Which getting rid of the EC quite obviously does not do, unless by "balanced" you mean "urban dominant", which given your political affiliation I suppose you do.

This post was edited by bogie160 on Nov 19 2019 11:43am

ending the EC just shifts politics from disproportionately spending in battle ground states to the entire system disproportionately spending in urban areas and catering all policy to the city dwellers.

as someone who lives in the country i'm glad there's a bunch of idiotic rednecks that politicians have to consider to, it comes in handy from time to time for me.

A realistic solution to this would be for states to give proportional representation when divvying up electors.

California doesn't want to do this, because it obviously gives a voice to their Republican minority, and they are in the business of accumulating political power, not giving it up.

Bush v Gore and Clinton v Trump were both dead even races.

until we have a race that's not close by popular vote which results in a victory on the electoral side i dont see a reason to "fix" anything.

if someone wins the popular vote 51%-49% this isn't a failure in democracy, it's a tight race where someone wins by the rules of the electoral college.

the system works just fine, we have had dozens of presidential races where the popular vote isn't even a factor.

another day, another instance of fender aka heinrich ranting about the electoral college, a system which he accused the “republicans” of ‘creating to disenfranchise voters’

This post was edited by excellence on Nov 19 2019 12:06pm

It is possible though that Trump wins in 2020 via the EC despite losing the popular vote by 5% or even more.

Lose California by an even more overwhelming margin, win Texas baaaarely, by 1 or 2% or so, barely hang on to Arizona and Georgia, win Florida by 20k votes, lose 2 out of WI/MI/PA handily while barely winning one of them, for a 280:260 EC victory or so.
Which isnt even thaaaat unlikely, at least the tendency. Trump is overwhelmingly rejected in CA, he might well win Texas by less than the already low-ish 9% from 2016 without being in real danger of losing the state, and see his margins in places like AZ cut even more.

The trends in Texas and California alone probably mean that the popular vote gap has increased by another 500k-1m votes since 2016 without affecting the EC.

certainly possible. given how many more people live in cities this might keep happening until the meta shifts somehow.

given how hard it would be to change the EC overall it seems like hot air. no one is going to change that shit anytime soon imo. too much polarization.

It's a good thing that the EC shouldn't ever change because if you think the majority of rural farmers across the country are gonna tuck tail and let a NYC and Cali run the country you got another thing coming. Good luck trying to survive without the people who produce your food and know how to survive if you dropped off in the middle of nowhere.

This post was edited by LA-Leviathan on Nov 19 2019 01:05pm

Well, if the GOP solidifies its edge in the Rust Belt, then all would come down to the question of if and when Texas turns blue.

But yeah, wouldnt abolishing the EC require something ridiculous like... 75% majorities in Congress and among states? I never see smaller states giving up their potential to be important.

yes it has an impossible hurdle to jump, by design.

you need a large number of states, but the only way it even becomes a question is if larger states want smaller states to be pushed out.

it's a bit of a catch22.