It is a common misconception that disproportionate power of states is what has resulted in the winner of the popular vote losing the electoral college. That isn’t what has caused it in the past, despite the possibility. What has caused it is the fact that nearly all states allocate 100% of their electors to the simple majority winner. If three candidates get 49%, 48% and 3% of the vote, the top candidate gets 100% of the delegates. That swings the electoral count out of alignment, and if that happens in enough big states, then the popular vote winner can get fewer delegates.
That historically has been what happened. If you were to imagine elections where all the states had equal power but still allocated their delegates that way, as far as I know, not a single election result would change.
If however you were to imagine states allocating delegates in proportion to the votes they received, that would have changed election results. There are different ways to do that, but the details are not that important. It’s the solution. Is unequal power among states fair? Not really. But it hasn’t had any impact in the past, so let’s focus on something we know has unfairly altered multiple outcomes.
States should be doing this. Currently only two do: Maine and Nebraska I think. It wouldn’t take a lot of states for this to fundamentally change elections. Five key states are all that’s necessary. There’s no reason to allocate all delgates to the simple majority, and no one likes it. It’s unfair to the minority in locked down states, and it’s stressful in battleground states. It results in candidate pandering to battleground states and ignoring everyone else. This is something people should be aware of and talk about more.
Or we could simply get rid of the electoral college and say a vote is a vote.
Like as a compromise measure before getting rid of the electoral college delegates based on % is an improvement but how to split based on % would be very contentious. In a 10 delegate state does 52% 48% mean 5 and 5 or 6 and 4? What about a 3 delegate states. Maine and Nebraska do assign some to the state popular vote and one to each congressional district. But states like Wyoming and Vermont only have 1 congressional district that covers the whole state while having 3 delegates. Their state popular vote and congressional district popular vote literally can’t be different.
As above, those things don’t matter. You say “simply get rid of the electoral college” as if that is the easier solution, but having a handful of states change laws fully under their control is far, far simpler than having numerous states agree to a change to the constitution, but the two things have the same effect. Do you want to stop having an unpopular president elected in the next 20 years, or the next 80 years?
As I said a compromise measure. I’m good with compromise but there are more considerations to that which I haven’t seen addressed in these discussions.
A major one of getting it done state by state instead of all at once is if a large Blue state like California does the split but a large red state like Texas doesn’t do the split then the electoral college will only get further skewed instead of fixed.
It is a common misconception that disproportionate power of states is what has resulted in the winner of the popular vote losing the electoral college. That isn’t what has caused it in the past, despite the possibility. What has caused it is the fact that nearly all states allocate 100% of their electors to the simple majority winner. If three candidates get 49%, 48% and 3% of the vote, the top candidate gets 100% of the delegates. That swings the electoral count out of alignment, and if that happens in enough big states, then the popular vote winner can get fewer delegates.
That historically has been what happened. If you were to imagine elections where all the states had equal power but still allocated their delegates that way, as far as I know, not a single election result would change.
If however you were to imagine states allocating delegates in proportion to the votes they received, that would have changed election results. There are different ways to do that, but the details are not that important. It’s the solution. Is unequal power among states fair? Not really. But it hasn’t had any impact in the past, so let’s focus on something we know has unfairly altered multiple outcomes.
States should be doing this. Currently only two do: Maine and Nebraska I think. It wouldn’t take a lot of states for this to fundamentally change elections. Five key states are all that’s necessary. There’s no reason to allocate all delgates to the simple majority, and no one likes it. It’s unfair to the minority in locked down states, and it’s stressful in battleground states. It results in candidate pandering to battleground states and ignoring everyone else. This is something people should be aware of and talk about more.
Or we could simply get rid of the electoral college and say a vote is a vote.
Like as a compromise measure before getting rid of the electoral college delegates based on % is an improvement but how to split based on % would be very contentious. In a 10 delegate state does 52% 48% mean 5 and 5 or 6 and 4? What about a 3 delegate states. Maine and Nebraska do assign some to the state popular vote and one to each congressional district. But states like Wyoming and Vermont only have 1 congressional district that covers the whole state while having 3 delegates. Their state popular vote and congressional district popular vote literally can’t be different.
As above, those things don’t matter. You say “simply get rid of the electoral college” as if that is the easier solution, but having a handful of states change laws fully under their control is far, far simpler than having numerous states agree to a change to the constitution, but the two things have the same effect. Do you want to stop having an unpopular president elected in the next 20 years, or the next 80 years?
As I said a compromise measure. I’m good with compromise but there are more considerations to that which I haven’t seen addressed in these discussions.
A major one of getting it done state by state instead of all at once is if a large Blue state like California does the split but a large red state like Texas doesn’t do the split then the electoral college will only get further skewed instead of fixed.
What happens in California and Texas isn’t the problem so obviously one wouldn’t start there. They’d start with swing states.