2020 US Election (Part Two)
- Thread starter Lexicus
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Not really, wyoming has a representative for ~500k people while california has a representative per ~750k. California would need between 10 and 15 additionnal representatives for it to be represented properly. Of course the same could be said for Texas etc.
Basically the house is currently a compromise between giving political power to small states and to populous states, giving more power to bigger states but still not as much as they should based on their population.
Not really. The Senate was the compromise to give smaller states power. And actually it was just going to be the Senate as the only house of our legislature, but the more populous states at the time threw a hissy fit about not being able to dominate the smaller states so the House of Representatives was created to shut them up. The US was never intended to be a nation in which power was determined by how many people a state had. It was intended to be a union of states that were were all considered equal. That's what a lot of the pro-popular vote crowd and non-Americans forget about how this nation is supposed to work. The US was not conceived as a democracy, but rather a federal republic in which the power was to lie largely with state governments, not the people directly. The purpose of that specifically being to prevent decision-making from becoming nothing more than a popularity contest.
In short I disagree that "big states" have less power than they should. I think they have too much simply because they have more power than the smaller states and all the states are supposed to be equal.
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Well if Trump loses any of those states, its over and the election will be called for Biden immediately if that happens. But it won't... Trump is probably winning all three of those states easily.
That's not a fair trade off at all. The Democrats "don't need to win as many states" because the states they typically win have more voters in them. The Republicans basically get extra EC votes by splitting endless miles of uninhabited/sparsely inhabited wilderness, desert and mountains into a bunch of different states which sandbags extra EC votes.
The 2/3rds system is problematic in that you would just end up with a bunch of unresolved elections, which makes things objectively worse, not better. One state-one vote is something that I envision as encouraging a "state-creation-cold-war", where the parties are constantly trying to break up states to create more states to tip the EC balance... the exact set of circumstances which led to the Civil War, whereby the slave states kept trying to create more slave states to protect the institution of slavery from being abolished.
Cloud_Strife
Deity
Spend a week with a conservative and you'll learn that their favorite pastime is *****ing. *****ing about black people. *****ing about gay people. *****ing about the mainstream media. *****ing about kids these days. It is nothing but an airing of grievances. That's why they love Fox News. Because they get to watch famous people on tv ***** about the same **** they love to ***** about on a daily basis. The validation gets them high. Now, we have a president that *****es about what they ***** about and it sends them to the fudging moon.
That's all Trump's appeal is to them as well as the GOP, *****ing and moaning that validates their *****ing and moaning.
But then they didn't shut up, because the southern slave states then threw a hissy fit that their non-citizen, non-human slaves were not being counted as citizens for the purposes of the proportional representation in the House. So they created the 3/5ths compromise to shut them up. But then they didn't shut up, started a war and the country had to settle the issue through a war. So I think that at that point what was "originally intended" became null and void, because the south reneged on it.
It was also intended to be a slaveholding nation where black people would be treated as chattels. We aren't sticking to that anymore, so I don't see why anything else that was "originally intended" has any grounds to be declared sacrosanct either, particularly if it is deemed wrong, unworkable, manifestly unfair, etc.
Also, it is a non-sequitur to argue that the House with proportional representation was not what was "originally intended". Of course that is what was "originally intended" because that's what the framers put into the actual original Constitution. How can you say that the founding document isn't what was "originally intended"? It's what they originally agreed upon. Its the essence of their "original intent" consensus. At best, what you're referencing is what some framers' original desire was.
As stated above, what was "originally intended" is most convincingly demonstrated in the original Constitution. Even putting that aside... what a lot of people also forget, as I've already mentioned, is that a lot of what the US was originally conceived as is no longer valid. So for obvious reasons, I tend to be very leery about any "founders/framers intent" based arguments and/or appeals to what was "originally intended". It was originally intended for me and my family to be slaves. To hell with what was "originally intended".
Cloud_Strife
Deity
I hate to break this to you @Commodore but the founders also didn't intend for vast swathes of the population to vote so maybe cool it with that "logic"
Farm Boy
I hope you dance
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Putting on a show would be next level.
The guy partially dressed on his porch almost never planned it, if they didn't plan it, they didn't want it. Whether it's a bunch of townies on snowmobiles out for a joyride that just kicked his dog or if he's getting swatted or whatever.
