Support NeoGAF

[UFO]

In this topic I've learned that states are people to.

It is the United States of America, not the United People of America.

 

[Swimmer9800]

If Trump lost and won the popular vote the right wouldn't be criticising the ec.

 

[guek]

If Trump lost and won the popular vote the right wouldn't be criticising the ec.

wait, what

 

[Arrogant Bastard]

Is this the bargaining phase? lol.

The electoral college is not going away for at least another 100 years. You need a super majority in the senate and 3/4 state ratification. Seeing as how at any given time at least half the states benefit from the two extra votes, not happening. States call for a general constitutional convention (and I think we are actually close to that) but then everything is on the table.

Would it require that to go to a proportional system like say Nebraska?

wait, what

They are saying that if Trump lost the EC but won the popular vote then the right would criticize the EC.

 

[RobotHaus]

Can someone explain what the popular vote is? So confusing with all these different polls etc

Popular vote is the numerical total of people who voted for a single candidate. Electoral vote is the amount of votes assigned by a state to a particular candidate. Though Hillary Clinton had more people vote in favor of her, a greater amount of states allotted their electoral votes to Donald Trump, therefor making him candidate elect.

 

[OnionPowder]

They are saying that if Trump lost the EC but won the popular vote then the right would criticize the EC.

They would, and that would be fine.

 

[Gallbaro]

Would it require that to go to a proportional system like say Nebraska?



They are saying that if Trump lost the EC but won the popular vote then the right would criticize the EC.

That is up to the individual states and Maine/flyover state A do that.

As a state looking to maximize your return from the federal government, it is pretty foolish to split it up. If you consider the amount of money battleground states get compared to solid blue/red then you will understand why.

In this topic I've learned that states are people to.

The social contract in the USA is with the individual states, the states in turn created their own social contract with a federal government and other interstate compact organizations.

 

[numble]

That is up to the individual states and Maine/flyover state A do that.

As a state looking to maximize your return from the federal government, it is pretty foolish to split it up. If you consider the amount of money battleground states get compared to solid blue/red then you will understand why.

Your argument doesn't mesh with reality. Maine and Nebraska became battlegrounds because they split up the votes, giving candidates an incentive to visit and campaign in swing districts. If California split up its electoral votes, it would become a battleground and receive campaign visits and the connected spending.

 

[guek]

They are saying that if Trump lost the EC but won the popular vote then the right would criticize the EC.

No, he/she wrote "wouldn't", hence the confusion

 

[Kettch]

Is this the bargaining phase? lol.

The electoral college is not going away for at least another 100 years. You need a super majority in the senate and 3/4 state ratification. Seeing as how at any given time at least half the states benefit from the two extra votes, not happening. States call for a general constitutional convention (and I think we are actually close to that) but then everything is on the table.

You don't need that at all. As was mentioned earlier in the thread, all you need is a pact between more than half the states to award the election to the popular vote winner. It's still going to be tough, but it's not the impossibility you make it out to be.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact

 

[K.Jack]

Is that the best idea? If we went straight democracy with popular vote it could skew things. I thought the purpose of the EC was to give a larger voice to the more rural area. Without that, the issue that are important to them would go largely ignored and politics would be skewed to only care about issues relevant to people who live in large cities, which are often almost opposite of what is important to more rural people.

As if this doesn't happen in the current system?

 

[2thepoint]

The normal one where they just count how many people across the country voted for her.

I'm Irish and completely dumbfounded how the candidate with the highest percentage of the popular vote is not the President elect.

I supported Hillary from the beginning and it is unbelievable that she won't be president.

Devastated and our country according to polls conducted in Ireland overwhelmingly supported her.

 

[NimbusD]

It is the United States of America, not the United People of America.

And the ec gives some states more of a say than others.

 

[Jibbajabbawockky]

No she didn't win. She lost fair and square. Clinton, her campaign, the DNC, everybody knew that Trump's only path to the WH was to win Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, etc, we all knew the rules of the game and the routes to victory. Instead of being defensive and guaranteeing a win they took a risk and tried to humiliate the Republicans, neglecting their working class base and trying to flip red states.

Right, I mean, Clinton knew the rules of the game going in. It's not like she got surprised at the Electoral College existing, its like you said- they got greedy and over confident in their great blue wall and wasted time in trying to flip red states that at least in this election cycle, were never going to turn blue.

