I mean, the irony of someone making a living off telling people how to vote deriding people for following a celebrity endorsement is pretty self evident.
2024 U.S. Elections | Trump wins
- Thread starter Raoul
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He was giddy about Kid Rock and Hulk Hogan at the RNC.
USA is one of the most fecked up and brainwashed countries in the world.
This is pure pantomime. They are probably all in it together to make it look like a democracy.
Why is there only two parties? It’s like ordering a drink and being offered Pepsi or Coca Cola - slight difference but deep down it’s basically the same shit.
This is pure pantomime. They are probably all in it together to make it look like a democracy.
Why is there only two parties? It’s like ordering a drink and being offered Pepsi or Coca Cola - slight difference but deep down it’s basically the same shit.
Excellent journalism. We would be so mutch better off if the major US cable networks were this persistent.
Every electoral system has flaws, but the electoral college is the one which probably has the best trade off for the country as a whole.
In the 19th century.
Mollifying rich Southern slave owners to keep the Union intact isn’t on the agenda anymore. Time for a little update at least, if we stick with ‘wisdom of the founders’ then only white males can vote, state legislatures appoint Senators and Presidential candidates are decided by smoke filled room wheeling dealing instead of popular election.
How so? It results in citizens in different states have different vote share than each other, it creates swing states that means that candidates need to tailor their policies to a small subset of voters in a small subset of states, and it has resulted all to often in the president elect being the candidate who lost the popular vote.
Can Harris win without Pennsylvania? Seems like that’s a crucial state for her.
Fixed that for you.
Because if it was decided solely by the popular vote, then the break up of the union itself becomes much more likely…and I’m assuming that’s something the majority of Americans don’t want to happen.
Not impossible, but her chances of winning according to most models fall into the single digits if she loses PA, since weakness in one rust belt state will likely not be confined to one rust belt state. Therefore she has to focus on the most plausible path to victory first by winning PA. States like GA and NC would be aspirational insurance policies in case something goes wrong in the north.
No it would not. Every other office in the country is decided by a popular vote and you don't see states breaking up when the vote is close. Instead what you see is candidates who are forced to craft platforms that are widely popular. And besides, if changing the election of the president to a popular vote is all that it takes to break up the Union, well then it was going to break up anyways.
All that being said, the reason for the EC was so that slave owning states could get to count their slaves as property but also get them included (well, 3/5's of them) in their vote share. The persistence of the EC is a stain.
At least winning the presidency closely aligns with winning the popular vote. Prior to the 2016 election, there were only four times in US history when a candidate won the presidency despite losing the popular vote.
By way of comparison…in Britain only one government (outside of the National government around WW2) has achieved a majority of the vote since universal suffrage in 1928.
Also structurally it theoretically incentives investment and effort in "lesser" states so they don't get left behind. In the UK for example London gets all the investment because London has always had all the investment. It becomes self fulfilling unless you deliberately bias interest towards the more peripheral areas.
I'm not saying the electoral college is the right system, but letting people in (more populous) cities decide what should happen in rural areas has never seemed all that logical to me. Weighting by both population and geographical location is ostensibly a decent compromise if done well.
The Presidency is effectively and symbolically different to every other office in the country though. Significantly different!
That aside however, what’s the public appetite on the issue? Ultimately it could be tested by referendum.
Agreed. I think it’s the compromise or trade off that fits that particular country, given both its unique size and diversity of population.
Did not think of this as something people do. Watch debates in bars.
Unfortunately we do not have national referendums here, so that is not going to happen. According to Pew, 65% of Americans favor the move to a popular vote. Unfortunately, this would require a Constitutional amendment which is highly unlikely.
Another route is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact which is where states pass legislation stating that, should the Compact ever achieve enough electoral votes to be in the majority (currently 270) then the Compact would trigger and all the EV's from the states in the Compact would go to the winner of the national popular vote, regardless of who one each State. The Compact has 209 committed votes and 50 pending. Now, would the Compact survive legal challenge? It should, but with the current SCOTUS there is no way it would (unless a Rep won of course).
But that is not how it works, not even close. None of those "lesser" states are swing states and so receive no extra investment whatsoever.
Edit: Actually, I would argue it is worse for the country and the planet the way things work. You think the Dems would be supporting fracking if Pennsylvania wasn't a pivotal swing state?
1 time is 1 time too many, let alone 5, it went directly against the principle of ‘one person, one vote’, which the Supreme Court supported, btw, when they ordered districts to be roughly similar in population in reapportionment.
