Omnibus Politics Thread: Campaign 2016 EditionFollow

Yeah, i mean i described a better voting system like 4 times and yet he still is wondering what it is....

Edited, Dec 1st 2016 7:36pm by Timelordwho

I'm pretty sure that in one of these threads, I responded as though that was the proposal to someone, only to get some form of "Oh, I'm not actually arguing for a direct popular vote, just saying that I don't like the EC". So yeah, I'm going to ask that people actually say how they think we should change our voting, then maybe actually spend some time analyzing the effects of the change they are proposing.

So far, the overwhelming focus has purely been on things people don't like about the EC, and not about what other methods they propose, nor how they would make things "better" (except, I suppose that a pure popular vote maybe might have allowed their candidate in this one election to win). I'm the one who keeps having to point out that if you do this differently, you'll also get this other effect that you might not want, or this other thing will change as well, or you'll have to make adjustments for yet another thing. And when I do that, I keep getting responses that they're not actually advocating for this, that, or the other thing.

Which leaves me to assume that for most people at least, this is purely about whining. Which is fair, I suppose, but then lets be honest about it.



Yeah. That's yet another feature that favors the EC. It's far less likely to result in a tie. As I've been saying all along, it's not a perfect solution, but it does have the benefit of being consistent at providing a clear winner, while minimizing ugly things like recounts and legislative votes deciding who won. And that's in addition to the base concept of a Republic style vote rather than direct Democracy.

A popular vote is FAR FAR less likely to end in a tie.

more likely to end in recount, or be contested. that's one of the reasons it was selected when the electoral apparatus was more imperfect.

Trump's first choice for National Security Advisor is a guy who regularly lies, retweets and spreads thoroughly debunkt conspiracy theories, and was fired from an Intelligence position in the Pentagon for leaking classified information to unauthorized parties and general incompetence.

Why don't we have a 90 day return policy on politicians?

...but emails.

I can certainly see where he's qual--- wait, what??

Because then it would be nothing but an endless campaign cycle. Unlike now where we at least get a month or two off before people start thinking about the presidential primaries again.

Sorry. I meant our current (mostly) winner takes all EC methodology as opposed to the proportional allocation method that I was responding to (and which resulted in a tie in this case).



Yup. Both 1 and 2 increase the odds of a tie (but admittedly do make every state and/or district more likely to garner attention).

Number three (I'm answering both you and TLW here), introduces several problems. It makes any close election a nightmare in terms of potential recounts. It also focuses media campaign buys in the most heavily populated areas. It also more or less tosses out the idea of a national Republic as our system of government (which I suppose is more of an extension of the previous problem, but it's not something you just change lightly because you think it'll benefit your party or something).



Also presents yet another problem. One of the points of the EC in the first place is to allow for the possibility (likelihood even) of the president being of a different party than that which controls congress. If you think about the state representation in the EC, it's identical to that in congress. We could just as easily have had the already elected members of congress vote for who gets to be president. But that would make our system more or less identical to those which elect a prime minister. We can debate why we decided to do things differently, but we did. Summarily tossing that out might not be a great idea.

And yes, it's not the same exact thing, but likely to produce the same results most of the time. Oh. Just in case it's not clear, I'm speaking of what things would look like if we went to either a proportional or district by district allocation of EC votes nationwide.



You're basically choosing (most of the time anyway) between whether the EC votes match the Senate, or match the House (with some modification via the Senate). And we're also glossing over the fact that the states are empowered to make that decision, not the federal government. You'd have to also radically change our system to a top down process before you could even begin this. Because otherwise, you could see large states like California and Texas sit still on their current allocation methodology, while diluting the relative power of other states. There's just very little incentive for states to do this (or something like this), which is why only two have to this date. So to actually do this, you'd either have to somehow convince every state to do it voluntarily at the same time, or create some new federal law that mandated how states allocate their electoral votes (which would take a pretty massive step from states rights to federalism).




And also would require the most radical change to our system. Again, at this point you have to toss out the idea that we're in a Republic. I guess maybe I'm asking the wrong question here (I'm sure of it actually). It's not just "how would you do it?", since the easy answer most toss out is "use a straight popular vote". Um... duh. I'm asking people to analyze the effect of making such a change beyond just "Clinton would have won!". How does this change how politicians run for president? How does it change the relative representation of each voter in the process. Not just the good "one person one vote", but also the bad "more dollars per vote gained here versus there". Also, how may this change trickle down into other related systems (like how we do primaries?). Does a change like this act as a precedent for other changes that we may not necessarily want today. Like say, changing other aspects of our federal process to be more like a direct democracy. We could, theoretically open up federal legislation to ballot initiative processes voted on directly by the people rather than our representatives. I mean, if the issue is to make sure "one person, one vote", should that not also apply to our legislation? The same skew that exists in the EC also exists in congress (well, similar anyway). Do we use this same movement to change that down the line as well? Is that really what we want?

I just think that this is one of those issues that comes up every election cycle (and even moreso when we have an outcome like this), and people jump on the bandwagon, but most of them without really having thought through the process. The system we use wasn't just made up on the fly arbitrarily. It was designed to balance a number of factors in the selection of our president. You're free to call this moving the goalposts if you want, but I think it's important to argue, not just what change you are proposing, but why that proposed change is a good idea.

Oh. It also goes without saying that all of these solutions (except I suppose the states voluntarily changing to a proportional system) would require a constitutional amendment be passed. Which is almost certainly not going to succeed, given that the very issue you're trying to change is the influence states have as a balance against pure popular vote, and once again, since we live in a Republic and not a Democracy, popular votes aren't counted for constitutional amendments either. States vote (and congress, which is yet another of those darn Republican processes).

So. Um... Good luck with that!

Edited, Dec 6th 2016 4:51pm by gbaji

That would mean something if five people on ZAM were actually deciding the voting mechanisms of the US. As opposed to having a conversation while you jump around and insist we present detailed studies to support our work or else there's some sort of big problem.

Yes, yes... you're a beautiful precious and unique snowflake.

Everyone else does largely the same thing, we just don't all play the "You never defended your idea!" "But I said..." "YOU NEVER DEFENDED YOUR IDEA, I WIN!!!" game.

I already listed the goals. Explicitly here are some of the more important benefits:

1. Enfranchisement; current electoral rules means very few votes matter, with fairly arcane reasons as to why they are they are the only people we should really listen to.
2. Political signalling; we should have a system that is more able to deal with nuance and reward people for doing things that voters want.
3; Political compromise; If the game is non-zero sum there are vastly more opportunities to come to sane, net benefit policies
4; Better governance; Good governance is wholly related to winning elections in the current system. This seems like a bad method for governance...When political signalling has more depth, and compromise enabled you will naturally get better governance. (or at least less cases of bad governance)
5; Continuity of policy; if policy changes are made on a continuum consensus rather than drastic sea changes, you generate less uncertainty, which is good for markets.
6; Lower potential for corruption; If people have more political options, the costs of not internally policing corruption are higher.

Gbaji really likes to think that he's special; "my third grade teacher said I'm amazing", "professors tell me no one ever thought of it that way before" and all that.

I mean, Tirith has been arguing essentially the same side as Gbaji but without a thousand words per post and I haven't sat around thinking "He must not have a real plan that he's thought through because he hasn't met my arbitrary requirements for a valid argument!"

It's just Gbaji being Gbaji.