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California gets 54 electoral votes; Wyoming gets 3.
California has 38.94 million citizens; Wyoming has 0.575 million.
California gets one electoral vote for every 721,110 people. Wyoming gets one for every 191,660. This means that per capita, Wyoming gets 3.76 times as much say in who gets to be the president as California.
Indeed. Scrap electoral college and remove the arbitrary cap on House reps.
Don’t forget to implement proportional representation in the House, blow up the senate, and implement ranked choice voting or something similar in all elections
This isn't the electoral college causing the problem. It's Congress capping the size of the house 100 years ago. It needs to be increased, but it won't happen without force as it requires Congress to agree to reduce their individual power.
sigh
Yes, it is the EC causing the problem. You'll never get 1:1 with it in place no matter what congress does.
There's 0 reason the president, representative of all people, should use this shitty system for election
The Electoral College is allowing more an more manipulation from these small states. It is time for that to end. They are holding this country back much too much.
As a pretty left person who lives in Tennessee, please get rid of it. Anytime I have this conversation with folks on the right, I always point out that there are more Republican voters in California than Texas. That usually gets them to concede.
It's a great argument, and incredibly depressing that the only thing that will convince them is that it's also their people are being hurt, not that it's the most fair and just thing to do.
ONE PERSON
ONE VOTE
As an Alabamian I dream of the day that my vote actually matters, fuck the electoral college.
As a Washingtonian I also dream of that. It is ridiculous that only people in states that are kinda purple have their opinions heard.
Trump in 2012: The electoral college is garbage and needs to go. Trump in 2016: The electoral college is genius. What a great system. Trump in 2020: The electoral college is garbage and needs to go
I remember his tweets each time.
But without the electoral college, politicians would suddenly have to care about states with a lot of people living in them
Yup, I understand it was meant to give smaller states an equal voice but he GOP weaponized it and now the minority is speaking for the majority. Tell me the system isn't broken when ONE vote in shitty red state Wyoming is equal to TEN THOUSAN VOTES in Blue California?
100% correct.
Hey hey! Ho ho! The electoral college has got to go!
I'm glad someone is saying it! Stupid ass lines on a map determines who becomes president
I’m not sure I agree the EC has to go; it definitely has to change, but it also does provide protections — just ones that aren’t currently at issue with the present political climate.
Combined with the PV compact and a ranked vote system, it could actually become a more relevant part of the process.
What kind of protections?
It feels like the only protections the EC provides is to the GOPs ability to win the presidency. I agree with Walz, the EC needs to go, it's too easy to game by focusing on swing states.
The ec Is so anti democratic. It does need to go
What it was designed for, to protect the slave states and provide another barrier to populist movements.
Also the EC will never be abolished, despite whatever candidates promise every 4 years. It's too useful.
Let's see what the founders had in mind:
The process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications. Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States. It will not be too strong to say, that there will be a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters pre-eminent for ability and virtue. And this will be thought no inconsiderable recommendation of the Constitution, by those who are able to estimate the share which the executive in every government must necessarily have in its good or ill administration. Though we cannot acquiesce in the political heresy of the poet who says: "For forms of government let fools contest That which is best administered is best,'' yet we may safely pronounce, that the true test of a good government is its aptitude and tendency to produce a good administration.
In other words, it's supposed to stop someone like Trump from ever being President. Since that clearly failed, maybe we should junk the whole thing.
Even this is generous. The Federalist Papers, IMO, should be taken as a way to sell the new constitution to the populace. They make it sound like the whole thing was more well thought out than it really was. The constitution that came out is just the compromise everyone could live with after debating it for hours. Politicians back then aren't that different from today; they have their own agendas, their own ambitions, and their own squabbles. They also get tired after long debates and will vote for anything as long as it gets them out of there.
On top of that, a good chunk of what they were thinking at the time--which you can see echos of in the quote above--was deflecting criticism that democracy couldn't work. The US was the first modern democracy, and there were plenty of aristocrats in Europe (and even some useful idiots domestically) who laughed off the idea of a government run by peasants. The result is a system that doesn't go all in on democracy, and has all these little exceptions. "No, no, see, the electoral college will stop a populist idiot from taking executive power".
We've changed a lot of those over the years, such as electing senators rather than having them appointed by state governors. In hindsight, these were not necessary at all. It's time for the electoral college to go.
To be honest, I’m not sure it applies.
The electoral college is an institution where electors cast votes to elect the President. In theory, it allows electors to choose a different president if the population chooses someone terrible.
It’s not /supposed/ to favor red states. However the formula for counting number of electors relies on the number of representatives in the house. That is fixed at 435 by law. To fix the electoral college, we’d have to remove that cap and it would work the way the founders intended.
But then, you’d need a helluva lot of dissenters to change. Is it possible? Sure. Is this system built for current day population and densities? Arguably not
Today each state decides how to assign their electors. In my uneducated opinion for the system to be fixed, rather than states being "winner take all", it would make more sense for each state to allocate electors in proportion to the popular vote within their state.
Would be easier to just get rid of the damn thing
I did some math assuming lowest population is 1 seat and rounding to the nearest whole number based on 2020 census using that factor.
We should have 574 seats with 676 electors. I didn’t include Puerto Rico or overseas who didn’t claim a state.
This was the video that made me passionate that the electoral college needs to go. It is a dumb system that seemed good at the time, but makes literally no sense today.
The EC is undemocratic, but the Republican Party would never be able to win the presidency if it was decided by pure popular vote. So, it will never go or even change.
Then, one would argue that the republican party should not government if they are unable to garner the requisit amount of votes!
Sending one person to Washington to speak on behalf of a arbitrarily chosen group (and not even have to respect their choices) is an antiquated system from the days we sent representative by horseback..
You haven't even given a reason you think it shouldn't go away. The only reason to keep it would be to exploit it.. it's a ridiculous system.