What about the notion that switching from Electoral College to popular vote just changes the focus of power from a few key states to another few key states, specifically the states with the highest populations and/or voter turnout?
It's a silly complaint because putting most of the power in the most populated states is exactly how you'd expect it to work. California, with a huge population, should be vastly more influential than Montana. How much more influential? Well, I'd say about 38 times more.
Montana won't get much attention, but Montanans should get just as much attention per person as the rest of us, in that case.
Montana doesn't seem to get much attention now, including most other states. Only swing states get attention.
But the complaint you have doesn't make sense because what you speak of is problems the states would have with how Congress works. The electoral college has nothing to do with law, only how the President is elected. Well, Vice President too, supposedly, but the choice of who to vote for is determined for us. To say that California doesn't have enough influence in federal laws because of the electoral college seems misdirected. California already has more influence over Montana right now because both the electoral college electors and House of Representatives are based on population count while the Senate is not. The only place that a small state has the same level of influence on the federal level is in the Senate. Therefore California's complaint about smaller states is partly caused by themselves and the other more populous states.
Why does the Senate exist? To actually give the small states a chance in deciding things on a federal level. If everything was decided by popular vote then small states might as well not bother. Notice that the Senate has more powers than the House, which is as designed because each state has equal voting power. If treaties, for example, were ratified in the House then small states would most often have to follow the lead of the most populous states. That would open the possibility of our country being led by mob rule, which the Founders were fearful of and you call a dick comment.
The only people who seriously push for everything being decided by popular vote tend to have an agenda to push that can only be done by mob rule, to the detriment of the minority for the advantage of the majority.
Also note that most often the winner of the electoral college also wins the popular vote, it is rare for the reverse to happen. So it seems that whether we use electoral college or popular vote for electing the President it would rarely make a difference, other than the focus of campaigning.
Want to have some real fun? Force the states to stop using winner takes all in determining electors. But even then it still probably wouldn't make much of a difference.
I disagree, and so did the founders when they made two houses, one based on population and one based on states. I don't think the current electoral college is the right answer, but I don't think a pure populist vote is right, either.
I'm well aware that I disagree with the founders on this question. After all, it's hardly the only thing I disagree with. Other items include whether women should be allowed to vote and whether people should be able to own other people.
I think the federal government's original setup makes a great deal of sense when you're trying to tie together a loose collection of independent states, but no longer makes much sense today, now that the states have almost completely been subordinated to the federal government.
It's a compromise that has worked fairly well, balancing population versus the independent needs of states. Throwing out that balance could fundamentally unsettle the US, because many states would quickly become tired of New York and California telling them how to live their lives.
...as opposed to people in California and New York, states which create disproportionately large amounts of the national wealth, being told what to do by people in small states which don't have to manage the issues California and New York have to in order to keep the national economy moving.
When you're in a small state with disproportional voting power you end up with more money coming back to your state than it contributes in federal taxes, so you can afford to act out and pretend we can all live in a screw the government utopia - the big states you're sticking your thumb in the eye of have to pay the tab.
Considering that there has only been three elections where the winner of the electoral vote did not win the popular vote, per Wikipedia, it stands to reason that California and New York have roughly the same amount of influence either way. Therefore it is silly for them to complain over the system in place because it more than likely would still be what would be in place if the Presidential election was decided by popular vote.
Personally, I think this issue comes from a confusion of how the electoral college works and how Congress works. The things you say that bother California and New York are not determined by the electoral college, which is used to elect the President, it is in fact how Congress itself works. If those two states are bothered by smaller states telling them what to do then the problem lies with Congress, not how the President is elected.
It is only in the Senate where a smaller state gets the same amount of influence as every other state since they all get an equal number of votes. The electoral college electors and House of Representative members are determined by population count. The problem with a possible mismatch between popular vote and the electoral college is that states tend to be winner takes all, which they can change anytime they want since a state determines how its electors are chosen.
It's true that the electoral college gives small states a slight boost in representation in the presidential election. This is due to the fact that the number of electors is a function of the number of congresspeople and small states have, relative to their population, more congresspeople because of the existence of the senate and rounding error when determining number of representatives.
With regard to whether getting rid of that advantage in electors in order to modernize the system would unfairly shift the balance of power, read the above paragraph again. The small states already have an advantage in representation in Congress. That doesn't go away if we make the election of the president rely on a popular vote.
Agreed the grandparent's reply was a smarmy way of saying it, but, avoidance of majority rule is indeed why we use it. And to look at it another way: to keep one state (or a tiny few) from deciding the direction the rest of the states in the union must go.
I don't think it's a stretch to say we've become a more singular nation state, so that second part may not be as obvious, but, it's definitely still a factor. Imagine the general mentality in a state whose populace you have a low opinion of can now dictate things formerly decided in your state.
