CDZ I am for the Electoral College

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.


That's the first question, but the second is whether the proposed improvement is actually better.

At least you're not just blindly advocating the PV, but I like the EV the way it is. The founders got it right


I think it's a good idea to have at least a plurality of people who cast ballots decide. Just as they do for every other office in the nation. I understand that the national demographics would quickly devolve into large metropolitan areas deciding the President so I want both the EC and the plurality of the PV. If you can't get both (most times the President Elect does)...have the House decide the matter.
 
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.

Disagree. The whole point of the EC was to keep one or two heavily populated areas from RULING the rest of us.


Having 3 or 4 areas is a lot better than having 2 areas?
 
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.


Yet the only times these "improvements" are brought up is when your party loses. Go figure.

.

Yep. And CandyCorn wrote a post in 2012 crowing about Obama's electoral college victory over Romney eschewing the popular vote. I called her on that before

Obama won the popular vote as well. Please reference this post you're suggesting.
 
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.


Yet the only times these "improvements" are brought up is when your party loses. Go figure.

.

Yep. And CandyCorn wrote posts about 2012 crowing about Obama's electoral college victory over Romney eschewing the popular vote. I called her on that before. Just Google "332-206" for CandyCorn and you'll see these quotes and more






No; 332-206 is and we use the Electoral college. Losers talk about percentages of popular vote.

Obama also won almost every state that was up for grabs. In short, he kicked Romney's ass.


332-206..

You chose to engage...you don't have anyone IRL that you can talk to...poor baby

:dance:



332-206 courtesy of the women's vote.


:dance:
:dance: :lol: :dance:
:dance: :lol: :dance: :lol: :dance:

Enjoy your single digit approval rate...you've earned it.

Still applauding Al Queda you piece of shit?
Ahh...there it is.

Not sure what your point is. When you have a lesser percentage of the popular vote than the person who won....you're a loser.
 
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.

That's the first question, but the second is whether the proposed improvement is actually better.

At least you're not just blindly advocating the PV, but I like the EV the way it is. The founders got it right

I think it's a good idea to have at least a plurality of people who cast ballots decide. Just as they do for every other office in the nation. I understand that the national demographics would quickly devolve into large metropolitan areas deciding the President so I want both the EC and the plurality of the PV. If you can't get both (most times the President Elect does)...have the House decide the matter.

It's ironic you're arguing that the EV matters, but then you're arguing we should soften the PV even more and make it a plurality instead of a majority.

And think about when you say the House should decide. The House is like the ... EV. Each district picks a representative who has one vote regardless of the percentage of the vote they got. Again, like the EV.

You seem to just be saying here's another way to do it, you don't really have an argument why it's better.

I realize we no longer follow the Constitution, but it was written to be a thin layer over State governments. By arguing for a more direct election, you're arguing to turn it more into a Frankenstein monster. At some point if you don't want the Constitution, just argue to rewrite it rather than continue to bastardize what it was meant to say. I still believe the States should be MORE powerful than the Federal government. That's why I continue to support the EV.

The United States has 10 times the population as Canada. Do you think we should have ten times the votes in the general assembly? Why or why not?
 
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.


Yet the only times these "improvements" are brought up is when your party loses. Go figure.

.

Yep. And CandyCorn wrote a post in 2012 crowing about Obama's electoral college victory over Romney eschewing the popular vote. I called her on that before

Obama won the popular vote as well. Please reference this post you're suggesting.

I assume you read this first before the posts where I provided three quotes and told people how to find more.

The point wasn't that Obama won both, it's that you were ignoring the popular vote and crowing about his EV vote.

Leftists have a way of changing your entire way of thinking when you lose and you retroactively think you always believed your new belief. That's all I'm saying. Eight years ago, you were firmly behind the EV as it is.

Just like

- Democrats said in 1992 of course HW would not get a SCOTUS pick in an election year where the Senate was a different party than the President, then you retroactively changed your views after Gorsuch.

