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Kamala Harris’s running mate urges popular vote system but campaign says issue is not part of Democrats’ agenda
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Finally the dems are saying it out loud. They should have been yelling this from the treetops since Bush vs Gore.
It’s easy to say and harder to do anything about. I believe it would take a constitutional amendment to fix on the national scale, or “opt-in” from enough states on the state level.
The first step towards change is elevating the conversation to high office, though, so this is something.
Completely agree!
The popular vote contract sounds interesting, but I like ranked voting more because it allows flexibility in sampling the public opinion of who they’d want. Think of any question a poll could ask you where you feel there isn’t a clear yes/no or single answer. Isn’t it better when it allows you to pick from a few choices that together reflect your answer? An election not only could turn out more voters, it could give statistical nuances on how people lean among the ones that voted in the winner. Eg., how many that voted both Democrat candidate as well as certain other parties.
Just had a thought that we could even see a person vote Democrat and Republican on a ticket. But at least they got their vote in and showed how they’re torn.
The popular vote contract sounds interesting, but I like ranked voting more
Those solve two different problems. The first solves the problem of a candidate winning despite having fewer votes; the second solves the spoiler effect.
Yes, the compact is definitely a way to get around the current system, not to overhaul it (which it desperately needs but would require 2/3 approval instead of >50% of the electoral college). I agree that if we are able to get constitutional amendments on the table, we should be looking at ranked choice or approval voting systems! But one of the big issues right now is unfamiliarity with either of those systems, and a lot of familiarity with popular choice. That’s why it’s so important that the many, many local and statewide initiatives for ranked choice get support!
Agreed, the more we see ranked choice locally the more support there will be to expand it. Also “easier” to get it changed at that level.
I hope it happens but there’s no way the current Supreme Court would allow this to happen.
I am imagining a future when an amendment is ratified in the proper technique and Uncle Thomas just says “nah. Also, we give outselves that power. So, away go a bunch of other amendments!”
This and Ranked Choice Voting.
By 2032 Texas will be a solid swing state and the EC becomes near impossible for the GOP to ever win again
We can wait them out, and reap the benefits
Eight years of right wing malignancy left, may the odds be ever in your favor.
People argued this idea of a permanent Democratic majority in the 2000s and then again after Obama’s election but it never materialized. GenX, with its liberal sensibilities, the rise of college educations, and increased diversity among the population will make it impossible for Republicans to win. Then GenX got older and more conservative and people realized that minorities and college grads could also be made to hate immigrants and queer people.
This idea that “just waiting” is all it will take to end conservatism and other bigotries is a fantasy.
could also be made to hate immigrants and queer people.
Less that and more that it turns out a lot of people don’t vote based on how their candidate or his party feels about immigrants and queer people. There are even a lot of single issue voters whose single issue isn’t immigration or queer people.
Regardless, the only feasible way to go from the EC to the Popular vote will be if Republicans think they’ve lost the advantage the EC gives them.
There are two issues:
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Parties aren’t set in stone, Republicans will shift some positions to appear more palatable and move some states redder
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If they take power now they are likely to increase Gerrymandering and voter suppression to give themselves an advantage.
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I’ve been hearing that for a while. Of course then again the people that said that don’t seem to have an answer for the fact that in 2022 Republicans swept the entire state by like 10 points. So maybe we should stop counting on that.
Here’s a comparison of Barack Obama’s, Hillary Clinton’s, and Joe Biden’s election results in Texas:
Election Year Democratic Candidate Vote Percentage Republican Candidate Vote Percentage Margin 2012 Barack Obama 41.4% Mitt Romney 57.2% 15.8% 2016 Hillary Clinton 43.2% Donald Trump 52.2% 9.0% 2020 Joe Biden 46.5% Donald Trump 52.1% 5.6% This is the trend
Here’s a comparison of Bill Clinton’s, Al Gore’s, and Barack Obama’s election results in Florida:
Election Year Democratic Candidate Vote Percentage Republican Candidate Vote Percentage Margin 1992 Bill Clinton 39.0% George H. W. Bush 40.89% -1.89% 2000 Al Gore 48.84% George W. Bush 48.85% -0.01% 2008 Barack Obama 50.91% John McCain 48.09% +2.82% Florida is reliably blue now, right? Since 2010, the Hispanic proportion of the state has grown by 5 percentage points while the white proportion has shrunk by a similar number. It’s gotta be like Dem +8 by now.
Florida is different because conservatives move there when they retire or to escape COVID restrictions. And don’t forget, those Latinos in Florida are Cuban, so race isn’t as good an indicator.
Texas is really opposite. It’s getting large influxes of left-wing voters each year.
