Should we abolish the popular vote?
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  Should we abolish the popular vote?
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Question: a Phillip-esque type poll
#1
yes
 
#2
no
 
#3
possibly, let's hear a good argument for it M&C...
 
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Total Voters: 69

Author Topic: Should we abolish the popular vote?  (Read 32283 times)
Smash255
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« Reply #25 on: July 26, 2005, 03:13:06 AM »

Make the EV;s sokey based on population & # of Reps.  Smaller states tend to have more power.  For example Wyoming population is 1/17 of the New Jersey's however their EV count & total voting power in Presidential elections is 1/5 of New Jersey's.
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Fmr. Gov. NickG
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« Reply #26 on: July 29, 2005, 10:16:14 AM »

There's no reason why you can't preserve all the individual rights we have no while giving everyone at least approximately equal voting power.

The way the Senate is structured now, it doesn't denfend the rights of minorities against majorities.  It only protects some specified minorities, whle hurting other minorities.  What state you are from is really much less relevant tou our lives today than many other traits.  If you really want to protect minorities, give two Senators to each racial group, or each religion, or each income bracket.

The assumption in a federal body like the Senate is that significant minorites will not be so geographically uniform that they are lost in every jurisdiction. That assumption generally tends to be true, but the threshold for "significance" is ambiguous. That ambigous threshold is a good thing IMO, since it provides far greater flexibility to changing times than the specific declaration of minority interest groups.

The problem with the Senate is that the founding fathers didn't creally ontemplate the idea that their might be interest groups that were totally undefined by geography.  For the most part, this is because these interests weren't even given voting rights at the time of the Constitution. 

One major "minority" that is completely geographically dispersed, for instance, is women.  People of all age groups are almost equally geographically dispersed.  And both rich and poor live in the same states and same cities, if not always in the same House district. 

If you want to really make sure the rights of minorities are represented, let them choose with "District" they want to be in....allow it to be completely free from geography.   Tell everyone they have to register to be in one of 100 "districts", but can choose which on they want.  Thus, people can identify with whatever interest they find most important. 

If enough people want to form an "Hispanic" district, or a "gay" district, or a "lawyer's" district, that's fine.  And if some people still value geography and want to form a "Maryland" district or a "Chicago" district, that's fine too.
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Emsworth
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« Reply #27 on: July 29, 2005, 10:46:21 AM »

There's no reason why you can't preserve all the individual rights we have no while giving everyone at least approximately equal voting power.

The way the Senate is structured now, it doesn't denfend the rights of minorities against majorities.  It only protects some specified minorities, whle hurting other minorities.  What state you are from is really much less relevant tou our lives today than many other traits.  If you really want to protect minorities, give two Senators to each racial group, or each religion, or each income bracket.

The assumption in a federal body like the Senate is that significant minorites will not be so geographically uniform that they are lost in every jurisdiction. That assumption generally tends to be true, but the threshold for "significance" is ambiguous. That ambigous threshold is a good thing IMO, since it provides far greater flexibility to changing times than the specific declaration of minority interest groups.

The problem with the Senate is that the founding fathers didn't creally ontemplate the idea that their might be interest groups that were totally undefined by geography.  For the most part, this is because these interests weren't even given voting rights at the time of the Constitution. 

One major "minority" that is completely geographically dispersed, for instance, is women.  People of all age groups are almost equally geographically dispersed.  And both rich and poor live in the same states and same cities, if not always in the same House district. 

If you want to really make sure the rights of minorities are represented, let them choose with "District" they want to be in....allow it to be completely free from geography.   Tell everyone they have to register to be in one of 100 "districts", but can choose which on they want.  Thus, people can identify with whatever interest they find most important. 

If enough people want to form an "Hispanic" district, or a "gay" district, or a "lawyer's" district, that's fine.  And if some people still value geography and want to form a "Maryland" district or a "Chicago" district, that's fine too.
There would be no incentive for individuals to register with their true "districts."
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Fmr. Gov. NickG
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« Reply #28 on: July 29, 2005, 12:03:02 PM »


Right...the Districts would have no geographical lines.  They would just be numbered 1-100, and presumably they would acquire their own de-facto "boundaries", geographic or otherwise.
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Emsworth
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« Reply #29 on: July 29, 2005, 12:52:20 PM »


Right...the Districts would have no geographical lines.  They would just be numbered 1-100, and presumably they would acquire their own de-facto "boundaries", geographic or otherwise.
No, I don't think so. Each district would merely be a subset of the U.S. with approximately the same socioeconomic and demographic breakdown as the whole nation.
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jimrtex
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« Reply #30 on: July 29, 2005, 01:23:31 PM »

If you want to really make sure the rights of minorities are represented, let them choose with "District" they want to be in....allow it to be completely free from geography.   Tell everyone they have to register to be in one of 100 "districts", but can choose which on they want.  Thus, people can identify with whatever interest they find most important. 

