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Majority of Americans continue to favor moving away from Electoral College
(www.pewresearch.org)
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this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
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I feel like while the electoral college is an issue, it's the gerrymandering that is ultimately the biggest issue.
And in fact probably also contributes to the electoral college issue.
The senate is pretty bad too.
In theory we could expand the number of house seats so that more populous states get more reps and everyone has a more equal number of voters per congressperson. I think that would not only help make the house more fair but would also make the electoral college more fair (since the # of electors increases with the number of house members). Not as good as the popular vote, but it’s an improvement that doesn’t require a conditional amendment.
Although it’s somewhat inconceivable to some people that the US can have more than 50 states (and that DC isn’t what it once was), don’t forget about representation for DC and Puerto Rico.
Both which operate very much like state entities now, making a pretty good argument for true federal representation with proper voting power.
Representation for DC would be harder to justify, but if a party actually pushed for it Puerto Rico statehood would have a fair chance.
The US has less representation per capita than most developed nations.
To be fair, it's also the most populous developed nation.
It's not fair though. We need representation.
What you're talking about is the Wyoming Rule or something similar to it. We fucked up our Government and we really really need to get rid of the Re-Apportionment Act of 1929.
Gerrymandering only directly impacts the House, while the EC biases the presidential vote, and state sizes bias the senate. All three elected branches are badly selected and all three are biased towards the Republicans. Hard to say the House is more important than the presidency though.
Some more fuckery with the house: Each state is supposed to get at least one representative, plus another representative per every so many people, right? And historically the house has expanded to fit the growing population, right?
That's not how it works anymore. They stopped expanding it when it was obvious the Republicans would never have a majority in the house ever again. Go look at the algorithm they use to determine how many representatives each state gets.
No.
The size of the HoR was set in 1929 and since then the Democrats have controlled it for multiple years at a time. Heck at one point they were in control of it for 45 straight years! There's been a number of multi-year stretches since 1929 where Democrats controlled BOTH bodies.
https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2020/jun/25/control-house-and-senate-1900/
The Re-Apportionment Act of 1929 that fixed the size of the HoR at its current 435 is a big chunk of the problem with the EC and quite a few other things. It needs to be undone.
That was entirely intentional though?
It was a bad idea necessary to bribe the small states into joining to keep the colonies together in a time with more important issues. The EC's population bias was also intentional, it doesn't make it not fundamentally undemocratic.
And the admission of states has always been very political. They have been often admitted in pairs to maintain political parity of the time and other proposed states (the state of Sequoyah) were rejected for political reasons (balancing east-west states or just racism, you decide). There's a reason statehood for Puerto Rico, a territory with more than enough people and no historical impediments like DC, isn't just a formality of waiting for a request by its people.
The Founding Fathers made a quite good first draft for modern democracy, but they weren't oracles and they made compromises based on the political needs of the day. There's a reason we don't install American democracy in countries we regime-change.
Democracy wasn't intended, I agree with that, but I don't think many wanted an entire democracy either, it wasn't just about states wanting power but also about minority representation. I personally prefer a constitutional system to a democratic system.
I mean, sure. They were also slaveholders. This is just trivia not something speaking to what should happen in the current day.
Because the constitution was the charter, the binding contract underwhich previously separate political entities agreed to be governed. You can't just change my rental contract to kick out my roommate midway through my term without following an established process we both signed on.
Talking about the constitution protecting minority representation at anything but the state-vs-state level or acting like it's a personal contract any of us at any point voluntarily entered into or could have rejected if not structured in this way is a laughable diversion. How it was made and that it exists as the current law of the land is irrelevant in a discussion of its current failures.
Again, there's a reason we don't implement it in other countries. It persists here because of inertia and cynical resistance by a minority party that can't win governing power without it, but it's not a good system in a country that purports to gain moral justification for its government through all of its citizens being equal.
Yes it was a contract at a state to federal government level, furthermore, it is a binding concession of power from the federal government
Equality doesn't mean democracy. Democracy grants a majority power over a minority.
Now 1 person 1 vote isn't equal? Democracy is everyone has the right to state their preferences and be treated equally. That sometimes more people want the other thing isn't a flaw in the system and in no way a justification to just give some people more votes. A tyranny of the majority is a whole lot better than a tyranny of the minority.
I swear there must be some kind of rural state indoctrination camp where people learn that 1 person 1 vote is actually bad and they're rightfully entitled to more say than those dirty city-dwellers. All while talking about the minority rights carefully crafted by the slaveholding men who literally transferred votes from the slaves to their oppressors.
I don't really understand how we fix gerrymandering. Districts can sue the state for making their elections more competitive, less competitive, or a perceived slight. Every time maps are drawn, 99.9% of districts become less competitive, offering a safer win for both of the two major parties where they expect to win. Strategically voting for third parties that can put Ranked Choice in place is... Possible, but incremental.
So yeah it seems like ending the electoral college is less complicated. It seems very popular with most people and half the politicians.