Kamala Harris’s running mate urges popular vote system but campaign says issue is not part of Democrats’ agenda
Tim Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, has called for the electoral college system of electing US presidents to be abolished and replaced with a popular vote principle, as operates in most democracies.
His comments – to an audience of party fundraisers – chime with the sentiments of a majority of American voters but risk destabilising the campaign of Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, who has not adopted a position on the matter, despite having previously voiced similar views.
“I think all of us know, the electoral college needs to go,” Walz told donors at a gathering at the home of the California governor, Gavin Newsom. “We need a national popular vote. We need to be able to go into York, Pennsylvania, and win. We need to be in western Wisconsin and win. We need to be in Reno, Nevada, and win.”
🗳️ Register to vote: https://vote.gov/
Tim Walz is 100% correct. Dump the out dated Electoral College.
Rank choice voting for all federal elections
Approval/STAR*
I also highly recommend this analysis of STAR and RCV
Appreciate the links. This is kind of my thing.
Edit: As a big Ranked Choice voting advocate, this was a interesting and informative read. I never did think about this particular situation:
RCV doesn’t take all rankings from all ballots into account and so is not the most accurate way of counting ranked ballots. If your first choice candidate is eliminated in later rounds your second, third, or fourth choices may never be counted. (Ranked Pairs, Schultz, and Bucklin Voting are much more accurate ways to count ranked ballots.)
I will need to go over this a few more times, but it seems I am going to switch my preference to STAR as well because of your comment.
Really anything other then First-past-the-post will do, but it’s nice to look ahead and plan for a future where people are free to vote for who best represents them.
Thanks again.
I think I want him to be president.
That would fit the pattern (provided Harris wins) Obama/Biden -> Biden/Harris -> Harris/Walz -> Walz/??
Walz/Obama 😄
Maybe.
Walz really is the ideal politician but he might be rough around the edges after 8 years. He already looks a bit older than what he is and I don’t consider his speaking to be quite as good as Harris’s. It would preferential if we started looking towards building up younger politicians within the party with people like Walz providing support.
We really do tend to vote for charisma over statesmanship, which is incredibly problematic.
I feel that but society has been like that forever. Trust me, it used to be something that frustrated me excessively but I’ve just come to accept that even throughout history people are just shallow.
One could argue you can learn to be a statesman, but charisma is something innate.
Even if we keep the electoral college as a means of allocating points we need to get rid of the electors. I’ve been saying this since before Jan 6th 2021.
We are all slaves to the ruling class until this is done.
Removing the electoral college does nothing to change our two party system so I don’t understand why you think it solves billionaire class rule.
It absolutely does. Without Republicans gerrymandering everything to stay in the fold, they’re completely done. They’ll get bodied every election. The last time the Republicans won the popular vote was 20 years ago, and the party has radically changed since then.
Hopefully undoing the electoral college is the first step to dismantling the two party system.
So thats on me, I said “does nothing to change our two party system” when I should have said “does nothing to remove our two party system”. All this does is concentrate power into the democrats which if they had no worry of winning elections would very quickly openly turn into the Billionaire Boot Licking Society overnight. We need more political parties.
All this being said I’m not arguing against removing the electoral college, it needs to die. But Americas problems run so much deeper than the GOP
I think we can mostly agree that the electoral college system is not working as intended. It was designed to give people outside the cities an extra boost to their representation, But it was certainly never designed to let fascism take hold.
Unfortunately there’s no such thing as a fair and representative voting system. In all their cases you either end up underrepresenting the rural, over representing the rural, or forcing people to pick between candidates that they don’t want.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m perfectly down with what walls is calling for as it gives my intentions the best chance and at the same time will keep fascism from just popping in because they’re good at propaganda. But I’d still like to see some other way.
I’ve always been and always will be a Ranked Choice Voting advocate
Can I persuade you to consider Approval or STAR?
RCV has some structural flaws that make it less than optimal. Flaws that exist in an Ordinal voting system but RCV puts a slightly odd twist on them, in some ways making them worse.
