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RE: End the Electoral College?
November 11, 2016 at 10:53 am
(November 11, 2016 at 10:08 am)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: Well, I suppose that in theory every political decision could be made by referendum. Is that a good thing?
That's irrelevant to the point we are discussing. The president is an elected representative for the whole country, therefore the entire country should have a fair and equal say in electing him/her. If one person has more of a vote than another, that's unfair, plain and simple.
Again on your point about cities, I just don't see it being backed up by facts. Look at a county map of Texas. Clinton won in all the major cities in Texas. Trump won in most of the rural areas. So Clinton won Texas right? No, she lost it by almost a million votes.
You need rural areas to win the presidency in a popular vote. You can't do it with just the cities.
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RE: End the Electoral College?
November 11, 2016 at 10:56 am
CGP Grey has an interesting take on it, IMO:
[youtube]7wC42HgLA4k[/youtube]
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
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RE: End the Electoral College?
November 11, 2016 at 11:37 am
(November 11, 2016 at 10:53 am)Tiberius Wrote: (November 11, 2016 at 10:08 am)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: Well, I suppose that in theory every political decision could be made by referendum. Is that a good thing?
That's irrelevant to the point we are discussing. The president is an elected representative for the whole country, therefore the entire country should have a fair and equal say in electing him/her. If one person has more of a vote than another, that's unfair, plain and simple.
Again on your point about cities, I just don't see it being backed up by facts. Look at a county map of Texas. Clinton won in all the major cities in Texas. Trump won in most of the rural areas. So Clinton won Texas right? No, she lost it by almost a million votes.
You need rural areas to win the presidency in a popular vote. You can't do it with just the cities.
States have the option to apportion their results according to the popular vote. Any State could do so but they don't. The dominant party of those States wants their party's candidate to get them all. Sure they want it on a national scale I.e. on other states but they won't do that for the people in their own state.
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RE: End the Electoral College?
November 11, 2016 at 4:51 pm
(November 11, 2016 at 10:53 am)Tiberius Wrote: You need rural areas to win the presidency in a popular vote. You can't do it with just the cities.
Except for Illinois perhaps. 
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RE: End the Electoral College?
November 11, 2016 at 5:09 pm
(November 11, 2016 at 11:37 am)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: States have the option to apportion their results according to the popular vote. Any State could do so but they don't. The dominant party of those States wants their party's candidate to get them all. Sure they want it on a national scale I.e. on other states but they won't do that for the people in their own state.
Well a few do, for instance Maine and I believe Nebraska do to some extent.
However apportioning electoral votes within the states themselves won't solve the problem either, because for some states it's easier to match the popular vote than in others.
Take the recent results, where Clinton won 48% of the vote, and Trump won 47%. For simplicities sake, let's assume that the popular vote is the same in every state.
In the 8 states (Alaska, Delaware, District of Columbia*, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, Wyoming) that only have 3 electoral college votes, dividing them up between the candidates to most closely match the popular vote would be unfair to Trump. He would get 1 vote, but Clinton would get the remaining two (66.6% of the votes) simply because as the winner of the popular vote, she has to get more than Trump.
In states with 4 electoral college votes, the vote may be split either 2 per candidate, or if the rules say the winner of the popular vote has to win more electoral college votes, it would be even more unfair for Trump, as Clinton would get 3 votes, and Trump would only get 1.
As the number of electoral college votes increases, and assuming that "ties" are allowed (e.g. states can divide their electoral votes equally between the candidates), then the vote share would get fairer. For example, in California, Clinton would get 28 votes, and Trump would get 27.
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RE: End the Electoral College?
November 11, 2016 at 5:53 pm
(November 11, 2016 at 4:51 pm)Cato Wrote: (November 11, 2016 at 10:53 am)Tiberius Wrote: You need rural areas to win the presidency in a popular vote. You can't do it with just the cities.
Except for Illinois perhaps. You pretty much have that right! In Chicago the voter ID laws are very strict. I had to show my death certificate.
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RE: End the Electoral College?
November 11, 2016 at 8:26 pm
(November 11, 2016 at 10:56 am)Tonus Wrote: CGP Grey has an interesting take on it, IMO:
[youtube]7wC42HgLA4k[/youtube]
And a couple of hours after I link to that video, he updates it with a new one that undermines it a bit. 
[youtube]G3wLQz-LgrM[/youtube]
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
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RE: End the Electoral College?
November 11, 2016 at 10:24 pm
I don't think he undermined it. He actually brought up a great argument that the electoral college doesn't mean small states will always have a say. You can win the electoral college by just winning a small number of big states.
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RE: End the Electoral College?
November 12, 2016 at 2:19 am
I don't think he undermined it entirely, but one of his premises was that focusing on just the largest population centers was a bad idea. But a slight shift in how we define those areas shows that it might be possible to reach a majority of voters by visiting only a relatively small number of places.
I think his overall point has merit. I also think that if we did away with the EC, we would still wind up with areas that were reliably blue or red, and that there would still be battleground states that would get the majority of attention. I no longer think that abolishing it would be a bad option. I think it's almost impossible for that to happen, though.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
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RE: End the Electoral College?
November 14, 2016 at 2:48 pm
(This post was last modified: November 14, 2016 at 2:51 pm by Neo-Scholastic.)
Changing the constitution is still on the table. Republicans are one state away from having 3/4. Be careful what you wish for. ;-)
Either way, I think it is important to remember that what goes around comes around. The people who were fine with Obama using executive orders to go around Congress should be concerned about Trump having the same power. Or bemoaning the filibuster when it thwarts the Democrat majority...until Republican take the Senate. I truly believe that the losers always want to change the rules and the winners want things to stay the same....until the situation is reversed.
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