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Winner Take All Electoral College

Obscurity said:
The US constitution does not designate how states assign their electoral votes.

Without a constitutional convention, how can we amend our electoral process so 14 states (The battleground states) do not control the entire election for president?

Would declaring "Winner Take All" elector states an unconstitutional practice help?

I am of the opinion that eliminating winner take all would automatically ensure all states matter in the presidential election. The EC is fine; the way electoral votes are awarded is the problem. Democrats in Texas may as well not vote. Republicans in California may as well not vote.

Why is it OK for fourteen states to dictate the outcome of the presidential election despite who votes for who?
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The states would have to do it themselves but perhaps they should apportion EC votes according to who won in their races. That way for example a Democrat for Potus might take 30% of Texas' EC votes and a republican might get 40% in California. Seems fairer.

However it's not just states, because even if votes were apportioned not by sheer numbers but by county, it would still be possible for someone who had fewer votes to get more EC seats. I don't know the spread of Texas TBH, but for example Dems could sweep cities like Dallas, Houston, and SA, but leave almost all the countryside untouched. That might earn them 30-40% of the vote (optimistically here) but only get them 10% of the seats.

So even a state that' a solid color might not see much change at first. In fact going long term, it might solidify the imbalance of the EC long after demographics, platform and economics have changed voting habits.
 
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Oh boy, another thread that doesn't contemplate a national runoff. Chaos on a national scale...
 
Grand Mal said:
Being from Texas you and your neighbour together count for one vote in Wyoming.
The reason, the sole reason, for the electoral college is to over-ride the popular vote occasionally. If you and most other Americans are good with that, enjoy.
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I have no more problem with it than you in Canada appear to have with your how your chief executives are chosen -- by birth, and by who is elected head of the party which gets the most votes for parliament. You actually have less direct say than we do.

I'd ask if that's OK with you, but it's really no more my business than it is of yours how we select our President.
 
akyron said:
Perhaps it is the questions that expose the faulty thinking here. A strawman aflame

"Those who wish to abolish the electoral college ought to go the distance, and do away with the entire federal system and perhaps even retire the Constitution, since the federalism it was designed to embody would have disappeared.

None of that, ironically, is liable to produce a more democratic election system. There are plenty of democracies, like Great Britain, where no one ever votes directly for a head of the government. But more important, the electoral college actually keeps presidential elections from going undemocratically awry because it makes unlikely the possibility that third-party candidates will garner enough votes to make it onto the electoral scoreboard.

Without the electoral college, there would be no effective brake on the number of “viable” presidential candidates. Abolish it, and it would not be difficult to imagine a scenario where, in a field of a dozen micro-candidates, the “winner” only needs 10 percent of the vote, and represents less than 5 percent of the electorate. And presidents elected with smaller and smaller pluralities will only aggravate the sense that an elected president is governing without a real electoral mandate.

The electoral college has been a major, even if poorly comprehended, mechanism for stability in a democracy, something which democracies are sometimes too flighty to appreciate."
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Why would you argue that position to me in an attempt to refute my post when I NEVER took that position in the first place?
 
akyron said:
Mob rule is good for the country according to progressives.



Not really in practice though.

If you like it chaos so much, head for Venezuela where socialists have taken over.

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It's not about mob rule. IT's about the fact that 14 states dictate every presidential election.

As for the Venezuela comparison, spare me. Venezuela was anti-market, not socialist. Not even remotely close to the same thing.

Spread that bull**** over on fox news.
 
Obscurity said:
It's not about mob rule. IT's about the fact that 14 states dictate every presidential election.

As for the Venezuela comparison, spare me. Venezuela was anti-market, not socialist. Not even remotely close to the same thing.

Spread that bull**** over on fox news.
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No one dictates anything. That is the point.
 
uptower said:
The states would have to do it themselves but perhaps they should apportion EC votes according to who won in their races. That way for example a Democrat for Potus might take 30% of Texas' EC votes and a republican might get 40% in California. Seems fairer.