If enough people want to form an "Hispanic" district, or a "gay" district, or a "lawyer's" district, that's fine.  And if some people still value geography and want to form a "Maryland" district or a "Chicago" district, that's fine too.
New Zealand has (or had?) something like this for Maoris.

The census had a designation for Maoris.  When voters registered, they indicated whether they were Maori and whether they wished to be on the Maori voting roll.

When the Maori districts were drawn, the relevant population for an area is: Maori_Population * (Maori_Roll / Maori_Voter).  Thus if 60% of Maori voters in an area said they wanted to be on the Maori voting roll, then 60% of the Maori population would be used as the population for the area, with the districts based on population.

A variant in the US would be to take the relative share of the population for each ethnic group (Asian, Black, Hispanic, and Anglo) and determine the equivalent number of congressional districts.  Then for each ethnic group in turn, select the combination of small areas (census tracts perhap) that have the highest concentration of the ethnic group, that have a total population equivalent to the number of congressional district.  Then divide those areas up into districts.

For example, Texas would have 1 Asian, 4 Black, 10 Hispanic, and 17 Anglo congressional districts.  The Asian district would be the census tracts statewide with the highest concentration of Asians that had a total population of 651,593.  The 4 Black districts would be the the areas with 2.606 million population with the highest Black concentration, and so on.
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Fmr. Gov. NickG
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« Reply #31 on: July 29, 2005, 02:56:31 PM »


Right...the Districts would have no geographical lines.  They would just be numbered 1-100, and presumably they would acquire their own de-facto "boundaries", geographic or otherwise.
No, I don't think so. Each district would merely be a subset of the U.S. with approximately the same socioeconomic and demographic breakdown as the whole nation.

Why would that be? 

What would happen is you would have a group of people with similar interests uniting to reregister in a particular district (arbitrariy chosen at first)...just like they unite to form political parties.  Once they reached a critical mass in a particular district, they would be able to elect the representative of their choosing.  At this point, the original members of that district, realizing they could never win, would disperse into other districts that better represented their own interests. 

If one district was overpopulated (e.g. all Hispanics joined one district), someone would mount a campaign to get some of the people in that district to register in a new district, so that that interest could get a second or third representative.  If an interest that was once strong began to dwindle (e.g. a district of people who favored Prohibition), eventually some more popular interest would realize the opportunity and take it over. 

You would have a constant rebalancing of interests according to changing demographics, changing issue landscapes, and changing self-identificiations. 

Moreover, no-one could complain that their representative did not properly represent them, because if they didn't like who got elected, they could just "move" into a "district" with a rep they liked better.

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Emsworth
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« Reply #32 on: July 29, 2005, 04:55:42 PM »


Right...the Districts would have no geographical lines.  They would just be numbered 1-100, and presumably they would acquire their own de-facto "boundaries", geographic or otherwise.
No, I don't think so. Each district would merely be a subset of the U.S. with approximately the same socioeconomic and demographic breakdown as the whole nation.

Why would that be? 
Let's say that today, your plan is adopted, and the Senate as we know it is abolished. These 100 "districts" are created. Now, the probability of a voter choosing a particular district is 1/100. Voters will arbitrarily choose districts, and the net effect will be to create districts which are by and large subsets of the nation.

You assume that voters will, on their own, organize into districts based on their interests. Given that only about 30% of the voters actually cast ballots in midterm elections, I don't think that this assumption is valid. A vast majority of the voters would arbitrarily choose some district; they would not be sufficiently interested to research each district, checking if that body matches a particular interest.
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Fmr. Gov. NickG
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« Reply #33 on: July 29, 2005, 08:32:53 PM »


Right...the Districts would have no geographical lines.  They would just be numbered 1-100, and presumably they would acquire their own de-facto "boundaries", geographic or otherwise.
No, I don't think so. Each district would merely be a subset of the U.S. with approximately the same socioeconomic and demographic breakdown as the whole nation.

