It's worth pointing out that in the last quarter century, the American public at large has STEADFASTLY rejected Republican Presidential candidates. There have been 7 elections since 1992, and Democrats have been the top vote-earner in 6 of them. And not just by a little, but by alot. The average margin of victory in the overall vote has been over 4 million each time. The ONLY exception to this was 2004, and that required Bush both being an incumbent and beating the war drums as hard as humanly possible.
So I would have to say it's a pretty goddamn neat deal for conservatives to still be able to hold onto the White House a full 50% of the duration of that time frame. There is no scenario where Trump would win the popular vote and lose the electoral college. But the opposite could EASILY happen again. Not that it matters anyway, because I'm coming more and more convinced @deltago is correct. If Trump loses, it won't matter what the scenario is. He won't accept it. He'll go completely scorched earth and plunge the entire country into absolute crisis.
So Republican megadonor and deputy finance chair (same as Michael Cohen was) Elliott Broidy's offices were raided by the FBI looking for evidence of three criminal areas: conspiracy, money laundering, and violations of the law related to covert lobbying for foreign officials.
Broidy resigned in April 2018 after it came out that he paid off a porn star in exchange for silence about an affair. There are rumors that the payoff involved an abortion and that he actually didn't do it and that he was merely the fall guy who volunteered that it was for him and that the payoff was actually on behalf of Trump. At any rate, since resigning from the Republican party finance position, Broidy has done quite well and been awarded by the White Housemore than a billion dollars in contracts for his privatesecurity firm mostly regarding the recent destabilization of the UAE for Saudi Arabian interests.
@jjstraka34: You've mentioned the "GOP presidential candidates only won the popular vote once since 1992" thing several times recently. Some repetition is inevitable over the course of a thread this long, but we don't need reminders for facts we've heard just the other day.
It's a short-sighted plan by emotional people who dislike the result of an election that happened two years ago. Tinkering with the system while emotions are running high is going to result in bad unintended consequences IMHO.
It has happened 5 times in the last 200+ years. To say it another way, 5 of our 45 presidents have been elected without winning the popular vote.
200 years isn't short sighted. And no one that I can see is referencing the most recent election. I'd be *fine* if Romney won in 2012 by winning the popular vote, and I'd still want it changed if Romney lost in 2012 despite winning the popular vote because of the electoral college.
Would you fly on a plane if 5 out of the last 45 times it flew, it malfunctioned? Would it be shortsighted of you to want it fixed?
Nowhere in the Constitution does it ever mention that winning the popular vote is a requirement for becoming president. I think that is exactly what was intended. I don't agree with you that 5 out of 45 times it malfunctioned.
Did you know the constitution it states "The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand." Obviously that was abandoned and replaced. Don't see why the current method can't be abandoned and replaced.
How is that obvious? Each representative represents about 690,000 people now. That's far more than 30,000. We'd need over 10,000 representatives to even come close to breaking that rule...
It mean for the population of 30,000 = 1 ECV. New York City alone with 8.337 Million people should have 278+2 Electoral votes if the constitution is actually being followed as written. (if you don't have 30,000 people, you still get 1+ 2 for the senators)
They capped it back in 1911 when they thought there was getting to be too many electoral votes to manage (population back then was just over 92 million compared to 323 million now).
@deltago the original restriction doesn't work in the way you're interpreting it. The restriction provided a lower limit to the numbers of citizens per Representative, but there was no requirement for that lower limit to be used, though it was relevant at the time. When the constitution was written the population was around 3m, so there would have been a maximum limit of around 100 on the number of Representatives - and in 1790 they were close to the maximum with an average of 33,000 citizens per Representative. The original limit proposed was actually 40,000, but Washington intervened to propose a lower limit (i.e. more Representatives) in order to enable the Representatives to more closely represent their constituents.
The rapidly rising US population since 1790 resulted in substantial increases in the average number of citizens per Representative even before the membership cap was introduced in 1911 - the trend in that average has actually been pretty consistent over time, with the average citizens per Representative roughly doubling every 50 years. You can see the figures for all years here.
Deutsche Bank apparently has leverage over the President of the United States. The guy's basically a foreign agent. A puppet. We don't know how bad this is because he's hiding his tax returns and financial information.
