional amendment, and that will never happen. Is it hopeless then? Danielle Allen has argued in The Washington Post that while the first-choice option is politically impossible, there is a second-choice option that the Democrats could carry out next time they get the trifecta: Enlarging the House.

 

The problem with the Electoral College is that low-population red states in the Midwest and West are greatly overweighted on account of their two senators. Wyoming has a population of 580,000 and California has a population of 39 million. In a fair system, California should have 67 times the clout of Wyoming. But in the Electoral College, the ratio is 54/3 or just 18. So Wyoming has about 3.7x more power than it really should have. The same holds more or less for Alaska, Idaho, Montana, the Dakotas, West Virginia, Hawaii and more states. If the smaller states were randomly blue or red, it might not matter, but except for Hawaii, all the other states with 3 or 4 electoral votes are red states, giving the Republicans more power than they would get in a system in which states got electoral votes based strictly on their population.

 

In 1790, each of the 105 House members represented 34,000 people. In the past, the size of the House was increased over time. That stopped in 1929 when Congress permanently fixed the size of the House at 435. The population then was 120 million, so each House member represented 275,000 people. Now each of the 435 House members represents, on average, about 760,000 people. If Congress wanted each member to represent 275,000 people, as in 1929, it could increase the size of the House to 1,200 members. In over 200 countries, the ratio of population to members of the lower house is less than 275,000. In Italy, it is 97,000. In Spain, it is 79,000. In France, it is 72,000. In the U.K. it is 45,000.

 

This expansion would also go far toward fixing the Electoral College problem. In a 1,200-seat House, California would have 142 House seats and 144 electoral votes, Wyoming would have 2 House seats and 4 electoral votes, and the ratio would be about 36. While not 67, it is more than 18, and would reduce the power of the small states. And the simple thing here is that all it takes to do this is for Congress to pass a new law. No constitutional amendment is needed.

 

A second problem with the U.S. electoral system is gerrymandering. If done right, the expansion could also address that. To make the math simpler, let's assume the House triples in size, to 1,305 members. But rather than make 1,305 smaller, gerrymandered districts, the number of districts is kept at 435 (or even made smaller). Each district would elect three members by proportional representation by party or ranked-choice voting. In that way, if a red district had one-third Democrats, they could elect one of the three members. It would be much harder for a partisan legislature to draw lines to grab nearly all the seats. Right now, if a Republican legislature draws a map with large numbers of 55% R, 45% D districts, the Republicans win all those seats. In a three-member district, each party would be assured of one seat and the other one would be competitive. The devil is in the details, but introducing multimember districts that were not winner-take-all, as is now the case, would go a long way to making sure the minority party in each district had a decent shot at some representation. A 1,200-member House and 240 five-member districts with some sort of proportional representation would make gerrymandering nearly impossible. The limit here is to have all House members run statewide and then allocate seats to the parties in proportion to the votes.

 

Click on the link for the rest

 

The U.S. House once had a representative for about every 30,000 people, but now lawmakers serve between 543,000 and 991,000 constituents — what happened?

 

Montana? Great, you get a full vote for or against the measure.

 

Washington? OK, you get just under three-quarters of a vote.

 

Idaho? Welp, you get a little over half of a vote.

 

Wait... what? Why would some votes count less just because of the state you live in? How is that fair?

 

It's not.

 

But in effect, that's exactly how disparate the public's voting power currently is in the U.S. House of Representatives, because congressional districts vary so dramatically that the largest district has nearly half a million more people in it than the smallest district.

 

While court cases in the 1960s established that congressional districts within a state need to be basically equal in size, recognizing the principle of "one person, one vote," the same standard hasn't been applied to districts across the country. Other than requiring at least one representative for each state, with at least 30,000 constituents per representative, the U.S. Constitution leaves plenty of leeway for Congress to decide just how big the House should be and how its members should be apportioned "according to [states'] respective numbers" of residents.

 

Neighboring Northwest states perfectly illustrate the divide that has grown in recent decades.

 

As of 2022, Montana has the smallest House districts in the country, with each of the state's two representatives covering about 543,000 people. Before gaining a seat during the 2020 apportionment, the state had only one district of nearly a million people, making Montanans' voting power, through their representative, the weakest in the country. Now, it's the strongest.

 

Meanwhile, Washington's 10 U.S. representatives have about 772,000 constituents in each of their districts.

 

Idaho is currently the second-worst represented state in the country, with each of its two representatives covering almost 921,000 as of 2020. (Delaware gets the saddest slice of the vote cake, with only one representative covering nearly 991,000 people.)

 

Spokane attorney Will C. Schroeder, who most often handles trial cases such as wrongful death lawsuits, stumbled upon the dramatic difference in the size of House districts across the country in early 2022 after his kids asked him to explain: How does the government work?

 

"I started with a dad joke: 'Not very well,'" Schroeder says.

 

After explaining the executive and judicial branches, and the Senate, which is made up of two senators from each state, Schroeder says he realized his knowledge was a little fuzzy when it came to the House. He told them that seats are split out based on population ... basically ... and there are currently 435 districts.

