I voted today!Follow

Lower population groups have higher rates of under/unemployment so in this scenario they'd be less likely to bring something to the overall group, not more. It'd be most accurate to say Group 4 brought 51% of the total cost of the food while the rest each brought in 12%. Trying to paint the more populous group as leeches is nothing but irrelevant emotional rhetoric that adds nothing to the conversation.

Edited, Nov 29th 2016 10:46am by lolgaxe

The reason for government intervention on this level is the same as for basically any other situation where you have a monopoly or similarly non-competitive environment. This would be less of a concern if there was a greater variety of competitive political parties in the country, but with the current de-facto 2-party system the vast majority of the meaningful decisions are made prior to the general election.

To point is to give a greater number of voters a larger say in who represents them. Just look at the major 2 candidates from this previous election cycle. For example there was no anti-abortion candidate, there was no fiscally conservative candidate, there was no religiously inclined candidate, etc. The only place these kinds of candidates showed up was in the early primary voting. The only ones with a chance to cast a meaningful vote for these candidates were a small minority of the population in a handful of states. For everyone else the candidate had either withdrawn from the race, or had been all but eliminated from contention. So how do you make sure people who would have supported those candidates have a reason to participate in the election? There was some degree of bucking the trend of course, Utah had an additional major candidate, of course, but for the most part there were simply disenfranchised voters.

I mean, don't get me wrong, it's fine to have a run-off election between 2 candidates where not every view is represented, that's basically what we have now in the general election. Other countries do that, and there's nothing wrong with it. It's only a problem when people don't get a chance to say who's in that run-off, which is the vast majority of the country at this point. It's not like this is choosing the board of directors for a private corporation, this is choosing who's supposed to be representing all of country, or all of a district. The idea that only a subset of the country gets a say in who represents them is wholly undemocratic.

Me either, TBH. But that's what I'd advocate for nonetheless. I don't disagree with anything you wrote, as those are generally the reasons the system needs a shake up. We generally have low voter turnout in this country and a government many Americans don't approve of.

I mean, obviously as long as the general population is represented there's not a huge problem in using an imperfect method, in the end you're getting reasonable results and that's what matters. One could argue however, that those voting in the political primaries/etc as a whole are much less representative of general populace than in previous years, and it leads to more extreme candidates. More extreme candidates make it harder for them to turn towards the middle come general-election time; which means instead of moderating a message you end up making it more worthwhile to discourage turnout outside your party instead, a.k.a. "both these candidates look like **** why should I even bother voting?" The system become more insular and less representative at this point, which is arguably the position we find ourselves in.

In the end you end up with the argument for change being similar to the anti-electoral college one, the goal is to get more accurate representation, but I'd argue the primaries are a much more important place to direct change because of the already limited number of choice present in the general election. No doubt any political system can be manipulated by the parties in power of course, but anything that brings more accurate representation is a step in the right direction.

The more things change....


Edited, Nov 29th 2016 1:03pm by Samira

I think I commented in an earlier post (maybe in this thread, maybe in the other), how they used to actually write "Elector for <candidate name>" on the ballot. Sometime in the last 15-20 years, they changed the ballots to just put the candidate's name in there. Probably just because people who don't understand the EC process would get confused every year. But that does not change the fact that you are actually voting for the makeup of your state's electoral college delegation, not directly for the candidate.

The parallel I was trying to make is that you don't vote directly for *any* decision or office at the federal level. You elect a set of representatives from your state, who then go to Washington and vote on various things. Those things could be legislative bills, or executive appointments, or for who sits in the oval office. The Electoral College follows the same pattern. Since the President, just like executive appointees, is not a representative of a single state, you don't get to vote directly for that position. You vote for your states delegation, which in turn votes for president. Just like every other thing done at the federal level of our government.

Only because you can't wrap your head around the fact that people don't vote for president. State delegations do. There's no devaluation of your vote, because you don't individually or directly vote for that office. The entire flaw you're complaining about is based on your own misunderstanding of the process. Once you fix that, you'll find that there is no flaw here.



The people have never been franchised with directly voting for President though. Thus, there is no disenfranchisement by still not having them directly vote for President. You have to have something before it can be taken away.

Then those "many Americans" need to start showing up for the primaries and voting in more moderate candidates. It's really that simple. Well, simple to say, not so much to actually get people to get out of their couches and vote though. Elections are won by those who show up. If you didn't participate in the primary process you kinda can't complain that the only two major party candidates don't sufficiently represent you.



