Large Majority of Americans Want to End Electoral College
New polling results released just weeks away from Election Day show a majority of Americans want to replace the Electoral College with popular vote system.
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The only reason they want a popular vote system is because it would have worked in their favor in 2000 and 2016.
The minute it goes against "their" candidate they'll scream to go back to the electoral college.
See the multi-state pact here:
https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-explanation
Currently passed in 17 states for 209 electoral college votes, it doesn't take effect until there are 270 accounted for.
But do you really think the residents of a state like Oregon, or Washington, or California will just be OK with their electoral college votes being passed to a popular vote winner who is a Republican?
Especially if that person failed to win their state?
But do you really think the residents of a state like Oregon, or Washington, or California will just be OK with their electoral college votes being passed to a popular vote winner who is a Republican?
Yes, because they won. People who favor democracy understand they won't always be in the majority, and that's OK bedause they aren't shitbags. People who only want the system to work in their favor are called Conservatives.
This runs counter to the Lemmy narrative which says we need like 40 years of Democratic rule to unfuck the country.
To unfuck the Supreme Court. That's still an issue regardless of how the voting is done. And it's usually referenced to discredit people just saying "let the system work it out" and in favor of quicker solutions like packing the Court.
You have more faith than I do. If Oregonians thought their vote was overturned because of a national popular vote winner, there would be riots.
Their vote wasn't "overturned" their vote counted just as much as anyone else's they just lost.
Under the multi-state pact, if Oregon voted overwhelmingly for Harris, but Trump won the national popular vote, and our electoral college votes were delivered to Trump because of the popular vote, yeah, that would be overturning the will of Oregon voters and there would be riots.
So when one town votes for trump and Harris wins the state the votes of that town are "overturned" by the state then?
Pretty much, and they're so pissed off about that they want to split the state and join Idaho.
Really? I grew up in a red town in Massachusetts and I've literally never heard a single person talk about their vote like that ever, let alone suggest that the town should join another state.
Welcome to Oregon!
Here's the thing, the population centers, where people actually live, are super super blue.
The rest of the state is Trump country.
So every election, the people in Portland, Salem, Eugene, Corvallis, Bend and Newport call the shots. Everyone else feels disenfranchised because in those counties there are more square miles and cows than people.
Overturning what exactly? To record their votes in the EC for the losing candidate in a symbolic gesture? No one gives a shit about that, they're still losing. You'll have the state tallies, which actually count people, if you really want to say "most Oregonians disliked Trump".
The way the multi-state pact works is that member states agree to give all their electoral votes to whoever wins the national popular vote, regardless of who the state actually voted for.
It doesn't actually get rid of the Electoral College, that would take a constitutional amendment, it just re-apportions the Electoral College votes based on the outcome of the popular vote.
So in 2000 and 2016, the Democratic candidate won Oregon, and won the popular vote, they would get all the electoral college votes, not a problem, even though they lost the election overall.
Where it WILL be a problem is if the Democratic candidate wins the state, but the Republican candidate wins the national popular vote.
State voters will be told "Yeah, we don't care who you actually voted for, the Republican gets the votes from your state." OMG there will be riots.
Think of it like this... Your vote in your state gets inverted because of voters in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, etc. etc.
Your state EC vote for a losing candidate is a purely symbolic exercise with zero effect whatsoever on the result. And once the NPVC is in effect even the symbolism will be effectively nil as people no longer care or count electoral votes.
If the Republicans win the popular vote, they've also won the electoral college, but even if they didn't, that's democracy. Trying to overturn the will of the people by reverting to an archaic and undemocratic system is anti-democracy. You have to actually believe the EC has some value to try go to the streets to try to restore it, but it's a bad system that invalidates people's votes, whether or not Democrats are winning.
You mean if they lost? How many riots have there been in Oregon when the candidate Oregon shows didn't win the electoral college? Trump lost the popular vote in 2016, but we didn't see riots in Oregon.
That's not your best argument against a national popular vote agreement. The best argument is that no national campaigns would give a shit about Oregon if the goal was winning the national popular vote. Oregon is a progressive coastal state, but it's still a flyover state.
In fact, states wouldn't matter at all. State borders are just imaginary lines drawn around population centers. Campaigns would focus exclusively on demographics and high density population zones. Oregonians as a demographic would be considered "safe" for progressives and "lost" for conservatives, so neither side would give them much effort. California Republicans and Texas Democrats would be the big winners. States like New York and Florida would become the new battlegrounds, as candidates spoke to the concerns of the most people.
