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Virginia bill would end winner-take-all, award EVs by (gerrymandered) districts

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ElFly

Member
yeah p sure the republicans will rig the elections, legally or illegally

good luck ever having a democrat president or congress again. not that it would matter cause the democrats would just bend over to the whims of the republicans
 

cDNA

Member
Maryland's gerrymander was done to protect incumbents, not to protect Democrats.

You could actually make a super easy gerrymander for Maryland where Democrats win all 3 ECs.

Maryland_Gerrymander_Comparison.png


Also, there are literally like 6 states that are gerrymandered for Democrats.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/...re-is-more-to-gerrymandering-than-ugly-shapes

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/201...e-in-2016-Why-Because-it-probably-did-in-2012

C2d35PqWgAA8f9k.jpg

Since Republican are not moving , Democrat needs to gerrymander California, New York to be competitive in the House.
 
They won by a razor thin margin. But now they're going to want to deny themselves electoral votes after they just got 20 versus 15.

Also the Democratic governor will NEVER get reelected even though they won by a razor thin margin.

Cool.

The PA general assembly tried this plan years ago. The backlash even from republicans was so severe they dropped the idea.

I wouldn't expect anyone to bring it up again.

As for Wolf, he's extremely vulnerable. The budget fight from a year or two back heavily damaged his favorability, and gubernatorial races are held in off years, so you can't count on presidential year turnout to increase his vote count.

His only saving grace are two things:

1.) His expected opponent is a wealthy trash company millionaire currently serving in the house. The guy is a massive asshole with zero charisma, but no other republican is in a position to outspend him.

2.) The PA gubernatorial race is 2018 and if Democrats are still sore about Trump (likely at this point, he's been much worse than expected) democrats and moderates could turn out to hand republicans a loss. Historically the controlling party always takes a hit in midterms.
 
The PA general assembly tried this plan years ago. The backlash even from republicans was so severe they dropped the idea.

I wouldn't expect anyone to bring it up again.

As for Wolf, he's extremely vulnerable. The budget fight from a year or two back heavily damaged his favorability, and gubernatorial races are held in off years, so you can't count on presidential year turnout to increase his vote count.

His only saving grace are two things:

1.) His expected opponent is a wealthy trash company millionaire currently serving in the house. The guy is a massive asshole with zero charisma, but no other republican is in a position to outspend him.

2.) The PA gubernatorial race is 2018 and if Democrats are still sore about Trump (likely at this point, he's been much worse than expected) democrats and moderates could turn out to hand republicans a loss. Historically the controlling party always takes a hit in midterms.

I know all of these things, I'm pointing out that Diablos is being absurd.
 

Kettch

Member
The electoral college was a mistake. The founding fathers either thought they were being really smart or they neglected too realize how dumb or corrupt people are.

The founding fathers put the electoral college together to give slave states more voting power by counting slaves as 3/5ths of a person when determining the number of electoral votes they got.

That's how out of date the electoral college is.
 
If they want to do something like this, the EVs should be based on the population of the districts. Of course, they would never do that, because that would mean that the GOP would never win. Like, virtually never, at least if they continue to act in the way that they do.
 
They know they're going to get bent in the 2018 midterms otherwise. They will be doing anything they can to ensure Blue never wins an election again.

Trump has been saying 8 years for a while now. He knows.
 

Lime

Member
Since Republican are not moving , Democrat needs to gerrymander California, New York to be competitive in the House.

How quaint, this is what Sean Spicer just said today in relation to "voter fraud" (their manufactured excuse for upcoming voter suppression):

Jake Tapper ‏@jaketapper 24m24 minutes ago

.@seanspicer suggests the Trump investigation into voter fraud will focus on "bigger states" such as CA and NY
 

eggandI

Banned
In the centuries before cars, planes, internet and phones it made some sense.But like the 2nd Amendment its a relic of a bygone era.

Lmao people are this spouting this even as the GOP tries everything in their power to disenfranchise democrat-voting citizens in this country.

Subservient until the very end, how sad.
 

Trickster

Member
Wish I could say I'm surprised, but yeah, I really ain't. Democrats probably not gonna have any say in anything for decades to come...
 
