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.
Ranked choice.
Fix gerrymandering.
Popular vote.
If you don't want this, you're simply a sore loser. You dont want democracy, you want a boys club.
How do you achieve this, when by and large neither party seems to want to move in this direction?
I do think it is entirely possible, it just requires money. There is a way to defeat our two-party system and it's by running a third party that gets the popular vote.
If someone were running on the platforms of:
Corporations can't own residential real estate.
Members of Congress are not allowed to own or trade stock in any capacity, private or public.
Socialized single payer healthcare. Not rocket science.
Comcast, Verizon, every other ISP gets absolved by the United States government and is no longer a for-profit competitive agency,
CEOs are forbidden by law to be paid more than 1,000 times more than their lowest paid employee.
Minimum wage is $30 an hour. Entry level IT roles, entry level teaching positions now pay about $85,000.
Taxes are now included in sales prices everywhere.
No merchant is allowed to change the price of any product for at least one fiscal quarter.
Buying or purchasing means owning. No company is allowed to tamper with what you own in any way shape or form. They will be held fully liable for the total cost of damages in the form of cash recompense. Damages can exceed the price of the goods themselves and include the luxuries provided by the service if terminated.
No government agency may have any say in an individual's reproductive rights in any way shape or form.
Individuals earning more than $1 million per year will be taxed at 99.99% of every dollar they earn beyond 1 million.
Corporations are not people. They CAN be tried in the court of law, as people, for crimes that entity committed when it had personhood.
Wealthy individuals without an income will be taxed at a rate of 10% of their calculated net worth as per their assets, annually. These figures will be determined by an average of no fewer than 5 independent auditing firms. These auditors all most be able to show their lack of connection to the taxable entity being audited.
Elected officials are not allowed to have accounts in their own name on private or publicly traded platforms. There will be a government social media platform where these individuals may partake in social media. The public at large is also allowed to be on this platform, but they must register using a government provided email address, which will be provided from now on at birth.
End gerrymandering
End electoral college
Ranked choice for all elections...
What am I missing? Ticketmaster? Probably plenty more...
I guess what I'm saying is the two-party system can be fractured if a large enough amount of the population can wholly agree on policies not being put forth by the two party system. I'd say we're getting fucking close to critical mass here.
Voting holiday and mandatory voting. The second one is a bit much, but it could be heavily incentivised (tax break?).
The issue with gerrymandering is that there is basically no way around it because all borders are arbitrary.
They could be less arbitrary and more mathematical. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-mathematicians-who-want-to-save-democracy/
We've had GIS for decades. This is an easy algorithmic solve.
The simplest is the shortest-straight-line method. Draw district boundaries with the shortest straight line that divides the population appropriately.
Funnily enough, one of the biggest hurdles to algorithmic districting is the Voting Rights Act, which actually requires some level of gerrymandering to ensure representation of minorities. A algorithm may randomly split a community of color into 4 districts in violation of the VRA.
I get that the Electoral College was originally designed to give smaller states an equal say. But, when Los Angeles county has more population than like 10 states combined, things are getting ridiculous.
California has like 67 times the population of Wyoming... yet they each have two senators. And that keeps increasing.
Our government is not a good representation of the populace.
The number of people was a political compromise between individual rights and States rights, but so was a Senate and House.
The electoral college was primarily designed to enable states to vote despite a communication delay that could take months.
It did great at that, actually. How would California have up to date info on what's going on in Washington when the fastest mode of travel was a horse? It wouldn't.
Instead of voting based on information that's outdated and potentially inaccurate, best to pick some people you trust to vote in your interests, and send them to Washington. Let them get caught up, and vote how they will as your representative.
Then States can sort out their own voting time and method, with no real concern for it being simultaneous or consistent because news travels so slow anyway. The important thing was authorized people would show up by the expected federal voting time, and if that happened, everyone did well enough.
Of course, now they can cast their vote without leaving the state, and coordination is possible, but here we are holding the bag on a lack of accounting for technological progress.
I agree with your ultimate premise, that technological advances have all but eliminated the need for the Ec. But, my man, the telegraph predates CA as a state.
The EC was also for many reasons, but pertaining to the point were talking about, it was because they were afraid people would just campaign in cities because that would be the most efficient. The EC forces a wider appeal.
But with the ability to reach everyone, everywhere, instantly, this fear that they only campaign in cities is gone.
Instead of having a forever constitution that was great and new 200 years ago when the internet and modern transportation and communications didn't exist .... they should regularly overhaul the entire government every hundred years to keep up with the times.
I'm in Canada and they should do the same here.
We can't possibly think that everything we see, think and believe today will be applicable to people living 100, 200 years from now.