Approval or STAR on the other hand, are both Cardinal voting systems. They work on a different core principle and thus are immune to the flaws found in Ordinal systems.
Honestly, I’d be happy with any sort of ranked/cardinal voting system, and it looks like STAR is just a better RCV though. RCV just seems like the most likely to pick up steam in the US, tough I could be mistaken
RCV does have some money behind it, but it also has some deep-seated structural problems that come up with disturbing regularity.
Which leads to a situation where the results of an RCV election can be so bad that the district/state decides to axe voting reform entirely and go back to First Past the Post.
This has happened a few times now, and it sets efforts for real voting reform back. If you walk into Burlington, Vermont and say “I have voting reform that will fix the problems of First Past the Post” They will tell you to fuck off because they tried RCV, and it failed horribly because it’s a bad system.
So an attempt to get STAR going will face that much more pushback. So it’s better for everyone to resist RCV and push for STAR or Approval.
Approval has gotten some wins, and is also picking up steam. I’d be happy with it, even though STAR is slightly better.
I always hear that excuse about the rural areas not being represented without the electoral college, but my only reaction is GOOD. Rural areas are large in land ans small in people. Why should they get an equal voice as a Metropolitan area with the majority of people? A government is supposed to reflect the will of the people. The not ALL the people, that would be impossible, but but an average of the majority of the people.
Additionally, the government at the federal level has relatively minor impact at the local level. The federal level is broad strokes, the local government is fine strokes, and the state level is somewhere in between. Rural dwellers can run their local government however they like as long as it doesn’t violate state or federal laws.
ent at the federal level has relati
Not equal, but at the same time you don’t want to collectively just shit on all your farmers, although, they don’t seem to have any problem shitting on us so maybe?
The real problem is that the size of the House of Representatives has been frozen for 100 years. The number of electoral college votes a state has is equal to the number of reps and senators they have. Since the House hasn’t grown alongside our population, the relative representation for rural areas has steadily grown more and more.
Ending the cap on the House would balance out the electoral college issues and help reduce the constant congressional deadlocks we’re seeing.
And so we’ll remain until we can also get rid of the two party system. This would be a good start, but we also need to change our voting system to anything but this awful first-past-the-post system.
You think the midwest will have any say in what happens in the USA without it?
All the campaigns will spend time in NY, California, Texas, and nearby states. Campaign money goes where the votes go. Then government spending goes where the votes are.
Coroprations will own the midwest while farms exist, and care not about voting because their lobbying is paying the ad spend on the coasts.
This is a deep issue. The founders may have been white (mostly, remember hamilton isnt an opera) and flawed but they werent stupid.
so what? We’re talking about a national vote for president. Your specific voice gets heard through local elections, not the president. Every person should have an equal vote. Period.
The flip side is that people who live in states with a big land area but relatively small population have a way oversized vote compared to people who live in high population states. Why should a small number of people in the Midwest be able to outvote the majority?
All the campaigns will spend time in NY, California, Texas, and nearby states.
As opposed to spending all their time in cities in swing states like they currently do? The EC is an abysmal failure at preventing candidates from ignoring huge swaths of the country. Fuck the EC. What is even dumber about the EC, is that basically every other office in the US counts all votes equally, and yet this isn’t a problem at the state/local level.
One person, one vote. We are all born equal, all votes should be equal. Nobody is more deserving of a voice than any other.
Coroprations will own the midwest while farms exist, and care not about voting because their lobbying is paying the ad spend on the coasts.
That’s already the case.
I want my devalued vote back. Any other rationalization is an assault on “one person one vote”.
Campaign money goes where the votes go. Then government spending goes where the votes are.
You mean to say, power will be more evenly distributed per person instead of per acre?
I’m ok with this.
Which was the point of the EC in the first place:
There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections.
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-10-02-0065
and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes
Could you explain this sentence please? English isn’t my first language and I can’t make sense of it.