They won by a plurality, the party with the most votes won, pretty reasonable.
Kamala may have got the coveted Tay endorsement but Joe is all about MAGA.
And the extra investment they do receive doesn’t help, red states that are a net drain on fiscal contribution consistently rank in the bottom tier for education, wage, life expectancy etc. The residents of Louisiana or Mississippi really got a good deal from the EC when no candidate for president will visit their state and push for policies that will benefit them.
How about the number of electoral votes per state is standardised against census population data and all of each states votes is assigned to each candidate as it is now (stop it Maine and Nebraska) fisrts past the post style. You then double the number of electoral votes and assign these votes proportionally to the popular vote. If you want to slightly increase the power of each states result you could assign these new proportionally representative votes within states so that (say) California's popular vote wasn't too dominant.
I’ve no dog in the fight here but it seems obvious to me that changing the electoral system increases (significantly) the chances that the United States in its current form would no longer exist at some point. The choice therefore involves a decision on whether that’s an acceptable trade off.
The current British government won 33.7% of the vote. Is that more reasonable?
Let’s be fair, Megyn Kelly was by no means “semi-attractive”.
Easy solution. Turn the UK system to a Presidential one and allow only 2 choices.
That may have been the case a long time ago when the US was more politically homogeneous, but the new trend is that the opposition (usually Republicans) can win the electoral college by winning more swing states, while losing the popular vote because states like California account for an increasing disparity in total national votes. Therefore, the new norm based on demographic shifts is that popular votes are always going to Dems, but Republicans can still win elections by winning more swing states.
Take the example of the Inflation Reduction Act. A huge number of the projects that it benefits are in red states and swing states. If the red states were irrelevant because they had 4 hicks and a dog in them thus no voting power, then I'm not sure they would have been in a position to reap those kinds of rewards. Now you might think those red states don't deserve the investments perhaps, but deserve doesn't really come into Keynesian economics.
I'm not saying it's a good system but I'm not sure just doing it on popular vote would magically fix everything. In terms of bang for your buck you'd be much better off switching to a proportional voting system in Congress or something rather than scrapping the Electoral College I would have thought, but personally I would still encourage some power on the national stage being afforded to "space" even if most of it is afforded to voters themselves, the idea being that "space" has the potential to become voters and the economy if you give it the right conditions to.
No solution is required really. The British public has long been conditioned to accept it.
No, changing it wouldn’t cause the US to cease to exist, because the root cause behind it has already been decided, on the battlefield, and by a subsequent Supreme Court decision. Secession is treason, and there’s no appetite, nor the 19th century citizen militia system that fueled the seditious states to test that question again.
Yes, they won the most votes.
It would be the solution to under 50% of the vote going to one party
You’re assuming the appetite for it wouldn’t change if the electoral system changed. Let’s imagine however that the system is changed and in time the popular feeling/view in one or a number of states is to leave the union…what approach would you take? How would you tackle this ‘treason’?
And the vast majority of voters didn’t vote for them.
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Yeah but hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.It would be the solution to under 50% of the vote going to one party
There’s no need to imagine, because it already happened. As I said, secession is treason and it’s backed up by 800k-1.3m American lives, a Supreme Court decision and a Constitutional Amendment. If the legislature of any state declare secession tomorrow, the US National Guard or US Army will move in, arrest them and they will be tried for treason, and that state would remain in the Union. It’s a cut and dried case, it’s not what I or you would get to decide, it’s a fact of life.
The vast majority of kids in a classroom may not vote for a president, the kid with the most votes still get the prize. If you must have majority, do ranked choice voting until you arrive at a majority, the principle remains, one person one vote, candidate with the most votes wins.
Your choice of the IRA as an example is fitting, because it absolutely proves my point. Whether we are talking the EC or popular vote, states like Mississippi and Alabama will not matter to Dems chance of gaining the White House. Yet, the benefits of the IRA (negotiated drug prices, capping insulin costs, credits for solar power, etc.) will benefit them like everyone else. That is what good legislation does, it benefits everyone, not just those that support you. Oh, and all those GOP members off Congress in Alabama and Mississippi? They all voted against the IRA. So tell me, does it really matter how we elect our government or is it more important who we elect?
So if the majority of people in a particular state, or states, wished to leave the union do you believe that this democratic will should be ignored and/or quelled?
Which will often equate to a president who isn’t representative of the majority of voters.
Now imagine a 3 party system.
Who you elect is a consequence of how you elect them so...yes.