Every. Single. Time.



I like the electoral college, even though I think it has produced some bad presidents. We're a large country, we need the differing viewpoints to matter. The coasts controlling the presidency isn't healthy for democracy.

This post was edited by IceMage on Sep 12 2017 06:14pm

2016 election

trump = tom brady
hillary = matt ryan

This is purely do to demographic changes from Ted Kennedy's wave of disgusting third world immigration in the 60s. Romney would have won 2012 with Reagan's demographics.

the issue isnt with the marginally higher voting power of voters in small states, the issue lies in the plurality voting system. if one candidate scores significantly more narrow victories, he is almost guaranteed to win the electoral college.

here, have a look at a counterexample:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1884

in 1884, new york was the largest state, and at the time, it was a swing state. in 1884, new york turned blue by the very narrow margin of just 1074 votes, which led to the democratic victory in this election.

the next time around, in 1888, new york narrowly turned red again (by a margin of 15k), which led to a republican victory in the electoral college despite losing the popular vote:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1888

so its not about big vs small, any state can be a swing state, and if an election is decided by a narrow result in a swing state, there is a good chance for an electoral college - popular vote split.

that all big states except for florida are solid red or blue these days is a coincidence, not something ingrained in the elctoral college system.
the american voting system of plurality votes on the states level is what's causing the splits between electoral college and popular vote.

but think about it: if there was a nationwide proportional representation system instead, then the voters in places like montana, wyoming, vermont, maine, but also iowa and new hampshire, would be largely irrelevant. the low amount of voters, coupled with few urban centers where a candidate could effectively reach out to many voters at once, would render these places unattractive for campaigns.

under the current system, attention is focussed on the swing states, but the current set of swing states contains a healthy mix that represents a large variety of regions: you have mountainous colorado, coastal virginia, you have rust belt states of ohio and pennsylvania, you have the large and diverse florida, you have the polarized north carolina, and you have the rural new hampshire and iowa. the only region or type of voter not represented in the current set of swing states is the west coast.

He's right though. The electoral college is fundamentally undemocratic.
Which is good, because democracy is stupid.

Do we still need to explain why the US needs the electoral college?

I thought we were past this.

Can someone explain why we dont just delete federal government and turn USA into like 10 city states?

But irrational pseudo-democracy is even worse. Our system takes all the flaws of democracy and magnifies them. The Electoral College does nothing to solve any of the problems with democracy.

I'm no fan of democracy either, but we can at least try to have the best democracy if we're going to do it.



We are past it, it's long been decided that the Electoral College is irrational.



The Electoral College mathematically does not solve the problem you are raising. If anything, it exaggerates it.

A strict preference-based democratic vote would be enormously superior.



The swing state factor is certainly the most egregious, but state size also creates a small distortion of voting power (because of equal Senators per state).



That's true but the Electoral College does not solve this problem, it makes it worse; it just swaps out which voters are irrelevant and makes other ones irrelevant instead. There are all sorts of objectively mathematically superior options to increase the democratic strength of an election and maximize proportionality of representation to the electorate.



I don't think region really exemplifies the diversity of voters, and even if it did, that's not sufficient (leaving off the west coast as you mention, arguably the most important economic and technological region in the country thanks to Silicon Valley).

And I should add, this weakness of the Electoral College is on top of the already awful first-past-the-post voting system, where the candidate that the fewest people prefer wins simply because the other candidates split votes (it is mandatory in first-past-the-post voting that there only be two candidates).

Out election system is archaic and mathematically obsolete, and we, unlike most other developed democratic countries, refuse to improve it.

This post was edited by Voyaging on Sep 13 2017 09:54am

It refers to the episode when it took Trump three attempts (at least) to adequately convey his feelings on the domestic terrorism in Charlottesville.



Fucking howlers for dayyyyyyys, goodness gracious this single post alone is a gold mine.

A constitutional executive democratic republic mitigates the flaws of democracy. I don't understand how you can even pretend that a republic let alone a constitutional one with a president somehow amplifies the flaws of democracy
Democracy has the flaws that it leads to tyranny of the majority, is too slow and indecisive in times of national emergency / war, reflects the ignorance of public opinion. It allows for the more numerous plebes to overthrow the elites and lead to societal collapse. A republic hedges against the disproportionality of voter power, abstracts away from the kneejerk public and passes through a more competent group of representatives and can mobilize more quickly- much more coherently thanks to an executive, and with the protections against tyranny of a constitution.