The Electoral College

[rehmwa]

15 minutes ago, iacas said:

I think there's a big difference between getting the idea that "my vote doesn't count" and someone "understanding the electoral college."

the whine of "my vote doesn't count" is more an indication of the narcissism of the average person - who's vote COUNTS, and is tallied with the rest of the other votes and they just didn't get the result they wanted under the defined system.

legitimate gripes in this vein are real when voter fraud, voter fixing, illegal voting, etc occurs.  not just complaints about the legal system in place not being someone's 'preference'

when someone says "my vote doesn't count" I always HOPE for a reasoned discussion about reducing voter fraud of various kinds.  I'm usually disappointed when, instead, the conversation inevitably turns to complaints about the Electoral System - usually only when their guy didn't win, not the other times..... It is a legitimate discussion, just not on the 'doesn't count' basis.....

 

though, one could just say it's a harmless, though inaccurate, shorthand to introduce the topic (analogous with people that lean on "just my luck" type of intellectual casualness).  But I still contend it's not very precise at all and the presentation is founded in something symptomatic about the nature of people today.

But we are fond of memes and bumper stickers..so we got that going for us.

[newtogolf]

6 minutes ago, rehmwa said:

the whine of "my vote doesn't count" is more an indication of the narcissism of the average person - who's vote COUNTS, and is tallied with the rest of the other votes and they just didn't get the result they wanted under the defined system.

legitimate gripes in this vein are real when voter fraud, voter fixing, illegal voting, etc occurs.  not just complaints about the legal system in place not being someone's 'preference'

I disagree, when 51% vote for X and 49% vote for Y and X gets all the votes it makes all those that voted for Y feel their vote has been marginalized.  

What if Y party pushed for Y supporters to move into their state by offering them entitlements and tax breaks so that Y party would become the majority in the state.  Is that how the system is supposed to work? 

[Groucho Valentine]

26 minutes ago, newtogolf said:

That's my point, individuals votes should always count, no matter what party you support and state you live in.  

I disagree, Gary Johnson wasn't invited to the debates because Trump and Clinton didn't want him there and polling data (15% polling threshold) didn't earn him a spot.  

It's a chicken and egg problem and neither the Democrats or Republicans will make it easy for a 3rd party candidate because their campaign funds are so much better financed.    

Johnson got 15%? Wow. I thought he's been languishing in the 4-5% range. 

[Golfingdad]

2 minutes ago, Groucho Valentine said:

Johnson got 15%? Wow. I thought he's been languishing in the 4-5% range. 

He's just saying that Johnson DID NOT meet the 15% threshold.

[imsys0042]

Couple of things that get overlooked I think....

1 -  State demographics change over time.  Because a state is red/blue today doesn't mean it will always be.  People are more mobile as well.   I don't think it marginalizes someone's vote to have a winner take all system within a state.  I don't think that proportionally allocating is bad either, but that is (per the Constitution at this time) a decision for each state to make.  A weak candidate in either party could shift a state the other direction.  

2 -  The fact that certain states are reliably Red/Blue are also because politics are much more tribal now.   A weak candidate will still win double digit states because people vote for their party no matter what.   or stay home.   That didn't used to be so prevalent in this country, but it is more so.   Past bad candidates have lost upwards of 45+ states

3 -  It's not just winning a state and that automatically selects the winner.  There are a number of provisions and methods for dealing with contested elections, ties and esoteric circumstances.  Those are largely in place due to the EC.  For example if the results of an election cannot be determined or there is a tie (we could have a tie in the popular vote as well within a margin of error), then these provisions could be inacted.  I'm not saying that many of them could not be used for a straight popular vote, but dismantling an entrenched system is both a lot of work and can have unforseen consequences.

 

[iacas]

35 minutes ago, Golfingdad said:

Remember, I'm simply saying that I'm skeptical that voter turnout would rise much if we eliminated the electoral college.  Your answer here doesn't change my view on that because the people you're talking about are turning out to vote anyway.

All I am saying is that I don't think that eliminating it would cause voter turnout to increase much.

Imagine if California switched to divvying up their 55 votes by % popular vote.

Republicans would immediately launch a "get out the vote" campaign to snatch as many (still probably the minority, but more than zero!) of the votes as they could. Democrats wouldn't idly take the hit, and would also launch "get out the vote" campaigns to try to keep as many of the votes as possible.

I would bet that California, for example, would see a sizable increase in the number of voters.

If I was a Republican in California, why go out of my way to vote? Ditto if you're a Democrat… your guy (gal) is going to win, so… who cares?

Changing to a split electoral vote would make more people care. Don't you think?

