I voted today!Follow

Gbaji and I got to vote for/against the recreational use of marijuana in our state. Not sure how Gbaji felt, but it passed.

I'm well aware of how the EC came to be. The point is that this country has *never* elected a president by popular vote. Somewhere along the line, folks started tracking said popular vote, but it has never been more than an interesting footnote. The original intent was for the state delegations to elect the president. That's why it's not a coincidence that the number of EC votes for each state match with each states representatives in congress (well, with concessions to territories that are not yet full states, of course).

It was always the intent that the president represent a majority opinion of the delegations from the states of the United States, and never just a majority of the raw population. This mirrored the original constitutional congress, where each state was granted delegates based on population size. You can argue that this was a matter of convenience due to the difficulty of trying to count up all of the people, but it's a lot more than that. Technically, the states delegations could be created via any process the state wanted. They could be appointed, picked at random, voted for, etc. The assumption that "the people" vote is just a convention that has developed over time, but is by no means a requirement at all.

Each state is granted a delegation size based on the size of the state's population (mirroring the representation in Congress, plus 2 for each state (mirroring the two senators from each state). How each state determines who it's delegation is, is entirely up to each states. The people do not actually elect a president. We never have. We chose the state delegation. That's it. I get that some people want the president to be elected by popular vote, but it has never been done that way, and frankly, there are a host of very good reasons to *not* do it that way.


One of the things more people also don't get is that terminology aside, we do not actually have federal elections in the US. Well, not that "the people" vote in. Each state elects its own representative to congress. That's a state wide election, not federal. Each state elects its delegates to the electoral college. Again, a state by state election process, not federal. The only actual federal election is conducted by the electoral college members when they cast their votes for president. That's it. Oh. And I suppose you could technically call votes by members of congress on various things (like confirmations) to be "federal elections" as well, but we typically don't. We don't live in a Democracy. We live in a Republic. Always have.

When you vote for president, you aren't actually voting for a given president or vice president. You're voting for the electors representing that party's pick for president and vice president. This actually used to be more clearly labeled on the ballot itself, although I've noticed they've gone to just putting the actual names down on the ballot (probably to avoid confusion). But the fact is you're voting for an electoral college representative from that party, who has pledged to vote for that candidate. That may seem like a silly technicality, but it's actually significant and put in place for a number of practical reasons (like, say the candidate dying somewhere along the way, for example).

It's a good system. And there's nothing at all wrong when the EC result does not match the raw popular vote.

FTFY

But both of them wanted the president to be elected by a state delegations and not by total popular vote of the country as a whole.



And again, how the exact number of delegates from each state was decided isn't the relevant point. The fact that each state sends a delegation and has its own rules for deciding how said delegation votes is what's relevant here (that's what makes it an election by the "electoral college" rather than by "popular vote", which is what we're discussing here). Even if we appointed delegations to the electoral college on a strictly population basis (so toss out the whole "every state gets 2, then more based on population" compromise you're speaking of), we could still get results where the popular vote and the EC results differ. Because when you have very large states (like say California) with a very high percentage voting for one party (again, like say California), and a much larger number of smaller states, but where the voting margin is much smaller (like, say NC, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Michigan, etc), you can easily award more EC votes to the party that won a large number of small states by a narrow margin versus the one that won a small number of large population states by a large margin. And that can result in a popular vote that differs from the EC vote.

Again, how the delegations are apportioned isn't the issue. It's the fact that we send delegations in the first place (and that most of them are "winner takes all") that causes the potential for the popular vote and the EC vote to differ. And that's not broken. That is 100% by design.





Huh? Well, technically anyone could, since the EC representatives could decide to vote for anyone they want. You know... technically.



