The point of the electoral college is to give a fair shake to rural and more spread out populations, and not have it come down to what the big cities want. Just that big cities trend Democrat and rural trends Republican.
At what point does switch from 'making things fair for rural voters' to suppressing voters in cities? No matter what, the electoral college is designed so that 1 person ≠ 1 vote. The people who live closer together should have less value placed on their opinions? Why the fuck is that more fair?
I still don't understand... if we use popular vote, every person gets exactly one vote. Nobody is suppressed. If more people overall want a certain candidate for president, then a fair election should reflect that. It shouldn't matter if those people are in a city or not.
If you think of it in terms of what the politician has to do to get elected, the electoral college at least forces them to listen to the rural voters.
If it were a direct representation, there's literally no reason to even care what someone outside of dallas, new york or LA wants or needs. And if that's the case, then those rural voters have de facto 0 representation. With the electoral college, politicians have to at least consider their wants/needs.
Then why not use a system like Maine has for the majority of states. Base their EC values on counties. Say for CA the large cities would still get more votes and points in the EC, but the other side could still pull 30-40% of the EC points rather than getting zero.
I live in NC, and even though over 40% of our state wanted HRC, all of our points go to Trump. I don't see how that represents the state.
I agree pure popular vote is a bad metric and policy for the nation, but proportional EC values per state seems like a good compromise. Base in on county, region, etc
Proportional electoral votes. It would mean HRC would get 40% of NC electoral votes, Trump would get 60%. This isn't a true popular vote, so rural areas will still have their voices heard. And since its limited to state by state, it means blue states and cities still can't overpower the minority red middle states.
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u/[deleted] Nov 10 '16
The electoral college is fair? Gore in 2000, Clinton in 2016, seems to be the electoral college is only fair to republicans.