Madison was saying that blacks in the south were enslaved and couldn’t vote. They made up a significant portion of the southern states population which put them at a disadvantage giving them poor representation.
Southern states owned a lot of slaves, and thought the slave owners should get to have the slave’s votes in addition to their own. They thought that if they couldn’t do that, the South couldn’t have a loud enough voice in the election.
It’s kind of related to the 3/5th compromise.
Thanks !
White slave owners in the south didn’t want abolitionists to vote away their supremacy over blacks, and thought the EC would be a good way to make sure the abolitionist voting bloc would be kept in check.
History is riddled with the results of people on the right side giving so much to the losers that the losers win in the long run.
They were monsters that treated humans like property… fuuuuuuuuck them so hard.
And here we are, back again cuz someone didn’t smack them hard enough
Now we’re all still property, but must find a way to feed, clothe, home ourselves and get to our mostly underpaid jobs. It’s fine if it’s extralegal, until we’re caught or turned in.
They give you a bag of snakes and demand you reach in and pick one. Both will kill you with a single bite. It really doesn’t matter which you pick when they control your choices in the first place. I refuse to vote, it will make no difference if Harris wins or Trump, the loosing party will do everything in their power to defeat everything the winner tries to do for good, unless they can profit from it. It will just be more of the internal civil war over money. Our leaders will get richer, corporations will get tax cuts and the people will PAY!
Normally I would agree, but it seems riskier this time around to have that mindset. Trump and his people want to do some serious damage and I believe that they will put in all the effort they can to do it.
It’s actually scary this time round
It’s always been that way, and you never cared. That has been happening for what, 50 years now?
Keep bowing down to your overlords and doing their bidding, that will SURELY create change. Surely.
Didn’t say it was the right thing to do. Ever since Carter’s loss which cause Democrats to go to the right because they thought it would get them votes, it’s really gone downhill.
Picking a turd taco or shit sandwich really doesn’t taste good.
This time it feels like a shotgun to the face or a shit sandwich.
It’s scary every time around. This attitude is what got us someone who stalled on even admitting climate change was a thing for almost a decade instead of Al Gore in 2000. Like sure not as fraught as now but imagine being a decade ahead on implementing green policies even if those policies were watered down.
It’s really like their own little game. We are just the peices. Neither party is working for us. They just work for themselves. But they have split up the issues to make sure the majority of the people have something to hate. And to play their game they need to do things to keep that hate going. So which one wins determines which hate will get applied. So your vote matters on that plane.
I don’t think it’s fair to say both snakes in that bag are equally bad. Sure they might both kill you, but one of them will give you a horrific, painful death.
k
Yay anti American vice presidential candidate!
Tell us you don’t know what you’re talking about without actually telling us.
How is proposing a change to our electoral system “anti-American”?
Was it “anti-American” to want to end slavery? After all, it was a part of our country’s systemic history.
Was it “anti-American” to give women the right to vote? The constitution pretty clearly didn’t give them that right.
Yay anti American comment!
Explain.
They can’t lol they don’t know what they are talking about, they don’t know what Walz is actually talking about. It is typical low-information knee-jerk ignorance (it is how they stay maga without getting a permanent headache)
CGP Grey calculated it @ 22%
It’s always a good day when CGP Grey gets mentioned.
Watched it. The video is 12 years old, and the article I shared is 8yrs old. I am tempted to do the calculations myself with current numbers, but I am excelled out for the day.
I was showing my 3yo how to run a DOE with his hotwheels track and the cars that work best current tests are on mass. The favorite mass is 29-32g/car to complete the track. The range is 10g-43g/ car. Below those masses, they fly off the track most of the time. Above those masses, they fail around 1st to 2nd loop.
Still have about 10 cars to test.Next steps measure wheel base, length, thickest section, car height, and running in reverse vs forward. Finally time trials.
Well technically the ‘minimum’ has almost no bottom. One tortured example, if you had a single voter per state for the biggest 11 states all vote for one candidate, but every other one of the 118 million eligible voters in other states voted the other way, then those 11 people will win.