Deutsche Bank has reportedly loaned him over $2 billion dollars. He lied to the bank over several instances. Yet for some reason they continued to give him money. This involves recently retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's son approving the loans when when American banks would not.
When Trump was trying to get a loan from the bank to build a skyscraper in Chicago, he reportedly said his net worth was $3 billion. The bank, however, reportedly concluded that he was worth about $788 million. The bank also reportedly determined in 2014 that Trump exaggerated his wealth as he was looking to secure a loan to make a bid for the NFL's Buffalo Bills. In 2010, Trump again turned to Deutsche Bank for a loan as he attempted to buy the Doral Golf Resort and Spa for $100 million. The bank again reportedly determined that Trump was exaggerating his wealth, this time concluding that he had overvalued some of his real estate assets by up to 70 percent. That is accounting fraud and bank fraud.
So Republican megadonor and deputy finance chair (same as Michael Cohen was) Elliott Broidy's offices were raided by the FBI looking for evidence of three criminal areas: conspiracy, money laundering, and violations of the law related to covert lobbying for foreign officials.
Broidy resigned in April 2018 after it came out that he paid off a porn star in exchange for silence about an affair. There are rumors that the payoff involved an abortion and that he actually didn't do it and that he was merely the fall guy who volunteered that it was for him and that the payoff was actually on behalf of Trump. At any rate, since resigning from the Republican party finance position, Broidy has done quite well and been awarded by the White Housemore than a billion dollars in contracts for his privatesecurity firm mostly regarding the recent destabilization of the UAE for Saudi Arabian interests.
(Maybe there is a method to Trump's (literal) madness...)
Trump employs the "Firehose of falsehoods" method. It is a Russian propaganda model. The strategy is where a propagandist overwhelms the public by producing a never-ending stream of misinformation and lies. Basically the truth gets lost because fact checks and the truth get overwhelmed and can't keep up with rebuttals to earlier lies because the propagandist is already on to the next lies. Research in psychology supports many of the most successful aspects of the model.
Russian Firehosing model of propaganda
High volume, multi channel
Rapid continuous and repetitive
No commitment to objective reality
No commitment to consistency
So yeah that describes Trump to a T, right. High volume - he's told over 8k lies since taking office about 15 a day. Rapid continuous and repetitive, check he repeats himself all the time and it's multi-channel he gets his state TV show on Fox News and alt-right media to repeat his lies. No commitment to objective reality - obvious since day 1 when he had Sean Spicer lie about crowd size at his inauguration being bigger than Obama's when pictures told a different story and he lied on day 1 about winning the popular vote. He has no commitment to consistency - he lies about lies he told before flip flopping to whatever suits him now even when it's opposite of an hour ago.
If you actually think campaigning primarily in swing states is a problem, consider the ramifications of the alternative. All a swing state is, is a state likely to switch between parties. Any state can be a swing state, that is up to the voters. So any state can become a battleground state in an election. We do see these change over time.
Now, if the Electoral College didn't exist, the same disproportionate coverage would exist, only it would not be subject to change the way swing states are. It would be the few major population centers and that's it, all the time, until the end of time.
Of course the Electoral System isn't perfect, but it at least gives the ability for every state to matter, which is manifestly not the case otherwise. And we see this in history (from Wikipedia cause i'm lazy):
"Swing states have generally changed over time. For instance, the swing states of Ohio, Connecticut, Indiana, New Jersey and New York were key to the outcome of the 1888 election.[18] Likewise, Illinois[19] and Texas were key to the outcome of the 1960 election, Florida and New Hampshire were key in deciding the 2000 election, and Ohio was important during the 2004 election. Ohio has gained its reputation as a regular swing state after 1980,[20][21] and last voted against the winner in 1960. If current trends from the 2012 and 2016 elections continue, the closest results in 2020 will occur in Arizona, Florida, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska's second congressional district, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.[22] Other potential swing states include Alaska, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia, all of which have voted for both a Republican candidate and a Democratic candidate within a five-point margin multiple times in the previous six presidential elections.[23]"
IMO, anything that deals with how an election is run should be made a referendum in the next election, and if passed enacted for the next election. A governing party shouldn't be able to change the rules on the fly even if you support it or not.