I just find the narrative how the EC needs to die a bit funny when Clinton and most democrats have such a huge advantage in the EC with your solid blue states like California and New York being such huge boosts in the EC. Trump's path to victory in the EC was so incredibly narrow and the fact that he did it by a good margin just underscores how colossally wretched Clinton managed her campaign more than it does how "bad" the EC is as a system. Clinton had so many ways to win via the Electoral College and she completely choked it all away while Trump had about 1 and did better than expected.

There was a good article I read somewhere online this morning on the EC's history and the many past attempts to get rid of it and why that's not necessarily a great idea. Wish I could find it to link to it.

 

[slit]

It is the United States of America, not the United People of America.

And the EC creates an unequal power play between those states.

On a side note, The United People of America has a better ring to it anyway.

 

[WillyFive]

And the EC creates an unequal power play between those states.

On a side note, The United People of America has a better ring to it anyway.

And a popular vote would be significantly more unequal. So many states with low population would never ever be able to elect someone that cares for them if it was simply the popular vote.

 

[slit]

And a popular vote would be significantly more unequal.

Comparatively, no it would not.

So many states with low population would never ever be able to elect someone that cares for them if it was simply the popular vote.

As has been stated and explained fifty different times by fifty different people in this thread. A states population has nothing to do with it being catered to or not as far as the EC is concerned.

 

[Laughing Banana]

So where were those people by the millions during the election.

 

[DontBeThatGuy]

If Trump lost and won the popular vote the right wouldn't be criticising the ec.

Someone should show those Trump tweets after Obama won.

 

[oneofthose]

didn't she beat obama in popular votes back in 2008?

 

[jfkgoblue]

didn't she beat obama in popular votes back in 2008?

Not really

 

[guek]

And the ec gives some states more of a say than others.

So does the Senate and House of Representatives

 

[avaya]

didn't she beat obama in popular votes back in 2008?

Not ex-Michigan and Florida.

 

[jfkgoblue]

So does the Senate and House of Representatives

EV is actually directly related to reps. It's number of reps+2

 

[Duxxy3]

Living in Massachusetts it sucks that my vote doesn't matter in the presidential election. Clinton won by something like 70% of the vote. Anything beyond 50% is a wasted vote.

Other states have the same problem. Red states as well. It's frustrating.

 

[ishibear]

So where were those people by the millions during the election.

While some purposefully did not vote, others could have had a number of problems voting. Getting registered, work schedules, voting location distance too great, etc.

Voter suppression is a profound issue in this country.

 

[tirminyl]

A system built to appease slave owners should have no place in modern society.

Agreed.

 

[OrangeGrayBlue]

And a popular vote would be significantly more unequal. So many states with low population would never ever be able to elect someone that cares for them if it was simply the popular vote.

Yeah, all those constant campaign stops to Wyoming would really dry up.

 

[Gallbaro]

Agreed.

But perversely enough the Electoral College now allows representation for non-citizens.

 

[ReBurn]

A states population has nothing to do with it being catered to or not as far as the EC is concerned.

It doesn't matter how many explanations there are if those explanations are wrong.

The number of electoral votes a state has is decided by the number of members each state has in Congress. The number of seats in Congress each state has is decided by the population of each state. Candidates want to win as many of the states with the highest number of electoral votes as possible.

Are you seriously saying that candidates don't focus more on states that have the number of electoral votes they need to win the election? How much time did Clinton and Trump spend in Alaska or South Dakota versus Ohio and Florida? Because empirical evidence proves that candidates do focus their attention by population, at least indirectly.

 

[Theonik]

They don't have to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact

Hmm...

 

[Bishop89]

Popular vote is the numerical total of people who voted for a single candidate. Electoral vote is the amount of votes assigned by a state to a particular candidate. Though Hillary Clinton had more people vote in favor of her, a greater amount of states allotted their electoral votes to Donald Trump, therefor making him candidate elect.

ah ok, makes sense.

Thanks for that

 

[guek]

EV is actually directly related to reps. It's number of reps+2

Yup. And like I said earlier, the inequality is even worse with the senate and its limit of 2 seats per state.

 

[slit]

It doesn't matter how many explanations there are if those explanations are wrong.