I like the legal maneuvering, but the places that have adopted this so far will almost certainly always go with the popular vote anyway.
Well I am guessing it needs some good voter turnout so that the other states can get it through
It is the single most logical and devastating blow that the democratic party could work on to stop fascism.
Disallow corporate entities from owning residential property.
Increase minimum wage.
Break up monopolies and oligopolies to reintroduce competition. Get off this “stop price gouging greedflation” horse shit. Break up monopolies and oligopolies, lower the bar to competition.
End forced arbitration outright.
Set a maximum document length limit to stop frivolous lawsuits, “drowning in paperwork”.
Set term limits for all govt positions, especially SCOTUS.
Harsher punishments to corporations. No more of these fines that are simply the cost of doing business. C suite execs should do time on behalf of law breaking ‘corpirate citizens.’
Tax the fuck of our anything making over $100M in profit. I mean, the fuck out of it.
And none of this happens until we ditch the two party system. Because the Dems will just continue to do the bare minimum to win elections while still serving the billionaire class.
Disallow corporate entities from owning residential property.
And tax the shit out of second (and third and beyond) home owners. If you don’t reside there it is absolutely a luxury. Nobody on the face of this Earth needs more than one dwelling.
There are reasons for owning one or two more houses. Maybe you just moved and need to sell the second house, or maybe you got a house for a friend or relative. Still think the tax is good, but should be applied to the fourth house and up unless you are renting to someone.
I’d be okay with execs and board members doing community service for first offense, if it means picking up trash on roadways, working in nursing facilities, harvesting crops, and other things Joe and Jane Average would be doing for community service.
Agreed with everything except getting rid of ec, increasing the minimum wage, and taxing the fuck out of corps for an arbitrary profit margin.
But damn. Solid otherwise.
I remember when trolls were actually funny and smart.
Easier to think I’m a troll than to believe someone could say those words and be serious?
Well I’m not. So strengthen up buddy boy.
Yes, I would rather think you’re a troll than beleive someone is actually seriously that cruel and dumb. It’s better for my mental health.
I’m am neither cruel nor dumb. Again, this is your own mental illness that is preventing you from seeing another human behind those words.
What possible reason do you have for wanting to keep such an incredibly shit voting system? Please elaborate.
Because it’s not ‘incredibly shit’ it’s just not what you want it to be. It was designed to not allow mob rule. And it’s done a pretty good job at it.
Just because something doesn’t do what you want it to do doesn’t mean it’s bad.
So why don’t you want one wage earned to be able to support their entire family or corporations to pay their fair share so we all call have quality health and education? The EC is rubbish, btw.
It’s pretty simple really. Raising the minimum wage will cause inflation to everything else to balance out and we will be right back where we started. People can’t afford anything. But now with even higher and overly inflated prices.
That’s just how economics works. None of that trickle down bs or any other partisan view.
Simple cause and effect, and scarcity.
Not if you’re also taking care of monopolies and lowering the barrier to entry in a way that creates meaningful competition.
Yeah man I’m all for killing monopolies. Hasn’t happened, won’t happen. Money drives the world, those monopolies are spending a considerable amount of their time and money lobbying the gov to make it so they can make MORE money, not less.
Now. If we also get rid of lobbying and make it a federal offense or treason to manipulate the legislative branch for monetary incentives, we got something.
Raising the minimum wage will cause inflation
https://www.upjohn.org/research-highlights/does-increasing-minimum-wage-lead-higher-prices
No it doesn’t
No, I get it. You don’t like democracy.
That’s fine, just own it.
No, I get it. You don’t know how to have a discussion in which you disagree with the person and default to dismissing them completely instead.
That’s fine, just own it.
No you’re coming across as white privilege who wants to keep that. It’s not nice, cool or * admirable in any way, form or shape.
Damn now talking like normal people is privilege. No wonder everyone else is fucking crazy.