Yes yes, we all have our post hoc excuses for why a state with a historical trend toward the Democrats didn’t continue on. All of those excuses were happening when Florida was getting bluer. It’d be great if all we needed to do was kick our feet up and demographics would solve our political problems, but this isn’t a new idea. People in 2000s thought the Democrats would have a permanent majority by now. Turns out the money behind the Republican party isn’t going to just sit back and let them wither into nothingness.
In 10 years we’ll have a good excuses for Texas too. It will be obvious that some Hispanic group was going to turn conservative because they were fleeing failures in nominally left wing states, or were very religious, or had a machismo culture or something. The young people moving to Texas for economic opportunities will be scared away by the abortion bans. Or they’ll crank their media propaganda to 11. Or maybe Texas really will go blue and we’ll have an entirely different set of turning-point states. The Democrats weren’t doomed to be unable to win the presidency because Florida is no longer a swing state and somehow after all the Republican’s failures and odious behavior we’re still in a toss up now.
If it was a simple matter of waiting for Democrats to break the cycle and win forever, it would have happened by now. People have been predicting the impending collapse of the Republican party for decades.
Actually a lot of people moving to Texas tend to be conservative from other states moving explicitly for the politics. Conservatives from California in particular.
For instance in Ted Cruz’s last election he got a higher percentage of Voters from new residents than he did from native Texans and of course the inverse.
Wow, that’s crazy a VP candidate for one of the two parties is actually saying this.
Respect.
I want Walz as president.
There’s a joke here somewhere, but you get a visit from the secret service if you say it…
I don’t follow your meaning
Tim Walz will become president if Kamala is elected and later dies.
Given that she is relatively young and apparently healthy, and the US has a gun situation… the most likely cause of death would be a shooting.
Joking about killing a president gets you a serious talking to by the secret service.
Yeah, it’s not really a joke. Hence the confusion
“but then it would be majority rule!! no faaaaaairrrrr”
-the party of fuck your feelings get over it
If you live in a state that hasn’t joined the NPVIC push your state legislature to adopt it.
https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/state-status
Shows the list of states and each state links to a post submission to message your state’s legislature
My worry with that is the supreme court would just declare it void.
I am worried about that too, but I also think that we should still fight to improve things regardless of the threat of a regressive court undoing our progress.
I completely agree with you. The only way to get them to show us all who they are is to fight for what is right. Every time they fight against the people it becomes harder to ignore their blight. Either things get better or more people see who is making things worse. Win-win.
They are forever burning the bridge to millenials and younger. It’s wonderful.
How could they? At the end of the day isn’t it up to the states to decide who their electoral votes go?
Unfortunately, the supreme court has zero checks and balances, and recently has been willing to make partisan political rulings, so it may well strike it down to help Republicans.
How could they make a president immune from any checks and balances?
How could they allow states to enforce draconian laws against the homeless?
How could they work towards ending voting rights?
How could they give lower judges the power to overrule experts?
They can. They have. They will again. The states have the constitutional right to select their electors as they choose, but this court has demonstrated complete contempt for justice and fairness.
You missed the one saying it’s okay to execute innocent people.
The supreme court also overruled states trying to ban interracial marriage, implement poll taxes to unfairly target poor people, and place signs in their yard protesting war.
I was pulling from the current court, but yes. It’s almost like giving nine unelected geriatrics the ultimate authority on all laws isn’t a good idea.
The only easy grounds for them to do so with an actual constitutional backing would be that interstate compacts are supposed to be approved by Congress.
That’d be great!!!
I live in a deep red state. My vote won’t matter as my states EC votes will go for the Republican candidate.
A popular vote would make my vote count finally.
I live in a deep red state. My vote won’t matter
It forces them to spend more money to keep the state red next time. Money they would rather use to win battleground states.
Yes I agree… part of the problem here is we are so gerrymandered it won’t matter for ages and ages.
Victors shouldn’t be permitted to write the district voting rules.
there wouldn’t be a republican president ever again. they won’t allow this
What if, now he’s me out, they started to adopt popular policies?
they won’t like this
The far easier plan is to simply increase the size of the House of Representatives. All it needs is a change, or repeal, of the Re-Apportionment Act of 1929. Replace it with something like the Wyoming Rule and done.
Not only does that fix Presidential Elections it would also fix or substantially ease a pile of other problems like Gerrymandering by giving the denser population areas the Representation they should have.
The HoR being fixed at only 435 seats is at the core of so many problems in this country.
Nah, even then the smaller populated states like mine have an outsized influence because it is senate (2) + house (population) number of votes per state. Our votes don’t deserve to count more for the head executive (President) that represents everyone.
I think you’re missing the bigger picture. Right now there is 535 votes, 100 from the Senate and 435 from the House.
If the House were expanded to 574 (Wyoming Rule, based on 2010 population data) there would be now be 675, which reduces the relative weight of the Senate’s votes by nearly 1/3rd.
