CDZ I am for the Electoral College

[Muhammed]

I am for strengthening the electoral college as to where the President-Elect must get both the plurality of the nationwide popular vote as well as the majority of the electoral votes—the famous “270” that we hear about. Save for that one aspect of strengthening, I’m quite happy with the current formation of the electoral college as opposed to the direct election of the president through the national popular vote.

Here is why;

Whatever system we have must be good for every outcome. While not perfect, the current system ensures that at least a majority of the electors select the president. A national popular vote, in the year 2020, would do the same thing. However, ours is not a static electoral landscape. Does anyone remember all of those great democratic presidents from California? Yeah, neither do I. That’s because what is a solid blue state today used to be a pretty dependable red state. Presidents Nixon and Reagan both came from there; both republicans. The brick red-south used to be called the “solid south” for another reason; they supported democrats almost exclusively. So today’s reality must not be taken as being carved in stone.

Further, the two-party system that we currently have has not always been the case. In the future there may be serval parties that emerge dividing the vote into smaller percentages. Whereas the Electoral College has remedies for no one candidate getting 270 electoral votes, the national popular vote has only a provision for the candidate who gets the most votes winning whether it be 80% of the vote, 50% of the vote, or 12% of the vote if every other candidate gets 11.9% and less. As unsettling it is to contemplate the winner having been crowned when 88% chose someone else, it’s even more unsettling to consider that the proposed remedies—a nationwide runoff—would delay a president-elect being named for weeks. There is an intriguing remedy of “rank choice voting” where you have an instant run-off. It is explained here.



I don’t care much for the idea as it would elevate a candidate who didn’t get the most “first choice” votes to office based on being more voter’s second choice. But I could see some value in the concept.

One of the most frequent complaints about the electoral college is that candidates only campaign seriously if a handful of states that are considered to be contested. This is true. Here is a graphic from the National Popular Vote website that shows the campaign stops

View attachment 360418

What isn’t addressed by the graphic is that if an NPV was instituted, the candidates would focus almost solely on high population centers as opposed to toss-up states; thus substituting one criteria-based campaign strategy for another. I’ve heard some proponents of the NPV state that this is how it “should” be—high population centers having more sway than comparatively rural areas like Nevada and Colorado. I reject that because demographics, as I mentioned earlier, do change over time.


Lastly, let me close on what I mentioned earlier. In this day and age, there is no reason to ignore the national popular vote. In a democracy, you vote should matter and it should have some effect on the outcome of the election in which you’re voting. So that is why I’m for strengthening the electoral college by having the president-elect win both the plurality of the popular vote and the electoral vote majority. If they do not win both, the remedies of the 12th Amendment come into play; just as it would if no candidate gets 270 electoral votes four months from now. Given the most recent election saw the Blob win an electoral victory without winning a popular vote victory, I’m sure some will see this as me trying to throw up a hurdle to his oozing into office. I wish it were that easy. But no, I brought up the plan I had long before he won. From 2015:

Electoral College. Just why?

The remedy I proposed, in our history, would only have changed the winner (arguably) 4 times when the President didn’t get both the EC victory and the NPV victory. In the two most recent incarnations; Bush in 2000 and the Blob in 2016; in both cases the House would have almost certainly delivered the presidency to Bush and Trump since the GOP had majorities in both 2000 and 2016. So this is not me trying to re-write history.

There is plenty wrong with our system of electing Presidents. We need to make election day into an election week. We need to expand access to the ballot requiring states to offer no-cause absentee voting. We need to get the parties out of the business of running elections all together and let the county clerks and election officials run elections. We need to have third, fourth, and fifth parties on the debate stage next to the Democrats and Republicans so voters can draw distinctions between the different candidates who are running. But one thing that we have that works in all climates is the electoral college. I think it needs to be strengthened to make sure the President Elect is the voter’s choice. But it’s not bad the way it is.

Why would any of the less populous states agree to that?

 

[Auld Phart]

I am for strengthening the electoral college as to where the President-Elect must get both the plurality of the nationwide popular vote as well as the majority of the electoral votes—the famous “270” that we hear about. Save for that one aspect of strengthening, I’m quite happy with the current formation of the electoral college as opposed to the direct election of the president through the national popular vote.

Here is why;

Whatever system we have must be good for every outcome. While not perfect, the current system ensures that at least a majority of the electors select the president. A national popular vote, in the year 2020, would do the same thing. However, ours is not a static electoral landscape. Does anyone remember all of those great democratic presidents from California? Yeah, neither do I. That’s because what is a solid blue state today used to be a pretty dependable red state. Presidents Nixon and Reagan both came from there; both republicans. The brick red-south used to be called the “solid south” for another reason; they supported democrats almost exclusively. So today’s reality must not be taken as being carved in stone.

Further, the two-party system that we currently have has not always been the case. In the future there may be serval parties that emerge dividing the vote into smaller percentages. Whereas the Electoral College has remedies for no one candidate getting 270 electoral votes, the national popular vote has only a provision for the candidate who gets the most votes winning whether it be 80% of the vote, 50% of the vote, or 12% of the vote if every other candidate gets 11.9% and less. As unsettling it is to contemplate the winner having been crowned when 88% chose someone else, it’s even more unsettling to consider that the proposed remedies—a nationwide runoff—would delay a president-elect being named for weeks. There is an intriguing remedy of “rank choice voting” where you have an instant run-off. It is explained here.



I don’t care much for the idea as it would elevate a candidate who didn’t get the most “first choice” votes to office based on being more voter’s second choice. But I could see some value in the concept.

One of the most frequent complaints about the electoral college is that candidates only campaign seriously if a handful of states that are considered to be contested. This is true. Here is a graphic from the National Popular Vote website that shows the campaign stops

View attachment 360418

What isn’t addressed by the graphic is that if an NPV was instituted, the candidates would focus almost solely on high population centers as opposed to toss-up states; thus substituting one criteria-based campaign strategy for another. I’ve heard some proponents of the NPV state that this is how it “should” be—high population centers having more sway than comparatively rural areas like Nevada and Colorado. I reject that because demographics, as I mentioned earlier, do change over time.


Lastly, let me close on what I mentioned earlier. In this day and age, there is no reason to ignore the national popular vote. In a democracy, you vote should matter and it should have some effect on the outcome of the election in which you’re voting. So that is why I’m for strengthening the electoral college by having the president-elect win both the plurality of the popular vote and the electoral vote majority. If they do not win both, the remedies of the 12th Amendment come into play; just as it would if no candidate gets 270 electoral votes four months from now. Given the most recent election saw the Blob win an electoral victory without winning a popular vote victory, I’m sure some will see this as me trying to throw up a hurdle to his oozing into office. I wish it were that easy. But no, I brought up the plan I had long before he won. From 2015:

Electoral College. Just why?

The remedy I proposed, in our history, would only have changed the winner (arguably) 4 times when the President didn’t get both the EC victory and the NPV victory. In the two most recent incarnations; Bush in 2000 and the Blob in 2016; in both cases the House would have almost certainly delivered the presidency to Bush and Trump since the GOP had majorities in both 2000 and 2016. So this is not me trying to re-write history.

There is plenty wrong with our system of electing Presidents. We need to make election day into an election week. We need to expand access to the ballot requiring states to offer no-cause absentee voting. We need to get the parties out of the business of running elections all together and let the county clerks and election officials run elections. We need to have third, fourth, and fifth parties on the debate stage next to the Democrats and Republicans so voters can draw distinctions between the different candidates who are running. But one thing that we have that works in all climates is the electoral college. I think it needs to be strengthened to make sure the President Elect is the voter’s choice. But it’s not bad the way it is.

Or better yet ,just leave well enough alone. A system that has worked for over 200 years can't be all bad.

As with all things, there is room for improvement.

The Taj Mahal ,for instance? Hmmmmm….. Here we have ,no matter how flawed ,the best system of Gov't the World has ever seen. Our election process gives the STATES the Power to elect the President. And this is important. The Problems in Wyoming ,Montana ,and Texas are NOT the same as NYC ,Chicago ,or Los Angeles.A POPULAR Vote would allow 4 or 5 Mega Cities to rule. This is to be avoided at all cost.

I agree. This is why I recommend counting both the EC and PV. But if the question is not "and" but "or", I'll stick with what we have now.

The EV way already accounts for popular vote, of each state, which is what the EC was designed for.

Founding Fathers went out of their was to AVOID a national popular vote, by setting up the EC, to shift the popular vote to the individual states instead.

I think the executive should represent the will of the people.

I think the executive should represent the will of the people.

agreed.

but, not just the will of the people in the most populous states.

 

[martybegan]

I am for strengthening the electoral college as to where the President-Elect must get both the plurality of the nationwide popular vote as well as the majority of the electoral votes—the famous “270” that we hear about. Save for that one aspect of strengthening, I’m quite happy with the current formation of the electoral college as opposed to the direct election of the president through the national popular vote.

Here is why;

Whatever system we have must be good for every outcome. While not perfect, the current system ensures that at least a majority of the electors select the president. A national popular vote, in the year 2020, would do the same thing. However, ours is not a static electoral landscape. Does anyone remember all of those great democratic presidents from California? Yeah, neither do I. That’s because what is a solid blue state today used to be a pretty dependable red state. Presidents Nixon and Reagan both came from there; both republicans. The brick red-south used to be called the “solid south” for another reason; they supported democrats almost exclusively. So today’s reality must not be taken as being carved in stone.

Further, the two-party system that we currently have has not always been the case. In the future there may be serval parties that emerge dividing the vote into smaller percentages. Whereas the Electoral College has remedies for no one candidate getting 270 electoral votes, the national popular vote has only a provision for the candidate who gets the most votes winning whether it be 80% of the vote, 50% of the vote, or 12% of the vote if every other candidate gets 11.9% and less. As unsettling it is to contemplate the winner having been crowned when 88% chose someone else, it’s even more unsettling to consider that the proposed remedies—a nationwide runoff—would delay a president-elect being named for weeks. There is an intriguing remedy of “rank choice voting” where you have an instant run-off. It is explained here.



I don’t care much for the idea as it would elevate a candidate who didn’t get the most “first choice” votes to office based on being more voter’s second choice. But I could see some value in the concept.

One of the most frequent complaints about the electoral college is that candidates only campaign seriously if a handful of states that are considered to be contested. This is true. Here is a graphic from the National Popular Vote website that shows the campaign stops

View attachment 360418

What isn’t addressed by the graphic is that if an NPV was instituted, the candidates would focus almost solely on high population centers as opposed to toss-up states; thus substituting one criteria-based campaign strategy for another. I’ve heard some proponents of the NPV state that this is how it “should” be—high population centers having more sway than comparatively rural areas like Nevada and Colorado. I reject that because demographics, as I mentioned earlier, do change over time.


Lastly, let me close on what I mentioned earlier. In this day and age, there is no reason to ignore the national popular vote. In a democracy, you vote should matter and it should have some effect on the outcome of the election in which you’re voting. So that is why I’m for strengthening the electoral college by having the president-elect win both the plurality of the popular vote and the electoral vote majority. If they do not win both, the remedies of the 12th Amendment come into play; just as it would if no candidate gets 270 electoral votes four months from now. Given the most recent election saw the Blob win an electoral victory without winning a popular vote victory, I’m sure some will see this as me trying to throw up a hurdle to his oozing into office. I wish it were that easy. But no, I brought up the plan I had long before he won. From 2015:

Electoral College. Just why?

The remedy I proposed, in our history, would only have changed the winner (arguably) 4 times when the President didn’t get both the EC victory and the NPV victory. In the two most recent incarnations; Bush in 2000 and the Blob in 2016; in both cases the House would have almost certainly delivered the presidency to Bush and Trump since the GOP had majorities in both 2000 and 2016. So this is not me trying to re-write history.

There is plenty wrong with our system of electing Presidents. We need to make election day into an election week. We need to expand access to the ballot requiring states to offer no-cause absentee voting. We need to get the parties out of the business of running elections all together and let the county clerks and election officials run elections. We need to have third, fourth, and fifth parties on the debate stage next to the Democrats and Republicans so voters can draw distinctions between the different candidates who are running. But one thing that we have that works in all climates is the electoral college. I think it needs to be strengthened to make sure the President Elect is the voter’s choice. But it’s not bad the way it is.

The problem with throwing it to the House if the NV and the EV are split is it just gives the loser a new thing to complain about. Then there will be talk of expanding the House so each rep is actually even to avoid the states with 1 rep that are technically "over represented".

And I think election day should only be 1 day, a true 24 hour period from the night before (figure 9 PM ) to the night of (9PM). It should always be a national federal holiday and State holiday, regardless of it being a presidential election or not.

People should have to CARE ENOUGH to go and vote. Absentee ballots should be for true absentees and those physically unable to reach a polling place.

 

[candycorn]

I am for strengthening the electoral college as to where the President-Elect must get both the plurality of the nationwide popular vote as well as the majority of the electoral votes—the famous “270” that we hear about. Save for that one aspect of strengthening, I’m quite happy with the current formation of the electoral college as opposed to the direct election of the president through the national popular vote.

