Talk Elections

Get rid of Cook County, IL and Los Angeles County, CA, and Trump wins the PV.  This is why we have the EC- to protect the rest of America from two counties out of over 3000.

This is an absolutely ridiculous statement and argument to make....

So now Presidential elections should be decided on the basis of what political party wins the most counties in either a given state or nationally???

Andrew Jackson would be turning over in his grave just reading such an insane argument for universal disenfranchisement....

I can't believe you have a Tennessee avatar, and are representing an ultimate Anti-Jacksonian position when it comes to elections in America, and need to assume you are deliberately just trying to "poke the sleeping dog with a stick" and not actually serious about this at all.

Oh. So our Founding Fathers assumed that Cook County and Los Angeles County could not possibly elect the right person to be President.
The one and only way to assure that the right person gets elected President is by making sure that the winner has the support of the most counties.
Not the most voters, but the most counties.
Uh-huh.
I think that if a simple, first-past-the-post method of electing the Governor of a state is good enough for nearly all states, then it's good enough of a method to elect the President of the United States.
The Chief Executive of a state compared to the Chief Executive of the United States -- why should the method of electing the latter be different than the method of electing the former?

The Republican attacks on people who live in urban areas are disgusting.

I guess the OP would be a stalwart supporter of this very representative system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_Unit_System

four counties (which combined are smaller than either cook or l.a.co.) gave trump his entire (alleged) electoral college majority

(s. https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=253682.0)

A compromise would be for all of USA to adopt the ME NE system for EV.    Under that system the Dems would have to be much more rural in nature to stay competitive. 

That would be a great idea if congress districts weren't massively Gerrymandered. Romney would've won in 2012 and I guarantee that Trump would still have won 2016, despite both losing the popular vote.

And just one state (Texas) gave Trump his ENTIRE EC win. Cook and LA are HUGE and tossing them aside like they're less important than a county of 2,000 residents is ridiculous. Sorry, but if you believe that rural votes are worth more than urban votes, you don't believe in democracy. Yes, there are more people living in urban or suburban areas. There are also more white people, more women, and more people who are working class. If you don't like the fact that urban voters vote overwhelmingly Democratic, maybe you could try, you know, finding out why they do, seeing them as people who happen to think differently from you, and consider that the Republican Party might need to make some tweaks if it's going to appeal to more voters in these areas. Treating urban voters like they're garbage and deserve to be sidelined... not a good strategy. I realize that the Democrats have sidelined rural voters too much as well, but this issue goes both ways, and it's time both sides acknowledged this.

Don't blame Texas for this! Florida was a huge factor.

>sigh<

I am honestly not sure how to explain the concept that "a vote is a vote" and that arbitrary political boundaries should not be used to justify weighting some ballots more than others, so I'm going to tell a story in the hopes that we can finally lay this argument to rest.

***

Many centuries ago, there lived a good and wise king who was nearing the end of his life. Having no children to inherit the throne after his death, he decreed that the crown would pass to he who would win the most for his people.

The terms were announced three years from the day when the choice of the new king would be made, and the contenders for the throne instructed to prepare their dowries. Though many pronounced intent to claim the prize, by the end of the three years but two men appeared at court to make their offering to the kingdom.

The first man, a merchant who had won great wealth from the ports of far-off lands, came smartly into the hall. He was followed by three attendants; each attendant carried a great oak coffer, and each coffer contained 1,000 gold talents.

"My liege," said the merchant, "I bring you these three coffers of gold, which I have earned by the careful execution of my trade, and which I now intend to bestow upon the people, should you be so just as to deliver unto me the throne."

At the conclusion of his speech, the second man entered the room. He was a soldier, the conqueror of many lands, and he drew behind him a cart on which were piled 5,000 talents of the same make and metal as those in the coffers of the merchant.

"My good and gracious king," said he, "all this I have won in the conquest of our enemies, and this I now present to you, that it may be given to the people when I shall be their ruler."

The king's trusted chancellor, having heard these speeches, approached the two and said, "Verily, then the merchant shall be king, for he has brought three coffers of gold, while the soldier offers but one cart."

"Not so," said the monarch, "you have mistaken the product for the parts. By the rules of our compact, the soldier shall be king; for while the merchant's gift comes in more containers, the soldier's is the greater sum; and whether it is drawn in one cart or in twenty, its value is the same."

yeah but the kingdom was A Republic, Not A Democracy

Get rid of York and Lancaster County, PA, Livingston County, MI and Waukesha County, WI  and Clinton wins the EV. This is why we should have the PV- to protect the rest of America from four counties out of over 3000.

exactly

LOL. This statement is ridiculous, ExtremeRepublican.