And also thanks for commenting on all my comments. Love you
It was designed to not allow mob rule.
And it flat our fails at that. Under the EC, we have a ‘mob rule’ by the swing states. And candidates basically only ever visit the cities of swing states, and solidly red/blue areas for fundraising on occasion.
One person, one vote. We are all born equal, so to should our votes be equal. Anything less is a failure of a system.
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-10-02-0065
There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections.
It was designed solely to allow southern states to launder the votes of their slaves, as explicitly said by James madison, the person who put it in place.
Were slaves not people?
3/5 dk what the rest was. Gods, in my estimation, to survive and thrive.
Edited because I’m on my first coffee.
Not to southerners, because they didn’t let slaves vote, even though they still wanted to vote on their behalf.
They only counted for 3/5 of a person and were not allowed to vote
That was indeed the compromise.
If you exclude 2004 with Bush Jr (wartime president which all but guarantees reelection) the Republicans haven’t won a popular vote since 1988.
Seems more like the EC ensures minority rule.
The electoral college is just DEI legislation for Rebublicans since they can’t win by popularity.
“Mob rule” in this case being…the will of the majority of voters? Some sort of national popular vote, perhaps?
This is an insane take man, but I guess some puppets don’t want their strings cut.
“Insane take” Literally the founding of our country was built off that take.
Yeah, you’re right, better to stay stagnant and not bother improving the system so that America stays true to its heritage. Everything was better back then, workers rights, women’s rights, slavery…gods the founding fathers really knew their shit. Why try to improve on perfection?
(MASSIVE /s so I don’t get downvoted to oblivion)
If any idiot here can’t tell your being sarcastic, that’s their issue.
But yes actually. Some things shouldn’t change. From what I’ve studied/learned we really were the first of our style of government. It’s been successful thus far, when plenty of other systems have come and gone.
Also just because the core of our system shouldn’t be changed doesn’t mean other things should/couldnt/havent changed. Soooo don’t put words in my mouth 👍
You said it best, why try to improve on perfection?
I agree with all of this and I think many people on Lemmy do as well. My concern is: Will the population that is excited to vote for candidates that are willing to push these changes through have the staying power?
These are huge changes to a system that has been manipulated to benefit a small group of well connected, very powerful, very wealthy people. It’s not something that can change in one or even two presidential terms. These are changes that will take many election cycles to complete. These, and other big changes, need sustained focus.
Not saying it can’t be done - it can. The republican party has proven that. Over the course of 40+ years they have reshaped America to fit their ideals. But it took 40 years. One part of how they did it was/is by keeping the pressure on their voting base even during non-election years through FOX news, rush limbaugh, alex jones, and other pieces of shit. So when it was time to vote their base was already “educated” on why they had to vote for the republican candidate. It made/makes it easy for the republican candidate to step in and just say the right words and phrases to the voting population and they were guaranteed a certain % of the vote.
So if the left wants to re-shape how America looks and how it treats it’s population then they have to be willing to play the long game.
The candidates have to work hard to get and keep voters excited, no backpedaling on platforms.
The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house
I agree with everything here except the concept that there’s such a thing as a non-election year, which is a big part of the reason the engagement discrepancy you’re talking about exists in the first place.
Move to c/usnews or at least c/politics please.
I have no clue what a “electoral college” is and don’t want to know.
I’m not american but this is pretty basic within the US political system. And it’s pretty relevant news.
!news@lemmy.world has always been US centered.
That’s why I recommend you also follow !world@lemmy.world and whatever there is for more local news for you. For example for me (Francophone) !actualite@jai.lu
Nah, /news just filled my /all feed. Seeing that /world is better for me, i could finally block the depressing stuff.
fair enough
Probably not the popular opinion, but I think EC is important to America being what it is & as large as it is. From Wikipedia:
The electoral college is fundamental to American federalism, in that it requires candidates to appeal to voters outside large cities, and increases the political influence of more rural states. Whether by design or accident, one of its effects is to help prevent a tyranny of the majority that would ignore the less densely populated heartland and rural states in favor of the mega-cities
Imo without the EC, the Democrats would just roll the elections and the entire Republican party would have to pivot. Serving the rural / conservative view would be a losing strategy. Then resentment would grow that a big cultural force in America no longer has any say
So your plan is to hand power to the minority of people? And you think we should agree to this minoritarianism, because the rural / conservative view holders would get resentful?
