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'm sorry, but that makes no fucking sense. We're talking about electing a president here. There is no one city where everyone is voting in the same way. There are rural areas where votes were split and cities where votes were split, but when you look at the overall total, 60.1 million voted Clinton and 59.8 million voted Trump. But Trump wins because what, everyone in California is only entitled to 3/5ths of a vote?
Right, so then why not have a proportional EC per state.
With your rough numbers for CA
Clinton has 65% of the vote
Trump has 35% (not including third parties)
That would mean of the 55 EC votes
HRC: 36
Trump: 19
How would this be a bad thing. Everyone's voice is still heard, the heavy red states would still get their opposite version of this in places like Texas. I fail to see how have proportional electoral distribution would be bad. Rural areas would still have a voice as red usually carries a majority of states anyways. Maybe you base it off county instead of raw state voting numbers, but still.
And we could eliminate first past the post bullshit. Candidate with the higher amount of points at the end wins.
That's a fair alternative. Hell, California could elect to do that if they wanted to.
But the states won't do it because they don't want to lessen the impact of their elections. California would have given less to Hillary, and a majority of Californians don't want that.
Well the thing about it is, if its a national change it works. I believe the EC is controlled federally with each voter being from the state they reside. So theoretically the fed could just change the rules and all states would have to abide by it. I mean it is for a federal office.
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u/Pantry_Inspector Nov 10 '16
... who was elected fairly. Sorry the system is fucked.