I'm not sure that there's any solution that really fixes this problem though. As long as we have a two party system, there's simply no way that those two candidates will ever adequately represent a perfect match to more than a small percentage of the total voting public. There's just too many different issues, and too many variations in positions on those issues for two people to encapsulate them all (or even, arguably, like 10 people). And going to a multi party system (like a Parliament) introduces other problems, and also tends to not result in more than a small percentage of voters getting exactly what they want.

What do you propose we do instead?



I'll ask again. What changes would you make to the primary process, and how would that improve representation?

Why would people need to leave their couches to vote?

You can if other people got to vote first, and the outcome was all but inevitable by the time you get your turn to vote. I mean, that critique might work on someone in New Hampshire, but not so much if you're in a state with a late primary.

Most importantly: have all states primary voting happen on the same day. There are other things we could do, but that alone would go a long way.

Well, my couch is kind of heavy and it would be awkward to try and fit through the town hall doors.

I say I don't really care because I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other. I haven't seen or read enough instances of it happening to make me think it is good or bad. Because there are so few of them. If it were changed so they had to vote their pledged way, I would have no problem with it.

As for the disenfranchisement issue... I don't have any problem with Electors being split up. Rather than by congressional district (subject to gerrymandering), just off the top of my head I imagine a system where the 2 EC votes from Senate allocated spots go to popular winner of the State. Remaining EC votes from House would be divided between candidates by popular vote, rounded to whole numbers favoring the winner of the State's popular vote. States with only 1 Rep would be all or nothing. (Sorry minority vote Wyoming voters, maybe if the vote is withing "X" percentage points 1 Rep EC goes to the minority vote winner? 2 Senate EC votes would still go to popular vote winner). States with 2 or more reps may need something to allow 1 Rep to go to minority voter choice under circumstances. Have I done the math to see if that would change the outcome of this election? No. Have I done any math to see how much of a popular vote swing from densely populated states this could offset, if at all? No. But off the top of my head it would still provide some incentive to the smaller population areas, while allowing more minority votes in more States to actually matter.

But really I can't see anything changing, at least not in my lifetime (or, the life time of the US maybe). I don't see congress or the States getting any agreement made, not to the level any change of this type would require. Don't see things changing at the State level. Cause why would Democrats want to split up big blue States to the red? Why would Republicans want to split up big red States to the blue, or possibly give up any portion of the small States?

Well, shit, since you can read my mind, and know everything that I have ever read, thought or seen, no sense in arguing with you, you win! So glad you are here to tell us all how wrong we are about anything and everything.

But now I remember why I don't usually respond to your posts. If I said "Oh, I have a friend who was just in a car accident" you would reply "That may be, but he wasn't in the RIGHT kind of car accident, so you don't really know what you're talking about." It's get's stupid on your part super fast.

I mean, really? You know what my friends and I discuss? What did I talk about with my friends on thanksgiving?

You get that you're an idiot, right?

Just saying.

Electors are not voted by district, and are thus not subject to gerrymandering. The candidate who receives the most total votes in a state wins the entire states electoral delegation. That's our "winner takes all" system, which is in effect in all but two states (Maine and Nebraska). Unless you're speaking of state lines themselves being subject to gerrymandering? Given that we don't change state lines every 10 years that's really not an issue IMO.



Which is how Maine and Nebraska do it. They use a proportional allocation system. Every state gets to decide how to determine its own EC delegation. Because, as I've been trying to point out all along, the people don't actually elect a President, the states do (well, the electors from that state do). The people may vote to determine how a state's delegation is made up, but they don't directly vote for the President. They never have.



Yeah. I haven't done the math either. I suspect it would still usually result in a benefit for the candidate who won pluralities in more states (cause of those two bonus electors) over the candidate who got the highest total popular vote. Don't underestimate that in "normal" election cycles, this may very well make it so that the Democrats never win the Presidency, like ever again. California alone is an issue. You're handing over a pretty large minority vote to the GOP that they normally lose out on entirely in the existing electoral college process.

And again, this is more about changing how the electoral college delegations are determined. The arguments for using popular vote instead of the electoral college should be completely different. And frankly, I think a lot of people are missing another major point. If you change the way we determine who won the election, it will change the way the candidates campaign. You can't just look at the fact that if we used a different methodology to make that determination the result would have been different to argue that had we actually used that methodology, the result would actually have been different.

You have a valid point in that it would give more people incentive to get out and vote, especially among states where there's a clear majority for one party. But that's kind of the point. It would change the ratio of voters and almost certainly reduce significantly the margins currently present in those states with clear majorities. We can't possibly predict how that would change things in terms of which party may or may not benefit, despite what many protesters today may think.



