Best outcome would be to get rid of it. Fuck the electoral college.
What result is best? | |||
| Trump maintains lead and is voted in. | 99 | 54.40% | |
| Clinton gains lead and is voted in. | 37 | 20.33% | |
| Both candidates are below... | 46 | 25.27% | |
| Total: | 182 | ||
Best outcome would be to get rid of it. Fuck the electoral college.
| Shadow1980 said: Adjusting the number of electors to make things more proportional would require changing the number of seats in the House. Since each state gets two bonus EC votes, that creates a huge disparity in individual vote power between someone in a state like Wyoming or Vermont and someone in a state like New York or Texas. Currently, the House of Representatives is locked by law at 435 seats thanks to the Apportionment Act of 1911. Had the number of seats grew at a rate of 10% per post-census reapportionment, we'd be at over 1000 Representatives right now. There is nothing in the Constitution that says we have to have a fixed number of seats, though it does implicitly allow for doing such a thing. If we had at least twice as many House members as we do now, that would ease some of the disproportionality of the EC. For ease of math, say we had 870 House seats and every state had exactly twice the seats as what they have today. Add in two Senators per state, and you'd have 920 EC votes. California would have 108 EC votes while Wyoming would have 4. That would give California about 362k people per electoral vote, while Wyoming would have over 146k per EC vote. That would give Wyoming voters nearly 2-½ times the voting power as California voters, still very disproportionate, but nowhere near as disproportionate as the current disparity is over 3-½ times. To make things even more proportional, the House would have to swell even greater in size. Had the the Congressional Apportionment Amendment (the so-called "Article the First", the first of the original twelve amendments to the Constitution proposed) passed, we would have over 6400 Representatives in the House. The Capitol building would have needed some serious remodeling over the years, but it would close the gap a lot. But even with a whopping 6400 Representatives, which would give Wyoming about 14 EC votes and California about 782 EC votes, that would still give Wyoming voters about 21% more voting power than a California voter. That shows how much those two bonus votes each states gets for each Senator skews the balance of individual voting power. Best to just abandon the EC and move straight to a national popular vote, thus perfectly adhering to the "one person, one vote" rule. We are the only democratic nation with a full presidential system to select the president with an electoral college rather than a national popular vote, and there's probably a very good reason why nobody else uses the system. It's an affront to democracy. That might have been the intent, but the political realities of the 1780s, which are what got us the EC to being with, are not the same realities we face today. It's an archaic and unrepresentative system that should be abolished. And I spent way too much time writing that. I need to go make dinner and go to bed. I have to be up for work in 8 hours. |
I advocate for progressive change: split votes, proportional votes, then increasing votes proportionally. Bearing such significant changes in mind, I think we should decuple electors from from House seats. Let the legislative branch remain internally checked unto itself, but not at the expense of a misrepresentative executive branch.
TL;DR: you're preaching to the choir.
In almost every recount I can remember at least in my area the loser always looses ground with the recount. It happened with Gore when he did a recount in Florida because of the voting problems in the that state. The outcome was he lost ground to Bush. And even with lesser elections the senators who won the election still won after the recount. And with a lot of states using electronic voting I doubt there will be that much of a difference.
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NightDragon83 said: The electoral college was designed for this very purpose... to ensure that all states have a say in the election and that the largest population centers in the country (in today's case, NY and CA) don't control the outcome of every general election. |
Republicans can have their state offices and governors. Face the facts. The electoral college mainly benefits the Republicans. They say your vote counts but if your state goes against you then your vote doesn't count. Guess what? My vote has never counted and I refuse to vote again till it is gone.
| tokilamockingbrd said: good luck finding 70k votes to flip PA. Wiscy is close enough they could do something fishy to swing it. Michigan is 100% paper ballots so I have no idea why they would look into it since their reason was "Russian Hacks" |
Most paper ballot issues are raised around the counting machines, not the actual ballots themselves. There was an investigative report (on some news show) that showed how easy it is to hack the counters. With regard to the vote total, the Clinton campaign made a public statement that no election recount has ever switched anywhere near these amounts of votes.
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BlkPaladin said: In almost every recount I can remember at least in my area the loser always looses ground with the recount. It happened with Gore when he did a recount in Florida because of the voting problems in the that state. The outcome was he lost ground to Bush. And even with lesser elections the senators who won the election still won after the recount. And with a lot of states using electronic voting I doubt there will be that much of a difference. |
Are you sure about that because I remember it differently. The recounts kept getting Gore closer and then the Supreme Court stepped in and ordered a stop to it.
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pokoko said: Good luck to those hoping the Electoral College system is changed or abolished. The Republican party is in complete control of Congress and it's a system that works to their advantage. |
Yea the republicans know this and would never move to get rid of it. Only way is for democrats to make it part of their platform and move to abtain majorities in House, Senate and win the Presidency. That would be the only way it goes away.
The point of the electoral college is to avoid mob rule or a 'tyranny of the majority'. It shouldn't be abolished, but it should be reformed in some way.
sethnintendo said:
Are you sure about that because I remember it differently. The recounts kept getting Gore closer and then the Supreme Court stepped in and ordered a stop to it. |
You may be right about him getting closer but in the end it didn't change the electoral vote, so the point was mute.