"If the Court follows the 10th Circuit, then the public has a chance to determine whether it wants to accept that result." The public already has that chance. This isn't helping. It's based on a flawed theory of change that court decisions provoke successful political backlashes that overturn the decisions. Being able to express yourself in a patrician cadence and couch your arguments in terms Courts understand does not make you a net-sum-positive political actor at the highest level of democratic power. This isn't the right time to bring this.
As a resident of a state deemed "flyover country" let me just key all you California residents in on something you may not know: if you get rid of the electoral college you also get rid of the consent of the Midwest to be in the union. We refuse to be dictated policy by a bunch of coastal high population states that can't even keep human feces off their major cities streets.
Getting rid of the electoral college is a good way to start a civil war.
California had 4.5 million Republican presidential votes cast in 2016, more than the total votes cast in 41 states (in other words, more than all but 9 states, one of which is California itself). [0]
Many of these voters live in the Central Valley, which grows much of the crops produced in the United States (over a third of the country's vegetables and two-thirds of the country's fruits and nuts). [1]
If you throw in the over 3 million Republican presidential votes cast in New York, the current system disenfranchises as many Republicans in 2 states as 30% of total votes cast in the 11 Midwest states won by the Republican.
I understand the impulse to push back against the coasts, as someone originally from the Midwest and is trying to move back there, but the electoral college is not a good system. It harms as many people as it helps. Voters in ~10 “swing states” get bombarded with ads and visits, while the rest of the country gets (comparatively) ignored.
Incidentally, I don’t really think the popular vote is a great system either, particularly in historical examples of no candidate winning a majority of the votes. I would much prefer a system like instant runoff where voters rank candidates based on preference. [2] The Wikipedia hole on electoral methods is a fun read for anyone interested. [3]
It's a good system for those who believe the country is in better hands when we weigh the votes of those in rural areas and still connected to the land as more important than the votes of those who dwell in the nihilism-inducing urban centers.
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[ 1.6 ms ] story [ 23.3 ms ] threadGetting rid of the electoral college is a good way to start a civil war.
Many of these voters live in the Central Valley, which grows much of the crops produced in the United States (over a third of the country's vegetables and two-thirds of the country's fruits and nuts). [1]
If you throw in the over 3 million Republican presidential votes cast in New York, the current system disenfranchises as many Republicans in 2 states as 30% of total votes cast in the 11 Midwest states won by the Republican.
I understand the impulse to push back against the coasts, as someone originally from the Midwest and is trying to move back there, but the electoral college is not a good system. It harms as many people as it helps. Voters in ~10 “swing states” get bombarded with ads and visits, while the rest of the country gets (comparatively) ignored.
Incidentally, I don’t really think the popular vote is a great system either, particularly in historical examples of no candidate winning a majority of the votes. I would much prefer a system like instant runoff where voters rank candidates based on preference. [2] The Wikipedia hole on electoral methods is a fun read for anyone interested. [3]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidentia... [1] http://www.cdfa.ca.gov/Statistics/ [2] https://www.fairvote.org [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method