We look at 200 year old laws about horses and we laugh at it. 200 years from now, our descendants will laugh at what we're debating today.
The only reason to maintain the status quo is to protect the power and privilege of a few powerful and wealthy people. It never has anything to do with the goodwill of the people.
California has like 67 times the population of Wyoming... yet they each have two senators. And that keeps increasing.
The worst part about the legislative branch is that Congress also acted to handicap the House of Representatives. It was supposed to be the body based on population. And you may say "Well California has 52 and Wyoming only 1 so that's proportional." But the original intent was no more than 30,000 constituents per representative. So based on a quick look at the 2020 population figures, Wyoming should have 19 while California should have ~1,317. (That would also be equivalent to California having 69 representatives to Wyoming's current 1.)
"...designed to give smaller states an equal say..."
Not quite...
California has like 67 times the population of Wyoming... yet they each have two senators.
But they have way more representatives. That was the point of separation of power, to limit federal power, while California does have a state legislature that can do most of what it wants.
The issue is that congress can regulate anything as "interstate commerce"
No it was designed by slave holding states to be sure that the free states up north didn’t have the power to end slavery.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/electoral-colleges-racist-origins
This is exactly where we should be focusing when this pops up. If PA decided and the pending states go through, that's all you need. Hell, with the pending states, you only need 11 more electoral votes for it to to be enacted.
and it would come into effect only when it would guarantee that outcome
And it will never budge above that line. They should have just done it anyways. Most of the votes to decide is better than all of them.
They should do it anyway, but limit it to the winner of the popular vote within the states that are part of the pact.
Then there’d be several states that would realize they’d have more influence by contributing their popular votes to the pact than by sending their electors to the College independently (and in any case a candidate would still have to virtually sweep all the non-pact states to win the College without winning the pact).
You could make the argument that if it was solely down to the popular vote, the last Republican president would have been George Bush in 1988.
The only Republican since then to win the popular vote was Bush II for his second term in 2004, but it's arguable that since Gore would have been the incumbent he might not have won that one. Plus there are a lot of hypotheticals like whether 9/11 could have been prevented under Gore, or if it had happened if the response was less aggressive, or if Bush II would have even run again after losing the first time etc. So it's impossible to say but certainly conceivable that Gore would have gone for two terms IMO.
Gore won twice in the good timeline. Sucks we have to live in this one.
You march to infinity in the timeline you've got, not the one you want.
I wonder who would have been the opponent in 2004 if Gore had won? This was back when losers didn't try running for election again, so not Dubya. Maybe McCain since he did in 2008?
Yeah I think McCain would be a likely candidate, he was the runner-up in the primaries in 2000 against Bush II so he was definitely thinking about it back then.
Maybe Mitt Romney? He was pretty popular for a while iirc. I think if 9/11 still happened in that timeline though, it probably would be McCain due to his military proximity. Hard to say if Gore's presidency would have caught/prevented 9/11 or not. It's possible flying alone would have been impacted by the climate portion of his platform.
I could make an argument that the conservatives could still be competitive in this alternate timeline, and would not necessarily need to fear the popular vote pact.
All they would need to do is change up their platform to capture more votes from outside their current demographic. But that might require them to stop being cartoon villains, and I'm not sure they're capable of taking their party back from the Trump ideology.
It's wild that if multiple things we implemented republicans would never win the presidency again.
Any anti voter suppression method, like universal mail in voting
Ranked choice voting
Removal of the electoral college
I am sure there are even more.
Remember that republicans are the minority, they just show up to vote more often (and aren't actively suppressed)
Man what I'd give for ranked choice voting, it seems like a no-brainer
There are other options as well, approval voting has several advantages over ranked choice voting. It is simpler and it there is no spoiler effect (voting for your favorite candidate will never hurt your second choice)
Some more info: https://electionscience.org/#approval-voting-explained
Gotta remember this system was setup by literal slavers.
They'd still win the Presidency occasionally. They'd just have to do it by adopting policies that more voters would support.
You know - what they're supposed to be doing.
I think it's important to point out that strategies would change if the system changed so we can't predict what the results would be.
The electrical collage is way overdue to be retired. I wonder if we will have the means to actually do it.
Unpopular Fanatics vs Apathetic Majority. Conservatives refuse to change their unpopular policies and with all the crap they pull to make elections favor them, they struggle to get 50/50. If elections were made fair and representative of the population....they would never win. The only way to win in that environment is to have the more popular policies, and that is antithetical to conservativisim.
Actually, it would be better for Republicans to try to convince the population their solutions are better instead of the BS we have now. It might help the Republican Party become somewhat normal again and then get more votes. I would love it if we could have real debates on real issues, instead of the BS we have now. I might even be a tad conservative in some areas... But right now, the choice is between Dems or Crazy Town. I think a popular vote would change politics and strategy so that you couldn't have a Trump anymore.