Why don’t we just hand the country back to the indigenous people and let them, an even bigger minority than the rurals, run shit for a while?
Anyway "rural / conservative view"s are already represented in their communities, towns, cities, and states. By their local, city, and state governments.
And by your “logic” shouldn’t all those conservative counties that vote red be forced to give greater weight to their liberal residents, yah know so their liberal voices aren’t drowned out and they suddenly become resentful or something.
I used to agree, and perhaps that concept made more sense in the 18th century when the urban/rural divide was not nearly as stark and separate.
The same goes with the Senate. I have no problem with it in concept, but unless we can also have a House that is actually proportionally representative, then it doesn’t really make sense.
One, the Republican party needs to pivot, or die, frankly. They’ve gone so far down the fascist rabbit hole at this point that they’re a danger to the very fabric of this country. Perhaps if they couldn’t get away with chiefly appealing to a minority of this country, that would push them to do so.
Two, the idea of the current system serving the rural/urban divide is a complete lie. Do you think the people of Kern County, CA are served by the electoral college? Do you think the people of San Antonio, TX are? No, they are completely and utterly ignored because they happen to be in states that vote the other way. To say nothing of the fact that the people who generally do vote with their state are ignored almost as much, because they can be taken for granted.
If you want every American to count, then you need to count every American. And if that upsets some people who have gotten used to welding outsized power over the rest of us and now think that’s their birthright, oh fucking well.
Rural states have a large advantage in the house, huge advantage in the senate, and of course significant skew in the electoral college. And much of it comes from compromises with slave owners.
Abolishing the EC would not mean rural regions get completely ignored, not only would they have reps and senators still courting their votes (and campaign donations), civilized countries with functional democracies have multiple parties. A rural party would show up, which could court voters in all rural areas, instead of only in swing states.And to expand on what you said, they wouldn’t be spending all their time in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, and Georgia. They would likely visit every state to hoover up as many votes as they could. It would also give a voice to those who live in heavy red or blue places who don’t vote because they feel their vote is meaningless (it’s not. Get out and vote anyway).
Democratic presidential candidates only ever come here to Indiana during the primaries. They know there’s no point in the general.
Bernie didn’t even announce his schedule when he was here in 2016. He did one public event and then it turned out later he did a couple of other things of note (like visit the Eugene V. Debs museum here in Terre Haute).
Did Biden/Harris even come here in 2016? I was under the impression that the Democrat candidates abandoned indiana ~10 years ago.
I don’t remember them doing so. I just remember finding out Bernie came and left town and never told anyone.
Say it ain’t so… the Republican party would need to become more attractive to moderate conservatives and be less alienating? What a travesty that would be.
Conservativism, as it exists in modern America, is simply a fringe belief that only survives because of our broken ass election system that forces us into two parties.
Don’t conservatives resent democrats either way? They have so much of an advantage through the EC that the democrats have to go liberal+progressive big tent, but still they complain/fear the amount of non-whites and atheists in big cities.
Also don’t black americans + lgbt also resent their underrepresentation? Why should rural white populations get to speak over them? Just because historically that’s been the case and we don’t want to hurt their feelings?
Watch Trump win the electoral college again and Democrats not use that as a rallying point to abolish it.
but campaign says issue is not part of Democrats’ agenda
Fucking hell! Every time either of them says something truly based, some DNC lackey comes and spoils it by saying that! 🤬
For real, ENOUGH already with the milquetoast Dem leadership being so terrified of actually taking a stand about any issue.