- Democrats supported Iraq before they opposed it. Gore said at the time of the invasion that HW had no UN mandate to topple Hussein, then later said he was angry HW hadn't toppled Hussein when he had the chance

- You suddenly found filibustering judges under W which never existed before. Then you removed filibustering judges under Obama. Same with administration nominees.

It's just how leftists roll
 
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Ahh...there it is.

Not sure what your point is. When you have a lesser percentage of the popular vote than the person who won....you're a loser.

The popular vote isn't a thing. You just informally added the State votes together. It's like adding the scores of two football teams games at the end of the season and declaring the winner based on who has more points when every game was a different game. Here's an interesting link.


Have you been to the Hillary White House for a tour yet?

Also, you know ZERO about statistics and data collection. You can't go back and re-tabulate data for a different purpose than it was originally collected and believe it would come out the same.

There were for example tens of millions of Republicans in California who had zero incentive under our system to vote who would have had lots of reasons to vote if the vote were popular.

You SERIOUSLY didn't know that? You thought that if the rules were different, everyone knew that, the candidates campaigned differently, the vote would turn out the same????? Really?????? You can't be serious, that's just massively ignorant to think that
 
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 XXXX 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 XXXXXX 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 XXXX 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.

There is a lot to like about what you say. When it comes to the Electoral college, I have always been pretty conservative, but the more I think about it- the less sense it makes.
Consider the Republican voter in California- he or she knows her vote for President is essentially meaningless. That conservative farmer from Fresno? His vote won't be counted in any meaningful way. Welcome to the winner take all states- and why would any state change that willingly? The electoral college effectively disenfranchises the minority political party in a state.
And of course my vote in California is weighted less than a voter in Alaska- because of how Electoral votes are calculated- a vote of a person in a less populated state is worth more than a vote of a person from a more populated state.

And then we get into the perenial argument about 'faithless electors'- you know those- the Electoral vote casters who don't vote for the candidate who they were supposed to vote for.

I can't think of any reason why we just don't have a flat out vote for President- like we do for every other office in America. Then the vote of the Republican farmer in Fresno would count as much as the Democrat farmer in Mississippi.
 
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 XXXX 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 XXXXXX 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 XXXX 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.

There is a lot to like about what you say. When it comes to the Electoral college, I have always been pretty conservative, but the more I think about it- the less sense it makes.
Consider the Republican voter in California- he or she knows her vote for President is essentially meaningless. That conservative farmer from Fresno? His vote won't be counted in any meaningful way. Welcome to the winner take all states- and why would any state change that willingly? The electoral college effectively disenfranchises the minority political party in a state.
And of course my vote in California is weighted less than a voter in Alaska- because of how Electoral votes are calculated- a vote of a person in a less populated state is worth more than a vote of a person from a more populated state.

And then we get into the perenial argument about 'faithless electors'- you know those- the Electoral vote casters who don't vote for the candidate who they were supposed to vote for.

I can't think of any reason why we just don't have a flat out vote for President- like we do for every other office in America. Then the vote of the Republican farmer in Fresno would count as much as the Democrat farmer in Mississippi.


Two things:

The vote of the farmer in Fresno and the farmer in Mississippi will be as meaningless as the 10,000 voters you can reach with an ad buy in South Central LA. When a candidate doesn't have to speak to the concerns of farmers, they will eventually (perhaps over the span of several presidencies) lose any traction with elected officials. What promise would you rather make as a candidate? Farm subsidies to reach perhaps a few hundred farmers or high speed rail that will reach thousands of urban voters? I think the answer is clear.

The second thing is that the voter in Fresno in 1980 and in 1984 had his votes counted if he voted for Reagan. Today's reality isn't tomorrow's reality.

Which is why I sponsor having to get both the majority of the EV as well as the plurality of the popular vote. Nobody on the right will believe this and I doubt few on the left will but this stance has nothing to do with politics. It has to do with right and wrong. The direct popular vote should have some bearing on who gets into the White House as it does for the other 534 elected officials who are in the Federal government.
 

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