Here is why;

Whatever system we have must be good for every outcome. While not perfect, the current system ensures that at least a majority of the electors select the president. A national popular vote, in the year 2020, would do the same thing. However, ours is not a static electoral landscape. Does anyone remember all of those great democratic presidents from California? Yeah, neither do I. That’s because what is a solid blue state today used to be a pretty dependable red state. Presidents Nixon and Reagan both came from there; both republicans. The brick red-south used to be called the “solid south” for another reason; they supported democrats almost exclusively. So today’s reality must not be taken as being carved in stone.

Further, the two-party system that we currently have has not always been the case. In the future there may be serval parties that emerge dividing the vote into smaller percentages. Whereas the Electoral College has remedies for no one candidate getting 270 electoral votes, the national popular vote has only a provision for the candidate who gets the most votes winning whether it be 80% of the vote, 50% of the vote, or 12% of the vote if every other candidate gets 11.9% and less. As unsettling it is to contemplate the winner having been crowned when 88% chose someone else, it’s even more unsettling to consider that the proposed remedies—a nationwide runoff—would delay a president-elect being named for weeks. There is an intriguing remedy of “rank choice voting” where you have an instant run-off. It is explained here.



I don’t care much for the idea as it would elevate a candidate who didn’t get the most “first choice” votes to office based on being more voter’s second choice. But I could see some value in the concept.

One of the most frequent complaints about the electoral college is that candidates only campaign seriously if a handful of states that are considered to be contested. This is true. Here is a graphic from the National Popular Vote website that shows the campaign stops

View attachment 360418

What isn’t addressed by the graphic is that if an NPV was instituted, the candidates would focus almost solely on high population centers as opposed to toss-up states; thus substituting one criteria-based campaign strategy for another. I’ve heard some proponents of the NPV state that this is how it “should” be—high population centers having more sway than comparatively rural areas like Nevada and Colorado. I reject that because demographics, as I mentioned earlier, do change over time.


Lastly, let me close on what I mentioned earlier. In this day and age, there is no reason to ignore the national popular vote. In a democracy, you vote should matter and it should have some effect on the outcome of the election in which you’re voting. So that is why I’m for strengthening the electoral college by having the president-elect win both the plurality of the popular vote and the electoral vote majority. If they do not win both, the remedies of the 12th Amendment come into play; just as it would if no candidate gets 270 electoral votes four months from now. Given the most recent election saw the Blob win an electoral victory without winning a popular vote victory, I’m sure some will see this as me trying to throw up a hurdle to his oozing into office. I wish it were that easy. But no, I brought up the plan I had long before he won. From 2015:

Electoral College. Just why?

The remedy I proposed, in our history, would only have changed the winner (arguably) 4 times when the President didn’t get both the EC victory and the NPV victory. In the two most recent incarnations; Bush in 2000 and the Blob in 2016; in both cases the House would have almost certainly delivered the presidency to Bush and Trump since the GOP had majorities in both 2000 and 2016. So this is not me trying to re-write history.

There is plenty wrong with our system of electing Presidents. We need to make election day into an election week. We need to expand access to the ballot requiring states to offer no-cause absentee voting. We need to get the parties out of the business of running elections all together and let the county clerks and election officials run elections. We need to have third, fourth, and fifth parties on the debate stage next to the Democrats and Republicans so voters can draw distinctions between the different candidates who are running. But one thing that we have that works in all climates is the electoral college. I think it needs to be strengthened to make sure the President Elect is the voter’s choice. But it’s not bad the way it is.

The problem with throwing it to the House if the NV and the EV are split is it just gives the loser a new thing to complain about. Then there will be talk of expanding the House so each rep is actually even to avoid the states with 1 rep that are technically "over represented".

And I think election day should only be 1 day, a true 24 hour period from the night before (figure 9 PM ) to the night of (9PM). It should always be a national federal holiday and State holiday, regardless of it being a presidential election or not.

People should have to CARE ENOUGH to go and vote. Absentee ballots should be for true absentees and those physically unable to reach a polling place.

If the standard way of voting was by mail, nobody would be saying that going to the polling place is a better idea. Going, standing in line for hours at times, in late fall...on a work day. Sorry....most voting should be done by mail and on days other than election day.

As for the expansion of the House, that should be happening anyway. One rep has about 500,000-600,000 constituents

 

[candycorn]

I am for strengthening the electoral college as to where the President-Elect must get both the plurality of the nationwide popular vote as well as the majority of the electoral votes—the famous “270” that we hear about. Save for that one aspect of strengthening, I’m quite happy with the current formation of the electoral college as opposed to the direct election of the president through the national popular vote.

Here is why;

Whatever system we have must be good for every outcome. While not perfect, the current system ensures that at least a majority of the electors select the president. A national popular vote, in the year 2020, would do the same thing. However, ours is not a static electoral landscape. Does anyone remember all of those great democratic presidents from California? Yeah, neither do I. That’s because what is a solid blue state today used to be a pretty dependable red state. Presidents Nixon and Reagan both came from there; both republicans. The brick red-south used to be called the “solid south” for another reason; they supported democrats almost exclusively. So today’s reality must not be taken as being carved in stone.

Further, the two-party system that we currently have has not always been the case. In the future there may be serval parties that emerge dividing the vote into smaller percentages. Whereas the Electoral College has remedies for no one candidate getting 270 electoral votes, the national popular vote has only a provision for the candidate who gets the most votes winning whether it be 80% of the vote, 50% of the vote, or 12% of the vote if every other candidate gets 11.9% and less. As unsettling it is to contemplate the winner having been crowned when 88% chose someone else, it’s even more unsettling to consider that the proposed remedies—a nationwide runoff—would delay a president-elect being named for weeks. There is an intriguing remedy of “rank choice voting” where you have an instant run-off. It is explained here.



I don’t care much for the idea as it would elevate a candidate who didn’t get the most “first choice” votes to office based on being more voter’s second choice. But I could see some value in the concept.

One of the most frequent complaints about the electoral college is that candidates only campaign seriously if a handful of states that are considered to be contested. This is true. Here is a graphic from the National Popular Vote website that shows the campaign stops

View attachment 360418

What isn’t addressed by the graphic is that if an NPV was instituted, the candidates would focus almost solely on high population centers as opposed to toss-up states; thus substituting one criteria-based campaign strategy for another. I’ve heard some proponents of the NPV state that this is how it “should” be—high population centers having more sway than comparatively rural areas like Nevada and Colorado. I reject that because demographics, as I mentioned earlier, do change over time.


Lastly, let me close on what I mentioned earlier. In this day and age, there is no reason to ignore the national popular vote. In a democracy, you vote should matter and it should have some effect on the outcome of the election in which you’re voting. So that is why I’m for strengthening the electoral college by having the president-elect win both the plurality of the popular vote and the electoral vote majority. If they do not win both, the remedies of the 12th Amendment come into play; just as it would if no candidate gets 270 electoral votes four months from now. Given the most recent election saw the Blob win an electoral victory without winning a popular vote victory, I’m sure some will see this as me trying to throw up a hurdle to his oozing into office. I wish it were that easy. But no, I brought up the plan I had long before he won. From 2015:

Electoral College. Just why?

The remedy I proposed, in our history, would only have changed the winner (arguably) 4 times when the President didn’t get both the EC victory and the NPV victory. In the two most recent incarnations; Bush in 2000 and the Blob in 2016; in both cases the House would have almost certainly delivered the presidency to Bush and Trump since the GOP had majorities in both 2000 and 2016. So this is not me trying to re-write history.

There is plenty wrong with our system of electing Presidents. We need to make election day into an election week. We need to expand access to the ballot requiring states to offer no-cause absentee voting. We need to get the parties out of the business of running elections all together and let the county clerks and election officials run elections. We need to have third, fourth, and fifth parties on the debate stage next to the Democrats and Republicans so voters can draw distinctions between the different candidates who are running. But one thing that we have that works in all climates is the electoral college. I think it needs to be strengthened to make sure the President Elect is the voter’s choice. But it’s not bad the way it is.

Why would any of the less populous states agree to that?

In a perfect world, it would just make sense to have the person who gets the most votes win the election. The less populous states would have just as much power as they have today.

 

[Auld Phart]

I am for strengthening the electoral college as to where the President-Elect must get both the plurality of the nationwide popular vote as well as the majority of the electoral votes—the famous “270” that we hear about. Save for that one aspect of strengthening, I’m quite happy with the current formation of the electoral college as opposed to the direct election of the president through the national popular vote.

Here is why;

Whatever system we have must be good for every outcome. While not perfect, the current system ensures that at least a majority of the electors select the president. A national popular vote, in the year 2020, would do the same thing. However, ours is not a static electoral landscape. Does anyone remember all of those great democratic presidents from California? Yeah, neither do I. That’s because what is a solid blue state today used to be a pretty dependable red state. Presidents Nixon and Reagan both came from there; both republicans. The brick red-south used to be called the “solid south” for another reason; they supported democrats almost exclusively. So today’s reality must not be taken as being carved in stone.

Further, the two-party system that we currently have has not always been the case. In the future there may be serval parties that emerge dividing the vote into smaller percentages. Whereas the Electoral College has remedies for no one candidate getting 270 electoral votes, the national popular vote has only a provision for the candidate who gets the most votes winning whether it be 80% of the vote, 50% of the vote, or 12% of the vote if every other candidate gets 11.9% and less. As unsettling it is to contemplate the winner having been crowned when 88% chose someone else, it’s even more unsettling to consider that the proposed remedies—a nationwide runoff—would delay a president-elect being named for weeks. There is an intriguing remedy of “rank choice voting” where you have an instant run-off. It is explained here.



I don’t care much for the idea as it would elevate a candidate who didn’t get the most “first choice” votes to office based on being more voter’s second choice. But I could see some value in the concept.

One of the most frequent complaints about the electoral college is that candidates only campaign seriously if a handful of states that are considered to be contested. This is true. Here is a graphic from the National Popular Vote website that shows the campaign stops

View attachment 360418

What isn’t addressed by the graphic is that if an NPV was instituted, the candidates would focus almost solely on high population centers as opposed to toss-up states; thus substituting one criteria-based campaign strategy for another. I’ve heard some proponents of the NPV state that this is how it “should” be—high population centers having more sway than comparatively rural areas like Nevada and Colorado. I reject that because demographics, as I mentioned earlier, do change over time.


Lastly, let me close on what I mentioned earlier. In this day and age, there is no reason to ignore the national popular vote. In a democracy, you vote should matter and it should have some effect on the outcome of the election in which you’re voting. So that is why I’m for strengthening the electoral college by having the president-elect win both the plurality of the popular vote and the electoral vote majority. If they do not win both, the remedies of the 12th Amendment come into play; just as it would if no candidate gets 270 electoral votes four months from now. Given the most recent election saw the Blob win an electoral victory without winning a popular vote victory, I’m sure some will see this as me trying to throw up a hurdle to his oozing into office. I wish it were that easy. But no, I brought up the plan I had long before he won. From 2015:

Electoral College. Just why?

The remedy I proposed, in our history, would only have changed the winner (arguably) 4 times when the President didn’t get both the EC victory and the NPV victory. In the two most recent incarnations; Bush in 2000 and the Blob in 2016; in both cases the House would have almost certainly delivered the presidency to Bush and Trump since the GOP had majorities in both 2000 and 2016. So this is not me trying to re-write history.

There is plenty wrong with our system of electing Presidents. We need to make election day into an election week. We need to expand access to the ballot requiring states to offer no-cause absentee voting. We need to get the parties out of the business of running elections all together and let the county clerks and election officials run elections. We need to have third, fourth, and fifth parties on the debate stage next to the Democrats and Republicans so voters can draw distinctions between the different candidates who are running. But one thing that we have that works in all climates is the electoral college. I think it needs to be strengthened to make sure the President Elect is the voter’s choice. But it’s not bad the way it is.

The problem with throwing it to the House if the NV and the EV are split is it just gives the loser a new thing to complain about. Then there will be talk of expanding the House so each rep is actually even to avoid the states with 1 rep that are technically "over represented".

And I think election day should only be 1 day, a true 24 hour period from the night before (figure 9 PM ) to the night of (9PM). It should always be a national federal holiday and State holiday, regardless of it being a presidential election or not.

People should have to CARE ENOUGH to go and vote. Absentee ballots should be for true absentees and those physically unable to reach a polling place.

If the standard way of voting was by mail, nobody would be saying that going to the polling place is a better idea. Going, standing in line for hours at times, in late fall...on a work day. Sorry....most voting should be done by mail and on days other than election day.

As for the expansion of the House, that should be happening anyway. One rep has about 500,000-600,000 constituents

As for the expansion of the House, that should be happening anyway.

nope

should go the other way.

2 per state, just like the Senate.

 

[martybegan]

I am for strengthening the electoral college as to where the President-Elect must get both the plurality of the nationwide popular vote as well as the majority of the electoral votes—the famous “270” that we hear about. Save for that one aspect of strengthening, I’m quite happy with the current formation of the electoral college as opposed to the direct election of the president through the national popular vote.