Shouldn’t every vote count the same? Just imagine you live in a county that heavily votes Republican in a statewide race, while your party wins that election with a one percent margin. What now if a Democrat comes around and says: “If we remove this county, we would have won!”. What would be your reaction? Would you like that?

You can get almost any result if you want, if you remove certain areas of a state. You could turn CA red or UT blue. Trying to win more votes than your opponent… isn’t democracy supposed to be about this simple principal?

That's why we're thankfully not a democracy.

This is a weak argument. The reason for the electoral college, like so many things laid out in the constitution, is to provide checks and balances, int his case on the larger states. It's not about counties. It's about holding back "the violence of factions" frequently mentioned in the federalist papers.

That said, the electoral college does need reform. I would prefer that the winner of each state get two electors and then have the rest be proportionally distributed. That would provide greater incentives to vote in safely red and blue states. Perhaps the Cruz supporters down in Texas who didn't show up to vote for Trump would have done so reluctantly if they thought their votes actually mattered in stopping Clinton and the same goes for all those anti-Trump protesters in Portland and elsewhere who didn't even vote.

Perhaps we could compromise by using the Mexican system to elect our president. In that, the candidate with the most votes wins, but every voter must show a photo ID proving their citizenship and eligibility to vote. Democrats get a popular vote. GOP gets voter ID. Sounds like a good compromise to me!

Too many people on this site don't really understand the level of prescient wisdom in our constitutional framework.
I am not dead-set against reforming the EC altogether. But I think we ought to be very careful about how we tamper with it, if we tamper with it. America has had a record of stability that few other nations can dream of matching. We shouldn't be trash-talking our constitutional framework, we should be talking it up!

I am yet to hear a reasonable argument for why some citizens ought to have more representation than others, and yet that is the end result of all arguments for why the majority ought to be disenfranchised in favor of giving extra votes to arbitrarily drawn, sparsely populated political districts. If it is indeed true that "governments... [derive] their just powers from the consent of the governed," ought not the will of the governed be the most important factor in selecting the head of government?

I could support this, provided we take the necessary steps to ensure that all voting age citizens receive a photo ID.

The implied sensibility is inevitably that the (even in this election) relatively more well-heeled people who vote for Republicans count as 'the governed', whereas the riffraff who vote for Democrats deserve to be ruled.


^

I think that for a federal nation like US the EC has solid bases for work, but need some limit to state population there is too difference within California and Wyoming
w/o population limit the EC could distort the vote

put that the 50 states have around the same census population what would happen?

We use the state redristicting tool to gerrymander the new states every 10 years

Hypothetically if a republican candidate got 90% of the vote in the southern states and won the popular vote but lost all the other states should that person be president?  I don't think so.

Reverse Bandit thread.

If you get the most votes, you should win, regardless of where those people live.

Why on earth not? It's clear that, for this scenario to be mathematically possible, the Republican nominee must have lost the non-Southern states by very slim margins and probably massively outperformed in traditionally liberal states like New York and California (meaning that a fair number of Democrats voted for the Republican candidate). I don't see why the GOP voters in those states should be disenfranchised, especially considering they constitute a majority of citizens nationally.

Once and for all: Landmass does not vote!!!

To ExtremeRepublican: I have to disagree with you, even though you are technically right.

Consider the same analogy: Only 1 county (Clark) gave Catherine Cortez Masto the Senate seat. Take it out and Joe Heck is our next senator.

I fully understand that in your home state of Tennessee, except the heavily urban areas (e.g. Nashville), every rural county trended and swung to GOP's firm column, and Trump won by the most lopsided margin of 61-35-4 in the 21st century.

I could support that idea as well, despite my general strong stance against voter ID. If we established such a system with time to spare and had a strong proactive government to ensure everyone has easy access to free voter ID, I could accept some of the provisions that those on the right would like. The right gets voter ID, but we make it so that it is free and the government is proactive is giving it to all eligible voters. With that in place, there's not a reason for the right to oppose early voting, same-day registration, or automatic voter registration.

In Italy all people that has political rights is registred for vote, the voter identification is achivied or through a ID or personal knowledge by polling stations crew (they came from the same municipality so in the small town commonly the ID is not required), i think this is a very good method

Only three counties gave Trump his EC majority...

I mean, yeah, if there were fewer Clinton voter she'd have lost the PV. I'm glad you understand how subtraction works, although I'm not sure what point you're trying to make?

That and the founders supported the EC as a republican anti-democratic measure so the wise heads of the EC would overrule any heated poor decision by the ignorant masses. What would the EC do in 2016 according to precedent? Hmmmmmm......