Sure. I think you're repeating a mistake I've seen lots of people make (same deal with the primaries as well). The EC representatives are not just random people picked up off the street and handed some awesome responsibility or something. These are well regarded members of the parties themselves, that have taken pledges to vote according to their party's wishes. It's not like a state has a EC delegation picked out, then they wait to find out how they're supposed to vote, but they're free to vote any way they want if they don't like the results (Um... that can be the case in primaries, but obviously not in the general, since the one party nominee is already known when the delegations are picked). Each party picks its delegation for each state via its own internal process (which one can assumes involves a whole lot of "make sure these are people who will 100% vote for our nominee"). If the Democrats win in a state, they send the Democratic delegation to the Electoral College to vote. If the Republican's win, they send their delegation. In states with split delegations, as one might expect, the Democrats send a number of their own party faithful equal to the number they won, and the GOP does the same.

I get that this idea of the EC voting contrary to who "won" is a popular one, but it just doesn't pan out. Yes, occasionally an EC delegate chooses to vote for someone other than his party's nominee, but that typically only happens when their party lost the election, or the numbers are such that it wont matter. And it's done as a protest. For example, I believe that Reagan got one electoral vote in the 76 election because that one guy, whose vote didn't matter, wanted to express his opinion that Reagan should have been the nominee instead of Ford. I'm sure there's a few other examples, but I don't believe this has ever actually affected the result of the election itself, like ever. Most likely because people only do this when they know it wont actually affect the outcome. You know, because when you are a staunch member of a political party, it's kinda not likely you're going to intentionally do something to hand the presidency over to the other party.


You aren't honestly suggesting that GOP party delegates are going to chose to vote for Clinton, are you? Cause that's... kinda insane.

Edited, Nov 11th 2016 7:08pm by gbaji

If Montana's population spikes, do they get more EC representatives?

So, it seems that the first step is to figure out how to draw congressional districts correctly and independently.

Glory be to Altana. It is a slippery slope. Next thing we know, we have Japan style **** that has ***** and pussies blurred and entire population resorts to a new form of uncensored ****. I heard PS4 has a neat VR approach. I can see great things for the human race.

Hah. Pussies are not blocked anymore. We have progress. Maybe Trump is not so bad after all.

Edited, Nov 12th 2016 3:52pm by angrymnk

Edited, Nov 12th 2016 3:53pm by angrymnk

you can say porn

Oh, we know how, but the group in control of districting has no incentive to do so.

No? Not in the sense used here at least. No one wanted to current system. They settled on it.

If I think the answer is "7" and you think the answer is "3", then we might decide to submit "5" as our collective answer, but neither of us thinks it is correct.

Assuming that a voting system created more than two hundreds years ago as a result of groups with different goals vying for temporary power gains is the pinnacle of democracy is preposterous. We can do better.

That's my point. It was a result of compromise, not intent. No one walked into the discussion wanting what they got out of it. The EC was not designed to be the best, most fair voting system. It was designed to sate the ephemeral and petty power struggles of a few individuals.

Only in proportion to the number of people they have. One could argue a purely state based voting system would ***** over people who live in more populous states, and that the current system screws over both.

Yes, when it comes to allocating votes to people, it is necessarily a zero sum game. The question is what system makes the most sense. In my opinion it's 1 person 1 vote. In the current system it is 1 Wyoming to 3.5 Texas votes, except that neither mattes because all votes can be thrown out on a whim as a legitimate result of the system.

Edited, Nov 12th 2016 8:06pm by Allegory

Make no mistake, i know what's going on. Gbaji just always thinks he has a unique and true perspective on things that nobody else understands. In reality, he's no smarter than the typical college graduate, and his arguments are completely tired and predicted by right wing mainstream media.

I think you've been in this forum long enough to realize he doesn't deserve more than a flippant response.



Edited, Nov 12th 2016 10:09pm by trickybeck

Because they'd want to make some equalization of the interests of the individual States. The issue being that the population of Texas is so much larger than that of Wyoming, and the issues important to Texans and the ones important Wyoming may be (probably are) different.

Maybe if there were 54 times as many men in the US as there were women, women would feel a bit let down by a purely popular vote? Wouldn't they want to attempt to equalize the interests of both men and women? While the men would want their majority to still hold some power.





I'll concede a bit of ignorance there, but I was thinking the Electors were placed there by the officials in the States, and if they started putting people there that changed their vote it'd reflect poorly on them. But it doesn't really matter. The "they can change their vote" just seems like fear mongering, something that just won't happen.