Here is why;

Whatever system we have must be good for every outcome. While not perfect, the current system ensures that at least a majority of the electors select the president. A national popular vote, in the year 2020, would do the same thing. However, ours is not a static electoral landscape. Does anyone remember all of those great democratic presidents from California? Yeah, neither do I. That’s because what is a solid blue state today used to be a pretty dependable red state. Presidents Nixon and Reagan both came from there; both republicans. The brick red-south used to be called the “solid south” for another reason; they supported democrats almost exclusively. So today’s reality must not be taken as being carved in stone.

Further, the two-party system that we currently have has not always been the case. In the future there may be serval parties that emerge dividing the vote into smaller percentages. Whereas the Electoral College has remedies for no one candidate getting 270 electoral votes, the national popular vote has only a provision for the candidate who gets the most votes winning whether it be 80% of the vote, 50% of the vote, or 12% of the vote if every other candidate gets 11.9% and less. As unsettling it is to contemplate the winner having been crowned when 88% chose someone else, it’s even more unsettling to consider that the proposed remedies—a nationwide runoff—would delay a president-elect being named for weeks. There is an intriguing remedy of “rank choice voting” where you have an instant run-off. It is explained here.



I don’t care much for the idea as it would elevate a candidate who didn’t get the most “first choice” votes to office based on being more voter’s second choice. But I could see some value in the concept.

One of the most frequent complaints about the electoral college is that candidates only campaign seriously if a handful of states that are considered to be contested. This is true. Here is a graphic from the National Popular Vote website that shows the campaign stops

View attachment 360418

What isn’t addressed by the graphic is that if an NPV was instituted, the candidates would focus almost solely on high population centers as opposed to toss-up states; thus substituting one criteria-based campaign strategy for another. I’ve heard some proponents of the NPV state that this is how it “should” be—high population centers having more sway than comparatively rural areas like Nevada and Colorado. I reject that because demographics, as I mentioned earlier, do change over time.


Lastly, let me close on what I mentioned earlier. In this day and age, there is no reason to ignore the national popular vote. In a democracy, you vote should matter and it should have some effect on the outcome of the election in which you’re voting. So that is why I’m for strengthening the electoral college by having the president-elect win both the plurality of the popular vote and the electoral vote majority. If they do not win both, the remedies of the 12th Amendment come into play; just as it would if no candidate gets 270 electoral votes four months from now. Given the most recent election saw the Blob win an electoral victory without winning a popular vote victory, I’m sure some will see this as me trying to throw up a hurdle to his oozing into office. I wish it were that easy. But no, I brought up the plan I had long before he won. From 2015:

Electoral College. Just why?

The remedy I proposed, in our history, would only have changed the winner (arguably) 4 times when the President didn’t get both the EC victory and the NPV victory. In the two most recent incarnations; Bush in 2000 and the Blob in 2016; in both cases the House would have almost certainly delivered the presidency to Bush and Trump since the GOP had majorities in both 2000 and 2016. So this is not me trying to re-write history.

There is plenty wrong with our system of electing Presidents. We need to make election day into an election week. We need to expand access to the ballot requiring states to offer no-cause absentee voting. We need to get the parties out of the business of running elections all together and let the county clerks and election officials run elections. We need to have third, fourth, and fifth parties on the debate stage next to the Democrats and Republicans so voters can draw distinctions between the different candidates who are running. But one thing that we have that works in all climates is the electoral college. I think it needs to be strengthened to make sure the President Elect is the voter’s choice. But it’s not bad the way it is.

The problem with throwing it to the House if the NV and the EV are split is it just gives the loser a new thing to complain about. Then there will be talk of expanding the House so each rep is actually even to avoid the states with 1 rep that are technically "over represented".

And I think election day should only be 1 day, a true 24 hour period from the night before (figure 9 PM ) to the night of (9PM). It should always be a national federal holiday and State holiday, regardless of it being a presidential election or not.

People should have to CARE ENOUGH to go and vote. Absentee ballots should be for true absentees and those physically unable to reach a polling place.

If the standard way of voting was by mail, nobody would be saying that going to the polling place is a better idea. Going, standing in line for hours at times, in late fall...on a work day. Sorry....most voting should be done by mail and on days other than election day.

As for the expansion of the House, that should be happening anyway. One rep has about 500,000-600,000 constituents

Voting by mail eliminates the concept of the private/anonymous ballot. It allows family members to pressure each other, employers/unions to pressure employees/members. It also allows people to harvest unused ballots and commit fraud. We saw a small local example of harvesting just recently in NJ.

You also ignored my point of making it a federal/State holiday, and for 24 hour voting. Sorry, but if you can't figure out how to get to a polling place in that time frame with most people being off from work then you don't deserve to vote.

The issue isn't the inflation of voters per rep, it's the inflation of the things the feds feel the need to get involved with. If the feds concerned themselves with true national issues, and not trying to make the whole US a homogeneous slate of drones the # of persons per rep wouldn't be a big deal.

 

[Darkwind]

I am for strengthening the electoral college as to where the President-Elect must get both the plurality of the nationwide popular vote as well as the majority of the electoral votes—the famous “270” that we hear about. Save for that one aspect of strengthening, I’m quite happy with the current formation of the electoral college as opposed to the direct election of the president through the national popular vote.

Here is why;

Whatever system we have must be good for every outcome. While not perfect, the current system ensures that at least a majority of the electors select the president. A national popular vote, in the year 2020, would do the same thing. However, ours is not a static electoral landscape. Does anyone remember all of those great democratic presidents from California? Yeah, neither do I. That’s because what is a solid blue state today used to be a pretty dependable red state. Presidents Nixon and Reagan both came from there; both republicans. The brick red-south used to be called the “solid south” for another reason; they supported democrats almost exclusively. So today’s reality must not be taken as being carved in stone.

Further, the two-party system that we currently have has not always been the case. In the future there may be serval parties that emerge dividing the vote into smaller percentages. Whereas the Electoral College has remedies for no one candidate getting 270 electoral votes, the national popular vote has only a provision for the candidate who gets the most votes winning whether it be 80% of the vote, 50% of the vote, or 12% of the vote if every other candidate gets 11.9% and less. As unsettling it is to contemplate the winner having been crowned when 88% chose someone else, it’s even more unsettling to consider that the proposed remedies—a nationwide runoff—would delay a president-elect being named for weeks. There is an intriguing remedy of “rank choice voting” where you have an instant run-off. It is explained here.



I don’t care much for the idea as it would elevate a candidate who didn’t get the most “first choice” votes to office based on being more voter’s second choice. But I could see some value in the concept.

One of the most frequent complaints about the electoral college is that candidates only campaign seriously if a handful of states that are considered to be contested. This is true. Here is a graphic from the National Popular Vote website that shows the campaign stops

View attachment 360418

What isn’t addressed by the graphic is that if an NPV was instituted, the candidates would focus almost solely on high population centers as opposed to toss-up states; thus substituting one criteria-based campaign strategy for another. I’ve heard some proponents of the NPV state that this is how it “should” be—high population centers having more sway than comparatively rural areas like Nevada and Colorado. I reject that because demographics, as I mentioned earlier, do change over time.


Lastly, let me close on what I mentioned earlier. In this day and age, there is no reason to ignore the national popular vote. In a democracy, you vote should matter and it should have some effect on the outcome of the election in which you’re voting. So that is why I’m for strengthening the electoral college by having the president-elect win both the plurality of the popular vote and the electoral vote majority. If they do not win both, the remedies of the 12th Amendment come into play; just as it would if no candidate gets 270 electoral votes four months from now. Given the most recent election saw the Blob win an electoral victory without winning a popular vote victory, I’m sure some will see this as me trying to throw up a hurdle to his oozing into office. I wish it were that easy. But no, I brought up the plan I had long before he won. From 2015:

Electoral College. Just why?

The remedy I proposed, in our history, would only have changed the winner (arguably) 4 times when the President didn’t get both the EC victory and the NPV victory. In the two most recent incarnations; Bush in 2000 and the Blob in 2016; in both cases the House would have almost certainly delivered the presidency to Bush and Trump since the GOP had majorities in both 2000 and 2016. So this is not me trying to re-write history.

There is plenty wrong with our system of electing Presidents. We need to make election day into an election week. We need to expand access to the ballot requiring states to offer no-cause absentee voting. We need to get the parties out of the business of running elections all together and let the county clerks and election officials run elections. We need to have third, fourth, and fifth parties on the debate stage next to the Democrats and Republicans so voters can draw distinctions between the different candidates who are running. But one thing that we have that works in all climates is the electoral college. I think it needs to be strengthened to make sure the President Elect is the voter’s choice. But it’s not bad the way it is.

Why?

The President is not a direct representative of the people. In fact, his or her real purpose is to represent America as a whole to the leaders of the world, and enforce federal law.

We have a body that represents the people. It is called the "House of Representatives".

We have direct control over the States, the States have input and control over who is President.

Under no circumstances should a mob vote be the determining factor for who gets elected to the Presidency.

 

[San Souci]

I am for strengthening the electoral college as to where the President-Elect must get both the plurality of the nationwide popular vote as well as the majority of the electoral votes—the famous “270” that we hear about. Save for that one aspect of strengthening, I’m quite happy with the current formation of the electoral college as opposed to the direct election of the president through the national popular vote.

Here is why;

Whatever system we have must be good for every outcome. While not perfect, the current system ensures that at least a majority of the electors select the president. A national popular vote, in the year 2020, would do the same thing. However, ours is not a static electoral landscape. Does anyone remember all of those great democratic presidents from California? Yeah, neither do I. That’s because what is a solid blue state today used to be a pretty dependable red state. Presidents Nixon and Reagan both came from there; both republicans. The brick red-south used to be called the “solid south” for another reason; they supported democrats almost exclusively. So today’s reality must not be taken as being carved in stone.

Further, the two-party system that we currently have has not always been the case. In the future there may be serval parties that emerge dividing the vote into smaller percentages. Whereas the Electoral College has remedies for no one candidate getting 270 electoral votes, the national popular vote has only a provision for the candidate who gets the most votes winning whether it be 80% of the vote, 50% of the vote, or 12% of the vote if every other candidate gets 11.9% and less. As unsettling it is to contemplate the winner having been crowned when 88% chose someone else, it’s even more unsettling to consider that the proposed remedies—a nationwide runoff—would delay a president-elect being named for weeks. There is an intriguing remedy of “rank choice voting” where you have an instant run-off. It is explained here.



I don’t care much for the idea as it would elevate a candidate who didn’t get the most “first choice” votes to office based on being more voter’s second choice. But I could see some value in the concept.

One of the most frequent complaints about the electoral college is that candidates only campaign seriously if a handful of states that are considered to be contested. This is true. Here is a graphic from the National Popular Vote website that shows the campaign stops

View attachment 360418

What isn’t addressed by the graphic is that if an NPV was instituted, the candidates would focus almost solely on high population centers as opposed to toss-up states; thus substituting one criteria-based campaign strategy for another. I’ve heard some proponents of the NPV state that this is how it “should” be—high population centers having more sway than comparatively rural areas like Nevada and Colorado. I reject that because demographics, as I mentioned earlier, do change over time.


Lastly, let me close on what I mentioned earlier. In this day and age, there is no reason to ignore the national popular vote. In a democracy, you vote should matter and it should have some effect on the outcome of the election in which you’re voting. So that is why I’m for strengthening the electoral college by having the president-elect win both the plurality of the popular vote and the electoral vote majority. If they do not win both, the remedies of the 12th Amendment come into play; just as it would if no candidate gets 270 electoral votes four months from now. Given the most recent election saw the Blob win an electoral victory without winning a popular vote victory, I’m sure some will see this as me trying to throw up a hurdle to his oozing into office. I wish it were that easy. But no, I brought up the plan I had long before he won. From 2015:

Electoral College. Just why?

The remedy I proposed, in our history, would only have changed the winner (arguably) 4 times when the President didn’t get both the EC victory and the NPV victory. In the two most recent incarnations; Bush in 2000 and the Blob in 2016; in both cases the House would have almost certainly delivered the presidency to Bush and Trump since the GOP had majorities in both 2000 and 2016. So this is not me trying to re-write history.

There is plenty wrong with our system of electing Presidents. We need to make election day into an election week. We need to expand access to the ballot requiring states to offer no-cause absentee voting. We need to get the parties out of the business of running elections all together and let the county clerks and election officials run elections. We need to have third, fourth, and fifth parties on the debate stage next to the Democrats and Republicans so voters can draw distinctions between the different candidates who are running. But one thing that we have that works in all climates is the electoral college. I think it needs to be strengthened to make sure the President Elect is the voter’s choice. But it’s not bad the way it is.

Or better yet ,just leave well enough alone. A system that has worked for over 200 years can't be all bad.

As with all things, there is room for improvement.

The Taj Mahal ,for instance? Hmmmmm….. Here we have ,no matter how flawed ,the best system of Gov't the World has ever seen. Our election process gives the STATES the Power to elect the President. And this is important. The Problems in Wyoming ,Montana ,and Texas are NOT the same as NYC ,Chicago ,or Los Angeles.A POPULAR Vote would allow 4 or 5 Mega Cities to rule. This is to be avoided at all cost.