34 minutes ago, rehmwa said:

the whine of "my vote doesn't count" is more an indication of the narcissism of the average person - who's vote COUNTS, and is tallied with the rest of the other votes and they just didn't get the result they wanted under the defined system.

I disagree too.

A vote for a Republican president in California doesn't matter, just as a vote for a Democrat president in Texas. (Recent history, anyway.)

It's not "narcissistic" in the least. It's pragmatic. Realistic.

34 minutes ago, rehmwa said:

But we are fond of memes and bumper stickers..so we got that going for us.

So we're having a real discussion about the electoral process, and you come by to put us all down with some bumper sticker whining about the narcissistic whiners?

[Golfingdad]

11 minutes ago, iacas said:

If I was a Republican in California, why go out of my way to vote? Ditto if you're a Democrat… your guy (gal) is going to win, so… who cares?

Because there are several other things that are on the ballot that matter as much, if not more.  This election, we have 16 or 17 state propositions, a senate seat, house seat, state senate and assemby seats, and all the local stuff as well.

If those don't matter to somebody then I'd suspect that somebody would be more likely to recognize that the presidential election isn't going to be decided by one vote anyway.

I'll concede that it might increase based on the advertising campaign you suggested, but I don't think it would be very significant.

[iacas]

34 minutes ago, Golfingdad said:

Because there are several other things that are on the ballot that matter as much, if not more.  This election, we have 16 or 17 state propositions, a senate seat, house seat, state senate and assemby seats, and all the local stuff as well.

I'm talking about the presidential race. Like it or not many probably don't go if they don't care about the presidential race.

I think it would be significant.

[Chilli Dipper]

34 minutes ago, Golfingdad said:

Because there are several other things that are on the ballot that matter as much, if not more.  This election, we have 16 or 17 state propositions, a senate seat, house seat, state senate and assemby seats, and all the local stuff as well.

If those don't matter to somebody then I'd suspect that somebody would be more likely to recognize that the presidential election isn't going to be decided by one vote anyway.

I'll concede that it might increase based on the advertising campaign you suggested, but I don't think it would be very significant.

It's worth pointing out that the Republican Party in California is in such a bad shape right now, they couldn't even put a candidate on the ballot for an open Senate seat. There are an awful lot of Republican congressmen in Texas running unopposed this year, too. They have deeper problems than what throwing them a bone with the Electoral College will solve.

[rehmwa]

26 minutes ago, Chilli Dipper said:

 

2 hours ago, newtogolf said:

I disagree, when 51% vote for X and 49% vote for Y and X gets all the votes it makes all those that voted for Y feel their vote has been marginalized.  

What if Y party pushed for Y supporters to move into their state by offering them entitlements and tax breaks so that Y party would become the majority in the state.  Is that how the system is supposed to work? 

no issues - it's largely semantics with most people anyway.  You likely note "wasted" as illustrative to make the point.  I understand that.  I'll clarify, but it likely won't matter.

the 49% for X got their votes counted, and it wasn't enough.  sour grapes isn't a claim to disenfranchisement

The rules are - states get to decide how to use the state's electoral votes.  that's the rules.  We vote to try to 'win' the electoral votes, not directly.  You want to vote directly for president you have to earn the position of electoral vote caster.

A vote isn't wasted if it's used in the legal and known process.  It is only wasted if there is fraud.  Disenfranchised is the very definition of a wasted vote.  Arguing against the legal process is a good discussion - but claiming it's because a legal vote is wasted is a non-starter, a flawed emotional argument at best.

 

 

Here's the short version - I suspect that if there was a popular vote instead - and one candidate wins with 90%, that many of the 10% that didn't vote for him would still cry about their vote "not counting".  Same result - just a different set of rules.  This is the mindset I'm discussing.  Nothing more.

1 hour ago, iacas said:

So we're having a real discussion about the electoral process, and you come by to put us all down with some bumper sticker whining about the narcissistic whiners?

I'm very much enjoying this discussion and take the comment about a vote "not being counting" very serious, it's self defeating and not accurate.  Pragmatic?  fine, and I get why people say that, but I find it lazy to describe it that way - there are many ways to use a vote to make change.  Even voting for a losing candidate still helps to send a message and press eventual change.  Saying it "Doesn't matter" in the final result is one thing.  But saying "my vote was NOT COUNTED" is very different and completely incorrect. (I can see that last comment being a harmless tease and wry - if that's the intent, feel free to tone down the urgency of my response accordingly.  sometimes hard to tell tone in written stuff - as I'm sure you know.)

the funny part of this thread is that while I'm reading it, the other thread in these forums that I find to be the most analogous is the "Ball at Rest Moved - How would you change it" 

[Golfingdad]

32 minutes ago, iacas said:

I'm talking about the presidential race. Like it or not many probably don't go if they don't care about the presidential race.