The guy partially dressed on his porch almost never planned it, if they didn't plan it, they didn't want it. Whether it's a bunch of townies on snowmobiles out for a joyride that just kicked his dog or if he's getting swatted or whatever.
EnglishEdward
Deity
The advantage of this model is if the people in the the more heavily populated states perceive themselves
as being proportionally disadvantaged by the electoral college, they can choose to remedy that by
splitting into less populated states; thereby providing an incentive for the states to remain more equal.
The US started as a brotherhood ?
How unchristian when that brotherhood was for the nouveau nobility only
The issue being discussed isn't any of those things though. In fact, those advocating for popular vote systems are the ones trying to create an unfair system by attempting to make the low population states irrelevant.
Just because you don't get to run roughshod over the nation because you have more people on your side doesn't mean you are being treated unfairly. That's what the popular vote crowd doesn't get. Or they do get it, but they just don't care because they aren't interested in fairness, only in creating a system that is politically advantageous to them.
I would say that's part of the problem. For a governing document like the Constitution to have any meaning at all, it should not be subject to the whims of whatever policies the current majority finds fashionable.
Since you're getting snippy I'm going to point out that the Constitution was not the founding document. The Articles of Confederation was the founding document. So yeah, the Constitution doesn't reflect the original intent of the Founders. It was a compromise to keep the nation together.
Nope. That was another compromise made to keep the nation together. All the compromises made at the birth of our nation really are examples of why compromising is almost always a terrible idea. Compromise inevitably weakens the integrity of any idea, concept, cause or organization.
Yeah well given the sheer stupidity I deal with on a daily basis, maybe the idea of limiting who can vote isn't such a terrible idea. The problem with democracy is that its advocates base their ideas for it on the assumption that the population is comprised of educated, well-informed and actively engaged citizens. That simply isn't the case as evidenced by the poor quality of politicians in any modern democracy and generally low voter turnout in nations that don't have compulsory voting. Switzerland being one of the worst with something like a 33% voter turnout. And those that do vote have absolutely insane criteria for how they decide who to vote for (i.e. "I'm voting for so-and-so because I feel like I could sit down and have a beer with them")
People just largely do not care about politics until it directly affects them. So why should we let people who don't care have a say in how the nation is run?
And I want to be clear that I don't think people shouldn't have any say at all in government. They should but they shouldn't be the primary voice, or even a large voice when it comes to running a nation. It should be more of a "we'll take your concerns into consideration" type deal. Basically you want to minimize the impact the stupid, ignorant and apathetic can have on the system.
It's an interesting piece of framing. Some people think that the current formula for calculating who's President is unfair. An alternative viewpoint would be that the Presidency is too powerful if it can be weaponized too easily against the majority of the population.
sophie
Break My Heart
I don't.
I think the founding fathers never thought really deep about the Presidency
That the States needed much self-determination was clear and that senators representing those states needed to be powerful was clear as well.
and then the thinking stopped and they scrambled to a modern version of the concept of a King.
ofc that King had to be elected and would not last longer than a limited time...and lots of checks were put in place against a too powerful King.
But the very idea that you could do without a King was too alien... something, something that in dire times you needed that supreme commander
One leg in nobility thinking... one leg in the modern time
That the States needed much self-determination was clear and that senators representing those states needed to be powerful was clear as well.
and then the thinking stopped and they scrambled to a modern version of the concept of a King.
ofc that King had to be elected and would not last longer than a limited time...and lots of checks were put in place against a too powerful King.
But the very idea that you could do without a King was too alien... something, something that in dire times you needed that supreme commander
One leg in nobility thinking... one leg in the modern time
Not irrelevant, just as relevant as their relative population warrants. "Fairness" is obviously subjective. However, it is not subjective to say that POTUS votes in Wyoming have more relative value than POTUS votes in California. Its just mathematically true. And as far as your complaints about "the popular vote crowd" go, remember that my proposal wasn't a "popular vote" system. My proposal explicitly kept the electoral college system in place, it just made it more proportionally, mathematically accurate.
All I'll say about that is that I don't think comparing the establishment of the institution of slavery and the bloody ending of it, to a whimsical decision about fashion is a particularly sound argument.