And in a way, that would be much better. It would encourage more voters to actually show up, and local races would become more important. But with first past the post, winner take all national elections, you'll still have two parties demonizing the other.
Oregonians as a demographic would be considered “safe” for progressives and “lost” for conservatives, so neither side would give them much effort.
That's now. You're describing the electoral college.
True.
Found the person not from Oregon:
Lol, I'm from Philly, that's not a riot.
Is the suggestion here that the only people who support the electoral college are those who don't want the president to represent the majority of the voting population?
I think the argument boils down to the same one that created both a Senate and House of Representatives, which is does the US have allegiance to it's citizens or it's States.
Representation by population vs representation by area. The same kind of arguments made in favour of switching the U.S. to a fully proportional system (getting rid of all forms of representation by area) could equally be made in favour of having one world government with proportional representation.
When we think about it that way (world elections would be dominated by Asia), it’s easy to see why we might not want such a system. Then, returning to the U.S. system alone it’s easier to see why many people want representation by area preserved. Although the cultural differences between states are much smaller than the differences between continents, they’re still very much present and the issues often dominate American politics.
No, the suggestion here is that the people supporting the popular vote are doing it because they got burned in 2000 and 2016.
Had it gone the other way, they wouldn't be agitating for it.
If Trump somehow wins the popular vote, but loses the electoral college, WA, OR and CA will be THRILLED.
Your suggestion is wrong. Eliminating the Electoral College is advocated for by everyone who supports Democracy. It is also not a coincidence that the Electoral College disproportionately benefits one party over the other. And to cement that advantage they employ anti-Democratic measures in an attempt at voter suppression.
Everyone who supports Democracy... right up until it goes against their interests.
Thankfully, there are many people who don't think like this.
I think you're giving average people too much credit.
"Consider how dumb the average person is and then remember 1/2 of them are dumber than that!" - Carlin
So you don't think it's ok to do the right thing, because people want it for the wrong reasons?
I think people want it now because they feel burned by the 2000 and 2016 elections, but the first time it goes the other way they will be like "Wait, not like THAT!"
I look at the 2000 election like this:
Gore won. If we had completed counting the ballots in Florida, however they were counted, Gore won.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/jan/29/uselections2000.usa
(Published 8 days after the Bush inauguration)
The problem there wasn't popular vs. electoral college. The problem was Democrats are spineless and refuse to fight. "When they go low, we go high" and all that.
In the end though, if Gore had also bothered to win his own home state of Tennessee, Florida would not have mattered.
In 2016, again, less of a problem with popular vs. electoral and more that Clinton utterly failed to campaign in key states like MI and WI, taking them for granted and assuming they were a lock. Surprise! Not a lock.
Had she done her job correctly, she wouldn't have lost the EC.
Gore won. If we had completed counting the ballots in Florida, however they were counted, Gore won.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/jan/29/uselections2000.usa
(Published 8 days after the Bush inauguration)
The problem there wasn’t popular vs. electoral college. The problem was Democrats are spineless and refuse to fight. “When they go low, we go high” and all that.
There were recounts beforehand. Didn't change the result. The last recount, the one that got interrupted by the injunction and killed by SCOTUS was of a handful of specific counties and counted under a different standard for over- and under-votes than the rest of the state.
If it had been completed, Bush would still have won. According to some media outlets doing research on the topic, had the entire state been recounted under the standard Gore wanted to use for that handful of places, Gore might have won. Some surveys done after the fact also suggested Gore could have won but surveys aren't votes, it's why we don't just let news media do a poll and decide the president that way.
The SCOTUS decision leaned on two things: Election deadlines are enforceable and using different rules to count votes depending on which district you are in violates Equal Protection. They killed the last recount because it violated equal protection and a version of it that wouldn't could not possibly have been completed before the deadline (about 2 hours after they released the opinion).
The logic behind Bush v Gore is why Trump switched from launching lawsuit after lawsuit in 2020 to bloviating and whining and hoping for a coup starting at about mid December. He'll do the same this year if he loses - he'll launch any lawsuit he thinks might have a ghost of a chance until we reach election deadlines then incessantly bloviate in a vain attempt to foment rebellion.
It would be nice to implement stuff like one of the voting systems under the broader ranked choice voting umbrella first before getting rid of the electoral college.