The number of electoral votes a state has is decided by the number of members each state has in Congress. The number of seats in Congress each state has is decided by the population of each state. Candidates want to win as many of the states with the highest number of electoral votes as possible.

Are you seriously saying that candidates don't focus more on states that have the number of electoral votes they need to win the election? How much time did Clinton and Trump spend in Alaska or South Dakota versus Ohio and Florida? Because empirical evidence proves that candidates do focus their attention by population, at least indirectly.

They focus on swing states. Did you see the candidates focusing on California and Texas at all? Did you see them focusing on Maryland or Vermont at all? How about Idaho or Montana? NO! They focus on states where political culture is split. That does not mean it focuses on the farmer in Wyoming or the college professor in San Francisco. It does not create the balance you think it does.

 

[DrForester]

If Trump lost and won the popular vote the right wouldn't be criticising the ec.

What universe have you been living in? Trump would be raging about how the system is rigged.

 

[numble]

It doesn't matter how many explanations there are if those explanations are wrong.

The number of electoral votes a state has is decided by the number of members each state has in Congress. The number of seats in Congress each state has is decided by the population of each state. Candidates want to win as many of the states with the highest number of electoral votes as possible.

Are you seriously saying that candidates don't focus more on states that have the number of electoral votes they need to win the election? How much time did Clinton and Trump spend in Alaska or South Dakota versus Ohio and Florida? Because empirical evidence proves that candidates do focus their attention by population, at least indirectly.

The empirical evidence only shows that they focus on swing states and (in Maine and Nebraska) swing districts. They focus on the swing districts in Maine and Nebraska because the votes are up for grabs. The electoral college allows for a scenario where the states are solid red/blue for 268 votes on each side, and the only votes that mattered are 1 district in Maine and 1 district in Nebraska. The population of states are irrelevant in this scenario, because the only votes that matter are in these 2 districts. You can have a lot of permutations that say similar things--260 - 260 and the swing states are 3 states. The 2000 and 2004 elections were the closest to such a scenario as the election turned on whoever won Florida in 2000 and 2/3 of Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania in 2004.

 

[alatif113]

How would you keep from disenfranchising all of those people in the smaller states. You want every vote to count and every vote to mean something, but if the majority of Americans all packed into our 15 largest cities got to decide every election, there's no reason for anyone else to ever bother going to the polls.

Isn't this what democracy is?

 

[Easy_D]

Why not have two presidents and split up their power depending on which states voted for 'em and see which does best after the first 2 years and then decide who'll be president of all of 'em.

How's that for convoluted ?

 

[MIMIC]

Someone posted this:

Thanks. My brother calculated it and there are probably errors and it was more of a really quick go through, and we came up with 258 Trump, 255 Hillary (not including any of the outstanding states).

Super close.

 

[pswii60]

Our country is not the United States of New York, Texas, Florida and California. We're the United States of America. Every state matters and that's why the electoral college exists.

The UK has a similar system.

The party with the most seats wins, but only if they win by a significant majority or form a coalition to get past the line. And each seat is won by council area. So the 'popular vote' doesn't count in the UK either.

The thought behind this is that it better represents the whole of the UK, and would prevent (for example) the large population of London voting for a 'London First' party whilst the rest of the country suffers. It also dictates how many MPs (seats) a party can have in parliament therefore forming an opposition representing the country too.

We can't vote for our monarch though.

 

[Dion Blaster]

Right, I mean, Clinton knew the rules of the game going in. It's not like she got surprised at the Electoral College existing, its like you said- they got greedy and over confident in their great blue wall and wasted time in trying to flip red states that at least in this election cycle, were never going to turn blue.

I just find the narrative how the EC needs to die a bit funny when Clinton and most democrats have such a huge advantage in the EC with your solid blue states like California and New York being such huge boosts in the EC. Trump's path to victory in the EC was so incredibly narrow and the fact that he did it by a good margin just underscores how colossally wretched Clinton managed her campaign more than it does how "bad" the EC is as a system. Clinton had so many ways to win via the Electoral College and she completely choked it all away while Trump had about 1 and did better than expected.

There was a good article I read somewhere online this morning on the EC's history and the many past attempts to get rid of it and why that's not necessarily a great idea. Wish I could find it to link to it.