Yup. Honestly though, that's not really the whole issue. I've mentioned several times that it's really the states that are electing the President, and it's really the states that have the most direct interest in that selection. The question is not just about what effect such changes would cause (whether going to more proportional EC allocation, or full on direct popular vote) in terms of the outcomes of the elections themselves (which is what it seems like most people care about most right now), but also how this changes the basic concept of representation of a president.

All other elected offices at the federal government represent specific geographical regions within specific states. Whether it's a state as a whole in the case of Senators, or whether it's a district within a sate in the case of the House. The President is the one elected office that is supposed to represent *all* of us. Not just people, but also the regions we live in. And especially the individually sovereign states. I know that some will reject this as some kind of quaint states rights argument, but there really are valid reasons for maintaining the concept that the states put delegations into the federal government and not just the population as a whole.

States are distinct legal entities. They have their own laws and boundaries. Thus, there are specific policy positions that directly affect states differently based on the mere fact that state A may have different rules than sate B. The federal government has as one of it's primary powers the power to regulate interaction between the states themselves, and between the states and other nations. This can have a *massive* effect on any given state's economy. An easy example is a trade tariff on any given good that may be predominantly produced or consumed by a given state. Changes to federal law, or even just classifications in federal administrations can either conflict with or align with existing states laws.

Treating the entire US population as a single homogenous set is simply wrong. People are affected differently by federal decisions based entirely on which state they may live in. It is for the exact reason that we place weight on each state as a state, both in our Senate and in the Electoral College. Because our systems recognize that states themselves have a strong vested interest in the rules and regulations they are bound by. Remember that the federal government was not originally intended to directly interact with individual citizens at all. It's a relatively recent thing to have federal funding for education, healthcare, social security, welfare, etc, etc, etc. And yes, to some degree a good portion of this was specifically because the founders didn't like the idea of a federal government that might place onerous regulations or taxes on the citizens of one set of states, in order to benefit the citizens of another. And they realized that if you had a system where the federal government directly engaged in that sort of selective benefit handing system and you coupled it with direct voting for offices like president, you could run the risk of popular self interest in some regions of the country pushing for policies that benefit them, while harming those in the less populated regions.

Unfortunately, over time we have expanded the power and role of the federal government as it pertains directly to citizens. I happen to think that's a very bad thing, btw. But it's happened. IMO, moving even further to direct popular voting for president would only make such things worse. I don't believe that the federal government should be involved at all in what is essentially charity. It should stick to regulating between the states and between the US and other countries and that's it. I would love for us to simply eliminate social security, and medicare, and welfare, and the department of education, and pretty much all social spending programs. Except perhaps as standard setting bodies, the federal government simply should not be involved in such things. Directly funding them is just plain a bad idea. It fosters the idea that it's desirable to take from one group to give to another. Which is never a good idea for a government to get involved in. And yes, it further fosters the idea that "the people" should be voting directly on such things (which is just a small step from "mob rule" IMO).

All of those things can be done at the state level, if the citizens of a given state desire. It's bad enough already that if a majority of representatives in congress decides to impose some new rule on the citizens of the states that don't agree with them, they get to do it anyway. It would be infinitely worse if that majority didn't even require a majority of state representatives in said legislative and executive bodies, but a mere majority of the population as a whole. Again, the purpose of using a Republic rather than a Democracy is specifically to divide voters into regions in which each region has an equal say in things. It's designed to favor broad geographical appeal over narrow but deep popular appeal. And IMO, that's a very very good thing. It's likely why there are no nations I'm aware of that actually practice direct Democracy as their national political system. Which is what makes it all the more baffling when people make a huge deal about how the popular vote didn't match the EC vote. Um... That's not something that is broken. That's a system that's working exactly as it's intended to work.

Edited, Nov 29th 2016 6:42pm by gbaji

Eh? Does that messaging make them think that the president should be determined by popular vote, or not? Just seems like you more or less contradicted yourself there.

You can think of it as voting for the president if you want. But your votes only determines the allocation of your states electoral college delegation. If you are not ignorant of how this works, then all the messaging about "voting for candidate A over candidate B" should not in any way confuse you, or make you think that a popular vote that doesn't match the EC vote is somehow "wrong". You either understand that you are voting for your states EC delegation, or you are not. Pick one.



I have a response. I've stated my response multiple times. Maybe you missed it the first handful of times? People's votes don't matter any more or less than other people's votes any more than they do in anything else you vote for at the federal level. Whether your congressional district vote 100% for the pro-choice candidate or only 51% for that candidate, your representative only has one vote in the House on any issue related to abortion, right? And whether your state voted 100% for a given Senator, or 51% for that Senator, similarly does not change that said Senator only gets one vote, even if that Senator if from a state with 10 million people in it or only 100k.