Why would that be?
Let's say that today, your plan is adopted, and the Senate as we know it is abolished. These 100 "districts" are created. Now, the probability of a voter choosing a particular district is 1/100. Voters will arbitrarily choose districts, and the net effect will be to create districts which are by and large subsets of the nation.

You assume that voters will, on their own, organize into districts based on their interests. Given that only about 30% of the voters actually cast ballots in midterm elections, I don't think that this assumption is valid. A vast majority of the voters would arbitrarily choose some district; they would not be sufficiently interested to research each district, checking if that body matches a particular interest.

If only 30% of people vote, then only these 30% are important for determining the composition of the district.  If a district has 30% people from a given interest group, and 70% random non-voter, that interest group will still dominate the election.
Registering for a district would be no harder than registering for a political party now, and most voters are members of a political party.
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muon2
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« Reply #34 on: July 31, 2005, 11:49:31 AM »

There's no reason why you can't preserve all the individual rights we have no while giving everyone at least approximately equal voting power.

The way the Senate is structured now, it doesn't denfend the rights of minorities against majorities.  It only protects some specified minorities, whle hurting other minorities.  What state you are from is really much less relevant tou our lives today than many other traits.  If you really want to protect minorities, give two Senators to each racial group, or each religion, or each income bracket.

The assumption in a federal body like the Senate is that significant minorites will not be so geographically uniform that they are lost in every jurisdiction. That assumption generally tends to be true, but the threshold for "significance" is ambiguous. That ambigous threshold is a good thing IMO, since it provides far greater flexibility to changing times than the specific declaration of minority interest groups.

The problem with the Senate is that the founding fathers didn't creally ontemplate the idea that their might be interest groups that were totally undefined by geography.  For the most part, this is because these interests weren't even given voting rights at the time of the Constitution. 

One major "minority" that is completely geographically dispersed, for instance, is women.  People of all age groups are almost equally geographically dispersed.  And both rich and poor live in the same states and same cities, if not always in the same House district. 

If you want to really make sure the rights of minorities are represented, let them choose with "District" they want to be in....allow it to be completely free from geography.   Tell everyone they have to register to be in one of 100 "districts", but can choose which on they want.  Thus, people can identify with whatever interest they find most important. 

If enough people want to form an "Hispanic" district, or a "gay" district, or a "lawyer's" district, that's fine.  And if some people still value geography and want to form a "Maryland" district or a "Chicago" district, that's fine too.

In many ways you have described special interest lobbies. If enough people join one then the interest may have enough resources to affect political races. Smaller groups affect smaller races, larger groups affect larger races and more of them. By affecting races, they in turn have greater response to their agenda items.

One feature of the current system is that special interests line up in coalition primarily behind specific candidates. That gives the candidates greater independence from the party to meet the needs of the interests that support them for election. Those interests can be ideological or geographical. No special party is needed for each interest. The two major parties then represent broad groupings of candidates with generally overlapping interests.
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Undisguised Sockpuppet
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« Reply #35 on: March 20, 2007, 05:37:44 PM »

Gee sounds like the ottoman empire's millet system. A poster on another discussion board I go to would like this system.
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minionofmidas
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« Reply #36 on: April 03, 2007, 07:35:57 AM »


Right...the Districts would have no geographical lines.  They would just be numbered 1-100, and presumably they would acquire their own de-facto "boundaries", geographic or otherwise.
No, I don't think so. Each district would merely be a subset of the U.S. with approximately the same socioeconomic and demographic breakdown as the whole nation.

Why would that be? 
Let's say that today, your plan is adopted, and the Senate as we know it is abolished. These 100 "districts" are created. Now, the probability of a voter choosing a particular district is 1/100. Voters will arbitrarily choose districts, and the net effect will be to create districts which are by and large subsets of the nation.

You assume that voters will, on their own, organize into districts based on their interests. Given that only about 30% of the voters actually cast ballots in midterm elections, I don't think that this assumption is valid. A vast majority of the voters would arbitrarily choose some district; they would not be sufficiently interested to research each district, checking if that body matches a particular interest.
Some of the districts would have tiny populations at the beginning, making them easy to take over for small organized groups.
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Nym90
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« Reply #37 on: July 29, 2007, 11:09:12 AM »

You can|t abolish the national popular vote because it does not exist.