I agree. This is why I recommend counting both the EC and PV. But if the question is not "and" but "or", I'll stick with what we have now.

The EV way already accounts for popular vote, of each state, which is what the EC was designed for.

Founding Fathers went out of their was to AVOID a national popular vote, by setting up the EC, to shift the popular vote to the individual states instead.

I think the executive should represent the will of the people.

And there lies the dilemma. WHICH people? The 50% who vote FOR the CE? Or the 49.9 who don't. We are called the UNITED STATES for a reason. The Constitution avoids the disenfranchised minority by letting the STATES elect the CE. It also avoids the tyranny of an empowered Majority. As it was meant to.

Improving the electoral college as perscribed in the OP would ensure that the president elect and eventual chief-executive were elected by the plurality of voters either directly or through their representatives in the lower house.

And leaving it alone would insure continuity. To be blunt ,why CHANGE something that already works? The difference between good and BETTER is far les than the difference between bad and WORSE.

Not sure I agree with that. Its like picture IDs for voting...there are incredibly few cases of true voter fraud. I'm for making everyone get a photo ID anyway. Why? Because you can make the process better; more sterile.

Ah! Now THAT is a horse of a different color. Voting ID's? That should be mandatory. Was that in OP? Sorry I missed it. But I would stay away with ANY plan to make the National Popular Vote count for anything.

 

[San Souci]

I am for strengthening the electoral college as to where the President-Elect must get both the plurality of the nationwide popular vote as well as the majority of the electoral votes—the famous “270” that we hear about. Save for that one aspect of strengthening, I’m quite happy with the current formation of the electoral college as opposed to the direct election of the president through the national popular vote.

Here is why;

Whatever system we have must be good for every outcome. While not perfect, the current system ensures that at least a majority of the electors select the president. A national popular vote, in the year 2020, would do the same thing. However, ours is not a static electoral landscape. Does anyone remember all of those great democratic presidents from California? Yeah, neither do I. That’s because what is a solid blue state today used to be a pretty dependable red state. Presidents Nixon and Reagan both came from there; both republicans. The brick red-south used to be called the “solid south” for another reason; they supported democrats almost exclusively. So today’s reality must not be taken as being carved in stone.

Further, the two-party system that we currently have has not always been the case. In the future there may be serval parties that emerge dividing the vote into smaller percentages. Whereas the Electoral College has remedies for no one candidate getting 270 electoral votes, the national popular vote has only a provision for the candidate who gets the most votes winning whether it be 80% of the vote, 50% of the vote, or 12% of the vote if every other candidate gets 11.9% and less. As unsettling it is to contemplate the winner having been crowned when 88% chose someone else, it’s even more unsettling to consider that the proposed remedies—a nationwide runoff—would delay a president-elect being named for weeks. There is an intriguing remedy of “rank choice voting” where you have an instant run-off. It is explained here.



I don’t care much for the idea as it would elevate a candidate who didn’t get the most “first choice” votes to office based on being more voter’s second choice. But I could see some value in the concept.

One of the most frequent complaints about the electoral college is that candidates only campaign seriously if a handful of states that are considered to be contested. This is true. Here is a graphic from the National Popular Vote website that shows the campaign stops

View attachment 360418

What isn’t addressed by the graphic is that if an NPV was instituted, the candidates would focus almost solely on high population centers as opposed to toss-up states; thus substituting one criteria-based campaign strategy for another. I’ve heard some proponents of the NPV state that this is how it “should” be—high population centers having more sway than comparatively rural areas like Nevada and Colorado. I reject that because demographics, as I mentioned earlier, do change over time.


Lastly, let me close on what I mentioned earlier. In this day and age, there is no reason to ignore the national popular vote. In a democracy, you vote should matter and it should have some effect on the outcome of the election in which you’re voting. So that is why I’m for strengthening the electoral college by having the president-elect win both the plurality of the popular vote and the electoral vote majority. If they do not win both, the remedies of the 12th Amendment come into play; just as it would if no candidate gets 270 electoral votes four months from now. Given the most recent election saw the Blob win an electoral victory without winning a popular vote victory, I’m sure some will see this as me trying to throw up a hurdle to his oozing into office. I wish it were that easy. But no, I brought up the plan I had long before he won. From 2015:

Electoral College. Just why?

The remedy I proposed, in our history, would only have changed the winner (arguably) 4 times when the President didn’t get both the EC victory and the NPV victory. In the two most recent incarnations; Bush in 2000 and the Blob in 2016; in both cases the House would have almost certainly delivered the presidency to Bush and Trump since the GOP had majorities in both 2000 and 2016. So this is not me trying to re-write history.

There is plenty wrong with our system of electing Presidents. We need to make election day into an election week. We need to expand access to the ballot requiring states to offer no-cause absentee voting. We need to get the parties out of the business of running elections all together and let the county clerks and election officials run elections. We need to have third, fourth, and fifth parties on the debate stage next to the Democrats and Republicans so voters can draw distinctions between the different candidates who are running. But one thing that we have that works in all climates is the electoral college. I think it needs to be strengthened to make sure the President Elect is the voter’s choice. But it’s not bad the way it is.

As long as you have a requirement that the President must get a majority of the popular vote, then you are defeating the purpose, which is to have a system where the most popular states can't dictate to to states with smaller populations.

There absolutely must be a way for the president to be elected, without the need to have the majority of the public vote.

You can't have New York and California, making Wyoming and other sparsely populated states, utterly irrelevant to the government of the country. The total number of votes in the 2016 election roughly 120 Million.

The top 5 states have 120 Million people.

The populous states could turn this country into a dictatorship against the other 45 states, if we went to a popular vote required system.

We need to expand access to the ballot requiring states to offer no-cause absentee voting.

This is actually the very problem I was citing above. The whole reason this country exists, is because we setup a system where the Federal Government does not get to dictate to the states.

You don't get to dictate how other states works. Our union, is a union of separate states. One state should have no ability to dictate to the other state, how their voting system works.

Now if you want to support no-cause absentee voting in your state, knock yourself out. But to try and dictate how other states run their voting system, is exactly the type of tyrannical dictatorship our constitution was created to avoid.

We need to get the parties out of the business of running elections all together and let the county clerks and election officials run elections.

Funny how you say that directly after saying we need to require states operating how you dictate, and then claim you want to get political parties out of dictating how elections run.

Generally though, I support that. I don't know how you would do it, since it would require a political party, to make the changes in the system.

We need to have third, fourth, and fifth parties on the debate stage next to the Democrats and Republicans so voters can draw distinctions between the different candidates who are running.

I am not opposed to this, but generally it never happens the way you seem to think it should. In California they had multiple parties, and thus far it has always boiled down to Republicans and Democrats.

Reminds me of Ross Perot in 1992. Still ended up with Republicans and Democrats. I highly doubt that any amount of 3rd parties in the debates will ever make any real significant impact.

Additionally, the more people you have on stage at a debate, the result is fewer distinctions. The opposite of what you claim. Just saying this from personal experience, if you have 2 people on stage, they have enough time to explain why they are different from each other.

If you have 10 people on stage, they all end up with sound bites, that sound similar. The amount of time, does not magically change, simply because you have more people on stage.

So if you have a 2 hour debate, and you have 10 questions, that's 12 minutes a question, divided by 2 people. Now divide that 12 minutes by 10 people. What kind of answers do you think you are going to get in a 60 second response? They are all going to be so short, as to be uninformative. It's all going to be "What about terrorism?" "Yup bad." "Very bad" "Bad indeed".

It's all going to be crap answers. So then you say, we'll need 5 debates, so everyone can have a full 10 minutes to respond to each question, or something.

You think the American people are not going to get bored and tune out? Man, I'm getting bored just thinking about an entire week of debates from a dozen politicians on every single night. I'm not watching that.

Having more candidates from different parties on the debate stage is a bad thing?

Depends. In 1992 ,it changed History. Ross Perot took ALL the independent votes. Which gave Clinton the Election . At the time ,the Country had 43% Democrats ,39% Repubs ,and the rest non-affiliated. Look up the election results. Might be a surprise.--PS--Perot got NO EC votes.

 

[JoeMoma]

I am for strengthening the electoral college as to where the President-Elect must get both the plurality of the nationwide popular vote as well as the majority of the electoral votes—the famous “270” that we hear about. Save for that one aspect of strengthening, I’m quite happy with the current formation of the electoral college as opposed to the direct election of the president through the national popular vote.

Here is why;

Whatever system we have must be good for every outcome. While not perfect, the current system ensures that at least a majority of the electors select the president. A national popular vote, in the year 2020, would do the same thing. However, ours is not a static electoral landscape. Does anyone remember all of those great democratic presidents from California? Yeah, neither do I. That’s because what is a solid blue state today used to be a pretty dependable red state. Presidents Nixon and Reagan both came from there; both republicans. The brick red-south used to be called the “solid south” for another reason; they supported democrats almost exclusively. So today’s reality must not be taken as being carved in stone.

Further, the two-party system that we currently have has not always been the case. In the future there may be serval parties that emerge dividing the vote into smaller percentages. Whereas the Electoral College has remedies for no one candidate getting 270 electoral votes, the national popular vote has only a provision for the candidate who gets the most votes winning whether it be 80% of the vote, 50% of the vote, or 12% of the vote if every other candidate gets 11.9% and less. As unsettling it is to contemplate the winner having been crowned when 88% chose someone else, it’s even more unsettling to consider that the proposed remedies—a nationwide runoff—would delay a president-elect being named for weeks. There is an intriguing remedy of “rank choice voting” where you have an instant run-off. It is explained here.



I don’t care much for the idea as it would elevate a candidate who didn’t get the most “first choice” votes to office based on being more voter’s second choice. But I could see some value in the concept.

One of the most frequent complaints about the electoral college is that candidates only campaign seriously if a handful of states that are considered to be contested. This is true. Here is a graphic from the National Popular Vote website that shows the campaign stops

View attachment 360418

What isn’t addressed by the graphic is that if an NPV was instituted, the candidates would focus almost solely on high population centers as opposed to toss-up states; thus substituting one criteria-based campaign strategy for another. I’ve heard some proponents of the NPV state that this is how it “should” be—high population centers having more sway than comparatively rural areas like Nevada and Colorado. I reject that because demographics, as I mentioned earlier, do change over time.


Lastly, let me close on what I mentioned earlier. In this day and age, there is no reason to ignore the national popular vote. In a democracy, you vote should matter and it should have some effect on the outcome of the election in which you’re voting. So that is why I’m for strengthening the electoral college by having the president-elect win both the plurality of the popular vote and the electoral vote majority. If they do not win both, the remedies of the 12th Amendment come into play; just as it would if no candidate gets 270 electoral votes four months from now. Given the most recent election saw the Blob win an electoral victory without winning a popular vote victory, I’m sure some will see this as me trying to throw up a hurdle to his oozing into office. I wish it were that easy. But no, I brought up the plan I had long before he won. From 2015:

Electoral College. Just why?

The remedy I proposed, in our history, would only have changed the winner (arguably) 4 times when the President didn’t get both the EC victory and the NPV victory. In the two most recent incarnations; Bush in 2000 and the Blob in 2016; in both cases the House would have almost certainly delivered the presidency to Bush and Trump since the GOP had majorities in both 2000 and 2016. So this is not me trying to re-write history.

There is plenty wrong with our system of electing Presidents. We need to make election day into an election week. We need to expand access to the ballot requiring states to offer no-cause absentee voting. We need to get the parties out of the business of running elections all together and let the county clerks and election officials run elections. We need to have third, fourth, and fifth parties on the debate stage next to the Democrats and Republicans so voters can draw distinctions between the different candidates who are running. But one thing that we have that works in all climates is the electoral college. I think it needs to be strengthened to make sure the President Elect is the voter’s choice. But it’s not bad the way it is.

As long as you have a requirement that the President must get a majority of the popular vote, then you are defeating the purpose, which is to have a system where the most popular states can't dictate to to states with smaller populations.

There absolutely must be a way for the president to be elected, without the need to have the majority of the public vote.

You can't have New York and California, making Wyoming and other sparsely populated states, utterly irrelevant to the government of the country. The total number of votes in the 2016 election roughly 120 Million.

The top 5 states have 120 Million people.

The populous states could turn this country into a dictatorship against the other 45 states, if we went to a popular vote required system.

We need to expand access to the ballot requiring states to offer no-cause absentee voting.

This is actually the very problem I was citing above. The whole reason this country exists, is because we setup a system where the Federal Government does not get to dictate to the states.

You don't get to dictate how other states works. Our union, is a union of separate states. One state should have no ability to dictate to the other state, how their voting system works.

Now if you want to support no-cause absentee voting in your state, knock yourself out. But to try and dictate how other states run their voting system, is exactly the type of tyrannical dictatorship our constitution was created to avoid.

We need to get the parties out of the business of running elections all together and let the county clerks and election officials run elections.

