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What do opponents of the electoral college think about the US Senate. It follows the same principle of apportioning power to states rather than based on population. California with 37 million people has the same 2 US Senators as Wyoming with its pop of only 563 thousand.
Should California get more Senators since it has more population?
the senate represents a singular state as a singular entity...thats why the senators were NOT voted for by the public but APPOINTED by the STATE
the house of REPS represents the population
civics101
Last edited by workingclasshero; 11-16-2011 at 01:19 PM..
Under the electoral college system, we will never have a third party. So if you think both parties and Washington in general is broken, you should support a public vote, period.
Last I heard, only about 10% of Americans think Washington is doing a good job with the two parties we have in power.
When and where votes matter, presidential candidates vigorously solicit those voters.
With a national popular vote, every vote everywhere will be equally important politically. There will be nothing special about a vote cast in a big city or big state. When every vote is equal, candidates of both parties will seek out voters in small, medium, and large towns throughout the states in order to win. A vote cast in a big city or state will be equal to a vote cast in a small state, town, or rural area.
The main media at the moment, TV, costs much more per impression in big cities than in smaller towns and rural area. Candidates get more bang for the buck in smaller towns and rural areas.
With National Popular Vote, big cities would not get all of candidates’ attention, much less control the outcome.
The population of the top five cities (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Philadelphia) is only 6% of the population of the United States and the population of the top 50 cities (going as far down as Arlington, TX) is only 19% of the population of the United States. Suburbs and exurbs often vote Republican.
Any candidate who yielded, for example, the 16% of Americans who live in rural areas in favor of a “big city” approach would not likely win the national popular vote.
If big cities controlled the outcome of elections, the governors and U.S. Senators would be Democratic in virtually every state with a significant city.
A nationwide presidential campaign, with every vote equal, would be run the way presidential candidates campaign to win the electoral votes of closely divided battleground states, such as Ohio and Florida, under the state-by-state winner-take-all methods. The big cities in those battleground states do not receive all the attention, much less control the outcome. Cleveland and Miami do not receive all the attention or control the outcome in Ohio and Florida.
The itineraries of presidential candidates in battleground states (and their allocation of other campaign resources in battleground states) reflect the political reality that every gubernatorial or senatorial candidate knows. When and where every vote is equal, a campaign must be run everywhere.
Even in California state-wide elections, candidates for governor or U.S. Senate don't campaign just in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and those places don't control the outcome (otherwise California wouldn't have recently had Republican governors Reagan, Dukemejian, Wilson, and Schwarzenegger). A vote in rural Alpine county is just an important as a vote in Los Angeles. If Los Angeles cannot control statewide elections in California, it can hardly control a nationwide election.
In fact, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland together cannot control a statewide election in California.
Similarly, Republicans dominate Texas politics without carrying big cities such as Dallas and Houston.
There are numerous other examples of Republicans who won races for governor and U.S. Senator in other states that have big cities (e.g., New York, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts) without ever carrying the big cities of their respective states.
The National Popular Vote bill would not change the need for candidates to build a winning coalition across demographics. Any candidate who yielded, for example, the 16% of Americans who live in rural areas in favor of a “big city” approach would not likely win the national popular vote. Candidates would have to appeal to a broad range of demographics, and perhaps even more so, because the election wouldn’t be capable of coming down to just one demographic, such as voters in Ohio.
When and where matter when a candidate is deciding where to best deploy his time and resources. That's why candidates focus on battleground states today, that's why candidates will focus their campaigns on larger urban areas if the National Popular Vote ever really took hold. Get over the idea that candidates run national campaigns. They never have. They never will. Prior to the Civil War candidates didn't even run on national tickets. Lincoln wasn't on the ballot in the South. The various regions voted for their candidates, and then the electoral college negotiated. In 1864 when Lincoln won, his region of the country had sufficient electoral votes that no negotiation was necessary. The North chose the President. The South seceded, in part, because they had no role in choosing the President.
In modern elections, because of the winner-take-all laws in the majority of states, not all, we have battleground states that can tip the election one way or another, but those battleground states change as political demographics change. With the National Popular Vote, the battlegrounds won't be between states, they'll be between the most urban cities, and the "solution" will simply perpetuate the long-standing problem with democracies, that urban areas have an overwhelming advantage in controlling political discourse and policy. It will marginalize the rural areas of America, making them politically irrelevant. And what happens when an area feels politically irrelevant, especially in a democracy? They want out. If your voice is never heard, it doesn't matter if some idiots argue that you have a voice. A silenced voice is not a voice. And the National Popular Vote, with the best of intentions, is a movement that silences rural America's voice in the selection of a President. It undermines our country, much more than the electoral college.