Well I suppose you could pass a law making it illegal to publish the results of the national popular vote, but that would be a tad bit unconstitutional. Smiley
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Хahar 🤔
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« Reply #38 on: November 01, 2007, 10:34:10 PM »

The opposite should be done.
Get rid of the archaic system we have and go with the most votes win.
I can only imagine, over time candidates would only run from cities and nobody would have any representation from the country.

Over time, people would only live in cities and there would be nothing to represent in the country.
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Хahar 🤔
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« Reply #39 on: June 10, 2008, 01:20:48 AM »


Right...the Districts would have no geographical lines.  They would just be numbered 1-100, and presumably they would acquire their own de-facto "boundaries", geographic or otherwise.

I actually somewhat like this.
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rockhound
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« Reply #40 on: August 04, 2008, 09:44:32 PM »

What bothers me about election coverage, is the fascination with the popular vote totals and the nearly complete absence of any discussion of state totals.  Even on this site, the maps list the electoral counts and the popular vote totals, without listing the comparable state totals.

Per the constitution, the president is chosen by the states.  Not by the people.  States can decide how they want to make that choice, and currently all do so by having a popular preference contest.

The great compromise came about when the small states aquisced to the larger ones by giving them more power in the house of representatives and the presidential selection.  But they did not intend to be overwhelmed by that power, thus the senate and the electoral college.
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Хahar 🤔
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« Reply #41 on: August 04, 2008, 10:25:33 PM »

What bothers me about election coverage, is the fascination with the popular vote totals and the nearly complete absence of any discussion of state totals.  Even on this site, the maps list the electoral counts and the popular vote totals, without listing the comparable state totals.

Per the constitution, the president is chosen by the states.  Not by the people.  States can decide how they want to make that choice, and currently all do so by having a popular preference contest.

The great compromise came about when the small states aquisced to the larger ones by giving them more power in the house of representatives and the presidential selection.  But they did not intend to be overwhelmed by that power, thus the senate and the electoral college.

The answer's a lot simpler than you think.

State totals are boring. We're not really interested in thinking up 51 PV totals.
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muon2
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« Reply #42 on: August 05, 2008, 11:28:06 PM »

What bothers me about election coverage, is the fascination with the popular vote totals and the nearly complete absence of any discussion of state totals.  Even on this site, the maps list the electoral counts and the popular vote totals, without listing the comparable state totals.

Per the constitution, the president is chosen by the states.  Not by the people.  States can decide how they want to make that choice, and currently all do so by having a popular preference contest.

The great compromise came about when the small states aquisced to the larger ones by giving them more power in the house of representatives and the presidential selection.  But they did not intend to be overwhelmed by that power, thus the senate and the electoral college.

The answer's a lot simpler than you think.

State totals are boring. We're not really interested in thinking up 51 PV totals.

Perhaps that's changing. I found CNN's primary coverage to be strikingly different from the past. As a state was counted, there were totals from the counties, AND the analysis took time to look at the margins by county.
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Chronicler03
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« Reply #43 on: August 06, 2008, 06:16:22 PM »

In parliamentary systems in some foreign nations, one party won a majority of the seats even though it received fewer "popular votes."

Does anyone know of a movement in a nation with a parliamentary system to change their system?
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« Reply #44 on: August 06, 2008, 06:26:36 PM »

In parliamentary systems in some foreign nations, one party won a majority of the seats even though it received fewer "popular votes."

Does anyone know of a movement in a nation with a parliamentary system to change their system?

There was a minor row over this in Malta some time ago.
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« Reply #45 on: August 08, 2008, 08:22:03 PM »

In parliamentary systems in some foreign nations, one party won a majority of the seats even though it received fewer "popular votes."

Does anyone know of a movement in a nation with a parliamentary system to change their system?

I have trouble understanding what you mean. Do you mean a party won the election despite having less votes than the opposition party (aka, Quebec 1998)?
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minionofmidas
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« Reply #46 on: August 10, 2008, 05:51:08 AM »

In parliamentary systems in some foreign nations, one party won a majority of the seats even though it received fewer "popular votes."

Does anyone know of a movement in a nation with a parliamentary system to change their system?

I have trouble understanding what you mean. Do you mean a party won the election despite having less votes than the opposition party (aka, Quebec 1998)?
Yes.

The answer to the question is, of course: "that's why more countries switch from fptp to pr than the other way round".
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