Quote (Black XistenZ @ 17 Aug 2018 16:59)
it is not a disaster for democracy. as in all first-past-the-post voting systems, it rewards an efficient geographic representation of support. this system is working just fine in the UK, Australia, Canada and some other countries. the real issue with the electoral college in the US is that the blocks that go to the winner of a simple majority are too big. the split between popular vote and electoral college only goes out of hand if a candidate can win a large number of electors by edging out a single narrow win.
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another point to consider is that we dont really know how a presidential race for the popular vote would play out.. say both trump and clinton had campaigned in california and new york, do you think that clinton could have squeezed an even higher margin of victory out of these states, or would trump have cut his losses? same for texas: which side had more untapped voter potential in texas - conservatives or liberals? there are more conservatives in texas, they have a structural majority, but the turnout of democrats in texas is notoriously depressed. I really dont know how such a race would go, and neither does anyone else.
what we do know is that certain smaller states, like iowa and new hampshire, would get less candidate visits in a race for the popular vote. the distribution of candidate attention would without a doubt skew more heavily towards urban areas. by contast, under the current system, we have a healthy mix: candidates campaign in miami, philadelphia, denver and detroit, but also in iowa, new hampshire, ohio and north carolina. with the exception of the west coast and the deep south, the typical playing field encompasses every other type of region and electorate found in the country.
I agree with you. I don't think it's a disaster for democracy. I'm just having fun with Trump's blatant hypocrisy, but it almost goes without saying at this point. However, that's neither here nor there.
It is true that the Electoral College was created in part to incentivize candidates to appeal to a broad array of voters and states and not just urban centers. It's also true that we don't fully know how a popular vote race might have played out. In recent years, George W. Bush or Trump could have received more popular votes in 2000 and 2016 respectively, or Gore and Clinton could have smashed their Republican opponents by larger popular vote margins. Who knows.
However, there were reasons beyond the broad state appeal factor that the founders created the Electoral College for. Some of those reasons are outlined in Federalist Paper No. 68. They also wanted a group of people to act on a check and balance on the people, so to speak. A group of people that could potentially vet the candidates in ways most citizens might not have access to.
They also wanted an extra check to prevent blatant populists from becoming president, and people with potential influences from foreign powers. That's also why they didn't want any of the electors to be federally elected officials. They wanted an entirely separate group of people that would be less likely to have their hands in any sort of foreign power/money cookie jar.
The founders debated whether or not they wanted Congress to pick the President or not. They compromised with the EC. And if the EC couldn't agree on the President, it would go back to Congress. It's nearly impossible to know what they would think of the popular vote loser becoming president in 50% of the past elections, but I do agree that they would be happy to see that candidates are still required to appeal to a broad variety of states and regions and not just massive urban centers.
Quote (EndlessSky @ 17 Aug 2018 14:56)
Trump doesn't care about philosophy, he does/says things to get a particular material result
Quote (IgoSoHard @ 17 Aug 2018 14:59)
Of course he'd say that. People often make excuses when things don't go their way. Unfortunately Trump sometimes falls into this category.
Do you think Trump is a principled leader?
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