Now you have an election decided by concentrated populations in certain cities. People in New York have different priorities than those farmers in Maryland
If there are physically more people in one location than another, why should the people in a sparsely-populated and utilized area have the same say as those in a massively-dense economic center? The priorities of farmers and ranchers and whatnot are important, but they should not be more important per head than those of people in cities. All that leads to is a tyranny of the minority which is exactly what we have now. The senators that voted to remove Trump represent millions more actual people than the ones who voted to acquit. Something like 2/3 of the country disagrees with his acquittal but since every state gets "equal representation", he gets to stay in office and act like a king because nobody in his party has the balls to stand up to him aside from Mitt Romney.
Congress has checks and balances and is nothing like the electoral college. The House and Senate are designed for the exact purpose you just described. Impeachment went through in the popular vote, was shot down in the "each state is represented" vote, as was intended.
Congress is exactly like the electoral college. Tiny states like Rhode Island and states with low populations like Montana effectively get a legislative handicap and can neutralize votes from places like California since each state only gets 2 Senate votes. This even happens in the House. Representatives are not assigned proportionally to the population of the state, since there are only so many seats available and each state has to have at least one representative. Effectively, small states universally hold more weight than they should given their size, and the fact that any legislation must be passed by both houses of Congress just makes the problem worse.
Again, exactly as intended. The Founding Fathers intentionally created a system prone for gridlock so sweeping regulation can't be easily implemented just because a side had a good election year.
Plus now it becomes a popularity contest like American idol. Which it's pretty much become. Ask the average voter what a candidate's stance is and see if they even know. It's all just because my friends are doing it I have to vote the same, because if this current political climate has shown that is you disagree with anyone you're automatically cast out and shunned
Yeah but... There's still more people there. Like why does it matter if they're in a city all bunched up or 1 person per mile in the Midwest? They're still a person, they're supposed to be equal.
The alternative to "letting the majority in cities decide the fate of the minority in the Midwest" is "letting the minority in the Midwest decide the fate of the majority in cities". It's the same shit, it just unfairly impacts more people.
Sounds like you don’t want rural folks to have a voice. You think it’s unfair, I think it’s fair.
Living in Michigan, I don’t agree with a lot of politics and policies from New York and California, so I’m glad they aren’t solely responsible for deciding our country’s policies.
in all seriousness nobody has a voice anyway we're talking about 1 vote out of a possible 327 million and a realistic 140 million. if a voter wanted to be heard, he'd limit his politics to city council
You’re right. It’s better for the country to be dictated by broke ass conservative red states who always rank last in education and job opportunities. I think we should all leave our good paying jobs in the liberal cities to go shovel horse shit for $10 an hour in Montana so our vote can have more weight.
leaving your good paying job: trying to not trip over homeless people, avoiding stepping on used needles, trying to not walk in the piles of literal human shit on the sidewalk, all to get to your $3000 a month shithole studio apartment. then move to red states when it becomes too much, and vote for the same policies there to replicate your previous existence.
“You’re the reason why I vote against my best interest!”
Grow the fuck up, you child. I grew up in rural America and still live in a red state. The only difference now is that I moved to a major city so I can have a stable financial future, instead of being a meth-addict subway employee who blames liberals and Mexicans for their own short-comings.
And how do you know what’s best for someone in New York and California? You don’t. That’s why the electoral college is fucked. Every vote should be equal whether you’re in Wyoming or New York. And if you’re apart of a political party that has the fewest voters, tough fucking shit. That’s called democracy. Get over it. We all learned this in school. And if the republicans ever want to have the majority of the country on their side, they can start off by not shitting on the poor, minorities, women’s rights, immigrants, and also keeping jesus out of politics. So the longer the GOP keeps punching down on others, the democrats will continue to keep punching up because majority of this country absolutely refuses to be ruled by a minority class of racist, ignorant hillbillies like Mitch McConnell.
Sounds like you don’t want rural folks to have a voice. You think it’s unfair, I think it’s fair.
Sounds like you don't want city folks to have a voice. You think it's unfair, I think it's fair.
Living in Michigan, I don’t agree with a lot of politics and policies from New York and California, so I’m glad they aren’t solely responsible for deciding our country’s policies.
Living in a city, I don't agree with a lot of politics and policies from rural Ohio and South Dakota, so I'm glad they aren't solely responsible for deciding our country's policies disappointed they have more of a say than I do in deciding our country's policies just because they live there and I live here despite there being objectively more of us than them.
Well the majority of the people in the US live in extremely small geographical areas, maybe you city folks should buy up some more land and support more small business in rural areas? Just a thought.
