The Trump Presidency

[Doc Holliday]

The Electorial College is the socialism of votes. You take markets with great population wealth and redistribute it to lower population centers. Without it, the rural areas are ignored and there is no incentive to live there.

The left should use this to relate to the right with how they feel about paying higher taxes for higher income.

[Joust Williams]

Well yeah. Like I said before, two of the last three Rep wins have been by losing the popular vote. So instead of 16 years of Dem rule and 4 years of Rep, it's been 8 and 12, which is preposterous.

My worry is that soon they'll start voting against the grain and just vote R individually, even if the state votes D.

America is so backwards.

[gameoverDude]

I think the electoral collage is fine as it is. It gives each state more or less an equal place on the voting table. Popular voting would just make some states like CA control election results all the time and it wouldn't really be that fair. Generally this last election was a total joke to me.

Sorry, I couldn't agree less. Given its being the national figure, the popular vote should count. The EC needs its role changed. This "Winner takes whole state's electoral votes, 270 to win" business should be nixed.

I'm sure not every single voter in California votes blue, & I doubt every single Texan voter goes red. These states are generally gimmes for the respective party. Having a state's winner take all its electoral votes with nothing for 2nd place means that the losers' votes become worth nada. It wouldn't be so bad if the EV were split by percentage. The winner would still come out on top for the state, but the loser would have something to show for it.

[Joust Williams]

Or you could just use the popular vote...

[James]

The thing about a democracy is that the people living in it are supposed to be equal in terms of their voting power. Not the states or some other social construct. If Wisconsin needs to be equal to California then it's time to just redraw the state lines rather than tell CA they're worth X% of a WI voter. You want to keep the electoral college? Fine, I've no problem with that. But in its current status it's busted against the people it's supposed to serve, and just accepting it rather than figuring out how to make it work again is lazy bullshit. Fuck anyone who falls back on "this is how it's been so this is how it will be". Which sounds a hell of a lot like "Fuck Republicans".

[Dunlap]

It’s a republic, and individuals don’t have representation in the federal government. Popular vote has nothing to do with the way it’s set up.

[Doc Holliday]

So we can go to a flat tax where everyone pays 13%?

[Josh]

No.

[Drewbacca]

You like not having your vote mean anything? Cool.

I'd be surprised to see you change your mind on this even if there wasn't an electoral college.

The electoral college is the only thing that normalizes representation across states. I know why that irks someone (Joust would sell his first born to not lose to his adversaries) but I don't see a good outcome if it were to be removed since one of the main points is it forces you to work together as a union—you might as well just fracture the country along urban centres and move on from the USA without it.

[Frogacuda]

I think the electoral collage is fine as it is. It gives each state more or less an equal place on the voting table. Popular voting would just make some states like CA control election results all the time and it wouldn't really be that fair.

Have you thought this through or are you just repeating a talking point? Breaking states into solid blocks disenfranchises the voting minorities in any state that doesn't happen to have a close vote. It isn't a system to keep large states in check; it was never meant as that and doesn't accomplish it. It also doesn't really favor one party or another inherently, it's kind of beholden to the winds of population shift and has historically favored the urban centers as much as it has the rural.

The electoral college is the only thing that normalizes representation across states.

You're confusing the electoral college and the Senate dude. That is not how the electoral college works at all.

The electoral college assigns delegates based on population. Not all states get an equal number. The problem is that most states assign their delegates as a single bloc awarded to the winner of that state, essentially nullifying the minority vote in that state. This essentially exaggerates the influence of contested states, but it doesn't balance anything. The states that happen to be contested aren't by design, it's just where the boundaries of the states happen to fall based on population trends. It's meaningless.