Yeah, exactly my point. Major changes to our entire system of elections and representation should be decided by us, the voters, not a cabal of governors who want to consolidate power in their party by any means necessary.
To be more specific though I think an actual constitutional amendment is necessary, not just a referendum.
Lol everyone's vote counts in an electoral system the exact same way they count otherwise. 1 person, 1 vote, highest number wins. Only difference is that it is done on a state by state basis, to ensure that the majority in the majority of states in the winner. We didn't want small groups of states with their own needs and problems having virtually no say so or influence, and the electoral college corrects that.
Do you have an actual solution to their representation, or should they just "tolerate the crappy situation", as you say.
Lol everyone's vote counts in an electoral system the exact same way they count otherwise. 1 person, 1 vote, highest number wins. Only difference is that it is done on a state by state basis, to ensure that the majority in the majority of states in the winner. We didn't want small groups of states with their own needs and problems having virtually no say so or influence, and the electoral college corrects that.
Do you have an actual solution to their representation, or should they just "tolerate the crappy situation", as you say.
That just moves the problem further down the line, to within a state but between communities. It doesn't remove it.
Lol everyone's vote counts in an electoral system the exact same way they count otherwise. 1 person, 1 vote, highest number wins. Only difference is that it is done on a state by state basis, to ensure that the majority in the majority of states in the winner. We didn't want small groups of states with their own needs and problems having virtually no say so or influence, and the electoral college corrects that.
Do you have an actual solution to their representation, or should they just "tolerate the crappy situation", as you say.
That just moves the problem further down the line, to within a state but between communities. It doesn't remove it.
Can you clarify? How does a state election means that state lacks representation between communities? Because some communities vote for the losing candidate, and have their vote not count that way? That's kinda always gonna be the case if that's what you're talking about.
In a sense I agree that it doesn't remove the representation problem, but i've never heard a better solution, only ones that make it worse. With the electoral system that have enough proportional voting power that they can't be completely overshadowed, which is at least a start.
I look at the U.S landscape a lot like the E.U, frankly. The analogy isn't perfect I know but just deal. We are a large country and we have countries-within-countries. The South is not like the North. The Midwest is not like the West Coast. Maine is not like Wyoming. They all have different political needs and beliefs and industries and issues.
We have many groups trying to form a large political union, and as such a popular consensus among the majority of the groups make sense. It is the best way to serve as many peoples interests as possible. I don't see any reason why it doesn't.
Lol everyone's vote counts in an electoral system the exact same way they count otherwise. 1 person, 1 vote, highest number wins. Only difference is that it is done on a state by state basis, to ensure that the majority in the majority of states in the winner. We didn't want small groups of states with their own needs and problems having virtually no say so or influence, and the electoral college corrects that.
Do you have an actual solution to their representation, or should they just "tolerate the crappy situation", as you say.
Yeah, it 1 person 1 vote in THAT state. It's not even REMOTELY like that nationally. Every person in Wyoming is getting the equivalent of 4.3 votes to the same person in California. California gets a electoral vote roughly every 727,000 people. Wyoming gets one every 166,000. This is not an opinion, it is a mathematical fact. And yes I have mentioned this a number of times recently. Fine, slap me on the wrist for it again. But if people are going to make the argument that protecting the rights of small states means their vote should equal 4x as much as someone living in another one, I'm going to keep presenting numbers that call it out. I'm not making it up. I'm simply dividing the population of each state by their electoral votes. You can do this with ANY state to compare who has more voting power and who doesn't. But so I don't get accused of "spamming", here is another one. Texas and Delaware. The citizens of Delaware have Presidential votes that are 2.3x more powerful than Texas. I can do this til the cows come home. Take any state and compare it to another and you will see that it is in NO WAY one person one vote. Certain states, by virtue of the electoral college, grant their citizens the equivalent of 2 or 3 EXTRA votes. If people want to talk about where people are voting multiple times, they need only look at our current system to realize doing so is already entrenched into how it works.