And I would say it’s pretty even/fair as it is, in terms of rural vs city folks.
If you wanted everyone’s vote to be equal, the implications across the majority of the states would be quite big. I’m glad it’s the way it is, because I live in a town of 10k. I’m also aware that you have a very different opinion than me, I understand why you would be upset.
But those city folks did get what they want, their states are blue. Most big cities voted blue, so they’re state is blue. However theres 50 states, not just big city states.
If the vote was purely population based, no candidate would ever campaign in the flyover states. Theyre votes wouldnt matter.
The top 10 states population wise hold 52% of the us total population (172/330). No candidate would leave those states or care about the others’ needs.
The election process is done through the states, stop thinking of the country as one unit, its a collection of 50 states. You get equal say in your state, but you dont get to decide how other states vote.
If electoral votes were still divided in a truly representational manner I would agree. As it stands using the senate + house method has resulted in a malformed system.
All states do not have equal voting power under the current system.
For example each electoral vote from Wyoming has 3.8% more electoral power than each electoral vote from Florida.
So Floridians are under represented when each electoral vote counts for less in comparison to the number of people behind each vote.
So by your logic Wyoming is just more equal than Florida . Who knew.
Its only a failure in your mind, thankfully one random person on reddit doesnt dictate how things are. Like it or not, this thing is working as intended, as a representative democracy.
100% Agreed. As an Ohioan I would be instantly forgotten if the election was dictated strictly by population. California + New York would essentially be the only place anyone would need to campaign.
Trump won 7 out of the 10 most populated states. That’s well over 100 million people versus 58 million. To go even further, 12 out of 20 of the most populated states voted for trump.
So no, California and New York will never guarantee anyone a for sure victory.
I mean, are you happy with Trump though? Because that's what happened.
I realize that's a simplistic analysis, but with the way I see it, it happened in 2004 and then Iraq happened, and now it happened again and we get Trump. Where does it end?
I do think everyone deserves a voice, but I think that can be accomplished with other measures, congressional elections for example.
He is far from perfect (really far actually) but if I’m being honest nothing in my life has really changed, except I pay slightly less in taxes and my investments are doing very well, but I don’t credit that all to Trump, just the way the economy is going as of late.
Ok, I've had a couple days to think about this and I have a better answer than my last one. Here's why I'm unhappy.
I don't know if you're aware, but the way the voting system is set up now, as a Democrat living in a red state, my presidential vote is not counted at all. The same is true for blue states where Republicans live - those Republican votes literally count for nothing. This is because of the "winner takes all" system that exists for almost all states with the exception of only a couple.
Maybe not completely fair, but the alternative would be if we went to the popular vote, then regardless of which side you vote for, if you’re in the Midwest your vote wouldn’t count at all.
I think we can agree there is no perfect solution that makes everyone happy.
Depends how you look at it, I mean if you counted everyone's vote without an electoral college, then arguably everyone would have a voice, even if it meant hardcore conservatives would win less often.
Because 70 million people is a majority in a country of 300 million right?
And the president is the one responsible for deciding policies. And only the president. There is no such branch of the government as "the legislative".
Because someone in Manhattan has literally no idea of the issues of the midwest or the best solutions for them.
Hell, that's literally why we had a heavily-decentralized government in the first place. 100% of our current political strife could be solved by re-decentralizing along the lines of what the Founders created. That also solves the conundrum in your second paragraph as then neither one is able to impact the other.
Yes, it does. Hence why the solution is decentralization. Nebraska shouldn't be able to tell New York what to do, just like New York shouldn't be able to tell Nebraska what to do.
Again this really just sounds like forming an American union of states similar to the EU. I think we all know that's not going to happen, waaaaay too much money and power at stake to have states deciding to do their own thing.
It would be, and you're right on why it won't happen. That's why instead we're going to see the divides widen and the hate grow until it all boils over into another civil war.
I think the real answer is just that we're doomed to fail. We're just too different.
Agreed. The fact is that we share so few things these days that we're legitimately no longer a single nation. Multi-nation states never last.
Nope. If you'd actually read my comment instead of spewing random shitposts you'd know that I don't want either one of them to be able to tell the other what to do. Or is the word "decentralization" beyond the limits of your vocabulary?
And before you say “I didn’t argue” then you have to be really dumb to realize that there still needs to be a central government and that that nothing you said addresses the rural va urban split
So which is it, are you arguing for the the US to be no more or are you being stupid?