This is how Republics work. Your vote is always going to matter more in either a small population state (where the whole "two Senators per state" and "two bonus electors per state" benefit you, or in a state or district where the vote on any given thing is "close". Again, that's the nature of a Republic. But that trade off is more than worth it for the benefits of ensuring that one portion or geographical region of a country can't just control everything because they happen to have the bulk of the population. When these kinds of results occur, it's not a failure of the system, but the reason it exists.

I'll also point out, just for the record, that we use a similar methodology of evening out extreme results in lots of things. Imagine a World Series in which one team scored 2 points in all 7 games (14 total points), while the other team scored 1 point in 4 games and 10 in the other 3 (34 total points). The first team wins the series because they won the most games. But the second team significantly outscored the first in terms of total points. Again though, the reason for using these methods is to avoid giving an advantage to the team who runs up the score in a game they already won. Just as we don't give an advantage to the candidate who runs up the vote count in a state they already won. Same concept applies. We reward consistency across multiple games in sports, just as we reward consistent majorities across multiple states/regions in elections.

This is really not some alien concept. It's embedded in most of our competitions we engage in. And yes, that includes elections.



Ok. But when someone says that the people are upset because the "messaging" made them think they were voting for a president but the popular vote winner didn't win the election, it sorta sounds like they're saying those people didn't understand that we elect votes by electoral college votes and not popular votes. You can't rationally argue that since the ballot lists the candidates names that this makes people think they're voting directly for that candidate and then also claim that these people knew how the electoral college system works. Those are completely incompatible statements.




Response to what? The way they describe the issue? WTF does that even mean? Look. If someone understands the EC, then they can argue about why they think it should be changed, or eliminated, or whatever. But then make that freaking argument. I'm not sure what response you think I should have to an argument that basically says "My candidate didn't win despite something happening that is unrelated to whether she wins or not". Um... Ok. it rained yesterday, so that means that Clinton won the election, right? I'm going to be pissed off because I think that it raining means that Clinton should have onw. Boo hoo!

Unless you can actually make an objective rational argument as to why a direct popular vote would be a better method for electing presidents, not just in this one case and this one election because you wanted a different result, but in all election cycles, every 4 years, and are able to include at least some analysis of how this would affect campaigning and nationwide representation in our executive branch, then all you're doing is whining about a single election results you didn't like. I'm still waiting for someone to make that actual objective argument.

Until that happens, I can only respond with broad points. Heck. I'm the only one who's made any kind of actual argument on this issue at all so far. I've presented at least 3 or 4 different reasons why using the EC instead of direct popular voting is a good method to use. Not one person has made a counter argument in favor of popular voting that extends beyond simply declaring it to be "better" or "more fair" or whatever. Surely, someone out of all the super smart and well educated people on this board could at least take a crack at this? Maybe?

Sure. You know, since that would require the citizens of that one individual state voting to decide not to spend tax dollars on education, right? Was that supposed to be a trick question? Cause it's not. My solution gives the citizens of each state the power to decide how much to spend on their education system, and what form it will take. The current system puts their kids education in the hands of a set of federal education programs that were voted on by people elected by 49 other states in addition to theirs. Heaven forbid we give the power back to the people!



How does eliminating school lunch programs cripple the US military? Or are you under the impression that the military is a social spending program? Or that it does not fall squarely in the federal government's purview of "interactions between the collected United States and foreign nations"?



That's strange, since my position is that the federal government should not be involved in furthering anyone's self interest. You get that funding things like medicare, social security, education, etc, is all about providing for individual citizen's self interests, right? Vote for me and I'll pay for your health care. Vote for me and I'll send your kids to college. Vote for me and I'll provide for your retirement. Surely you can see the pattern here. All of those are about self interest. They just happen to be self interests that you are ok with fulfilling.

I'm for getting the federal government out of that business entirely. Not because I'm some cruel evil guy who wants people to suffer, but because I believe that a government that has the power to provide those things also has the power to hold those things over its citizens and use them as a means of control in other areas. So it's not even just "vote for me and I'll provide you with X", but "support me in voting for Y, because my opponent wants to stop providing you with X". When you become dependent on government funded services, you become controlled by that government. Obviously, we can't eliminate all government influence on us, but we can do what we can to make that influence as small as possible and as local as possible. The federal government's social programs are neither of those.

Edited, Nov 29th 2016 8:51pm by gbaji