I will never understand the constant hyperventilating about Wyoming. Yes, Wyoming and other small or less populated states get a boost from the electoral college.
Is Wyoming's 3 electoral votes utterly canceling out California's 55?
Absolutely not, not even close. All it does is give them a little bit more significance to the overall picture, so that they aren't entirely forgotten as if they are invisible and don't matter at all.
Lol everyone's vote counts in an electoral system the exact same way they count otherwise. 1 person, 1 vote, highest number wins. Only difference is that it is done on a state by state basis, to ensure that the majority in the majority of states in the winner. We didn't want small groups of states with their own needs and problems having virtually no say so or influence, and the electoral college corrects that.
Do you have an actual solution to their representation, or should they just "tolerate the crappy situation", as you say.
That just moves the problem further down the line, to within a state but between communities. It doesn't remove it.
Can you clarify? How does a state election means that state lacks representation between communities? Because some communities vote for the losing candidate, and have their vote not count that way? That's kinda always gonna be the case if that's what you're talking about.
In a sense I agree that it doesn't remove the representation problem, but i've never heard a better solution, only ones that make it worse. With the electoral system that have enough proportional voting power that they can't be completely overshadowed, which is at least a start.
Yes, that is what I mean.
FWIW the US federal government is way more overbearing than the EU.
I will never understand the constant hyperventilating about Wyoming. Yes, Wyoming and other small or less populated states get a boost from the electoral college.
Is Wyoming's 3 electoral votes utterly canceling out California's 55?
Absolutely not, not even close. All it does is give them a little bit more significance to the overall picture, so that they aren't entirely forgotten as if they are invisible and don't matter at all.
Is that really so bad?
This is a remarkable way of saying "stats and math don't matter".
Wyoming gets picked on because it is the smallest. But the 6 other states that have 3 ELC (Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Vermont), 4 of them skew right.
Those 15 votes won’t cancel out California but it does cancel out a state like New Jersey with 9 million people to 4 million.
Increasing the representation in the house (kinda my point with bringing up the 30,000), which hasn’t increased in a century would help with the despartity being shown now. It won’t tilt it to far left or right but it should give larger states more electoral votes to prevent the above situation playing out. With the 2020 census coming up, it’d Be the perfect time for the US to do it (alas something tells me the Senators won’t hear it).
Lest I be accused of ONLY cherry-picking Wyoming, I have now also selected 10 states at random (a full 20% of the country). North, South, East and West, and compared how their vote is weighted to California. Here are the results:
South Carolina-1.3x
Oklahoma-1.3x
New Hampshire-2.2x
Idaho-1.7x
Minnesota-1.7x
New Mexico-1.7x
Alabama-1.3x
Wisconsin-1.2x
Indiana-1.2x
Oregon-1.2x
So, while there is clearly not AS stark a difference with most other states, it does average out to all these other states having votes for President that are about 1.5x as powerful. And the best one can do to put 1.5 into context is by the example of overtime pay. Essentially, the entire rest of the country is ALWAYS getting overtime pay and California is constantly stuck at their base wage. You tell me if you would sit still for that if it was your pay and not your vote. We all know the answer.
But frankly, I'm sick of running actual numbers into a calculator and having them dismissed by people who aren't bothering to do the math themselves. The mathematical fact is when it comes to electing a President, the people in California (and frankly, I highly suspect, Texas and New York as well) are essentially 2nd-class citizens. It isn't up for debate. The numbers are what they are, and I'm no longer interested in debating whether the moon is made out of asiago cheese.
its hyperbole to say that if Wyoming's representation was aligned to be exactly proportional to California's, that Wyoming would be forgotten. They aren't forgotten - they are exactly entitled to the representation that they deserve. A voter in Cheyanne shouldnt have more sway than a voter in Sacramento. Just like a white voter shouldn't have more sway than a PoC.
The electoral college feeds that inequity. Wyoming will ALWAYS have outsized importance by virtue of having equal representation as California in the Senate. It doesn't need to extend to the Presidential level too.