Is our current system flawed? Yes. You want to change it---here's how you do it. Educate citizens that their state doesn't have to be winner-take-all in electors, that the states make those choices, and the states can change them. And work on the primary system. Iowa and New Hampshire have an undue influence on who Americans get to vote for. The primaries should be scheduled regionally, which would get the candidates to focus on the region coming up, and the chronological order of primaries should be rotated, so that if the Northeast were the first region to hold its primaries in 2012, in 2016 another region, say the West Coast, should be first, and in 2020 another region, the Upper Midwest for instance, should be first. A rotation like that gives each region a chance to weigh in on the largest group of candidates in turn. The current system is wedded to nonsensical tradition that serves only the political parties, not the citizens of the United States.
And your remark about TV getting more bang for the buck in rural areas than urban areas? False. I don't know where that information originates, but as someone who's dealt with the media in rural areas, it's utterly untrue.
Under the electoral college system, we will never have a third party. So if you think both parties and Washington in general is broken, you should support a public vote, period.
Last I heard, only about 10% of Americans think Washington is doing a good job with the two parties we have in power.
How do you figure this? There is nothing equivalent to the electoral college in the election of state governors, for example. Yet only one gov is not a D nor R, Lincoln Chafee of RI, who used to be an R and changed to 'independent' a few years ago.
How do you figure this? There is nothing equivalent to the electoral college in the election of state governors, for example. Yet only one gov is not a D nor R, Lincoln Chafee of RI, who used to be an R and changed to 'independent' a few years ago.
By election law, you must receive 51% of the electoral college vote to win. If you recieve 49% as an independent candidate, and he other two morons who have an R or a D behind their name split the other 51% (such as 26% for the R and 25% for the D), then the vote goes before the house.
Who has control of the house? Its going to be Democrats or Republicans. They would not vote for the independent candidate, they would vote for their candidate who only received 25 or 26% of the electoral college vote.
Thus, preventing a independent candidate from winning an election he/she rightly deserved to win.
This has already happend before, read a history book.
The only way to make sure that a independent candidate can win, is by popular vote alone, take congress out of the procedure.
By election law, you must receive 51% of the electoral college vote to win. If you recieve 49% as an independent candidate, and he other two morons who have an R or a D behind their name split the other 51% (such as 26% for the R and 25% for the D), then the vote goes before the house.
Who has control of the house? Its going to be Democrats or Republicans. They would not vote for the independent candidate, they would vote for their candidate who only received 25 or 26% of the electoral college vote.
Thus, preventing a independent candidate from winning an election he/she rightly deserved to win.
This has already happend before, read a history book.
The only way to make sure that a independent candidate can win, is by popular vote alone, take congress out of the procedure.
The only way to break the power of the two major parties is to take it state by state, breaking down the laws which assist the two major parties in maintaining their stranglehold.
Your version of events with an independent candidate gaining 51% of the vote and then not winning the office is nonsensical. No independent is going to win 51% of the national votes unless the party machinery is broken down, or unless one of those parties transforms itself into the independent party, in which case the R/D becomes irrelevant. And the parties are in constant transformation, moving more conservative, more liberal, revising their stances on the economy, on foreign affairs, etc.
The Electoral college system should be kept but not a one state winner take all approach. It should be winner take all at the county level. One county - one electoral vote. Here's what the 2004 election would have looked liek at the county level. 2004 Election County-By-County
And the 2008 election:
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/2008-election-county-by-county.png (broken link)
If we had a winner take all by county electoral college system then the Dems would never win another election again and our elected officials would look more like the country as a whole instead of a few pockets of cockroach city-dwellers.
Last edited by rogerbacon; 11-17-2011 at 10:18 AM..
The answer is yes. It is ludicrous that EVERY other elected official is voted in by popular vote, only the Office of President is this not true. There were reasons for this is the 1700/1800s, there are none in the 21st Century.
the reasons are still legitimate today. people in north Dakota would never have a presidential candidate come and their votes would mean little. The elections would be won By New York LA Dfw/ Houston. Political candidates would never have to address the concerns or cares of small farm states. They would not have to put in any platforms that addressed the concerns of rural heartlands and could make all the promises to big city voters only. the concerns of rural voters could be ignored. I think the electoral college was set up so all parts of the country would have say . I think it would be bad for the country to have dueling platforms based only on the needs of large cities
the senate represents a singular state as a singular entity...thats why the senators were NOT voted for by the public but APPOINTED by the STATE
the house of REPS represents the population
civics101
Exactly, this is why we need to repeal the 17th Amendment. The House of Representatives is supposed to represent the people (sort of like the British House of Commons on which the House of Representatives was based on); the Senate on the other hand was supposed to represent the individual states on the Federal level and thus Senators were appointed by the state legislatures ... until 1913 when the progressives (aka liberals) decided they wanted to pervert the system.
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