 

When his kids asked, "Why 435?" Schroeder says he had to answer, "Well, I don't specifically know."

 

So he did some research. What Schroeder found ultimately led him to file a lawsuit against the U.S. government in mid-2022, arguing that virtually every voter in the country has had their constitutional rights infringed. District size is so varied that the idea of "one person, one vote" has been violated.

 

In his research, Schroeder learned that, while Congress used to increase the number of representatives after each census, doing so for the better part of 100 years, the House stopped adding representatives after it reached 435 members in 1912.

 

Because the population growth in each state varies, and districts can't be split between multiple states, the mathematical Method of Equal Proportions isn't able to create perfectly balanced districts. While most districts in the country sit somewhere in the 700,000 range, 12 states have districts that sit outside that range.

 

Schroeder's proposed solution? Since each state needs to have at least one representative, why not use the population of the smallest state (currently Wyoming, at about 580,000 people) to set the size of districts, and add more members to keep districts about that size?

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Fergasun]

This is my #2 reform, but it could also go far towards improving the electoral college. 

 

I think this would also go far to break the two party system, somewhat. I don't think the parties could fund that many elections, nor could corporations bribe that many politicians.

[China]

Maine House Passes Bill To Join National Popular Vote Interstate Compact

 

The Maine House has passed legislation that would add the state to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC), an agreement between a group of states that have pledged to award their Electoral College votes to the winner of the popular vote upon the compact’s activation.

 

Currently, 16 states and Washington D.C. — totalling 205 Electoral College votes — are members of the compact. If the legislation advanced out of the Maine House today becomes law, that number would rise to 209. 

 

Under the NPVIC, member states would award their Electoral College votes to the winner of the national popular vote, regardless of their own state’s results. The compact is only activated once enough states have joined to make up 270 votes, the necessary threshold to win the Electoral College.

 

It is unlikely the United States will ever abolish the Electoral College itself in favor of a national popular vote. That would require a constitutional amendment and extensive support from Republican legislators who largely oppose the idea — with just one exception, the compact has only ever been passed in states that had  Democratic trifectas at the time. However the NPVIC circumvents this roadblock, by maintaining the Electoral College itself, but changing how electors are chosen. The compact is possible because Article II of the U.S. Constitution gives state legislatures exclusive control over the method used to award electoral votes. 

 

Click on the link for the full article

[EmirOfShmo]

Interesting opinion article about the Electoral College

 

Maine just took America one giant step closer to ending the GOP's grip on our elections

 

What if the person the majority of Americans voted for became president? It usually happens, but no Republican has been initially elected to the White House by a majority of Americans since 1988.

Just imagine how different America (and the world) would be today if neither George W. Bush or Donald Trump had ever set foot in the White House because both lost the federal election, the national popular vote.

Wednesday, the State of Maine took America one giant step closer to ending the antidemocratic grip the GOP’s had on our presidential elections. Even though George W. Bush lost the 2000 election by a half-million votes nationally and Donald Trump lost in 2016 by 3 million votes, both ended up in the White House because of the Electoral College.

 

https://www.rawstory.com/popular-vote/

[Skins24]

On 3/9/2024 at 8:57 PM, China said:

Maine House Passes Bill To Join National Popular Vote Interstate Compact

 

The Maine House has passed legislation that would add the state to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC), an agreement between a group of states that have pledged to award their Electoral College votes to the winner of the popular vote upon the compact’s activation.

 

 

Stupid.

 

Why even go to the polls at all then? If your state is going to take upon itself to vote for you, rendering your vote meaningless, why bother?

 

I fully understand the problems with how the electoral college is set up, but this isn't the solution.

edit to add - I have no idea what the solution is....

Edited April 5 by Skins24

[Renegade7]

Shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of good...I don't support trashing a proposed solution without an alternative. That's too easy and not very helpful.

 

This is being voted for state by state, so hard to argue it isn't democratic. 

 

Maybe not the best plan, but possibly better until a better solution is put in place in the future then the ridiculousness of people being elected president when they lose by almost 3 million votes overall. Thats certainly more undemocratic then this proposal.

[Skins24]

23 minutes ago, Renegade7 said:

Shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of good...I don't support trashing a proposed solution without an alternative. That's too easy and not very helpful.

 

This is being voted for state by state, so hard to argue it isn't democratic. 

 

Maybe not the best plan, but possibly better until a better solution is put in place in the future then the ridiculousness of people being elected president when they lose by almost 3 million votes overall. Thats certainly more undemocratic then this proposal.

Reminder that the U.S. is not a direct democracy - straight popular vote wins.

We're a representative republic. For electors to not represent the will of the people in their state is completely against who and what we are.

We would need to change that part first....

Edited April 5 by Skins24

[Renegade7]

5 minutes ago, Skins24 said:

Reminder that the U.S. is not a true democracy.

We're a representative republic. For electors to not represent the will of the people in their state is completely against who and what we are.

We would need to change that part first....

 

But the state itself is voting to do this, so are you sure it's not the will of the people of said state? 

 

You taken time to look at the support for abolishing electoral college in states that have signed in to this before saying that?