The system doesn't seem to work to prevent a tiny few states from deciding the direction the rest must go, it just shuffles them around. Instead of states like California, Texas, and New York having the biggest say, we have states like Ohio, Virginia, and Florida doing it. I don't see how that's an improvement, and it actually looks substantially worse to me.
States like CA, TX, and NY still have their say, AND states like OH, VA, and FL. It only takes 11 states to win the electoral college (CA, TX, NY, FL, IL, PA, OH, MI, GA, NJ, NC), but those never agree, and likely won't, that's when other states come into play.
With a popular vote, instead of candidates trying to vie for states by visiting regions in them, would hit a few hundred cities that they would already hit in the Electoral College process, but then stop there. It would effectively leave entire states out of the campaign process. That will only be magnified as we switch to the Internet for our media, so I think it's still worthwhile to get candidates out there hustling for votes, in front of hundreds of local media outlets while they exist. I genuinely think it helps vet them, as it gives the more opportunities to say things, including "the wrong things", and things that will change peoples mind's.
I fear when we start cutting back on physical appearances, we'll get to the point where the Internet is all that's left. Then they'll control the message completely. Imagine candidates who not only don't answer question, but seemingly don't get asked them. At least we currently have people who throw metaphorical wrenches at the seemingly monolithic candidates, hoping to snag them.
Because implying that someone who needs a justification for "One person, one vote" is below you is not dickish at all. I saw my post as doing you a favor: giving you my return argument so that you could write up a proper rebuttal ahead of time.
But hey. You can poison the well all you like. The burden of proof is not on me.
Your curt replies would hardly give mikeash sufficient context to understand either your intentions or what your return argument was going to be. I presume he thought you were simply going to twist his words ("one person, one vote" -> "mob rule") and was irked.
Your reply to ktizo was much more informative and appreciable.
> I presume he thought you were simply going to twist his words ("one person, one vote" -> "mob rule")
No, that's what I did. "Mob rule" is a proxy for the entire notion that direct democracy cannot work; the only other responses are that people don't want it or people can't do it. It's a blatantly obvious response from anyone who did not already buy into whatever mikeash is selling. The fact that he was framing his next response to be a sophisticated, high-fallutin, knock-your-socks-off thesis of epic proportions was disgusting and offensive. I'm not surprised that a taste of his own medicine cornered him into name-calling and running away.
> Your reply to ktizo was much more informative and appreciable.
Because ktizo was asking for information. If someone asks a question, I answer it earnestly. If someone is clearly ignorant, I try to explain what they're missing. If someone claims to have a solution to a well-known problem like "ZOMG!SHEEPLE", I expect them to actually have the damn solution ready at hand and not dangle it like a fucking carrot.
He could have called me on my tone and then answered the question. But I suspect he has no answer. All he has is an intuitive appeal to fairness completely unsupported by thousands of years of world history.
> Because implying that someone who needs a justification for "One person, one vote" is below you is not dickish at all.
I don't know what the hell you think you read, but you need to go back and try again. I never implied anything of the sort. I didn't know what level of justification you were after, so I started off with the most obvious rationale and left the door open to further discussion.
I have no idea how you could interpret that as "implying that someone... is below you". Maybe jerks think everyone is jerks, I don't know.
How would giving equal weight to all votes in elections, compared to giving diferent weights according to geographic location, be any more or less 'mob-rule'?
The purpose of the electoral college is to acknowledge the states as mostly-sovereign entities in their own right. This used to be quite important; it remains an issue, though largely a proxy war, today. I don't know whether or not I support the electoral college. I actually quite like liquid democracy, but I'm not yet sold on the system; I have a friend currently working on implementing it and it's interesting to watch him work through its issues. It's one of those things that wouldn't have been feasible in 1800 but is far more feasible today.
Digression aside, the acknowledgement of the states is a neutralization of pure people power. It is the same reason that the Supreme Court is not elected, and executive appointees are not elected. These are things that are intended to be a check against the people. This is also why the tax-exempt status of churches is supposed to depend on the fact that they are to be politically neutral, and why Kennedy's Catholicism was such a hot issue when he ran for office. This is why charities frequently remain neutral in political discourse, why HN was divided on whether a business should be allowed to take sides on a political issue. This is why you're not allowed to discuss who you're voting for, or campaign for a candidate or issue, within a certain radius of a polling station.
Because "one person, one vote" never is. In any group of people larger than approximately 25 and definitely larger than 150, you will never actually get "one person, one vote". You will get political parties, who give you flyers saying "Vote for these 5 dudes, vote yes on A, B, and D, vote no on C and E," and those flyers will be followed to the letter.
It is probably possible to maintain the argument for "one person, one vote" despite all of these reasons not to, of course. I'd like to see the argument made that can account for the problem of demagoguery, the problem of charisma, especially enhanced as it's been by the advent of television. I haven't seen it yet.