Gerrymandering
Can we please just get ranked choice voting
Would be nice, but I can't see either major political party actually following through with something that hurts their power.
Let me happily inform you that several states have varying versions of RCV.
Maine and Alaska got there through a Democratic government and a voter referendum, respectively.
Highly recommend reading this Wikipedia page.
You'll notice a trend of Democrats and voter referendums driving RCV, and on the other hand, Republicans fighting to reverse or delay RCV laws, and entire conservative states that have BANNED it.
This isn't a "both sides" thing.
Ah, but is a significant enough amount of that majority located in the lowest population states to make it matter?
From the article, maybe not:
Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are far more likely than Republicans and Republican leaners to support moving to a popular vote system for presidential elections (82% vs. 47%).
I think the issue is if we get close to enacting this, partisan politicians will flood the channel with anti-popular vote propaganda, because they know every step towards a fairer system harms their chances.
Is that a threat? Do we need to have government sponsored people movement into less populated states from left voting cities? Because I'll fucking vote for that.
You can bus all the immigrants you want to cities in blue states, and in equal exchange, we will bus lefty to sparsely populated states to render your votes blue.
Carpetbaggers of America, do your civic duty!
Problem is that "Majority" isn't gonna get rid of the Electoral College. Because Electoral College. Unpopulated states still have excess control.
I wonder if Work-From Home culture might someday shift demographics of some of these small states.
So how do we get a constitutional amendment passed to do this?
Especially with the republicans only able to win the presidency through the electoral college. They’re gonna cling to that shit with their dying breath.
We actually don’t need a constitutional amendment to do it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact
NaPoVoInterCo :3
this poll may show that Americans want electoral college gone, but if you look at where they answered, you can instead count the answers given by state delegates and then it turns out Americans love the electoral college!
How we did this
In 2000 and 2016, the winners of the popular vote lost their bids for U.S. president after receiving fewer Electoral College votes than their opponents. To continue tracking how the public views the U.S. system for presidential elections, we surveyed 8,480 U.S. adults from July 10 to 16, 2023.
Everyone who took part in the current survey is a member of Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP’s methodology.
Here are the questions used for this analysis, along with responses, and its methodology.
It's easier to remove or even modify the Reapportionment Act of 1929 to enlarge the total number of electoral votes in the college than it is to remove the Electoral College itself.
I can already hear it...
wEr,E a REpUbLiC nOt A dEMoCrOcy111
Alternatively, with a simple bill we can establish an EC so large or doesn't effectively matter. We would just repeal the inter-war bill freezing the size of the House of Representatives and set the ratio to something that means even Montana gets 20 EC votes.
Alternatively, with a simple bill we can establish an EC so large or doesn't effectively matter.
Well it's still up to the states to determine how electors are determined. That's because the president was intentionally designed to not be a prime minister (speaker of the house) because they are intentionally not elected in the same way as the house
In theory a state could decide to just have the legislature vote. But in reality most, if not all states, have constitutional rules about having to have an election.
But that's a tangential consideration to expanding the EC. If someone needed 5,000 votes for the EC then it would be very hard for the middle states to swing that election with their land, no matter how they selected their electors. And at the end of the day, that's the point. People should vote, not land. We already have the Senate that gives equal representation to each state and acts as a representative for land. There's no reason to have the EC doing the same and it wasn't the EC's original purpose.
I get it, but then only like 4 counties in the whole country decide an election.
Oh no! The majority of the people get to decide an election in a democracy! The horror!
You just described the system we have now.
Not true, heres the county map from 2016. https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2016_Presidential_Election_by_County.svg
As opposed to now where only like 4 empty plots of dirt decide elections...?
Not only that, but if the election is close, the entire country gets re-counted.
The quickest way to fix the electoral college is not to fix it at all, but to increase the size of Congress. Congress used to increase in size every year, until the 1920s, when they couldn't decide on how many seats to add. In 1920, there were about 250k people in an average district. Now there are over 750k, which is larger than some of the smallest states.
Congress sets its own size, and this fix can be done without any amendment.
This doesn't really fix anything other than the small state counting bias. You still have states that are entirely ignored because they're reliably >50% red/blue and you still have a small number of close states that are the only ones who matter. There's still a high likelihood that you'll have presidents elected who lost the popular vote merely because of inefficient arrangements of voters.
Which 4 counties contain even close to a majority of the population between them?
Counties dont vote. Individuals vote. Even if you're in LA youre still one person that gets one vote regardless of how those around you vote.
...if you batched the popular vote into counties and made each county winner-take-all.
Which is not what anyone is suggesting.