It’s not like Walz or Harris can do anything about it anyway. Legal scholars have said that it would take a Constitutional amendment to change the electoral college system to anything else, as it is mandated by the Constitution.
Amending the Constitution requires ratification by 75% of the 50 US states after passing a 2/3 majority of Congress.
It’s best to be realistic and not get worked up about things you can’t do anything about.
Not like the dnc couldn’t lean hard on party representatives to make them fall in line.
We are slaves to the ruling class forever then.
We really have nothing to lose in that case, and may as well do anything and everything to end the electoral college.
I’m not a slave, I do whatever I want and life is great. Perhaps you should try just doing whatever the fuck you want to sometimes.
That video is worth watching just for the LOLs, but also does a great job of explaining exactly how the whole thing works.
If you can keep the train of thought through ads.
Did you have a comment reply to make? I’m not watching anybody’s youtube link.
There’s a way to circumvent the electoral college without a constitutional amendment. It’s called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. It’s in progress, but not triggered yet until a few more states adopt it.
If states totaling at least 270 electoral votes sign on, then it kicks in. Every state in the compact will send the electors for the party that wins the national popular vote, regardless of how their state votes. Electoral college rendered meaningless without a constitutional amendment.
(The video is good, it’s CGP Grey’s explanation of this compact.)
Thanks
This is just like all those times Republican candidates hedged about Roe v Wade… right up until they finally got it overturned. Sure, the majority of voters agree the EC is outdated and needs to go; but saying as much can scare moderates, and doesn’t get you any new liberal voters. Never forget, “undecided” voters in the US are just fickle assholes who don’t want to vote for someone who “feels” too conservative or liberal. Unfortunately, with FPTP voting, they carry a lot of weight.
I can understand the strategy this time
One of the big motivators for the left is that Trump has made credible threats about undermining votes and folks have signed up for it. A fear of having your voice forever silenced in the political system is a strong motivator. You can see because pundits for Trump keep trying to turn it around and say “nuh uh, the Democrats are the ones that will take away your voice”, which generally rings hollow because there’s zero history or rhetoric in the Democratic party to even suggest that.
This could be the sort of rhetoric those Republicans have been wanting. A Democrat proposing a fundamental change to the biggest election that everyone knows would usually prevent a Republican win for that office. We wouldn’t have had either Republican president in the last 30 years. This could energize scared Republicans or feed the “but both sides” distraction.
It may make tons of sense, but it’s a huge risk of scaring people to vote against Democrats that might have otherwise sat it out.
And all interest in this statement was lost in record time. Even though it would help Democrats win every time, as swing states would stop being a thing, and the Democrat voters in Wyoming and Texas and every other sold-red state is now something to seriously counts.
Isn’t this kind of missing the point, though? The reason neither party wants to change a thing about the current system is the whole point of abolishing the electoral college is to remove the spoiler effect that eventually leads to a two party system. If the electoral college ends, there’s no such thing as swing states, gerrymandering will be moot, candidates will actually have to have policies that people want, they’ll have to actually campaign, and many corporate “Democrats” will probably get outed by more progressive candidates.
There are other benefits, but I really don’t see this getting any traction, regardless, until we can get money our of politics and a wealth tax that makes sense (like 70%+ on the ultra wealthy).
I agree with your sentiment that Democrat ideas – more likely the progressive Democrat ideas – will likely be the candidates that win the most. However, we’ll likely never find out cause both parties will fight this with all of their being and financial ghouls.
There are other benefits, but I really don’t see this getting any traction, regardless, until we can get money our of politics and a wealth tax that makes sense (like 70%+ on the ultra wealthy).
Seems like an infinite loop by design.
Okay, a couple things here are way off. The electoral college is not a cause of the two party system. FPTP is the primary driver of that.
No, both parties don’t want the electoral college. Pretty sure the Dems would love to win nearly all modern presidential races. This is a pretty lame “they’re both the same”.