Edited April 5 by Renegade7

[Captain Wiggles]

14 minutes ago, Skins24 said:

Reminder that the U.S. is not a true democracy.

 

You mean it's not a direct democracy because the US is certainly a democracy. 

 

And..... California has direct democracy btw. They seem to be doing well in spite of all the conservative hellscape talk. 🤭

 

Oh and how the hell have I never posted in this thread? **** the electoral college. Counties like Pakistan and Myanmar use that kind of antiquated ****. We can do better. 🤣

Edited April 5 by Captain Wiggles

[Skins24]

4 minutes ago, Renegade7 said:

 

But the state itself is voting to do this, so are you sure it's not the will of the people of said state? 

 

You taken time to look at the support for abolishing electoral college in states that have signed in to this before saying that?

Sure I'm saying that.

I see Maryland is one of the states. I had absolutely no idea. I never voted for that as it was never on any ballot or brought to our attention.

 

If you vote blue. Your state votes blue. But red wins the popular vote. Would you be happy if your representatives voted red for you?

 

 

This doesn't abolish the electoral college - "This compact does not abolish the electoral college system; rather, the compact awards all of the electoral votes from the member states to the candidate who receives the most votes nationwide"

So, it really doesn't matter who supports abolishing it. If we can find a better way to do elections, I'm all for abolishing the current version of the EC.

 

 

 

**

And yes, Captain Wiggles, I meant to edit and put direct

[Renegade7]

25 minutes ago, Skins24 said:

Sure I'm saying that.

I see Maryland is one of the states. I had absolutely no idea. I never voted for that as it was never on any ballot or brought to our attention.

 

If you vote blue. Your state votes blue. But red wins the popular vote. Would you be happy if your representatives voted red for you?

 

 

This doesn't abolish the electoral college - "This compact does not abolish the electoral college system; rather, the compact awards all of the electoral votes from the member states to the candidate who receives the most votes nationwide"

So, it really doesn't matter who supports abolishing it. If we can find a better way to do elections, I'm all for abolishing the current version of the EC.

 

 

 

**

And yes, Captain Wiggles, I meant to edit and put direct

 

 

We aren't as far off on this one as you may think.

 

But this is where gravity is going, so it's like a running clock to come up with something that is a better idea while we wait for states that a typical more purple then blue approve this.

 

It's a fair question if GOP won popular vote, how would I feel about that in my state (Virginia)...but we are having this conversation because GOP hasn't vote the popular vote for POTUS since the late 1980s, yet we've seen a fair share of GOP Presidents anyway. (EDIT: Bush won popular vote and election in 2004)

 

This is where an idea better then the status quo has been proposed because the status quo is unacceptable...I can't with a straight face stand up and say stop without a counter proposal that makes MORE sense then this. We as a country can barely agree on the color of the sky right now. So I'm fine with gravity taking care of this for now (as it's better then nothing).

Edited April 5 by Renegade7

[bearrock]

1 hour ago, Skins24 said:

We're a representative republic. For electors to not represent the will of the people in their state is completely against who and what we are.

We would need to change that part first....

 

Well, under this scenario, the will of the people of that state is to award the state's electors to the winner of the national popular vote.  

[PokerPacker]

2 hours ago, Skins24 said:

Reminder that the U.S. is not a direct democracy - straight popular vote wins.

We're a representative republic. For electors to not represent the will of the people in their state is completely against who and what we are.

We would need to change that part first....

For states that have more than 1 district, is it wrong for them to throw all of the state's electoral college votes to the party that won the state's popular vote even if your district voted for someone else?  Isn't it going against the will of the people to have their district throw its vote to somebody that did not win the district?

[88Comrade2000]

Don’t worry. Trump wins, there will be no electoral college. There will be no voting at all.

 

 

[PleaseBlitz]

4 hours ago, Skins24 said:

Stupid.

 

Why even go to the polls at all then? If your state is going to take upon itself to vote for you, rendering your vote meaningless, why bother?

 

I fully understand the problems with how the electoral college is set up, but this isn't the solution.

edit to add - I have no idea what the solution is....

The reasoning has been laid out in great detail in this thread if you care to spend the 20 minutes to read and learn. 

[Skins24]

10 minutes ago, PleaseBlitz said:

The reasoning has been laid out in great detail in this thread if you care to spend the 20 minutes to read and learn. 

What? Where?

Proportional votes by the states has been discussed, but not states sending all their votes to whoever wins the national popular vote no matter how their own state voted.

 

[Skins24]

4 hours ago, Renegade7 said:

 

This is where an idea better then the status quo has been proposed because the status quo is unacceptable...I can't with a straight face stand up and say stop without a counter proposal that makes MORE sense then this. We as a country can barely agree on the color of the sky right now. So I'm fine with gravity taking care of this for now (as it's better then nothing).

But this ISN'T better than the status quo. This has the potential to render millions more votes useless than our current system.

[PleaseBlitz]

9 minutes ago, Skins24 said:

What? Where?

Proportional votes by the states has been discussed, but not states sending all their votes to whoever wins the national popular vote no matter how their own state voted.

 

Perhaps, and hear me out, you should try reading this thread. 

Edited April 6 by PleaseBlitz