CA and NY are minimized by the EC, the only reason they give blue an "advantage" is because so many people live there. They are still under represented in this system.

 

[timmy]

You don't need that at all. As was mentioned earlier in the thread, all you need is a pact between more than half the states to award the election to the popular vote winner. It's still going to be tough, but it's not the impossibility you make it out to be.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact

This election was basically the worst thing that could happen for the progress of this Compact as it went from being a moderately partisan idea to an incredibly partisan idea.

 

[SURGEdude]

This election was basically the worst thing that could happen for the progress of this Compact as it went from being a moderately partisan idea to an incredibly partisan idea.

Yeah having this happen in 2 out of the last 5 elections, and to democrats both times ensure it will become hyper partisan.

 

[Kettch]

This election was basically the worst thing that could happen for the progress of this Compact as it went from being a moderately partisan idea to an incredibly partisan idea.

Yeah. It doesn't need to be bipartisan though. If Republicans were the ones who wanted a pact like this they could probably get it passed in enough states by themselves right now due to their strong state-level control. If Democrats can manage to improve in that area, they could get it done.

 

[AntraxSuicide]

This election was basically the worst thing that could happen for the progress of this Compact as it went from being a moderately partisan idea to an incredibly partisan idea.

It's actually much more doable now. Before, the only recent divide between the EC and popular vote was incredibly narrow. I wasn't that bitter in 2000 since it was so close either way. But now, we've got a huge difference between the popular vote and the electoral vote, and that's an issue. The EC was set up to give states more of a say, but not to this degree.

 

[numble]

It doesn't matter how many explanations there are if those explanations are wrong.

The number of electoral votes a state has is decided by the number of members each state has in Congress. The number of seats in Congress each state has is decided by the population of each state. Candidates want to win as many of the states with the highest number of electoral votes as possible.

Are you seriously saying that candidates don't focus more on states that have the number of electoral votes they need to win the election? How much time did Clinton and Trump spend in Alaska or South Dakota versus Ohio and Florida? Because empirical evidence proves that candidates do focus their attention by population, at least indirectly.

Going back to your argument that candidates do not spend time in Alaska or South Dakota, the candidates do not go there not because of their small populations, but because they are solid red states. If they were swing states, they would be visited. This is empirically proven by the fact that candidates focus on congressional districts in Maine and Nebraska, which have smaller populations. The reason they visit these districts is because they are swing districts with 1 electoral vote up for grab. The electoral college system itself allows for a scenario where the only focus of a campaign is Alaska or South Dakota (or both), if they are the only swing states in the political makeup.

 

[Al-ibn Kermit]

Is this the bargaining phase? lol.

The electoral college is not going away for at least another 100 years. You need a super majority in the senate and 3/4 state ratification. Seeing as how at any given time at least half the states benefit from the two extra votes, not happening. States call for a general constitutional convention (and I think we are actually close to that) but then everything is on the table.

As to rural vs. urban, which I do not understand as their are only two "Urban States," RI and NJ. Pretty much all the states have Urban and Rural populations. So what you are really complaining about is states with a greater percentage of rural population vs urban population.

Besides us Democrats have our own advantage with the EC as it currently stands, apart from the DNC being completely incestuous, inward facing and ignorant. The entire North East and West Coast are huge head starts in a presidential election. And those EC seats are always helped by fact that the census counts residents, not citizens, (not 3/5 but full 5/5ths people!) so those immigrants (illegal or not) count towards the electoral votes of citizens of that state. Immigrants tend to live in blue states...

http://kff.org/other/state-indicato...rtModel={"colId":"Non-Citizen","sort":"desc"}

It obviously doesn't work out for blue states. Hillary had more voters (citizens) than Trump by a considerable margin.

 

[Host Samurai]

So where were those people by the millions during the election.

Probably getting high

 

[jfkgoblue]

Yup. And like I said earlier, the inequality is even worse with the senate and its limit of 2 seats per state.

But that is one of the fundamental things our country was founded on. Each state gets equal say in at least one chamber of the legislature.

 

[SteveMeister]

Thanks. My brother calculated it and there are probably errors and it was more of a really quick go through, and we came up with 258 Trump, 255 Hillary (not including any of the outstanding states).

Super close.

If neither candidate reaches 270 evs, the House of Representatives chooses the president.