What do you think would be the best outcome for the US Electoral College?

[AsGryffynn]

Shadow1980 said:

Aura7541 said:

Minority opinions need to be protected and protection of those positions does not equate to tyranny of the minority.

You don't "protect" minority opinions by giving voters in Wyoming and Vermont four times the voting power of voters in California and Texas. You don't do so by allowing the loser of the popular vote to win. The Constitution already does a good job of protecting unpopular opinions through the First and Fourteenth amendments. The former prohibits the federal government from baning speech simply because it might express an unpopular opinion. The latter banned state and local governments from infringing on the First Amendment. The protections to our rights provided for in the Constitution is what prevents majority rule from becoming tyranny of the majority. But equal protection under the law and enshrining certain rights does not entail artificially inflating the voting power of certain demographics.

The electoral college forces candidates to listen and appeal to different demographics of the US.

No, it forces candidates to appeal to the narrow slice of the electorate that are swing voters, and even then only in the dozen or so states that are competitive. And that's not even what the Founders had in mind. They left it to the states to decide how electoral votes would be allocated, and in 1792 only Pennsylvania and Maryland had a popular vote to choose electors, and even then only property-owning white males could vote. In my home state of South Carolina, electors were not chosen by popular vote in the state until during Reconstruction. Every other state had done so by 1836. But in those early elections, presidential candidates didn't even have to appeal to that many people, just to a few state legislators.

If the US was run by a direct democracy, those candidates would only campaign in California, New York City, Philadelphia, and *insert any other major city*. The needs of certain demographics, especially those from rural areas, will be kicked to the curb because those people will just be seen as mere scraps.

See my response to outlawauron below.

TL;DR - In a constitutional republic, both the majority and minority opinions can be addressed. In a direct democracy, only the majority opinion will be addressed. The president needs to represent the people, not the majority.

"Direct democracy" is when the people as a whole, rather than elected representatives, propose and vote on the laws. What we're talking about is still representative democracy, but focused on how one of our elected officials, the head of the Executive Branch, is selected. Some of us want the President to be selected like every Representative, Senator, and Governor is: by straight-up popular vote.

 

outlawauron said:

False. With 5 metropolitan areas, you can effectively win the popular vote. You can completely ignore the rest of the country and focus on LA, NY, Chicago, Philly, and DAL/HOU. With that, there are 60 million people in those areas alone. Why would any politician ever visit Iowa, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, or Colorado again? They and everyone living there would be reduced to irrelevance.

The idea that completely open democracy would give everyone a voice is a farce. Electoral college was created so that the little guy (i.e. everything between the East and West coasts) couldn't be completely ignored. It attachs value to areas that people wouldn't care about otherwise.

To address this point made by both you guys, I don't think you quite understand how the math works here. Going by 2012 population estimates, the five largest metro areas in the U.S. (NYC, LA, Chicago, DC, and San Fran) do indeed account for a bit over 70 million people. But that is only about 22.5% of the population. While due to variations in things turnout and percentage of non-citizen population (non-citizens cannot vote in federal elections) the actual percentage of the electorate hailing from those five metro areas may be slightly more or less than 22.5%. But in any case, we're talking about less than a quarter of the population. I don't know how you can rationalize beliving so, but there is simply no way in hell any candidate can win by simply focusing on a few large metro areas and ignoring the rest of the population.

First off, those metro areas are not ideological/partisan monoliths. 16 of the 25 counties that are part of the NYC metro area voted for Trump. I haven't taken the time to add all 25 of those counties' votes up, but suffice it to say that there's a lot of Republicans in the suburbs and outlying areas. But let's say the Democrat averages two-thirds of the vote in the five biggest metro areas. Two-thirds of 22.5% is only 15%. There is absolutely zero chance a Democrat could win with only 15% of the electorate.