Nothing says it has to be the Wyoming Rule either, we could set a fixed ratio of Citizens to Representatives say 250,000 to 1. Now the HoR would have nearly 1,000 people in it and the Senate would be down to just 10% of the EC votes.
Frankly the HoR should be 1,000 seats or larger. A body of only 435 or even 574 is too small to accurately represent the interests of almost 340,000,000 people.
That would make the electoral college vote closer to proportional, but wouldn’t solve the fundamental problem that small states will always have a disproportionate impact on the outcome as long as we use the electoral college system that is based on the sum of senate + house.
We should fix it as you note for the House to be truly representational of the population though.
I was shocked when I first heard about some people deciding, instead of how many people actually voted for a candidate.
Apparently some Americans were, too.
Repubs want an electoral college, because it’s the only way they can win
Repubs want to keep gerrymandering because it’s the only way they can win
electoral college is DEI for conservatives
Not to mention that a popular vote would be much more secure, and cheaper.
The republicans will see this as a threat to their way of life. Idiots.
Wouldn’t this allow like three states to dictate the other 47?
Sure popular vote sounds nice. But is it really practical if the goal is to raise the quality of life for everyone?
A popular vote would allow the leading majority to neglect 49% of the active voters and groom the 51%. It’s the majority’s tyranny.
Edit* wow you absolute degenerates. You only support this idea because you have the popular vote. If the tide turn this one suggestion could fuck you sideways. If tye republican party had the popular vote you wouldn’t engage in this circlejerk. Never support a suggestion that could shackle you to a sinking ship.
This take can sound reasonable at first but it’s not the right way to look at it.
51% deciding the election is better than as low as 25% or so deciding in the system we have now. I mean, look at the candidates, they’re only visiting a few swing states and ignoring the rest. The issue you’re worried about is already happening.
You know what, you’re right. It is much better for all of us if a small group decides things for the rest of us. We really should just get rid of voting altogether to streamline government.
No that’s how it is now. Like 3 to 5 States decide the election. Without the Electoral College no States would decide the election, just the voters.
fewer Republicans winning will raise the quality of life for everyone.
Where the fuck have you been living for the past 24 years, in which we had TWO shitcunts rule by tyranny of the minority?
Yes. Earth. The planet with only one country.
Truly a pathetic attempt to save face.
You’re as reflected as a surface painted in Stuart Semple’s Black 3.0.
Defending a stance solely because it’s in your favour in this particular time isn’t a long term solution. It can shaft you and keep you shafted if the tide turns.
Having in place a system that allows for diversity should be in the interest of any democrat with an IQ above celcius room temperature. Gerrymandering onbtye other hand and other ways of manipulation is a more rational way of attacking the issue.
Wouldn’t this allow like three states to dictate the other 47?
No, that’s both not mathematically possible and big states aren’t uniform. And all your other statements don’t in any way address how the current system achieves any of those goals. There’s no perfect voting system, but we know our voting system is very bad. Right now most voters are completely irrelevant to a presidential campaign. Not 49%, 80%. If you’re not in a swing state, it doesn’t matter to the campaign what your issues are.
Unlike Norway, we don’t have a parliamentary system, so there’s no multi-party viability, only first-past-the-post which promotes a 2-party system. We do have state based representation in the Senate, which allows equal representation by state, and district level representation in the House. So ultimately any legislation has to go through both those to pass, removing any “tyranny” those of us who live in populous areas might have on the rest of the country.
- The current system allows for less than a 50% majority to decide the president (as what happened in 2016). The current system is worse than your concerns about a simple majority victor.
- The three biggest states do account for a lot of votes (more than a quarter of the votes cast in 2020 came from CA, TX, or FL). However, your point goes against reality - TX and FL are right-leaning purple states whereas CA is a strongly blue state. They don’t cancel each other out, but they alone definitely WOULD NOT decide the election nor “dictate the other 47”.
- “neglect 49% of the active voters and groom the 51%” - You make things sound so static. About 36% of voters are moderate voters and will shift. You can’t just assume that your 51% base will stay same and can be groomed. And that’s not even considering that people are dying and becoming 18+ years old everyday. Politicians in a simple majority election would have to appease the general public. They no longer could simply focus on making the swing states alone happy (though, on the flip side, I’m sure they would emphasize visiting larger population states).
On top of what everyone else has said:
Changing the electoral college impacts the presidential election, the one who’s supposed to represent everyone
You still have the other branches and local governments, the small states don’t get magically fucked by this and it’s weird people think they do
Na, und?
We don’t have proportional representation in the Executive Office. It’s literally impossible. The only fair way of choosing the president is by having the majority elect her or him.
Replacing FPTP would help, too, but ultimately, the executive branch in the US as an ersatz king, and holds far too much power. Regardless, letting a minority elect them is the worse of two evils.