The electoral college was a mistake. The founding fathers either thought they were being really smart or they neglected too realize how dumb or corrupt people are.

They knew exactly how dumb people are and that's why they created the EC. The EC is allowed to vote for somebody who didn't win the election.

They just chose not to
 
So Maine and Nebraska are rigging the EC?

Yes. It's a bad idea.

Nebraska has gerrymandered districts and Maine's is non-partisan. It's dumb. We shouldn't do it unless everyone has non-partisan districts. And hidden in your title, it was a bad idea when Dems in Colorado proposed it.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
The problem is that when you actually rig the system, you're going to end up with an actual succession at some point.
 
This would give them 45% of the electoral votes, Trump got 44% in Virginia. I'm more or less fine with this.

Fuck gerrymandering though.
 
You guys are never getting america back at this rate.

Nope, they learned and they will make sure something like Obama never happens again. This isn't hyperbole, we are getting set up to be a one party country by disenfranchising half of the voters.

GG folks, it was fun.

So Maine and Nebraska are rigging the EC?

I don't think it should be up to the states, we should all go by the same rules. If you want to split, we should do it everywhere.
 

mo60

Member
I wonder if Cole recognizes that the only reason North Virgina makes it possible for democrats to win Virginia now in presidential elections is that the republicans don't really try to appeal to the people in North Virginia.

This would give them 45% of the electoral votes, Trump got 44% in Virginia. I'm more or less fine with this.

Fuck gerrymandering though.

What happens in state's like PA, NE and NY? In PA's case the republicans will win well over 50% of the EV's allocated to that state if they used a system like this nationally. NY probably way more then they would get if they lose the state by 20%+ in a proportional system based on the percentage of the vote. In NE the republicans would get all of the EV's besides maybe the one connected to NE 1 if they are unlucky in this type of system.
 
The electoral college was a mistake. The founding fathers either thought they were being really smart or they neglected too realize how dumb or corrupt people are.

Or they were a bunch of slave owning shitheads. I'll let you decide!

Electoral college was explicitly devised to give inordinate amount of power to rural southern states where a large percentage of the population were slaves who couldn't vote, being considered property. The whites there wanted to ensure their dominance in government. They knew they'd be irrelevant otherwise. Same holds true for these racist white rural states today.
 
Yes. It's a bad idea.

Nebraska has gerrymandered districts and Maine's is non-partisan. It's dumb. We shouldn't do it unless everyone has non-partisan districts. And hidden in your title, it was a bad idea when Dems in Colorado proposed it.
For the record, I too think it's a bad idea, but for entirely different reasons. It nearly entirely eliminates a state that adopts that apportionment method from the presidential candidates' attention.
 
I'm conflicted on this one. I mean, you could also interpret this as "if all states followed this model, then Democrats might have a chance to win districts in states that typically go red", which could help a presidential candidate.

At the same time, gerrymandering.

Really, though, just fuck the EC.
Yeah, this is a system that tries to make itself look more fair but is just a different form of crooked. Going by Wikipedia's numbers, in 2016 Rs got 49.1% of the House vote to 48.0% Ds. The seat split, though, is 55.4% R to 44.6% D.
 
Yeah, this is a system that tries to make itself look more fair but is just a different form of crooked. Going by Wikipedia's numbers, in 2016 Rs got 49.1% of the House vote to 48.0% Ds. The seat split, though, is 55.4% R to 44.6% D.
I understand where it's coming from and the point it tries to make, but that sort of analysis regarding geographically defined districts is a really shallow view on the situation. It misses at least the cases when there's an uneven political distribution of supporters and when the competitiveness of a district leads to an uncontested seat.
 
Doesn't this just show how obsolete the Electoral College is?

If we keep micro-sizing individual votes into smaller groupings and divisions, why aren't we just going by a 1 for 1 vote ratio?

It's getting to that point with all this provisioning.
 

