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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
The Electoral College means that any President is required to give some attention to issues uniquely belonging to rural people.
Not much attention but some.
Honestly, I'm for MORE things like the Electoral College since Europe shows the benefits of allowing representation by smaller groups versus "Winner Takes All."
edited 23rd Jun '18 2:55:01 PM by CharlesPhipps
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.The electoral college means that a minority of people in the rural areas can hold back progress because they're somehow inherent virtuous or some other kind of anti-intellectual garbage. It objectively does not make small states less ignored and thus fails at its primary purpose.
edited 23rd Jun '18 2:53:44 PM by Fourthspartan56
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangIf, under a popular vote system, a candidate needed rural votes to win, then they would have to do that anyway.
Has anyone ever done a study that shows how election strategies would have to change if we switched to such a system?
edited 23rd Jun '18 2:54:50 PM by KarkatTheDalek
Oh God! Natural light!They're poor so they don't matter. Got it.
edited 23rd Jun '18 2:55:54 PM by CharlesPhipps
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.You think rural people have some sort of monopoly on abject poverty?
No, the urban poor have their votes repressed too.
So tell me, how does removing the electoral college stop hunger and epidemics and horrors in the rural states.
Just tell me what makes it better for the people there?
edited 23rd Jun '18 2:58:26 PM by CharlesPhipps
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.While smaller communities still tend to be ignored, there's three counterarguments I would make:
-That arguably means we need more electoral college, not less.
-Also keep in mind that isn't necessarily a bug, either. The electoral college is a compromise between states voting and popular vote. At a certain point, even with the electoral college a population can simply be too small to matter-that's deliberate.
-Also, these smaller communities not having much political influence means that they aren't interfering with popular vote all that much anyways-which should be a bonus for people who don't want them to have a lot more influence than their population size.
Leviticus 19:34I have a simple belief about democracy. Democracy exists for the purposes of making sure your interests are represented by the state of which you are a part of. There is nothing inherently more valuable about 51,000 voters over 50,000 when the goal should be to represent all 101,000 voters' interests as best possible.
The whole purpose of a Federation of United States is that there are compromises and alliances to keep everyone working together. That includes the promise to represent the interests of individual states.
Unless you want to argue we should just do away with states period.
Democrats can win the Electoral Vote....they have done in recent memory. They have done so by landslides.
- waves robot arms*
Does.not.compute.does.not.compute.
Well there is one way to compute, that people don't think campaigning to rural voters is worth it and that disenfranchising them is a good idea as long as it benefits their view that Democrats will always hold a popular majority.
edited 23rd Jun '18 3:03:41 PM by CharlesPhipps
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.Which is one of the reasons it's so hard to make things better and why the GOP don't need to be sane.
If you seriously think that not wanting rural people to have a disproportional influence for no-good reason that allows them to hold back progress and propagate the bigoted beliefs so common to such regions means that I think they don't matter because they're poor then frankly there's no much reason to continue interacting with you because you've either left the realm of rationality or are arguing in bad faith.
edited 23rd Jun '18 3:03:35 PM by Fourthspartan56
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangYou've said they're backward, ignorant, superstitious, and hold back progress along with a large number of other slurs based traditionally around hating on the poor. People who can't afford decent education, clothes, and for which life is a day to day struggle. You mock their beliefs and you talk about how they're bad guys.
I can't imagine WHY someone would think removing the Electoral College for something you suggest might be threatening to them.
If their votes won't matter, which they won't under this system, then why should they be part of the Union?
edited 23rd Jun '18 3:07:27 PM by CharlesPhipps
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.edited 23rd Jun '18 3:11:08 PM by Eschaton
Pretty sure I've once seen somebody do the math and apparently you could theoretically become president with only around 20 % of the popular vote.
How's that democratic?
Wish I could find the article again.
edited 23rd Jun '18 3:10:46 PM by DrunkenNordmann
We learn from history that we do not learn from historyI'm poor. I live in a poor town in North Carolina that's being destroyed by the opiod epidemic and I can't drink my tap water because it's contaminated by the local Chemours plant.
Guess what? People here are still bigots and they've got no excuse for being so. Poverty does not excuse bigotry.
edited 23rd Jun '18 3:12:48 PM by LeGarcon
Oh really when?Also yes, if they support people like the Republicans or Trump then they are being the bad guys.
Stop projecting your outrage onto me and address my actual arguments. Pathetic ad-hominems don't suit you.
Also their votes will matter the exact same as anyone else, one person one vote.
How's that democratic?
Wish I could find the article again.
The founders were deeply suspicious of popular will and thus wanted a psuedo-technocratic system that involves expertise (who all coincidentally were wealthy white men) instead of popular mandate. Which is why in the early days of the republic IIRC voting was restricted to landowning white men.
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangIt just strikes me that people are going after the wrong target there. George W. Bush won his first term through voter fraud. The Electoral College didn't elect him. The destruction of large numbers of ballots in Florida did. Trump won through the fact a number of states voted for him which voted for Obama.
There's a lot of ways to address this from Democrats broadening their campaigns among states to help flip them, attacking the voter suppression of the Republican party, or if you want to be radical—abolishing the two party system.
But the thing about the Electoral College is that as long as the states are set up like mini-countries with their own Governors, Senates, and Legal Systems—the Electoral College plays a vital role in preserving the balance of power within states.
I just think if you did banish the Electoral College, it won't lead to a Democratic Paradise. Instead, I see the Republicans just campaigning heavier in Suburban Areas and beating the Whites Only Drum while continuing voter suppression. 5 million votes is a lot but not so much that it can't be undone as we saw with Bush.
edited 23rd Jun '18 3:16:41 PM by CharlesPhipps
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.To be clear, I was responding to Charles when I said that, not you. I agree that the influence is disproportionate, but I do feel that if we switch to a popular vote system, it will be the urban voters who receive the lion's share of the influence. And while they deserve a great deal of influence, since, well, that's where a large portion of our population lives, I don't think it's fair to ignore the voices of those in less-populated areas.
Also - and this is for the thread at large - do we really need all of the snappy comebacks and the snarky Youtube responses? Are those really conducive to a polite and productive discussion? Sometimes it feels like people are more just trying to prove that they're smarter than their opponents.
Oh God! Natural light!One deal with the Electoral College is that it determines a state's vote in a binary fashion; they either vote for one candidate or the other, which means there's no different outcome for a state that voted for a candidate by a landslide versus one that was more or less on the fence. That could lead to some serious misrepresentation.
ASAB: All Sponsors Are Bad.It was one of the defining moments of my life. My father explained to me Bill Clinton was someone who was "one of us" and appealing to the problems of Southern voters, the rural poor, and also people in cities. He was a "unifier."
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

edited 23rd Jun '18 2:51:56 PM by Mio