Funny how you say that directly after saying we need to require states operating how you dictate, and then claim you want to get political parties out of dictating how elections run.

Generally though, I support that. I don't know how you would do it, since it would require a political party, to make the changes in the system.

We need to have third, fourth, and fifth parties on the debate stage next to the Democrats and Republicans so voters can draw distinctions between the different candidates who are running.

I am not opposed to this, but generally it never happens the way you seem to think it should. In California they had multiple parties, and thus far it has always boiled down to Republicans and Democrats.

Reminds me of Ross Perot in 1992. Still ended up with Republicans and Democrats. I highly doubt that any amount of 3rd parties in the debates will ever make any real significant impact.

Additionally, the more people you have on stage at a debate, the result is fewer distinctions. The opposite of what you claim. Just saying this from personal experience, if you have 2 people on stage, they have enough time to explain why they are different from each other.

If you have 10 people on stage, they all end up with sound bites, that sound similar. The amount of time, does not magically change, simply because you have more people on stage.

So if you have a 2 hour debate, and you have 10 questions, that's 12 minutes a question, divided by 2 people. Now divide that 12 minutes by 10 people. What kind of answers do you think you are going to get in a 60 second response? They are all going to be so short, as to be uninformative. It's all going to be "What about terrorism?" "Yup bad." "Very bad" "Bad indeed".

It's all going to be crap answers. So then you say, we'll need 5 debates, so everyone can have a full 10 minutes to respond to each question, or something.

You think the American people are not going to get bored and tune out? Man, I'm getting bored just thinking about an entire week of debates from a dozen politicians on every single night. I'm not watching that.

Having more candidates from different parties on the debate stage is a bad thing?

Depends. In 1992 ,it changed History. Ross Perot took ALL the independent votes. Which gave Clinton the Election . At the time ,the Country had 43% Democrats ,39% Repubs ,and the rest non-affiliated. Look up the election results. Might be a surprise.--PS--Perot got NO EC votes.

Ross Perot was competitive with a chance of winning the election before he dropped out of the race. He got back in the race in time to be spoiler for Bush 41.

 

[San Souci]

I am for strengthening the electoral college as to where the President-Elect must get both the plurality of the nationwide popular vote as well as the majority of the electoral votes—the famous “270” that we hear about. Save for that one aspect of strengthening, I’m quite happy with the current formation of the electoral college as opposed to the direct election of the president through the national popular vote.

Here is why;

Whatever system we have must be good for every outcome. While not perfect, the current system ensures that at least a majority of the electors select the president. A national popular vote, in the year 2020, would do the same thing. However, ours is not a static electoral landscape. Does anyone remember all of those great democratic presidents from California? Yeah, neither do I. That’s because what is a solid blue state today used to be a pretty dependable red state. Presidents Nixon and Reagan both came from there; both republicans. The brick red-south used to be called the “solid south” for another reason; they supported democrats almost exclusively. So today’s reality must not be taken as being carved in stone.

Further, the two-party system that we currently have has not always been the case. In the future there may be serval parties that emerge dividing the vote into smaller percentages. Whereas the Electoral College has remedies for no one candidate getting 270 electoral votes, the national popular vote has only a provision for the candidate who gets the most votes winning whether it be 80% of the vote, 50% of the vote, or 12% of the vote if every other candidate gets 11.9% and less. As unsettling it is to contemplate the winner having been crowned when 88% chose someone else, it’s even more unsettling to consider that the proposed remedies—a nationwide runoff—would delay a president-elect being named for weeks. There is an intriguing remedy of “rank choice voting” where you have an instant run-off. It is explained here.



I don’t care much for the idea as it would elevate a candidate who didn’t get the most “first choice” votes to office based on being more voter’s second choice. But I could see some value in the concept.

One of the most frequent complaints about the electoral college is that candidates only campaign seriously if a handful of states that are considered to be contested. This is true. Here is a graphic from the National Popular Vote website that shows the campaign stops

View attachment 360418

What isn’t addressed by the graphic is that if an NPV was instituted, the candidates would focus almost solely on high population centers as opposed to toss-up states; thus substituting one criteria-based campaign strategy for another. I’ve heard some proponents of the NPV state that this is how it “should” be—high population centers having more sway than comparatively rural areas like Nevada and Colorado. I reject that because demographics, as I mentioned earlier, do change over time.


Lastly, let me close on what I mentioned earlier. In this day and age, there is no reason to ignore the national popular vote. In a democracy, you vote should matter and it should have some effect on the outcome of the election in which you’re voting. So that is why I’m for strengthening the electoral college by having the president-elect win both the plurality of the popular vote and the electoral vote majority. If they do not win both, the remedies of the 12th Amendment come into play; just as it would if no candidate gets 270 electoral votes four months from now. Given the most recent election saw the Blob win an electoral victory without winning a popular vote victory, I’m sure some will see this as me trying to throw up a hurdle to his oozing into office. I wish it were that easy. But no, I brought up the plan I had long before he won. From 2015:

Electoral College. Just why?

The remedy I proposed, in our history, would only have changed the winner (arguably) 4 times when the President didn’t get both the EC victory and the NPV victory. In the two most recent incarnations; Bush in 2000 and the Blob in 2016; in both cases the House would have almost certainly delivered the presidency to Bush and Trump since the GOP had majorities in both 2000 and 2016. So this is not me trying to re-write history.

There is plenty wrong with our system of electing Presidents. We need to make election day into an election week. We need to expand access to the ballot requiring states to offer no-cause absentee voting. We need to get the parties out of the business of running elections all together and let the county clerks and election officials run elections. We need to have third, fourth, and fifth parties on the debate stage next to the Democrats and Republicans so voters can draw distinctions between the different candidates who are running. But one thing that we have that works in all climates is the electoral college. I think it needs to be strengthened to make sure the President Elect is the voter’s choice. But it’s not bad the way it is.

As long as you have a requirement that the President must get a majority of the popular vote, then you are defeating the purpose, which is to have a system where the most popular states can't dictate to to states with smaller populations.

There absolutely must be a way for the president to be elected, without the need to have the majority of the public vote.

You can't have New York and California, making Wyoming and other sparsely populated states, utterly irrelevant to the government of the country. The total number of votes in the 2016 election roughly 120 Million.

The top 5 states have 120 Million people.

The populous states could turn this country into a dictatorship against the other 45 states, if we went to a popular vote required system.

We need to expand access to the ballot requiring states to offer no-cause absentee voting.

This is actually the very problem I was citing above. The whole reason this country exists, is because we setup a system where the Federal Government does not get to dictate to the states.

You don't get to dictate how other states works. Our union, is a union of separate states. One state should have no ability to dictate to the other state, how their voting system works.

Now if you want to support no-cause absentee voting in your state, knock yourself out. But to try and dictate how other states run their voting system, is exactly the type of tyrannical dictatorship our constitution was created to avoid.

We need to get the parties out of the business of running elections all together and let the county clerks and election officials run elections.

Funny how you say that directly after saying we need to require states operating how you dictate, and then claim you want to get political parties out of dictating how elections run.

Generally though, I support that. I don't know how you would do it, since it would require a political party, to make the changes in the system.

We need to have third, fourth, and fifth parties on the debate stage next to the Democrats and Republicans so voters can draw distinctions between the different candidates who are running.

I am not opposed to this, but generally it never happens the way you seem to think it should. In California they had multiple parties, and thus far it has always boiled down to Republicans and Democrats.

Reminds me of Ross Perot in 1992. Still ended up with Republicans and Democrats. I highly doubt that any amount of 3rd parties in the debates will ever make any real significant impact.

Additionally, the more people you have on stage at a debate, the result is fewer distinctions. The opposite of what you claim. Just saying this from personal experience, if you have 2 people on stage, they have enough time to explain why they are different from each other.

If you have 10 people on stage, they all end up with sound bites, that sound similar. The amount of time, does not magically change, simply because you have more people on stage.

So if you have a 2 hour debate, and you have 10 questions, that's 12 minutes a question, divided by 2 people. Now divide that 12 minutes by 10 people. What kind of answers do you think you are going to get in a 60 second response? They are all going to be so short, as to be uninformative. It's all going to be "What about terrorism?" "Yup bad." "Very bad" "Bad indeed".

It's all going to be crap answers. So then you say, we'll need 5 debates, so everyone can have a full 10 minutes to respond to each question, or something.

You think the American people are not going to get bored and tune out? Man, I'm getting bored just thinking about an entire week of debates from a dozen politicians on every single night. I'm not watching that.

Having more candidates from different parties on the debate stage is a bad thing?

Depends. In 1992 ,it changed History. Ross Perot took ALL the independent votes. Which gave Clinton the Election . At the time ,the Country had 43% Democrats ,39% Repubs ,and the rest non-affiliated. Look up the election results. Might be a surprise.--PS--Perot got NO EC votes.

Ross Perot was competitive with a chance of winning the election before he dropped out of the race. He got back in the race in time to be spoiler for Bush 41.

Exactly. Check out the "Popular Vote". Straight down party lines.

 

[JoeMoma]

I am for strengthening the electoral college as to where the President-Elect must get both the plurality of the nationwide popular vote as well as the majority of the electoral votes—the famous “270” that we hear about. Save for that one aspect of strengthening, I’m quite happy with the current formation of the electoral college as opposed to the direct election of the president through the national popular vote.

Here is why;

Whatever system we have must be good for every outcome. While not perfect, the current system ensures that at least a majority of the electors select the president. A national popular vote, in the year 2020, would do the same thing. However, ours is not a static electoral landscape. Does anyone remember all of those great democratic presidents from California? Yeah, neither do I. That’s because what is a solid blue state today used to be a pretty dependable red state. Presidents Nixon and Reagan both came from there; both republicans. The brick red-south used to be called the “solid south” for another reason; they supported democrats almost exclusively. So today’s reality must not be taken as being carved in stone.

Further, the two-party system that we currently have has not always been the case. In the future there may be serval parties that emerge dividing the vote into smaller percentages. Whereas the Electoral College has remedies for no one candidate getting 270 electoral votes, the national popular vote has only a provision for the candidate who gets the most votes winning whether it be 80% of the vote, 50% of the vote, or 12% of the vote if every other candidate gets 11.9% and less. As unsettling it is to contemplate the winner having been crowned when 88% chose someone else, it’s even more unsettling to consider that the proposed remedies—a nationwide runoff—would delay a president-elect being named for weeks. There is an intriguing remedy of “rank choice voting” where you have an instant run-off. It is explained here.



I don’t care much for the idea as it would elevate a candidate who didn’t get the most “first choice” votes to office based on being more voter’s second choice. But I could see some value in the concept.

One of the most frequent complaints about the electoral college is that candidates only campaign seriously if a handful of states that are considered to be contested. This is true. Here is a graphic from the National Popular Vote website that shows the campaign stops

View attachment 360418

What isn’t addressed by the graphic is that if an NPV was instituted, the candidates would focus almost solely on high population centers as opposed to toss-up states; thus substituting one criteria-based campaign strategy for another. I’ve heard some proponents of the NPV state that this is how it “should” be—high population centers having more sway than comparatively rural areas like Nevada and Colorado. I reject that because demographics, as I mentioned earlier, do change over time.


Lastly, let me close on what I mentioned earlier. In this day and age, there is no reason to ignore the national popular vote. In a democracy, you vote should matter and it should have some effect on the outcome of the election in which you’re voting. So that is why I’m for strengthening the electoral college by having the president-elect win both the plurality of the popular vote and the electoral vote majority. If they do not win both, the remedies of the 12th Amendment come into play; just as it would if no candidate gets 270 electoral votes four months from now. Given the most recent election saw the Blob win an electoral victory without winning a popular vote victory, I’m sure some will see this as me trying to throw up a hurdle to his oozing into office. I wish it were that easy. But no, I brought up the plan I had long before he won. From 2015:

Electoral College. Just why?

The remedy I proposed, in our history, would only have changed the winner (arguably) 4 times when the President didn’t get both the EC victory and the NPV victory. In the two most recent incarnations; Bush in 2000 and the Blob in 2016; in both cases the House would have almost certainly delivered the presidency to Bush and Trump since the GOP had majorities in both 2000 and 2016. So this is not me trying to re-write history.

There is plenty wrong with our system of electing Presidents. We need to make election day into an election week. We need to expand access to the ballot requiring states to offer no-cause absentee voting. We need to get the parties out of the business of running elections all together and let the county clerks and election officials run elections. We need to have third, fourth, and fifth parties on the debate stage next to the Democrats and Republicans so voters can draw distinctions between the different candidates who are running. But one thing that we have that works in all climates is the electoral college. I think it needs to be strengthened to make sure the President Elect is the voter’s choice. But it’s not bad the way it is.

As long as you have a requirement that the President must get a majority of the popular vote, then you are defeating the purpose, which is to have a system where the most popular states can't dictate to to states with smaller populations.

There absolutely must be a way for the president to be elected, without the need to have the majority of the public vote.

You can't have New York and California, making Wyoming and other sparsely populated states, utterly irrelevant to the government of the country. The total number of votes in the 2016 election roughly 120 Million.