Lest I be accused of ONLY cherry-picking Wyoming, I have now also selected 10 states at random (a full 20% of the country). North, South, East and West, and compared how their vote is weighted to California. Here are the results:
South Carolina-1.3x
Oklahoma-1.3x
New Hampshire-2.2x
Idaho-1.7x
Minnesota-1.7x
New Mexico-1.7x
Alabama-1.3x
Wisconsin-1.2x
Indiana-1.2x
Oregon-1.2x
Having just 20% more voting power than another citizen is itself an inequity. I would not be okay with knowing that my neighbor's vote counted 20% more than mine or less than mine.
I look at the U.S landscape a lot like the E.U, frankly. The analogy isn't perfect I know but just deal. We are a large country and we have countries-within-countries. The South is not like the North. The Midwest is not like the West Coast. Maine is not like Wyoming. They all have different political needs and beliefs and industries and issues.
No, there's nothing wrong with this. You are spot-on. Europe (now) is a lot like the US, except they are idiots who don't realize that and cannot get their crap together to create a federal union. They're a bit like the US under the Articles of Confederation. (Though that too is an imperfect analogy.)
Alright, well if you follow my analogy, then maybe you can see the moral issue I have here. Germany shouldn't be able to entirely dictate policy for Croatia without Croatia having some say, regardless if Germany is bigger and can outvote them, because Croatia has it's own separate needs that Germany neither experiences nor cares about very much.
This is what happens without the Electoral College. The little guys have no say so over what happens to them and get steamrolled by the bigger guys who neither experience nor care about their issues very much, they are concerned with their own lives and issues. The Electoral College ensures that if enough little guys have enough problems that need addressing, they at least have some level of ability to throw their weight around even if won't ever amount to the big guys.
Consolidating power among the handful of major cities in the country is not preferable nor more representative of everyone than consolidating power among the populations of every state. The latter gives every group in the U.S some level of a voice and the former doesn't, or at least to a much, much lesser extent.
Lest I be accused of ONLY cherry-picking Wyoming, I have now also selected 10 states at random (a full 20% of the country). North, South, East and West, and compared how their vote is weighted to California. Here are the results:
South Carolina-1.3x
Oklahoma-1.3x
New Hampshire-2.2x
Idaho-1.7x
Minnesota-1.7x
New Mexico-1.7x
Alabama-1.3x
Wisconsin-1.2x
Indiana-1.2x
Oregon-1.2x
Having just 20% more voting power than another citizen is itself an inequity. I would not be okay with knowing that my neighbor's vote counted 20% more than mine or less than mine.
Trying to boil down electoral votes to individual voting power is not accurate. Everyone's vote counts for 1. It's the individual states that have more or less power, and the least populated states never have more than the average or highly populated state, they only are less behind.
Comments
So I would have to say it's a pretty goddamn neat deal for conservatives to still be able to hold onto the White House a full 50% of the duration of that time frame. There is no scenario where Trump would win the popular vote and lose the electoral college. But the opposite could EASILY happen again. Not that it matters anyway, because I'm coming more and more convinced @deltago is correct. If Trump loses, it won't matter what the scenario is. He won't accept it. He'll go completely scorched earth and plunge the entire country into absolute crisis.
Broidy resigned in April 2018 after it came out that he paid off a porn star in exchange for silence about an affair. There are rumors that the payoff involved an abortion and that he actually didn't do it and that he was merely the fall guy who volunteered that it was for him and that the payoff was actually on behalf of Trump. At any rate, since resigning from the Republican party finance position, Broidy has done quite well and been awarded by the White Housemore than a billion dollars in contracts for his privatesecurity firm mostly regarding the recent destabilization of the UAE for Saudi Arabian interests.
https://www.propublica.org/article/federal-authorities-raided-trump-fundraisers-office-in-money-laundering-probe
btw..
@deltago the original restriction doesn't work in the way you're interpreting it. The restriction provided a lower limit to the numbers of citizens per Representative, but there was no requirement for that lower limit to be used, though it was relevant at the time. When the constitution was written the population was around 3m, so there would have been a maximum limit of around 100 on the number of Representatives - and in 1790 they were close to the maximum with an average of 33,000 citizens per Representative. The original limit proposed was actually 40,000, but Washington intervened to propose a lower limit (i.e. more Representatives) in order to enable the Representatives to more closely represent their constituents.