I think it would be significant.

That's fine.  I don't.

[iacas]

4 minutes ago, Golfingdad said:

That's fine.  I don't.

We see "get out the vote" campaigns in states with far fewer electoral votes when they become battleground states.

To think that nobody would try to get out the vote when 15-20 votes (effectively 30-40 vote swings) would be up for grabs is… something.

[newtogolf]

23 minutes ago, iacas said:

We see "get out the vote" campaigns in states with far fewer electoral votes when they become battleground states.

To think that nobody would try to get out the vote when 15-20 votes (effectively 30-40 vote swings) would be up for grabs is… something.

It's fact that about 20% more people turn out to vote in the years with a Presidential election than mid-term elections, so changing the electoral college vote assignment would encourage more people to vote.  

[Golfingdad]

14 minutes ago, iacas said:

We see "get out the vote" campaigns in states with far fewer electoral votes when they become battleground states.

To think that nobody would try to get out the vote when 15-20 votes (effectively 30-40 vote swings) would be up for grabs is… something.

You've lost track of what I was saying.  I didn't say people wouldn't try to get more people to vote, I just said I am skeptical that eliminating the electoral college would increase voter turnout very much.

People who don't currently choose to vote, do so for lots of reasons and I just don't think that "my state is winner-take-all electoral votes" is a significant one of those reasons.  That is all.  I could very well be wrong.  It's simply an opinion.

[mvmac]

3 hours ago, Golfingdad said:

What do you think is the percentage of people who don't vote yet who also know what the electoral college is or how it works?  I'm not sure that is a very significant number.

Not sure on percentage but I think you'd see an increase in turnout overall and certainly in states like CA, NY and TX where a decent size of the population hasn't factored into a presidential race in a while.

1 hour ago, iacas said:

Republicans would immediately launch a "get out the vote" campaign to snatch as many (still probably the minority, but more than zero!) of the votes as they could. Democrats wouldn't idly take the hit, and would also launch "get out the vote" campaigns to try to keep as many of the votes as possible.

Right that makes sense to me. 

If people are motivated or feel they have a chance to matter they'll make the effort to vote. 

1 hour ago, Golfingdad said:

Because there are several other things that are on the ballot that matter as much, if not more.  This election, we have 16 or 17 state propositions, a senate seat, house seat, state senate and assemby seats, and all the local stuff as well.

While I agree that stuff will typically matter more in our daily lives than who's president, the presidential race is the main attraction and the one that really gets people to the polls. There are a lot of CA voters out there that know way more about the presidential race that what Prop 59 is. Maybe not Prop 64 though 

[iacas]

3 hours ago, Golfingdad said:

You've lost track of what I was saying.  I didn't say people wouldn't try to get more people to vote, I just said I am skeptical that eliminating the electoral college would increase voter turnout very much.

People who don't currently choose to vote, do so for lots of reasons and I just don't think that "my state is winner-take-all electoral votes" is a significant one of those reasons.  That is all.  I could very well be wrong.  It's simply an opinion.

I get that's what you're saying.

What I'm saying is that a world where the "winner take all" simply goes away with no other change is not going to happen. If California switched from WTA to "percentage voted for" in apportioning their 55 votes, you'd have massive "get out the vote" efforts, which would be the cause of the increased voter turnout.

I might even agree that if such a world as the one you are picturing existed then it might not account for a big rise in voter turnout (though it might - Republicans may feel like "yay, my vote will finally contribute to the electoral vote count for my guy!"), but the other stuff that would also happen as a result of the change would increase voter turnout. Get out the vote. More ads. More local events/visits/rallies. Etc.

[toto]

Under National Popular Vote, every voter, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in every presidential election. Every vote would matter in the state counts and national count.

National Popular Vote would give a voice to the minority party voters in presidential elections in each state.  Now they don't matter to their candidate.

 In 2012, 56,256,178 (44%) of the 128,954,498 voters had their vote diverted by the winner-take-all rule to a candidate they opposed (namely, their state’s first-place candidate)                   

And now votes, beyond the one needed to get the most votes in the state, for winning in a state, are wasted and don't matter to candidates. 

Oklahoma (7 electoral votes) alone generated a margin of 455,000 "wasted" votes for Bush in 2004 -- larger than the margin generated by the 9th and 10th largest states, namely New Jersey and North Carolina (each with 15 electoral votes).

