cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/news@lemmy.world/t/488620
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
Hmm this seems unfair. How about we redo the survey but this time break it down state-by-state where the majority option in each state will be considered the “winner” of the entire state (except for in Maine and Nebraska, in which the minority option is still given some points) and then these states will appoint a certain number of people (the number of people each state can appoint is equal to how many representatives they have plus two for their senators, except in DC where its capped at the state with the least amount of appointed people) where they will redo the survey again but now they have the opportunity to change the results if they feel like it (but don’t worry that basically has never happened so it’s all good) and after that each state will count the actual votes and then mail them to DC where Congress will count the votes from each state and the members of Congress get a chance to vote to ignore a state if enough of them feel like it (but again don’t worry this has never happened! It’s all good!) and after that hopefully one of the options has a majority because if not then the house gets to choose and if they can’t decide then the senate gets to pick and if nobody can make up their minds then the Speaker gets to temporarily decide until everyone figures their stuff out.
I think that’s how Americans should answer all their surveys since it’s more fair.
You don’t happen to have ADHD do you? Dont read to much into this, that wall of text tho
I copy and pasted how the electoral college works from Wikipedia and made it a run-on sentence to emphasize how nonsensical it is.
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.
Why? You’re accepting the premise but then stopping short. Yes, a candidate’s final outcome in the election should be proportional to the number of votes they received. You want to make it less unfair, but we can just as easily make it completely fair by making the outcome exactly proportional to the vote.
not completely disenfranchise rural voters
According to the US Census, roughly 20% of Americans live in rural areas. Under the Electoral College, most of these people get effectively no say in who is the president. Nobody cares what rural voters in Texas or California or Wyoming or Oklahoma think because they’re not swing states. In a popular election, these 20% of Americans would get 20% of the say, and their individual vote would carry the same weight as everyone else. That’s the only fair system. Making it less rigged is still rigged.
Bro what? Am I reading this wrong? The Electoral College ensures rural votes have an outsized say compared to their population.
See almost every GOP state with maps redrawn in the last 4 years.
On the whole, yes, the Electoral College gives a larger weight to rural voters by stealing it from urban voters. I was merely highlighting that it also effectively disenfranchises a lot of rural voters by consolidating all electoral power in roughly a dozen swing states. I think the argument that we need to give special privilege to rural voters is bogus, but even accepting the premise, the EC still sucks at that. The specious arguments made in its favor don’t hold up.
What does the Electoral College breakdown look like on that poll?
Why does that matter? The people want a better electoral system, one that treats all votes equally.
“Powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution are reserved to the States, or to the People.” -10th Amendment to the United States Constitution
Restrict the federal government’s power to only those powers explicitly delegated to them by the Constitution and I’d be ok with eliminating the Electoral College.
Why would that be relevant to switching to a voting system that produces winners that more accurately reflects the will of the people?
It matters which people want it. Certainly, if the sample was all in Kansas it would be different than if they were in New York.
Where people live shouldn’t effect their voice in who is president. And the majority of Americans recognize that.
The voice of a New Yorker should not be more important than a Kansan, and a Kansan’s voice should not be more important than a New Yorker.
It was designed to be unequal on purpose. The electoral is what keeps us from being ruled by the masses. It should not change.
So instead we get minority rule. Soooooo much better when the small number of loonies get to derail a functional government with a temper tantrum that ‘the masses’ want.
It’s a badly designed system, and claiming it’s like this on purpose doesn’t negate how bad the system is. Also, we should not be chained to ideas that came around 250 years ago when other people have improved on the idea and made it less shitty.
It was designed to be unequal on purpose
What a convincing argument of its continued existence.
The electoral is what keeps us from being ruled by the masses.
It doesn’t do that, all it does is give people in swing states a bigger voice than anybody else, which is a terrible thing for our country.
Everybody should have a voice, instead it’s just a handful of people in a small set of states.
Then why don’t we institute the “” It’s not “rule by the masses” but much more representative of what the population wants.
If two or three states end up picking the president, you’re going to have a problem where some geographical regions have disproportionate choice over who runs the country.
A lot of the systems in the USA are set up to help prevent a national divorce caused by disproportionate power accumulating in a few states. The more you eliminate those systems the faster you expedite a national divorce.
If two or three states end up picking the president, you’re going to have a problem where some geographical regions have disproportionate choice over who runs the country.
Moving away from the electoral college to something like STAR/approval voting would move us away from geographically weighted votes, which means that no such thing would happen. All voters would have equal representation.
Instead we currently have a system where a disproportionate amount of power is given to a select few states with fewer people. Tyranny of the minority is not acceptable. All votes should be equal.
So would you abolish the senate as well, with its 2 seats per state to ensure that each state is represented equally?
If you’re going to have a few regions basically having total dominion over who controls the country, why would the other state want to remain in such a union? The reason for the way things are set up is that different regions in the US had to be convinced to join the union in the first place. The farmers were concerned that the cities would have all the power. Start stripping away stuff intended to prevent a couple geographical areas from totally dominating the discussion and you will end up getting a couple geographical areas from totally dominating the discussion. That might work for a bit, but you could very well see it eventually causes a revolt and the end of the union since there’s no point being involved with a thing like that.
The President is not the representative of the 10 largest cities in America, they’re a representative of all of America. With the current system, a presidential candidate needs to convince people from all around the country that they’re the person to be president. With a pure equal voting system, presidential candidates would never spend any time at all in most states, and wouldn’t have anything in their campaign to help most states.
So would you abolish the senate as well, with its 2 seats per state to ensure that each state is represented equally?
I wouldn’t abolish it, I think the number of senators per state should reflect the population of a given state.
If you’re going to have a few regions basically having total dominion over who controls the country, why would the other state want to remain in such a union?
Why would big states want to remain in a union in which smaller states hold more power than they otherwise would in a system that holds all votes equal?
The system we have already incentivizes the dissolution of the union.
And the big states would not have total domination, because states don’t (or at least shouldn’t) vote, people do. You do realize that a significant number of people in these big states vote red, right? So there would be no domination.
That might work for a bit, but you could very well see it eventually causes a revolt and the end of the union since there’s no point being involved with a thing like that.
Our current system has historically been terrible for avoiding revolt.
The President is not the representative of the 10 largest cities in America,
And the president still wouldn’t be under a system that holds all votes equal. Because cities are not the only thing that exist.
Your whole argument is basically “We can’t have tyranny of the majority, we must maintain our current system of tyranny of the minority!” all while ignoring that all votes being equal is in fact not a form of tyranny by the majority.
With the current system, a presidential candidate needs to convince people from all around the country that they’re the person to be president
No they don’t. They just need to convince the swing states. And that’s all they do, spend time in swing states campaigning. They might go to stronghold states on occasion for funding, but other than that 90% of the time they’re in swing states.
presidential candidates would never spend any time at all in most states, and wouldn’t have anything in their campaign to help most states.
I live in a swing state. EVERY election, both candidates visit my city. Do you know what they don’t do? They don’t ever visit the surrounding states. They don’t ever stop by the smaller towns in my state. It’s only ever my city and 1-2 others for the entire state, then they skip off on a jet to the next swing state, flying over other states in the process.
The current system has all of the problems you are concerned about an equal vote system having.