UberTag

Member
Conservatives have the guns, though.
Was there an embargo put on the sale of new firearms that I missed hearing about?
No reason disenfranchised Democrats can't stock up now.
Conservatives may have all the guns but they can still only aim and fire one gun at a time.
Democrats outnumber them - so, logically, if every Democrat went out and bought a gun and stocked up on ammo - well, then that ceases to be an issue now, doesn't it?

Doesn't this just show how obsolete the Electoral College is?

If we keep micro-sizing individual votes into smaller groupings and divisions, why aren't we just going by a 1 for 1 vote ratio?

It's getting to that point with all this provisioning.
Pretty much. This is just creative obstructionism to skirt a fair and just electoral process.
 

Zil33184

Member
All of this is happening so fast no one knows what to pay attention to any more. :( I know this sounds abrasive, but what can people do outside of just calling. Honestly, is there any way to make this unconstitutional because it's intent is for corruption any nothing more.

Welcome to shock and awe.

By the way any constitutional challenges are likely dead now since Republicans were very effective in handcuffing Obama from appointing anyone to Scalia's seat.
 

Pocks

Member
The electoral vote was 43.1% to Clinton. If the vote were determined by Congressional Districts, she would have received 47.1%.

I wish that we as a nation could have a spirited debate on how the president should be elected—by will of the states or by direct will of the people. The key factor that most proponents of the Electoral College fail to recognize, is that the EC does not guarantee majority state preference.
 

aeolist

Banned
The electoral college was a mistake. The founding fathers either thought they were being really smart or they neglected too realize how dumb or corrupt people are.

it was a compromise to keep slave states happy because they were concerned about being overridden by the more populous northern states.

we sold our souls as the nation was being founded.
 
I'm conflicted on this one. I mean, you could also interpret this as "if all states followed this model, then Democrats might have a chance to win districts in states that typically go red", which could help a presidential candidate.

At the same time, gerrymandering.

Really, though, just fuck the EC.

But the only states who will do this is Blue states with Republican state governments.
 

Kareha

Member
The electoral college was a mistake. The founding fathers either thought they were being really smart or they neglected too realize how dumb or corrupt people are.

Wasn't it because the founding fathers didn't envisage the US having a 2 party system?
 

aeolist

Banned
Wasn't it because the founding fathers didn't envisage the US having a 2 party system?

At the Philadelphia convention, the visionary Pennsylvanian James Wilson proposed direct national election of the president. But the savvy Virginian James Madison responded that such a system would prove unacceptable to the South: “The right of suffrage was much more diffusive [i.e., extensive] in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of Negroes.” In other words, in a direct election system, the North would outnumber the South, whose many slaves (more than half a million in all) of course could not vote. But the Electoral College—a prototype of which Madison proposed in this same speech—instead let each southern state count its slaves, albeit with a two-fifths discount, in computing its share of the overall count.

it's because the founders owned people and wanted to make sure that would continue
 

Zen Aku

Member
Get rid of the gerrymandering and voting restrictions and I'm fine with this
I think this is my sentiment.

Overall though idk how I feel about this. I'm kinda in between. I would much prefer 1 person equal 1 vote and winners with the most votes wins. None of this states BS.
 
The electoral vote was 43.1% to Clinton. If the vote were determined by Congressional Districts, she would have received 47.1%.

I wish that we as a nation could have a spirited debate on how the president should be elected—by will of the states or by direct will of the people. The key factor that most proponents of the Electoral College fail to recognize, is that the EC does not guarantee majority state preference.

you're missing the point in that conservatives try to shove in "vote by congressional district" where it favors them, and block or undo it where it doesn't to give them an advantage no matter how the popular vote turns out.

Either way would be perfectly fine if it was consistent across states, but republicans have absolutely no intention of allowing that.
 

Hazmat

Member
It's a massive oversight that the Constitution created the Electoral College and didn't prevent this. I don't like that Maine does it, I don't like that Nebraska does it, and I don't want any more states to do it.

Vote in your state and local elections, people.
 

Formless

Member
I mean, we have the numbers. Is there any way we can get us to spread out to take over some of these districts?

You gonna get people to move where they live?


This, like most of this bullshit they're trying to pull, is way too complex for most people to care about and digest easily.
 
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