Utah (5 electoral votes) alone generated a margin of 385,000 "wasted" votes for Bush in 2004.

8 small western states, with less than a third of California’s population, provided Bush with a bigger margin (1,283,076) than California provided Kerry (1,235,659).

In 2008, voter turnout in the then 15 battleground states averaged seven points higher than in the 35 non-battleground states.

In 2012, voter turnout was 11% higher in the then 9 battleground states than in the remainder of the country.

In the 2012 presidential election, 1.3 million votes decided the winner in the ten states with the closest margins of victory.  But nearly 20 million eligible citizens in those states—Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin—are missing from the voter rolls.

Overall, these “missing voters” amount to half, and in some cases more than half, of the total votes cast for president in these states.

With National Popular Vote, presidential campaigns would poll, organize, visit, and appeal to more than 7 states. One would reasonably expect that voter turnout would rise in 80%+ of the country that is currently conceded months in advance by the minority parties in the states, taken for granted by the dominant party in the states, and ignored by all parties in presidential campaigns.

 

A national popular vote is the way to make every person's vote equal and matter to their candidate because it guarantees that the candidate who gets the most votes in all 50 states and DC becomes President.

 

Any state that enacts the proportional approach on its own would reduce its own influence. This was the most telling argument that caused Colorado voters to agree with Republican Governor Owens and to reject this proposal in November 2004 by a two-to-one margin. 

 

The political reality is that campaign strategies in ordinary elections are based on trying to change a reasonably achievable small percentage of the votes—1%, 2%, or 3%.  Only in Texas and California would even gaining 2 electoral votes be possible. As a matter of practical politics, only one electoral vote would be in play in almost all states. A system that requires even a 9% share of the popular vote in order to win one electoral vote is fundamentally out of sync with the small-percentage vote shifts that are involved in real-world presidential campaigns.

 

If a current battleground state, like Colorado, were to change its winner-take-all statute to a proportional method for awarding electoral votes, presidential candidates would pay less attention to that state because only one electoral vote would probably be at stake in the state.

If states were to ever start adopting the whole-number proportional approach on a piecemeal basis, each additional state adopting the approach would increase the influence of the remaining states and thereby would decrease the incentive of the remaining states to adopt it. Thus, a state-by-state process of adopting the whole-number proportional approach would quickly bring itself to a halt, leaving the states that adopted it with only minimal influence in presidential elections.

                                        

The proportional method also easily could result in no candidate winning the needed majority of 270 electoral votes.  That would throw the process into Congress to decide the election, regardless of the popular vote in any state or throughout the country

 

If the whole-number proportional approach had been in use throughout the country in the nation’s closest recent presidential election (2000), it would not have awarded the most electoral votes to the candidate receiving the most popular votes nationwide.  Instead, the result would have been a tie of 269–269 in the electoral vote, even though Al Gore led by 537,179 popular votes across the nation.  The presidential election would have been thrown into Congress to decide and resulted in the election of the second-place candidate in terms of the national popular vote. 

Awarding electoral votes by a proportional method fails to promote majority rule, greater competitiveness or voter equality. If done nationally,  the whole number proportional system sharply increases the odds of no candidate getting the majority of electoral votes needed, leading to the selection of the president by the U.S. House of Representatives.

In a situation in which no candidate gets a majority of the electoral votes, with the current system,  the election of the President would be thrown into the U.S. House (with each state casting one vote) and the election of the Vice President would be thrown into the U.S. Senate.  Congress would decide the election, regardless of the popular vote in any state or throughout the country.

A system in which electoral votes are divided proportionally by state would not accurately reflect the nationwide popular vote and would not make every voter equal. 

It would penalize fast-growing states that do not receive any increase in their number of electoral votes until after the next federal census.  It would penalize states with high voter turnout (e.g., Utah, Oregon). 

                                      

Moreover, the fractional proportional allocation approach, which would require a constitutional amendment, does not assure election of the winner of the nationwide popular vote.  In 2000, for example, it would have resulted in the election of the second-place candidate. 

                                

A national popular vote is the way to make every person's vote equal and matter to their candidate because it guarantees that the candidate who gets the most votes in all 50 states and DC becomes President.

[toto]

It would be astronomically unlikely to have a tie in the national popular vote.  Margins of error occur in statistics, not in a vote count. Any amount of more popular votes than an opponent obtained, makes that candidate the winner in an election decided by popular vote.

The candidate with the most votes would win, as in virtually every other election in the country.

Using the National Popular Vote bill would not be a lot of work and we have hundreds of years of elections in the U.S. where every voter is equal and matters everywhere, and the candidate with the most votes wins.