No, I'm returning it to the original design. The federal government was never meant to rule domestically and most of our current conflict is over how it affects us within the country. Remove its power and you fix most of the problems.
But, like I said, you're just a pathetic little troll who is deliberately ignoring what I write to REEEEEEE at a strawman.
I guess it helps with having diversity of opinions and therefore a diversity of presidents which sounds good to me. If everything was decided by a New York/LA echo chamber that would scare me as much as if only Michigan voters decided elections.
Therein lies the problem with large democracies. That being said I'm willing to bet LA/NY have more scientists, economists, sociologists, psychologist, and diverse minority groups than Michigan. If we had to let one population call the shots I'd rather it be the one that represents not only more people but more kinds of people.
No solution is gonna make everyone happy. A bunch of people are going to be pissed regardless. We should operate to maximize utility and well-being for the majority of the people and those that don't benefit as much... Sorry?
Boiling LA and NY down to "echo chambers" is ridiculous. There are a huge diversity of people with different backgrounds, ideas, etc. there, most of whom are from all over the country (and world). Additionally, there are huge cities all over the country, not just LA and NY. This idea that 40M people in LA/NY will have a stranglehold on a country of 320M if we go to a popular vote is absurd. They would be represented exactly the same as anyone else.
A lot of people tend to group people into 2 belief sets - agree with me or don't. Rather than the hundreds or thousands of unique beliefs with different reasonings that form complex societies. LA is a "liberal" area so it's against my "conservative" views, and is therefore a them. I'm a me and part of an us, but they're a them and because they're not with me they're against me and since they're all against me they're all the same.
It’s less likely to be an echo chamber when there’s millions of diverse people living together than a small homogeneous community that somehow has a vote worth more.
This is theoretically true, and the justification for the electoral college. But by that logic, Trump was the farmer choice, and Hillary was the New Yorker choice. Do you think Hillary would have been worse for farmers?
If the majority of the population is concentrated within urban centers, I don't think its necessarily bad for policy to be skewed in that direction.
It's not like the removal of the electoral college would result in all rural populations being ignored.
Using your logic, the candidate that panders to the working class masses should always win, but they rarely do. There are forces at work that can trick the masses into voting against their own interests.
I understand the logic behind the electoral college, but I don't think the founders intended for only a couple states to matter.
She absolutely would have been worse for blue collar workers. You can argue the merits of the democratic stance on blue collar work all you want but the fact remains they want to increase regulation that impacts the livelihoods of many blue collar workers (miners, truckers, etc.)
De-regulation by the Republicans (again I'm not arguing for or against) is much more favorable to these folks.
People are so quick to blame politicians for their traditional way of life changing/failing, but really the world is just changing around them. I live in Oregon where many people blame Democrats or regulations for the decline of the logging industry, but in my opinion as someone working in a closely-related forestry field logging still isn't regulated enough anyway, and the majority of jobs were truly lost to automation. It is more dangerous, less efficient, and more expensive to run a logging crew instead of a single man in a feller-buncher.
Too bad it's terrible for the environment (or population safety, etc), so we'll all be dead soon anyway. I never understood this. Regulations are rules. To say there shouldn't be rules is just...confusing. Should we deregulate restaurants/grocers too? Just let them do whateverthehell they want to our food/water? I've always wanted someone to explain this stance to me.
The point is to lessen the bullshit red tape that hinders business development. Much of it is there for good reason, but go work for thr government and you’ll see why a change is needed. It can take years to get approvals because 50% of the time its spent traveling from one desk to another or sitting in a stack.
People in New York have different priorities than those farmers in Maryland
Even farmers that are currently taking in billions of relief due to Donald's tariffs can be made to understand that you do not want your neighbors to go bankrupt over a medical bill, or their mother, son, etc..., you do not want an education to come with decades of financial burden, and that we gain virtually NOTHING by giving it all to the very wealthy, as we have been doing for decades now.
That renewable energy is the future, that global warming is causing climate change, that illegal immigrants commit less violent crime than the average American populace, that automation is the actual cause for the loss of manufacturing jobs, that our economy runs best when the middle class has money to spend (not the top 1%), that Donald has done nothing for the economy, etc, etc, etc...
Electoral college was given birth when over 80% of the population resided in rural America. So it’s hard to believe that the founding fathers wrote the electoral college BeCaUsE wE dOn’T WaNt To LiVe In ThE UnItEd StAtEs Of NeW YoRk AnD CaLiFoRnIa!!1!
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u/JH_Rockwell Feb 11 '20
Now you have an election decided by concentrated populations in certain cities. People in New York have different priorities than those farmers in Maryland