However it's not just states, because even if votes were apportioned not by sheer numbers but by county, it would still be possible for someone who had fewer votes to get more EC seats. I don't know the spread of Texas TBH, but for example Dems could sweep cities like Dallas, Houston, and SA, but leave almost all the countryside untouched. That might earn them 30-40% of the vote (optimistically here) but only get them 10% of the seats.

So even a state that' a solid color might not see much change at first. In fact going long term, it might solidify the imbalance of the EC long after demographics, platform and economics have changed voting habits.
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All states ought to proportion of votes to the official that earned them. this was Democrats in Texas feel heard and so do conservatives in California.

I tire of the special status of the 14 battleground states that control every national election.

To the conservatives posting here; we all know why you don't want this changed. Because it would challenge elections like DJT. Or would it?

IT makes every state competitive. Instead of rigging the game the states ought to be forced to end winner take all. It is anti American.
 
akyron said:
No one dictates anything. That is the point.
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Yes, they do. 14 "Swing" states are the only states that matter.

The rest of them are irrelevant.

WInner take all is un-American and the sole reason republicans disagree is because they think they benefit with the current corrupt system.
 
Harshaw said:
I have no more problem with it than you in Canada appear to have with your how your chief executives are chosen -- by birth, and by who is elected head of the party which gets the most votes for parliament. You actually have less direct say than we do.

I'd ask if that's OK with you, but it's really no more my business than it is of yours how we select our President.
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"The parliamentary system is the worst form of government in the world, after all the others."
-Winston Churchill-
 
akyron said:
Perhaps many years later...But after Eli Whitney had a certain notion ..Democrats raced forward to represent the plantation which of course evolved into sharecropping, and more recently barrios, slums, projects, and welfare.

The arguments at the core are the same. Just painted a little differently.
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Yeah, conservatism doesn't die easy, that's for sure. Liberal democracy has to be nurtured lest the conservatives sneak the bad old days back into society.
 
Grand Mal said:
"The parliamentary system is the worst form of government in the world, after all the others."
-Winston Churchill-
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He didn't say "parliamentary system;" he said "democracy."

But even so, if you're going to get on a horse about how we choose our President, you should check your own system.
 
Grand Mal said:
Stay away from me. I'm out of patience for this kind of juvenile stupidity.
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Stay in Canada, I'm tired of you foreigners sticking your nose in America's affairs.

See, I can be snarky, too.
 
Harshaw said:
He didn't say "parliamentary system;" he said "democracy."

But even so, if you're going to get on a horse about how we choose our President, you should check your own system.
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Scroll back. How many times in this exchange have I said that if you guys like it, that's all that matters. I'm not 'on a horse', you're more than a tad oversensitive on the subject.
 
Obscurity said:
The US constitution does not designate how states assign their electoral votes.

Without a constitutional convention, how can we amend our electoral process so 14 states (The battleground states) do not control the entire election for president?

Would declaring "Winner Take All" elector states an unconstitutional practice help?

I am of the opinion that eliminating winner take all would automatically ensure all states matter in the presidential election. The EC is fine; the way electoral votes are awarded is the problem. Democrats in Texas may as well not vote. Republicans in California may as well not vote.

Why is it OK for fourteen states to dictate the outcome of the presidential election despite who votes for who?
Click to expand...

The constitution gives the power to each state on how to designate their electors.
they can do it all or nothing.
they can do it by the % of votes received with +1 going to the winner.
they can do it by the popular vote if they want to.

it is all up to that states legislature it has nothing to do with the constitution.
 
Obscurity said:
I understand your point about the bolded section, but there absolutely is a basis to declare the practice unconstitutional. It disenfranchises votes, and, it makes us a dictatorship based on only a handful of states.

If this practice were outlawed every state is automatically competitive.

IT needs to be abolished.
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you will never pass a constitutional amendment to change it.
it will never make it out of committee let along pass congress or be rattified by the states.

you best best is to petition your state government on how they divide up delegates.
 