The Declaration of Independence is actually the "founding document" of our country... if we're going the "snippy" route... whatever that means. Putting aside an argument of what "founding" document means... it is indisputable, that the US Constitution is the law now... and the US Constitution originally contained proportional representation in the House, so the "original intent" of the US Constitution was to have proportional representation in the House, regardless of what the "original intent" of the now defunct/abandoned Articles of Confederation were.
sophie
Break My Heart
I mean, also the argument that the EC is fair because it ensures the concerns of low-population/rural areas are represented/have a voice fails on two parts.
On the first part because FPTP-WTA voting just moves the issue one level lower. The concerns of rural Californians are never heard because the population of Northern California and the Central Valley aren't quite large enough to overwhelm the urban coastal regions of the state. And this is something rural Californians complain about constantly. The same holds true in Illinois, New York, Massachusetts, Oregon, Washington, etc. If the point of this system is to ensure the concerns of local constituencies don't get drowned out by one or two overwhelmingly large metropoles, it kind of fails at that. And the same holds in the inverse, where a lot of red states have one or two urban centers that are often uniformly blue, but just aren't quite populous enough to outweigh the rural populace. And again, FPTP-WTA, ensures that any vote for a candidate who doesn't win in your state, is functionally the same as not voting at all.
And then beyond that, the other, far more obvious observation is that the EC doesn't, in fact, ensure that the needs and concerns of rural voters are heard or catered to. The EC incentivizes candidates to focus on two locations:
1) Elector-rich states whose population is sufficiently balanced that the voting outcome isn't immediately obvious
2) Capital-rich metropoles, who can be pandered to for campaign contributions
So that means the only states that are heard, acknowledged, or catered to under an EC system are: California (read: San Jose/San Francisco/LA), New York (read: NYC), Massachusetts (read: Boston), Illinois (read: Chicago); and then Pennsylvania, Florida, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina. I mean, this is literally the reason small states make such a big deal about the order they vote during the primary season. It's the only way to ensure even a 2-week window in which anybody will so much as pantomime giving a **** about a state like Iowa or New Hampshire. And they and their populace are forgotten just as soon as the primary voting is concluded. When is the last time you've heard a president or presidential candidate talk about Nebraska, the Dakotas, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Mississippi/Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, etc.? If the purpose of the EC is to ensure that the concerns of smaller states are respected, then it's a miserable wreck.
On the first part because FPTP-WTA voting just moves the issue one level lower. The concerns of rural Californians are never heard because the population of Northern California and the Central Valley aren't quite large enough to overwhelm the urban coastal regions of the state. And this is something rural Californians complain about constantly. The same holds true in Illinois, New York, Massachusetts, Oregon, Washington, etc. If the point of this system is to ensure the concerns of local constituencies don't get drowned out by one or two overwhelmingly large metropoles, it kind of fails at that. And the same holds in the inverse, where a lot of red states have one or two urban centers that are often uniformly blue, but just aren't quite populous enough to outweigh the rural populace. And again, FPTP-WTA, ensures that any vote for a candidate who doesn't win in your state, is functionally the same as not voting at all.
And then beyond that, the other, far more obvious observation is that the EC doesn't, in fact, ensure that the needs and concerns of rural voters are heard or catered to. The EC incentivizes candidates to focus on two locations:
1) Elector-rich states whose population is sufficiently balanced that the voting outcome isn't immediately obvious
2) Capital-rich metropoles, who can be pandered to for campaign contributions
So that means the only states that are heard, acknowledged, or catered to under an EC system are: California (read: San Jose/San Francisco/LA), New York (read: NYC), Massachusetts (read: Boston), Illinois (read: Chicago); and then Pennsylvania, Florida, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina. I mean, this is literally the reason small states make such a big deal about the order they vote during the primary season. It's the only way to ensure even a 2-week window in which anybody will so much as pantomime giving a **** about a state like Iowa or New Hampshire. And they and their populace are forgotten just as soon as the primary voting is concluded. When is the last time you've heard a president or presidential candidate talk about Nebraska, the Dakotas, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Mississippi/Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, etc.? If the purpose of the EC is to ensure that the concerns of smaller states are respected, then it's a miserable wreck.
Ms. Fuchs' point seems to be that rural Californian voters have a disadvantage compared to the urban ones - but that's an internal matter, no? There are different layers to the Republic, so a power imbalance within one of the states doesn't justify a power imbalance between states.
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