The top 5 states have 120 Million people.

The populous states could turn this country into a dictatorship against the other 45 states, if we went to a popular vote required system.

We need to expand access to the ballot requiring states to offer no-cause absentee voting.

This is actually the very problem I was citing above. The whole reason this country exists, is because we setup a system where the Federal Government does not get to dictate to the states.

You don't get to dictate how other states works. Our union, is a union of separate states. One state should have no ability to dictate to the other state, how their voting system works.

Now if you want to support no-cause absentee voting in your state, knock yourself out. But to try and dictate how other states run their voting system, is exactly the type of tyrannical dictatorship our constitution was created to avoid.

We need to get the parties out of the business of running elections all together and let the county clerks and election officials run elections.

Funny how you say that directly after saying we need to require states operating how you dictate, and then claim you want to get political parties out of dictating how elections run.

Generally though, I support that. I don't know how you would do it, since it would require a political party, to make the changes in the system.

We need to have third, fourth, and fifth parties on the debate stage next to the Democrats and Republicans so voters can draw distinctions between the different candidates who are running.

I am not opposed to this, but generally it never happens the way you seem to think it should. In California they had multiple parties, and thus far it has always boiled down to Republicans and Democrats.

Reminds me of Ross Perot in 1992. Still ended up with Republicans and Democrats. I highly doubt that any amount of 3rd parties in the debates will ever make any real significant impact.

Additionally, the more people you have on stage at a debate, the result is fewer distinctions. The opposite of what you claim. Just saying this from personal experience, if you have 2 people on stage, they have enough time to explain why they are different from each other.

If you have 10 people on stage, they all end up with sound bites, that sound similar. The amount of time, does not magically change, simply because you have more people on stage.

So if you have a 2 hour debate, and you have 10 questions, that's 12 minutes a question, divided by 2 people. Now divide that 12 minutes by 10 people. What kind of answers do you think you are going to get in a 60 second response? They are all going to be so short, as to be uninformative. It's all going to be "What about terrorism?" "Yup bad." "Very bad" "Bad indeed".

It's all going to be crap answers. So then you say, we'll need 5 debates, so everyone can have a full 10 minutes to respond to each question, or something.

You think the American people are not going to get bored and tune out? Man, I'm getting bored just thinking about an entire week of debates from a dozen politicians on every single night. I'm not watching that.

Having more candidates from different parties on the debate stage is a bad thing?

Depends. In 1992 ,it changed History. Ross Perot took ALL the independent votes. Which gave Clinton the Election . At the time ,the Country had 43% Democrats ,39% Repubs ,and the rest non-affiliated. Look up the election results. Might be a surprise.--PS--Perot got NO EC votes.

Ross Perot was competitive with a chance of winning the election before he dropped out of the race. He got back in the race in time to be spoiler for Bush 41.

Exactly. Check out the "Popular Vote". Straight down party lines.

Of course, Perot may have split the EC vote such that no one reached the magic number of 270 had he not dropped out just to get back in.

 

[jwoodie]

As with all things, there is room for improvement.

While this may be true, it begs the question of who gets to decide on the "improvement." The Constitution clearly gives the States the authority to apportion their Electoral votes. If they want to adopt proportional representation, they are free to do it. However, I think you would find the big Blue States to be the most opposed to this method.

 

[alang1216]

I am for strengthening the electoral college as to where the President-Elect must get both the plurality of the nationwide popular vote as well as the majority of the electoral votes—the famous “270” that we hear about. Save for that one aspect of strengthening, I’m quite happy with the current formation of the electoral college as opposed to the direct election of the president through the national popular vote.

Here is why;

Whatever system we have must be good for every outcome. While not perfect, the current system ensures that at least a majority of the electors select the president. A national popular vote, in the year 2020, would do the same thing. However, ours is not a static electoral landscape. Does anyone remember all of those great democratic presidents from California? Yeah, neither do I. That’s because what is a solid blue state today used to be a pretty dependable red state. Presidents Nixon and Reagan both came from there; both republicans. The brick red-south used to be called the “solid south” for another reason; they supported democrats almost exclusively. So today’s reality must not be taken as being carved in stone.

Further, the two-party system that we currently have has not always been the case. In the future there may be serval parties that emerge dividing the vote into smaller percentages. Whereas the Electoral College has remedies for no one candidate getting 270 electoral votes, the national popular vote has only a provision for the candidate who gets the most votes winning whether it be 80% of the vote, 50% of the vote, or 12% of the vote if every other candidate gets 11.9% and less. As unsettling it is to contemplate the winner having been crowned when 88% chose someone else, it’s even more unsettling to consider that the proposed remedies—a nationwide runoff—would delay a president-elect being named for weeks. There is an intriguing remedy of “rank choice voting” where you have an instant run-off. It is explained here.



I don’t care much for the idea as it would elevate a candidate who didn’t get the most “first choice” votes to office based on being more voter’s second choice. But I could see some value in the concept.

One of the most frequent complaints about the electoral college is that candidates only campaign seriously if a handful of states that are considered to be contested. This is true. Here is a graphic from the National Popular Vote website that shows the campaign stops

View attachment 360418

What isn’t addressed by the graphic is that if an NPV was instituted, the candidates would focus almost solely on high population centers as opposed to toss-up states; thus substituting one criteria-based campaign strategy for another. I’ve heard some proponents of the NPV state that this is how it “should” be—high population centers having more sway than comparatively rural areas like Nevada and Colorado. I reject that because demographics, as I mentioned earlier, do change over time.


Lastly, let me close on what I mentioned earlier. In this day and age, there is no reason to ignore the national popular vote. In a democracy, you vote should matter and it should have some effect on the outcome of the election in which you’re voting. So that is why I’m for strengthening the electoral college by having the president-elect win both the plurality of the popular vote and the electoral vote majority. If they do not win both, the remedies of the 12th Amendment come into play; just as it would if no candidate gets 270 electoral votes four months from now. Given the most recent election saw the Blob win an electoral victory without winning a popular vote victory, I’m sure some will see this as me trying to throw up a hurdle to his oozing into office. I wish it were that easy. But no, I brought up the plan I had long before he won. From 2015:

Electoral College. Just why?

The remedy I proposed, in our history, would only have changed the winner (arguably) 4 times when the President didn’t get both the EC victory and the NPV victory. In the two most recent incarnations; Bush in 2000 and the Blob in 2016; in both cases the House would have almost certainly delivered the presidency to Bush and Trump since the GOP had majorities in both 2000 and 2016. So this is not me trying to re-write history.

There is plenty wrong with our system of electing Presidents. We need to make election day into an election week. We need to expand access to the ballot requiring states to offer no-cause absentee voting. We need to get the parties out of the business of running elections all together and let the county clerks and election officials run elections. We need to have third, fourth, and fifth parties on the debate stage next to the Democrats and Republicans so voters can draw distinctions between the different candidates who are running. But one thing that we have that works in all climates is the electoral college. I think it needs to be strengthened to make sure the President Elect is the voter’s choice. But it’s not bad the way it is.

I'm all in favor of ranked choice voting.

My county recently went to ranked choice voting and this recent special election there were 4 candidates, one conservative, one liberal, one moderate, and one libertarian (whatever they are). The liberal got the most votes, 35% or so. In the next 2 eliminations the liberal never got any more and the moderate eventually won with 80% of the vote. I think the results represent myself and most people much better than any of the other candidates.

 

[San Souci]

I am for strengthening the electoral college as to where the President-Elect must get both the plurality of the nationwide popular vote as well as the majority of the electoral votes—the famous “270” that we hear about. Save for that one aspect of strengthening, I’m quite happy with the current formation of the electoral college as opposed to the direct election of the president through the national popular vote.

Here is why;

Whatever system we have must be good for every outcome. While not perfect, the current system ensures that at least a majority of the electors select the president. A national popular vote, in the year 2020, would do the same thing. However, ours is not a static electoral landscape. Does anyone remember all of those great democratic presidents from California? Yeah, neither do I. That’s because what is a solid blue state today used to be a pretty dependable red state. Presidents Nixon and Reagan both came from there; both republicans. The brick red-south used to be called the “solid south” for another reason; they supported democrats almost exclusively. So today’s reality must not be taken as being carved in stone.

Further, the two-party system that we currently have has not always been the case. In the future there may be serval parties that emerge dividing the vote into smaller percentages. Whereas the Electoral College has remedies for no one candidate getting 270 electoral votes, the national popular vote has only a provision for the candidate who gets the most votes winning whether it be 80% of the vote, 50% of the vote, or 12% of the vote if every other candidate gets 11.9% and less. As unsettling it is to contemplate the winner having been crowned when 88% chose someone else, it’s even more unsettling to consider that the proposed remedies—a nationwide runoff—would delay a president-elect being named for weeks. There is an intriguing remedy of “rank choice voting” where you have an instant run-off. It is explained here.



I don’t care much for the idea as it would elevate a candidate who didn’t get the most “first choice” votes to office based on being more voter’s second choice. But I could see some value in the concept.

One of the most frequent complaints about the electoral college is that candidates only campaign seriously if a handful of states that are considered to be contested. This is true. Here is a graphic from the National Popular Vote website that shows the campaign stops

View attachment 360418

What isn’t addressed by the graphic is that if an NPV was instituted, the candidates would focus almost solely on high population centers as opposed to toss-up states; thus substituting one criteria-based campaign strategy for another. I’ve heard some proponents of the NPV state that this is how it “should” be—high population centers having more sway than comparatively rural areas like Nevada and Colorado. I reject that because demographics, as I mentioned earlier, do change over time.


Lastly, let me close on what I mentioned earlier. In this day and age, there is no reason to ignore the national popular vote. In a democracy, you vote should matter and it should have some effect on the outcome of the election in which you’re voting. So that is why I’m for strengthening the electoral college by having the president-elect win both the plurality of the popular vote and the electoral vote majority. If they do not win both, the remedies of the 12th Amendment come into play; just as it would if no candidate gets 270 electoral votes four months from now. Given the most recent election saw the Blob win an electoral victory without winning a popular vote victory, I’m sure some will see this as me trying to throw up a hurdle to his oozing into office. I wish it were that easy. But no, I brought up the plan I had long before he won. From 2015:

Electoral College. Just why?

The remedy I proposed, in our history, would only have changed the winner (arguably) 4 times when the President didn’t get both the EC victory and the NPV victory. In the two most recent incarnations; Bush in 2000 and the Blob in 2016; in both cases the House would have almost certainly delivered the presidency to Bush and Trump since the GOP had majorities in both 2000 and 2016. So this is not me trying to re-write history.

There is plenty wrong with our system of electing Presidents. We need to make election day into an election week. We need to expand access to the ballot requiring states to offer no-cause absentee voting. We need to get the parties out of the business of running elections all together and let the county clerks and election officials run elections. We need to have third, fourth, and fifth parties on the debate stage next to the Democrats and Republicans so voters can draw distinctions between the different candidates who are running. But one thing that we have that works in all climates is the electoral college. I think it needs to be strengthened to make sure the President Elect is the voter’s choice. But it’s not bad the way it is.

Why would any of the less populous states agree to that?

In a perfect world, it would just make sense to have the person who gets the most votes win the election. The less populous states would have just as much power as they have today.

No. They probably would not. Like I said earlier. The Candidates would campaign only in 5 or 6 Mega-Cities. Our system has worked for over 200 years (at the risk of being redundant) . So I will continue to argue on behalf of that system. The Framers wanted to avoid the tyranny of the WHOLE Republic by a few heavily populated cities.

 

[Muhammed]

I am for strengthening the electoral college as to where the President-Elect must get both the plurality of the nationwide popular vote as well as the majority of the electoral votes—the famous “270” that we hear about. Save for that one aspect of strengthening, I’m quite happy with the current formation of the electoral college as opposed to the direct election of the president through the national popular vote.

Here is why;

Whatever system we have must be good for every outcome. While not perfect, the current system ensures that at least a majority of the electors select the president. A national popular vote, in the year 2020, would do the same thing. However, ours is not a static electoral landscape. Does anyone remember all of those great democratic presidents from California? Yeah, neither do I. That’s because what is a solid blue state today used to be a pretty dependable red state. Presidents Nixon and Reagan both came from there; both republicans. The brick red-south used to be called the “solid south” for another reason; they supported democrats almost exclusively. So today’s reality must not be taken as being carved in stone.

Further, the two-party system that we currently have has not always been the case. In the future there may be serval parties that emerge dividing the vote into smaller percentages. Whereas the Electoral College has remedies for no one candidate getting 270 electoral votes, the national popular vote has only a provision for the candidate who gets the most votes winning whether it be 80% of the vote, 50% of the vote, or 12% of the vote if every other candidate gets 11.9% and less. As unsettling it is to contemplate the winner having been crowned when 88% chose someone else, it’s even more unsettling to consider that the proposed remedies—a nationwide runoff—would delay a president-elect being named for weeks. There is an intriguing remedy of “rank choice voting” where you have an instant run-off. It is explained here.