Even if you go to the top 40 metro areas, which total a bit over half the electorate, the most a candidate is likely to receive is about a third of the popular vote. And even if they got 60% of all voters not classified as rural, they're still not quite at the 50% mark. In a close election, the nearly 20% of the population that is rural could be a valuable demographic for the candidates to try to go after.

In a national popular vote system, every vote counts. A candidate cannot afford to neglect any part of the country. Small states would still matter. Rural voters would still matter. In fact, they'd matter even more. It's not like the current system where deep red and deep blue states are taken for granted, with Republicans in deep blue states and Democrats in deep red states effectively not counting for much of anything, and the candidates instead focusing on tipping maybe at most about 5-10% of the electorate in a dozen swing states. If the states' geographical areas were determined by how much attention they got in an election, here's what America would have looked like in 2012:

It wouldn't have looked much different in this past election.

The idea that a few big cites, or just California and New York, could tip the entire election simply doesn't hold water.

*Rolls eyes*

Aura7541 said:

@Shadow. I'm just going to keep this as concisely, as possible.

Not to say you're wrong on voters in Wyoming and Vermont having 4x the voting power than those in Cali or Texas, but I would like to know how you came to that conclusion. A peer-reviewed study perhaps? Thanks. I think you make some good points. However, you have to take into account the different demographics of each state and those demographics are not equally distributed. A direct democracy will give certain minority opinions the shaft because the representation will not be there. You make good points on the protection of minority opinions from government oppression, but what about the outreach?

The thesis of your second paragraph is flawed in the implication that swing voters are monolithic. The swing voter can represent a variety of demographics and that plays an important role. The voters in the swing states tend to change in opinion more often than those in solid blue/red states which leads to my next point: the number of solid Democrat and solid Republican voters aren't equal. A direct democracy would work if distribution of Democrat, Republican, and unaffiliated voters were evenly distributed. However, such an ideal situation is impossible.

For your rebuttal on my third point, are you looking a population or voterbase? I'm asking this question because those two things are very different from each other. Also, there are significantly more than just five major cities in the US. You left out Philadelphia, Baltimore, Atlanta, Boston, Seattle, Denver, Portland, so forth and so forth. You make a good point on that urban voters aren't a monolith, but I think we can both agree that in general, urban voters tend to lean towards the left.

Anyways, I greatly appreciate your response. Thank you for approaching in a far more mature manner than... eh, I'll just leave it there

AsGryffynn said:

You literally trashed all Latinos and Blacks in the US. You do realize they are minorities right? This system wasn't conceived for no good reason. Also, more Latinos voted for Trump than they did for Mitt Romney (for one, Trump won Florida's popular vote). The only reason Hillary has an advantage was because of bloody California. Considering California works as if they were their own country, thinking they should decide the election might be the most ridiculous, over the top statement I've ever heard. 

Also, the majority wasn't always better. The majority of people in Germany liked Hitler at the time, look how that panned out... 

If I wanted to tell you how it works, well, things might only be fair if you tell 33 percent of the American urban population to leave the country. Then we'd have an equal proportion of blue and red voters, then whoever yields loses. Otherwise, as I said, there's no reason for the GOP to exist. Trump did win the popular vote in MOST states. It only happens there are a handful whose population has the weight of dozens of states and renders this win pointless. Californians shouldn't decide for the rest of Americans who don't have the advantages they have. 

The special ones shouldn't call the shots, but people from across the country should have their say on who rules. If most of the country's states, rather than the people, choose their leader, you know most of the country will be represented, rather than a state with overcrowding issues. 

By the way, Trump was aware of this. He campaigned with the electoral college in mind, not for the popular vote. The fact he dyed blue states red alone seems like a hint he did pack more firepower than Hillary did, but not in the "fortress states" of Hillary's firewall. 

Here's a more concise version of your first paragraph

Sargon's Law - Whenever an ideologue makes a character judgement about someone they are debating with, that character judgement is usually true about themselves.

Here's a fact for you... This wasn't a judgment I passed on you. The law's invalidated by this very limitation...