Ikari said:
The states have some leeway in deciding how their votes are cast, historically it has been "winner take all", so I don't think there is any possibility of declaring the "winner take all" states unconstitutional. You'd have to amend the Constitution to change how they are doled out on a federal level.

I actually think that any law (outside an amendment to the constitution) that dictates how the electoral college votes are cast should be unconstitutional. The point of the electoral college was supposed to be to give some protection against popularism, and thus an elector could vote outside the wishes of the State if they felt it was necessary. Now, the number of cases of "faithless electors" has been few and far between. But one of the ideas of the electoral college was that if the state voted for candidate X, the elector wasn't tied to candidate X, and if one had compelling reason otherwise could vote for candidate Y instead.
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The "Faithless elector" doesn't exist. that was proven in the last election.
there were actually several "faithless electors" they were quickly replaced.
 
Grand Mal said:
Being from Texas you and your neighbour together count for one vote in Wyoming.
The reason, the sole reason, for the electoral college is to over-ride the popular vote occasionally. If you and most other Americans are good with that, enjoy.
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actually no it doesn't.
their vote counts as 1 vote in texas and the other guy counts as 1 vote in WY.

actually we are for everyone getting a voice in the election not just CA and NY.
the entire point of the EC was to semi dilute the massive urban center and populism.

the founding fathers felt the winner of the presidentcy should appeal a vast array of american people not just mass urban centers.

as trump said had it been a popular vote election he would have gone in a different direction.
the system has worked well for 200 some years.

people just cry because they don't like the results at times. poor losers are poor losers.
 
Obscurity said:
It's not about mob rule. IT's about the fact that 14 states dictate every presidential election.

As for the Venezuela comparison, spare me. Venezuela was anti-market, not socialist. Not even remotely close to the same thing.

Spread that bull**** over on fox news.
Click to expand...

that is an issue with the voting public that they are so entrenched in their political ideology that they can't vote for another party
that is not an issue with the system.

it is a people problem.
 
Grand Mal said:
Scroll back. How many times in this exchange have I said that if you guys like it, that's all that matters. I'm not 'on a horse', you're more than a tad oversensitive on the subject.
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Oh, come on, like this wasn't some kind of condescension?

Grand Mal said:
Being from Texas you and your neighbour together count for one vote in Wyoming.
The reason, the sole reason, for the electoral college is to over-ride the popular vote occasionally. If you and most other Americans are good with that, enjoy.
Click to expand...
 
Harshaw said:
Oh, come on, like this wasn't some kind of condescension?
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No, it's not. Its a perfectly civil expression of what I know about the electoral college, and accurate. Do you dispute that the sole purpose of the electoral college is to occasionally over-ride the popular vote? Okay, explain to me the function of the electoral college in terms that don't mean over-ride the popular vote.
 
smallvoice said:
Stay in Canada, I'm tired of you foreigners sticking your nose in America's affairs.

See, I can be snarky, too.
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We're not in America, we're on the internet.
Try to keep up,
 
ludin said:
actually no it doesn't.
their vote counts as 1 vote in texas and the other guy counts as 1 vote in WY.

actually we are for everyone getting a voice in the election not just CA and NY.
the entire point of the EC was to semi dilute the massive urban center and populism.

the founding fathers felt the winner of the presidentcy should appeal a vast array of american people not just mass urban centers.

as trump said had it been a popular vote election he would have gone in a different direction.
the system has worked well for 200 some years.

people just cry because they don't like the results at times. poor losers are poor losers.
Click to expand...

There were mass urban centres in 17whatever? There were more people living in cities than rural in 17whatever?
 
Grand Mal said:
We're not in America, we're on the internet.
Try to keep up,
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You may be "on the internet" but I am in America, and you are sticking your nose and your opinion where it doesn't belong.
 
smallvoice said:
You may be "on the internet" but I am in America, and you are sticking your nose and your opinion where it doesn't belong.
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Don't like it? Keep your business off the internet. In fact, keep yourself off the internet. That's about the only way you snowflakes can be sure of not getting your fweelings hurt.
My opinion belongs anywhere I can stick it, snowflake.
 
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