The rapidly rising US population since 1790 resulted in substantial increases in the average number of citizens per Representative even before the membership cap was introduced in 1911 - the trend in that average has actually been pretty consistent over time, with the average citizens per Representative roughly doubling every 50 years. You can see the figures for all years here.
Deutsche Bank has reportedly loaned him over $2 billion dollars. He lied to the bank over several instances. Yet for some reason they continued to give him money. This involves recently retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's son approving the loans when when American banks would not.
When Trump was trying to get a loan from the bank to build a skyscraper in Chicago, he reportedly said his net worth was $3 billion. The bank, however, reportedly concluded that he was worth about $788 million. The bank also reportedly determined in 2014 that Trump exaggerated his wealth as he was looking to secure a loan to make a bid for the NFL's Buffalo Bills. In 2010, Trump again turned to Deutsche Bank for a loan as he attempted to buy the Doral Golf Resort and Spa for $100 million. The bank again reportedly determined that Trump was exaggerating his wealth, this time concluding that he had overvalued some of his real estate assets by up to 70 percent. That is accounting fraud and bank fraud.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/434643-deutsche-bank-loaned-over-2-billion-to-trump-report
Kinda puts supposedly purposefully scheduling a debate opposite Monday Night Football in perspective, doesn't it??
Trump employs the "Firehose of falsehoods" method. It is a Russian propaganda model. The strategy is where a propagandist overwhelms the public by producing a never-ending stream of misinformation and lies. Basically the truth gets lost because fact checks and the truth get overwhelmed and can't keep up with rebuttals to earlier lies because the propagandist is already on to the next lies. Research in psychology supports many of the most successful aspects of the model.
Russian Firehosing model of propaganda
So yeah that describes Trump to a T, right. High volume - he's told over 8k lies since taking office about 15 a day. Rapid continuous and repetitive, check he repeats himself all the time and it's multi-channel he gets his state TV show on Fox News and alt-right media to repeat his lies. No commitment to objective reality - obvious since day 1 when he had Sean Spicer lie about crowd size at his inauguration being bigger than Obama's when pictures told a different story and he lied on day 1 about winning the popular vote. He has no commitment to consistency - he lies about lies he told before flip flopping to whatever suits him now even when it's opposite of an hour ago.
Here's a video describing the technique.
Now, if the Electoral College didn't exist, the same disproportionate coverage would exist, only it would not be subject to change the way swing states are. It would be the few major population centers and that's it, all the time, until the end of time.
Of course the Electoral System isn't perfect, but it at least gives the ability for every state to matter, which is manifestly not the case otherwise. And we see this in history (from Wikipedia cause i'm lazy):
"Swing states have generally changed over time. For instance, the swing states of Ohio, Connecticut, Indiana, New Jersey and New York were key to the outcome of the 1888 election.[18] Likewise, Illinois[19] and Texas were key to the outcome of the 1960 election, Florida and New Hampshire were key in deciding the 2000 election, and Ohio was important during the 2004 election. Ohio has gained its reputation as a regular swing state after 1980,[20][21] and last voted against the winner in 1960. If current trends from the 2012 and 2016 elections continue, the closest results in 2020 will occur in Arizona, Florida, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska's second congressional district, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.[22] Other potential swing states include Alaska, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia, all of which have voted for both a Republican candidate and a Democratic candidate within a five-point margin multiple times in the previous six presidential elections.[23]"
Do you have an actual solution to their representation, or should they just "tolerate the crappy situation", as you say.
That just moves the problem further down the line, to within a state but between communities. It doesn't remove it.
Can you clarify? How does a state election means that state lacks representation between communities? Because some communities vote for the losing candidate, and have their vote not count that way? That's kinda always gonna be the case if that's what you're talking about.
In a sense I agree that it doesn't remove the representation problem, but i've never heard a better solution, only ones that make it worse. With the electoral system that have enough proportional voting power that they can't be completely overshadowed, which is at least a start.
We have many groups trying to form a large political union, and as such a popular consensus among the majority of the groups make sense. It is the best way to serve as many peoples interests as possible. I don't see any reason why it doesn't.