The founders didn't allow for direct election of senators, land requirements to vote, onnly male sufferage, etc. Their views on direct democracy are grossly anachronistic by today's standard of relatively educated and informed electorate, and would be rebuked by 90% of Republican "originalists".

There's only one reason for the EC today, and it's neither philosophical nor constitutional, but simply political.

This is why we have the Electoral College, folks.

The same can be said of Trump with electoral college. We can talk about shifting counties around all we want, but it's really a moot point since the votes of every state and county are going to continue to count. Cook and Los Angeles contribute to economy and federal budget greatly, yet I don't see anyone complaining about that.

"Remove 15 million people (5%) from the country, and Trump is a winner!" - op

I'm glad someone finally said it. I love how so many of them want to spread so-called "American democracy" across the world. Unfortunately, it's an oxymoron and our best applications of democracy are parliamentary republics that look nothing like this country.

Um, no?

Republicans and Democrats didn't even exist when the EC was created.

Every one of the republicans arguing for the EC would have been demanding that it be abolished if trump won the PV but lost the EC.

It's technically not true that they gave her entire PV plurality. If she had only won these two counties, she would have lost the PV, of course. County boundaries can be pretty arbitrary, so whether the 15 million people in Los Angeles and Cook counties were divided into two counties or ten counties should make no difference.

We have the Electoral College because slaves couldn't vote.

Nor is it a particularly good argument for it.

People in Los Angeles and Chicago live in the US and have to follow its laws, so why shouldn't they have a say in who gets to be its leader?

So that 3 counties can give Trump his entire electoral vote lead?

the democrats were rioting and beating up people for voting trump you side isnt Innocent either.

'No you' is the oldest and most craven way of avoiding moral self-reflection in the book.

No, he should. My opinions on how elections work don't change when the parties flip.

And part of the justification for this is that in the case you site, the person would need significant minority support in the rest of the country to win the popular vote. My only fear in that regard is a 3 person race skewing it even further.

Exactly. You don't get 90% of the Southern vote unless (a) you're winning lots of minorities, or (b) there's some serious vote suppression going on.

So?

I have to wonder what reactions some people here would have if Trump won the popular vote and lost the EV.

Well, it would have made up for 2000.

Had Trump won the popular vote, yet lost the electoral college, Republicans would have not have been okay with that scenario and probably would have found a way to give Trump the presidency anyway.

But if we are going to talk about counties, you have to acknowledge that only four counties gave Trump his electoral college win. If you eliminate Livingston County in Michigan, Waukesha County in Wisconsin, Washington County and Westmoreland County in Pennsylvania, then Hillary Clinton won the electoral college.

The idea that the EC serves to "protect" rural areas against big cities doesn't really hold water. It slightly exaggerates the voting power of smaller states, which are usually more rural, but its main effect by far is to massively increase the voting power of people in swing states. Rural Texans or Kansans have much less influence than urban Denverites or Philadelphians.

The argument that it prevents small states from being neglected is pretty bogus also: the candidates spend plenty of time and money campaigning in NH, but almost none in WY, ND, or SD.

Not really accurate.  What it does is make states matter in the first place, since we are a collection of 50 distinct states.  If the EC were proportional (without the two EV bonus to every state), Wyoming would have 1/436 (or 0.23%) of the votes.  Instead, it has 3/538 (or 0.56%) of the votes, more than double the power it would otherwise have.  The EC works to protect our federalist system.

But individual people in Wyoming have zero power.

Zero Counties Gave Trump his ENTIRE PV Plurality, Because He Didn't Win the PV and Is Therefore an Illegitimate President

Counties are just subjective boundary lines drawn more than a hundred years ago.    They don't have any real significance in terms of elections other than Republicans doing their regular spewing of "WE WON MORE COUNTIES, WE HAVE THE BIGGER EPEEN!!!"

Okay to everyone saying that trump lost popular vote so he should lose and that electoral college doesn't represent the people what I say is yes it does the fact is trump won 30 states plus half of Maine this is why we have the electoral college if we go to a popular vote system then only 10 states will really matter
If the democrats don't like the electoral college how about some of you Californiains move to Pennsylvania Michigan and Wisconsin all it would take is 60,000 more dems in each state to win

Only ten (swing) states matter now.

Well tell how many this is
Florida,Virginia,Pennsylvania,Michigan,North Carolina,New Hampshire,Maine,Wisconsin,Colorado,Nevada,Minnesota,Arizona,Georgia,Ohio,Iowa and New Mexico

Now you can make an agreement that Georgia and new Mexico aren't swing states but there still the general leaning red blue states that can go blue or red