I don’t care much for the idea as it would elevate a candidate who didn’t get the most “first choice” votes to office based on being more voter’s second choice. But I could see some value in the concept.

One of the most frequent complaints about the electoral college is that candidates only campaign seriously if a handful of states that are considered to be contested. This is true. Here is a graphic from the National Popular Vote website that shows the campaign stops

View attachment 360418

What isn’t addressed by the graphic is that if an NPV was instituted, the candidates would focus almost solely on high population centers as opposed to toss-up states; thus substituting one criteria-based campaign strategy for another. I’ve heard some proponents of the NPV state that this is how it “should” be—high population centers having more sway than comparatively rural areas like Nevada and Colorado. I reject that because demographics, as I mentioned earlier, do change over time.


Lastly, let me close on what I mentioned earlier. In this day and age, there is no reason to ignore the national popular vote. In a democracy, you vote should matter and it should have some effect on the outcome of the election in which you’re voting. So that is why I’m for strengthening the electoral college by having the president-elect win both the plurality of the popular vote and the electoral vote majority. If they do not win both, the remedies of the 12th Amendment come into play; just as it would if no candidate gets 270 electoral votes four months from now. Given the most recent election saw the Blob win an electoral victory without winning a popular vote victory, I’m sure some will see this as me trying to throw up a hurdle to his oozing into office. I wish it were that easy. But no, I brought up the plan I had long before he won. From 2015:

Electoral College. Just why?

The remedy I proposed, in our history, would only have changed the winner (arguably) 4 times when the President didn’t get both the EC victory and the NPV victory. In the two most recent incarnations; Bush in 2000 and the Blob in 2016; in both cases the House would have almost certainly delivered the presidency to Bush and Trump since the GOP had majorities in both 2000 and 2016. So this is not me trying to re-write history.

There is plenty wrong with our system of electing Presidents. We need to make election day into an election week. We need to expand access to the ballot requiring states to offer no-cause absentee voting. We need to get the parties out of the business of running elections all together and let the county clerks and election officials run elections. We need to have third, fourth, and fifth parties on the debate stage next to the Democrats and Republicans so voters can draw distinctions between the different candidates who are running. But one thing that we have that works in all climates is the electoral college. I think it needs to be strengthened to make sure the President Elect is the voter’s choice. But it’s not bad the way it is.

Why would any of the less populous states agree to that?

In a perfect world, it would just make sense to have the person who gets the most votes win the election. The less populous states would have just as much power as they have today.

No. They probably would not. Like I said earlier. The Candidates would campaign only in 5 or 6 Mega-Cities. Our system has worked for over 200 years (at the risk of being redundant) . So I will continue to argue on behalf of that system. The Framers wanted to avoid the tyranny of the WHOLE Republic by a few heavily populated cities.

That, and many less populous states simply would have refused to join the federation in the first place.

 

[Andylusion]

I am for strengthening the electoral college as to where the President-Elect must get both the plurality of the nationwide popular vote as well as the majority of the electoral votes—the famous “270” that we hear about. Save for that one aspect of strengthening, I’m quite happy with the current formation of the electoral college as opposed to the direct election of the president through the national popular vote.

Here is why;

Whatever system we have must be good for every outcome. While not perfect, the current system ensures that at least a majority of the electors select the president. A national popular vote, in the year 2020, would do the same thing. However, ours is not a static electoral landscape. Does anyone remember all of those great democratic presidents from California? Yeah, neither do I. That’s because what is a solid blue state today used to be a pretty dependable red state. Presidents Nixon and Reagan both came from there; both republicans. The brick red-south used to be called the “solid south” for another reason; they supported democrats almost exclusively. So today’s reality must not be taken as being carved in stone.

Further, the two-party system that we currently have has not always been the case. In the future there may be serval parties that emerge dividing the vote into smaller percentages. Whereas the Electoral College has remedies for no one candidate getting 270 electoral votes, the national popular vote has only a provision for the candidate who gets the most votes winning whether it be 80% of the vote, 50% of the vote, or 12% of the vote if every other candidate gets 11.9% and less. As unsettling it is to contemplate the winner having been crowned when 88% chose someone else, it’s even more unsettling to consider that the proposed remedies—a nationwide runoff—would delay a president-elect being named for weeks. There is an intriguing remedy of “rank choice voting” where you have an instant run-off. It is explained here.



I don’t care much for the idea as it would elevate a candidate who didn’t get the most “first choice” votes to office based on being more voter’s second choice. But I could see some value in the concept.

One of the most frequent complaints about the electoral college is that candidates only campaign seriously if a handful of states that are considered to be contested. This is true. Here is a graphic from the National Popular Vote website that shows the campaign stops

View attachment 360418

What isn’t addressed by the graphic is that if an NPV was instituted, the candidates would focus almost solely on high population centers as opposed to toss-up states; thus substituting one criteria-based campaign strategy for another. I’ve heard some proponents of the NPV state that this is how it “should” be—high population centers having more sway than comparatively rural areas like Nevada and Colorado. I reject that because demographics, as I mentioned earlier, do change over time.


Lastly, let me close on what I mentioned earlier. In this day and age, there is no reason to ignore the national popular vote. In a democracy, you vote should matter and it should have some effect on the outcome of the election in which you’re voting. So that is why I’m for strengthening the electoral college by having the president-elect win both the plurality of the popular vote and the electoral vote majority. If they do not win both, the remedies of the 12th Amendment come into play; just as it would if no candidate gets 270 electoral votes four months from now. Given the most recent election saw the Blob win an electoral victory without winning a popular vote victory, I’m sure some will see this as me trying to throw up a hurdle to his oozing into office. I wish it were that easy. But no, I brought up the plan I had long before he won. From 2015:

Electoral College. Just why?

The remedy I proposed, in our history, would only have changed the winner (arguably) 4 times when the President didn’t get both the EC victory and the NPV victory. In the two most recent incarnations; Bush in 2000 and the Blob in 2016; in both cases the House would have almost certainly delivered the presidency to Bush and Trump since the GOP had majorities in both 2000 and 2016. So this is not me trying to re-write history.

There is plenty wrong with our system of electing Presidents. We need to make election day into an election week. We need to expand access to the ballot requiring states to offer no-cause absentee voting. We need to get the parties out of the business of running elections all together and let the county clerks and election officials run elections. We need to have third, fourth, and fifth parties on the debate stage next to the Democrats and Republicans so voters can draw distinctions between the different candidates who are running. But one thing that we have that works in all climates is the electoral college. I think it needs to be strengthened to make sure the President Elect is the voter’s choice. But it’s not bad the way it is.

As long as you have a requirement that the President must get a majority of the popular vote, then you are defeating the purpose, which is to have a system where the most popular states can't dictate to to states with smaller populations.

There absolutely must be a way for the president to be elected, without the need to have the majority of the public vote.

You can't have New York and California, making Wyoming and other sparsely populated states, utterly irrelevant to the government of the country. The total number of votes in the 2016 election roughly 120 Million.

The top 5 states have 120 Million people.

The populous states could turn this country into a dictatorship against the other 45 states, if we went to a popular vote required system.

We need to expand access to the ballot requiring states to offer no-cause absentee voting.

This is actually the very problem I was citing above. The whole reason this country exists, is because we setup a system where the Federal Government does not get to dictate to the states.

You don't get to dictate how other states works. Our union, is a union of separate states. One state should have no ability to dictate to the other state, how their voting system works.

Now if you want to support no-cause absentee voting in your state, knock yourself out. But to try and dictate how other states run their voting system, is exactly the type of tyrannical dictatorship our constitution was created to avoid.

We need to get the parties out of the business of running elections all together and let the county clerks and election officials run elections.

Funny how you say that directly after saying we need to require states operating how you dictate, and then claim you want to get political parties out of dictating how elections run.

Generally though, I support that. I don't know how you would do it, since it would require a political party, to make the changes in the system.

We need to have third, fourth, and fifth parties on the debate stage next to the Democrats and Republicans so voters can draw distinctions between the different candidates who are running.

I am not opposed to this, but generally it never happens the way you seem to think it should. In California they had multiple parties, and thus far it has always boiled down to Republicans and Democrats.

Reminds me of Ross Perot in 1992. Still ended up with Republicans and Democrats. I highly doubt that any amount of 3rd parties in the debates will ever make any real significant impact.

Additionally, the more people you have on stage at a debate, the result is fewer distinctions. The opposite of what you claim. Just saying this from personal experience, if you have 2 people on stage, they have enough time to explain why they are different from each other.

If you have 10 people on stage, they all end up with sound bites, that sound similar. The amount of time, does not magically change, simply because you have more people on stage.

So if you have a 2 hour debate, and you have 10 questions, that's 12 minutes a question, divided by 2 people. Now divide that 12 minutes by 10 people. What kind of answers do you think you are going to get in a 60 second response? They are all going to be so short, as to be uninformative. It's all going to be "What about terrorism?" "Yup bad." "Very bad" "Bad indeed".

It's all going to be crap answers. So then you say, we'll need 5 debates, so everyone can have a full 10 minutes to respond to each question, or something.

You think the American people are not going to get bored and tune out? Man, I'm getting bored just thinking about an entire week of debates from a dozen politicians on every single night. I'm not watching that.

Having more candidates from different parties on the debate stage is a bad thing?

Can be. Yes. Just out of curiosity, have you ever watched a debate with 5 or more candidates? I have. And it ends up being very shallow, and very parroting.

Most of the candidates end up just repeating their slogans, because they simply don't have time for a complex answer. So you end up with each candidates slogan answer to a complex question. "And I believe Children are our future" is not an answer to a complex question.

And honestly... I just... Do you really truly and honestly believe that the debates change people's minds?

Can you list people who prior to the debate were going to vote Democrats, and after the debate decided to vote Republican? I can't. Or the reverse. I can't think of a single person who was going to vote Republican and decided to vote Democrat.

Where are these people?

People don't watch debates to be informed, or to determine who to vote for. They watch debates for zingers. All you have to do is look for the 'highlights' clips on youtube. Do you ever see a highlight clip, where it's about some brilliant informative argument on a given issue?

No. It's always the clips like "It's a good thing this man isn't in charge of the DOJ" "Yeah, because you'd be in jail".

Go back to the previous debates, and watch those highlight reels. It's always the zingers. Reagan "I will not make age an issue in this election. I will not exploit for political gain my opponents youth and inexperience".

Boy that was super informative. I have a completely new view on the minimum wage....

Of course not. Now that doesn't mean we can't be somewhat entertained by debates, but I don't see them as actually useful in the election process.

 

[candycorn]

I am for strengthening the electoral college as to where the President-Elect must get both the plurality of the nationwide popular vote as well as the majority of the electoral votes—the famous “270” that we hear about. Save for that one aspect of strengthening, I’m quite happy with the current formation of the electoral college as opposed to the direct election of the president through the national popular vote.

Here is why;

Whatever system we have must be good for every outcome. While not perfect, the current system ensures that at least a majority of the electors select the president. A national popular vote, in the year 2020, would do the same thing. However, ours is not a static electoral landscape. Does anyone remember all of those great democratic presidents from California? Yeah, neither do I. That’s because what is a solid blue state today used to be a pretty dependable red state. Presidents Nixon and Reagan both came from there; both republicans. The brick red-south used to be called the “solid south” for another reason; they supported democrats almost exclusively. So today’s reality must not be taken as being carved in stone.

Further, the two-party system that we currently have has not always been the case. In the future there may be serval parties that emerge dividing the vote into smaller percentages. Whereas the Electoral College has remedies for no one candidate getting 270 electoral votes, the national popular vote has only a provision for the candidate who gets the most votes winning whether it be 80% of the vote, 50% of the vote, or 12% of the vote if every other candidate gets 11.9% and less. As unsettling it is to contemplate the winner having been crowned when 88% chose someone else, it’s even more unsettling to consider that the proposed remedies—a nationwide runoff—would delay a president-elect being named for weeks. There is an intriguing remedy of “rank choice voting” where you have an instant run-off. It is explained here.



I don’t care much for the idea as it would elevate a candidate who didn’t get the most “first choice” votes to office based on being more voter’s second choice. But I could see some value in the concept.

One of the most frequent complaints about the electoral college is that candidates only campaign seriously if a handful of states that are considered to be contested. This is true. Here is a graphic from the National Popular Vote website that shows the campaign stops

View attachment 360418

What isn’t addressed by the graphic is that if an NPV was instituted, the candidates would focus almost solely on high population centers as opposed to toss-up states; thus substituting one criteria-based campaign strategy for another. I’ve heard some proponents of the NPV state that this is how it “should” be—high population centers having more sway than comparatively rural areas like Nevada and Colorado. I reject that because demographics, as I mentioned earlier, do change over time.


Lastly, let me close on what I mentioned earlier. In this day and age, there is no reason to ignore the national popular vote. In a democracy, you vote should matter and it should have some effect on the outcome of the election in which you’re voting. So that is why I’m for strengthening the electoral college by having the president-elect win both the plurality of the popular vote and the electoral vote majority. If they do not win both, the remedies of the 12th Amendment come into play; just as it would if no candidate gets 270 electoral votes four months from now. Given the most recent election saw the Blob win an electoral victory without winning a popular vote victory, I’m sure some will see this as me trying to throw up a hurdle to his oozing into office. I wish it were that easy. But no, I brought up the plan I had long before he won. From 2015:

Electoral College. Just why?