That edit lmao
Went from “I am a serious deep thinker” to “I just want red to win” so abruptly I got whiplash.
But I don’t want red to win. Fastest built straw man it gave you a whiplash too.
But the President doesn’t dictate much of anything (as much as the media salivates at the idea), our representatives in Congress do. The President appoints Judges and can veto bills.
Our country is built on representation of districts and states, so voting for President is also built around representation of districts and states. Not the ideas of the majority. That is reserved for districts and states. The country is physically huge and all 333 million of us don’t live in similar situations economically, environmentally, ethnically, culturally, etc. So we vote based on our local circumstances and (at that level) it is a majority rule. That’s why you can have some states that are much more socialist than others. Or some states that are much more conservative than others. And we as individuals have the freedom and responsibility to make change we would like to see at that level, or we have the freedom of movement between those areas.
I didn’t think I would need to do a basic civics lesson today.
wp:List of U.S. states and territories by population#State and territory rankings
Theoretically, 10 could.
However, just California, Texas, and Florida combined account for fewer than a third of Americans.
You are literally (no hyperbole) anti-democracy.
In democracy only people should matter not arbitrary administrative entities such as states, towns, baronies or whatever.
Furthermore there is no suggestion to increase the powers of the office. If tyranny can happen by a democratically president it can also happen under a president elected under the current non democratic system.
You said the goal is to raise the quality of life of everyone right? You have to get 51%(of the people who vote) to agree on something for the presidency the person who represents everyone in the nation. Why should Wyoming have as much power for voting for president as delaware. Wyoming has around half of the population. Also in another problematic shift why do we have a winner takes all system in all but 1 or 2 states. Your vote doesn’t count and gets completely thrown away in most states if you don’t vote for the popular party in that state. 1 electoral college vote is 536k people in the state of Florida. 1 electoral college vote in Wyoming is 144k people.
A popular vote would mean a democrat vote in Alabama matters as much as a vote in California. And vice versa in for Republicans. Right now neither party cares about either state because they will always vote for their respective party and all the losing party votes of that state get thrown away(except new Hampshire) the parties only care about “swing” states and states on the edge rather than the voter. We have a whole system that reallocate the Electoral college votes to population anyway but with a minimum and only gets reassessed every 10 years.
Why does a state have an identity to matter for voting for a president. They have congress and senate. Wouldnt be easier to find people who cares about the same issue across state lines. Farmers of Indiana would have a larger say if they combine with the farmers of Ohio and their voice can be heard more. Versus we can ignore one state because it isn’t a swing state.
Majority tyranny versus a minority tyranny…which would be better…the constitution us there so we don’t fuck each other up more. But why should the minority of people in America be able to tell the majority of people what to do in this country. Also again one office should represent just the majority opinion versus the senate which is the majority in each state and congress a majority in each smaller section of a state. Where as today the president is the majority of population in each state(essentially senate) weighted by population but we over weight smaller states and have different equalities all over the place which is what congress already is. Which also should be increased in size.
Lastly why are the states unequal the senate is ridiculously unequal favoring all the smaller states. Why shouldn’t California be like 12 states?
You need 2/3rds majority to pass the constitutional amendment required to make this happen, so as long as Republicans exist this isn’t going to ever be the case. It means they’ll never win another election.
Not just that, you then need 3/4 of states to sign off on an amendment before it takes effect. More than 1/4 of states benefit from the electoral college, which makes it a hard sell.
There’s also that interstate compact (which if it ever takes effect will be challenged in court on grounds that interstate compacts are supposed to be approved by Congress), which is also highly unlikely to take effect for the same reason - there aren’t 270 electoral votes worth of states that are either big enough that the electoral college hurts them or willing to hitch themselves so going along with whatever the two or three largest states want.
He is absolutely right that it should be scrapped, or failing that, every eligible voter in every state is automatically enrolled in the electoral college and their ballot is also their vote cast in the college, i.e. render the whole thing a technical irrelevance. It shouldn’t even be seen as a political thing. Votes in deep red states are just as disenfranchised as those in deep blue states. Voting Republican in California or New York is as disenfranchising as voting Democrat in Texas. So if democracy is the intent, then it should be scrapped and not left to the usual “swing state” BS.
Ah, but that is the thing - democracy is not the intent. It may be the intent of some, but it is not the intent of the system as a whole.
Yes, the United States is a representative republic, and not technically a democracy.
I’m willing to switch to an electoral trial by bake off.
Here is the thing that scares me. If Republicans make every election cycle this shitty and horrible to witness over and over again I’m going to be so fucking sick of elections in less than a decade.
This exercise of over and over again deteriorating the experience of elections will wear down a part of the populace into saying “FINE! Fuck elections! Go get a king so that I don’t have to listen to hateful bilious invective for 9 months out of the year.”
I can’t be the only one in fear of that type of fatigue to fascism.