Please don’t vote-splain. You’re arguing semantics. The electoral college just gives states the ability to decide to honor or ignore the will of the people. It also gives rural states more per-capita power than they’d othereise get. Until relatively recently, most states had nothing on the books to force delegates to vote the way the people wanted.
Sure, some of the younger crowd may want to abolish the electoral college, it won’t happen unless states force an amendment. The fossils in Congress, as well as the enshrined political surnames, will all use their collective power and wealth to shut that shit down for as long as they can.
In terms of they’re both the same, you are naive if you think the Democrats really care about you or power. They just don’t outrightly tell the populous to fuck off like the Republicans do. The party tolerates progressives, but does everything they can to keep them out of power. Look to Adam Schiff these last couple of years for a good example. If I recall, didn’t he politically champion and/or donate to a candidate running against a progressive Democrat in his state? When the Democrats, or even the Republicans for that matter, have all three branches, they still never seem to get anything done.
Hmm, 🤔… It’s almost like they want the current status quo to persist, even when empowered to do something without barriers.
Not every time. Republicans have won the popular vote before. What would happen, though, is the Republican Party would have to adjust its platform to become more in line with the majority of Americans.
Are you aware of what is minimally required in order to pull off this kind of change? There is no outcome to this election that will result in the Democrats having even the faintest possibility of doing this.
I think at this point pretty much everyone I’ve ever talked to thinks the electoral college is bullshit. Even my dad and he’s a trumper.
Why can’t we end it then.
Well one doesn’t necessary need to get rid of electoral college, if the electors were appointed by proportional vote and representation. At that point it would be just a smudging filter. National popular vote with extra steps and some added in accuracy due to one being able to do so much proportionality given how many electors there is.
So the main problem is not electoral college, but the voting method. Just as note since also getting rid of electoral college isn’t a fix, if the direct popular election uses bad voting method. Like say nationwide plurality vote would be horrible replacement for electoral college.
Though I would assume anyone suggesting popular vote would mean nationwide majority win popular vote. Though that will demand a “fail to reach majority” resolver. Be it a two round system (second round with top two candidates, thus guaranteed majority result) or some form of instant run-off with guaranteed majority win after elimination rounds.
TLDR: main problem I winner take all plurality, first past the post more than the technicality of there existing such bureaucratic element as electors and electoral votes.
For sure. It’s definitely a multi layer problem and our voting system is trash. We’ll always be stuck with a two party system as long as we stick with first past the post. And as long as we are stuck with two choices it will always be a shit show of “us vs them.” But at the same time the electoral college only makes things worse. I live in a very red area of the US even though I disagree with 70% of what they believe in. And even though I vote, I know for a fact that my vote literally means nothing outside of the popular vote. And it’s pretty disheartening to know that. I’m sure there are plenty of people like me that don’t even vote because they think it doesn’t matter so why even bother.
I won’t lie and say the solution or the problem are super easy. I’m just saying it’s fucked and definitely needs to change. And I’m a strong advocate for a two round system or something similar so people don’t have to just vote against the candidate they don’t want.
Let’s not forget the unfair ratio of citizens to electoral votes across the different states. California, for instance, is on the low end of electoral vote fraction per citizen compared to smaller states. That absolutely needs to be fixed as well.
It makes sense to exist… In the 40’s.
But with modern day society and how small the world has become, it makes no sense to me to still exist tbh…Even in the 1940s it didn’t make sense anymore.
1840s. It existed to preserve slavery
I was taught something different growing up and had to check myself with a quick read. Holy shit. You’re right. Thanks for sharing.
Cool. Not going to happen, but…. Cool.
Yeah, it’s a hopeless quest. Truly eliminating the EC would require 3/4 of state legislatures, an almost impossible task when the majority of states would be effectively voting against their self-interest.
Effectively neutering the EC only requires that the states with 50% of the EC votes agree to follow the national popular vote. But, it would be a fragile detente, since any state legislature could back out and break it.
It surprises me how many people still don’t know about the NPVIC
It still sends a message. Which in and of itself is good.