The remedy I proposed, in our history, would only have changed the winner (arguably) 4 times when the President didn’t get both the EC victory and the NPV victory. In the two most recent incarnations; Bush in 2000 and the Blob in 2016; in both cases the House would have almost certainly delivered the presidency to Bush and Trump since the GOP had majorities in both 2000 and 2016. So this is not me trying to re-write history.

There is plenty wrong with our system of electing Presidents. We need to make election day into an election week. We need to expand access to the ballot requiring states to offer no-cause absentee voting. We need to get the parties out of the business of running elections all together and let the county clerks and election officials run elections. We need to have third, fourth, and fifth parties on the debate stage next to the Democrats and Republicans so voters can draw distinctions between the different candidates who are running. But one thing that we have that works in all climates is the electoral college. I think it needs to be strengthened to make sure the President Elect is the voter’s choice. But it’s not bad the way it is.

As long as you have a requirement that the President must get a majority of the popular vote, then you are defeating the purpose, which is to have a system where the most popular states can't dictate to to states with smaller populations.

There absolutely must be a way for the president to be elected, without the need to have the majority of the public vote.

You can't have New York and California, making Wyoming and other sparsely populated states, utterly irrelevant to the government of the country. The total number of votes in the 2016 election roughly 120 Million.

The top 5 states have 120 Million people.

The populous states could turn this country into a dictatorship against the other 45 states, if we went to a popular vote required system.

We need to expand access to the ballot requiring states to offer no-cause absentee voting.

This is actually the very problem I was citing above. The whole reason this country exists, is because we setup a system where the Federal Government does not get to dictate to the states.

You don't get to dictate how other states works. Our union, is a union of separate states. One state should have no ability to dictate to the other state, how their voting system works.

Now if you want to support no-cause absentee voting in your state, knock yourself out. But to try and dictate how other states run their voting system, is exactly the type of tyrannical dictatorship our constitution was created to avoid.

We need to get the parties out of the business of running elections all together and let the county clerks and election officials run elections.

Funny how you say that directly after saying we need to require states operating how you dictate, and then claim you want to get political parties out of dictating how elections run.

Generally though, I support that. I don't know how you would do it, since it would require a political party, to make the changes in the system.

We need to have third, fourth, and fifth parties on the debate stage next to the Democrats and Republicans so voters can draw distinctions between the different candidates who are running.

I am not opposed to this, but generally it never happens the way you seem to think it should. In California they had multiple parties, and thus far it has always boiled down to Republicans and Democrats.

Reminds me of Ross Perot in 1992. Still ended up with Republicans and Democrats. I highly doubt that any amount of 3rd parties in the debates will ever make any real significant impact.

Additionally, the more people you have on stage at a debate, the result is fewer distinctions. The opposite of what you claim. Just saying this from personal experience, if you have 2 people on stage, they have enough time to explain why they are different from each other.

If you have 10 people on stage, they all end up with sound bites, that sound similar. The amount of time, does not magically change, simply because you have more people on stage.

So if you have a 2 hour debate, and you have 10 questions, that's 12 minutes a question, divided by 2 people. Now divide that 12 minutes by 10 people. What kind of answers do you think you are going to get in a 60 second response? They are all going to be so short, as to be uninformative. It's all going to be "What about terrorism?" "Yup bad." "Very bad" "Bad indeed".

It's all going to be crap answers. So then you say, we'll need 5 debates, so everyone can have a full 10 minutes to respond to each question, or something.

You think the American people are not going to get bored and tune out? Man, I'm getting bored just thinking about an entire week of debates from a dozen politicians on every single night. I'm not watching that.

Having more candidates from different parties on the debate stage is a bad thing?

Can be. Yes. Just out of curiosity, have you ever watched a debate with 5 or more candidates? I have. And it ends up being very shallow, and very parroting.

Most of the candidates end up just repeating their slogans, because they simply don't have time for a complex answer. So you end up with each candidates slogan answer to a complex question. "And I believe Children are our future" is not an answer to a complex question.

And honestly... I just... Do you really truly and honestly believe that the debates change people's minds?

Can you list people who prior to the debate were going to vote Democrats, and after the debate decided to vote Republican? I can't. Or the reverse. I can't think of a single person who was going to vote Republican and decided to vote Democrat.

Where are these people?

People don't watch debates to be informed, or to determine who to vote for. They watch debates for zingers. All you have to do is look for the 'highlights' clips on youtube. Do you ever see a highlight clip, where it's about some brilliant informative argument on a given issue?

No. It's always the clips like "It's a good thing this man isn't in charge of the DOJ" "Yeah, because you'd be in jail".

Go back to the previous debates, and watch those highlight reels. It's always the zingers. Reagan "I will not make age an issue in this election. I will not exploit for political gain my opponents youth and inexperience".

Boy that was super informative. I have a completely new view on the minimum wage....

Of course not. Now that doesn't mean we can't be somewhat entertained by debates, but I don't see them as actually useful in the election process.

Well feel free not to watch.

 

[Andylusion]

I am for strengthening the electoral college as to where the President-Elect must get both the plurality of the nationwide popular vote as well as the majority of the electoral votes—the famous “270” that we hear about. Save for that one aspect of strengthening, I’m quite happy with the current formation of the electoral college as opposed to the direct election of the president through the national popular vote.

Here is why;

Whatever system we have must be good for every outcome. While not perfect, the current system ensures that at least a majority of the electors select the president. A national popular vote, in the year 2020, would do the same thing. However, ours is not a static electoral landscape. Does anyone remember all of those great democratic presidents from California? Yeah, neither do I. That’s because what is a solid blue state today used to be a pretty dependable red state. Presidents Nixon and Reagan both came from there; both republicans. The brick red-south used to be called the “solid south” for another reason; they supported democrats almost exclusively. So today’s reality must not be taken as being carved in stone.

Further, the two-party system that we currently have has not always been the case. In the future there may be serval parties that emerge dividing the vote into smaller percentages. Whereas the Electoral College has remedies for no one candidate getting 270 electoral votes, the national popular vote has only a provision for the candidate who gets the most votes winning whether it be 80% of the vote, 50% of the vote, or 12% of the vote if every other candidate gets 11.9% and less. As unsettling it is to contemplate the winner having been crowned when 88% chose someone else, it’s even more unsettling to consider that the proposed remedies—a nationwide runoff—would delay a president-elect being named for weeks. There is an intriguing remedy of “rank choice voting” where you have an instant run-off. It is explained here.



I don’t care much for the idea as it would elevate a candidate who didn’t get the most “first choice” votes to office based on being more voter’s second choice. But I could see some value in the concept.

One of the most frequent complaints about the electoral college is that candidates only campaign seriously if a handful of states that are considered to be contested. This is true. Here is a graphic from the National Popular Vote website that shows the campaign stops

View attachment 360418

What isn’t addressed by the graphic is that if an NPV was instituted, the candidates would focus almost solely on high population centers as opposed to toss-up states; thus substituting one criteria-based campaign strategy for another. I’ve heard some proponents of the NPV state that this is how it “should” be—high population centers having more sway than comparatively rural areas like Nevada and Colorado. I reject that because demographics, as I mentioned earlier, do change over time.


Lastly, let me close on what I mentioned earlier. In this day and age, there is no reason to ignore the national popular vote. In a democracy, you vote should matter and it should have some effect on the outcome of the election in which you’re voting. So that is why I’m for strengthening the electoral college by having the president-elect win both the plurality of the popular vote and the electoral vote majority. If they do not win both, the remedies of the 12th Amendment come into play; just as it would if no candidate gets 270 electoral votes four months from now. Given the most recent election saw the Blob win an electoral victory without winning a popular vote victory, I’m sure some will see this as me trying to throw up a hurdle to his oozing into office. I wish it were that easy. But no, I brought up the plan I had long before he won. From 2015:

Electoral College. Just why?

The remedy I proposed, in our history, would only have changed the winner (arguably) 4 times when the President didn’t get both the EC victory and the NPV victory. In the two most recent incarnations; Bush in 2000 and the Blob in 2016; in both cases the House would have almost certainly delivered the presidency to Bush and Trump since the GOP had majorities in both 2000 and 2016. So this is not me trying to re-write history.

There is plenty wrong with our system of electing Presidents. We need to make election day into an election week. We need to expand access to the ballot requiring states to offer no-cause absentee voting. We need to get the parties out of the business of running elections all together and let the county clerks and election officials run elections. We need to have third, fourth, and fifth parties on the debate stage next to the Democrats and Republicans so voters can draw distinctions between the different candidates who are running. But one thing that we have that works in all climates is the electoral college. I think it needs to be strengthened to make sure the President Elect is the voter’s choice. But it’s not bad the way it is.

As long as you have a requirement that the President must get a majority of the popular vote, then you are defeating the purpose, which is to have a system where the most popular states can't dictate to to states with smaller populations.

There absolutely must be a way for the president to be elected, without the need to have the majority of the public vote.

You can't have New York and California, making Wyoming and other sparsely populated states, utterly irrelevant to the government of the country. The total number of votes in the 2016 election roughly 120 Million.

The top 5 states have 120 Million people.

The populous states could turn this country into a dictatorship against the other 45 states, if we went to a popular vote required system.

We need to expand access to the ballot requiring states to offer no-cause absentee voting.

This is actually the very problem I was citing above. The whole reason this country exists, is because we setup a system where the Federal Government does not get to dictate to the states.

You don't get to dictate how other states works. Our union, is a union of separate states. One state should have no ability to dictate to the other state, how their voting system works.

Now if you want to support no-cause absentee voting in your state, knock yourself out. But to try and dictate how other states run their voting system, is exactly the type of tyrannical dictatorship our constitution was created to avoid.

We need to get the parties out of the business of running elections all together and let the county clerks and election officials run elections.

Funny how you say that directly after saying we need to require states operating how you dictate, and then claim you want to get political parties out of dictating how elections run.

Generally though, I support that. I don't know how you would do it, since it would require a political party, to make the changes in the system.

We need to have third, fourth, and fifth parties on the debate stage next to the Democrats and Republicans so voters can draw distinctions between the different candidates who are running.

I am not opposed to this, but generally it never happens the way you seem to think it should. In California they had multiple parties, and thus far it has always boiled down to Republicans and Democrats.

Reminds me of Ross Perot in 1992. Still ended up with Republicans and Democrats. I highly doubt that any amount of 3rd parties in the debates will ever make any real significant impact.

Additionally, the more people you have on stage at a debate, the result is fewer distinctions. The opposite of what you claim. Just saying this from personal experience, if you have 2 people on stage, they have enough time to explain why they are different from each other.

If you have 10 people on stage, they all end up with sound bites, that sound similar. The amount of time, does not magically change, simply because you have more people on stage.

So if you have a 2 hour debate, and you have 10 questions, that's 12 minutes a question, divided by 2 people. Now divide that 12 minutes by 10 people. What kind of answers do you think you are going to get in a 60 second response? They are all going to be so short, as to be uninformative. It's all going to be "What about terrorism?" "Yup bad." "Very bad" "Bad indeed".

It's all going to be crap answers. So then you say, we'll need 5 debates, so everyone can have a full 10 minutes to respond to each question, or something.

You think the American people are not going to get bored and tune out? Man, I'm getting bored just thinking about an entire week of debates from a dozen politicians on every single night. I'm not watching that.

Having more candidates from different parties on the debate stage is a bad thing?

Can be. Yes. Just out of curiosity, have you ever watched a debate with 5 or more candidates? I have. And it ends up being very shallow, and very parroting.

Most of the candidates end up just repeating their slogans, because they simply don't have time for a complex answer. So you end up with each candidates slogan answer to a complex question. "And I believe Children are our future" is not an answer to a complex question.

And honestly... I just... Do you really truly and honestly believe that the debates change people's minds?

Can you list people who prior to the debate were going to vote Democrats, and after the debate decided to vote Republican? I can't. Or the reverse. I can't think of a single person who was going to vote Republican and decided to vote Democrat.

Where are these people?

People don't watch debates to be informed, or to determine who to vote for. They watch debates for zingers. All you have to do is look for the 'highlights' clips on youtube. Do you ever see a highlight clip, where it's about some brilliant informative argument on a given issue?

No. It's always the clips like "It's a good thing this man isn't in charge of the DOJ" "Yeah, because you'd be in jail".

Go back to the previous debates, and watch those highlight reels. It's always the zingers. Reagan "I will not make age an issue in this election. I will not exploit for political gain my opponents youth and inexperience".

Boy that was super informative. I have a completely new view on the minimum wage....

Of course not. Now that doesn't mean we can't be somewhat entertained by debates, but I don't see them as actually useful in the election process.

Well feel free not to watch.

I haven't watched a debate since before Bush Jr.

Can you think of a single debate where it made even the smallest difference in the actual election?