Yeah, it 1 person 1 vote in THAT state. It's not even REMOTELY like that nationally. Every person in Wyoming is getting the equivalent of 4.3 votes to the same person in California. California gets a electoral vote roughly every 727,000 people. Wyoming gets one every 166,000. This is not an opinion, it is a mathematical fact. And yes I have mentioned this a number of times recently. Fine, slap me on the wrist for it again. But if people are going to make the argument that protecting the rights of small states means their vote should equal 4x as much as someone living in another one, I'm going to keep presenting numbers that call it out. I'm not making it up. I'm simply dividing the population of each state by their electoral votes. You can do this with ANY state to compare who has more voting power and who doesn't. But so I don't get accused of "spamming", here is another one. Texas and Delaware. The citizens of Delaware have Presidential votes that are 2.3x more powerful than Texas. I can do this til the cows come home. Take any state and compare it to another and you will see that it is in NO WAY one person one vote. Certain states, by virtue of the electoral college, grant their citizens the equivalent of 2 or 3 EXTRA votes. If people want to talk about where people are voting multiple times, they need only look at our current system to realize doing so is already entrenched into how it works.
Is Wyoming's 3 electoral votes utterly canceling out California's 55?
Absolutely not, not even close. All it does is give them a little bit more significance to the overall picture, so that they aren't entirely forgotten as if they are invisible and don't matter at all.
Is that really so bad?
Yes, that is what I mean.
FWIW the US federal government is way more overbearing than the EU.
This is a remarkable way of saying "stats and math don't matter".
Those 15 votes won’t cancel out California but it does cancel out a state like New Jersey with 9 million people to 4 million.
Increasing the representation in the house (kinda my point with bringing up the 30,000), which hasn’t increased in a century would help with the despartity being shown now. It won’t tilt it to far left or right but it should give larger states more electoral votes to prevent the above situation playing out. With the 2020 census coming up, it’d Be the perfect time for the US to do it (alas something tells me the Senators won’t hear it).
South Carolina-1.3x
Oklahoma-1.3x
New Hampshire-2.2x
Idaho-1.7x
Minnesota-1.7x
New Mexico-1.7x
Alabama-1.3x
Wisconsin-1.2x
Indiana-1.2x
Oregon-1.2x
So, while there is clearly not AS stark a difference with most other states, it does average out to all these other states having votes for President that are about 1.5x as powerful. And the best one can do to put 1.5 into context is by the example of overtime pay. Essentially, the entire rest of the country is ALWAYS getting overtime pay and California is constantly stuck at their base wage. You tell me if you would sit still for that if it was your pay and not your vote. We all know the answer.
But frankly, I'm sick of running actual numbers into a calculator and having them dismissed by people who aren't bothering to do the math themselves. The mathematical fact is when it comes to electing a President, the people in California (and frankly, I highly suspect, Texas and New York as well) are essentially 2nd-class citizens. It isn't up for debate. The numbers are what they are, and I'm no longer interested in debating whether the moon is made out of asiago cheese.
The electoral college feeds that inequity. Wyoming will ALWAYS have outsized importance by virtue of having equal representation as California in the Senate. It doesn't need to extend to the Presidential level too.
Alright, well if you follow my analogy, then maybe you can see the moral issue I have here. Germany shouldn't be able to entirely dictate policy for Croatia without Croatia having some say, regardless if Germany is bigger and can outvote them, because Croatia has it's own separate needs that Germany neither experiences nor cares about very much.
This is what happens without the Electoral College. The little guys have no say so over what happens to them and get steamrolled by the bigger guys who neither experience nor care about their issues very much, they are concerned with their own lives and issues. The Electoral College ensures that if enough little guys have enough problems that need addressing, they at least have some level of ability to throw their weight around even if won't ever amount to the big guys.
Consolidating power among the handful of major cities in the country is not preferable nor more representative of everyone than consolidating power among the populations of every state. The latter gives every group in the U.S some level of a voice and the former doesn't, or at least to a much, much lesser extent.
Trying to boil down electoral votes to individual voting power is not accurate. Everyone's vote counts for 1. It's the individual states that have more or less power, and the least populated states never have more than the average or highly populated state, they only are less behind.