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End winner take all in the electoral college and let the true voice of the people be heard.

EatTheRich

President
I'm not ignoring that fact. That's a given.
So the question is not whether we are “going to let NYC and CA decide the election,” but whether the weight of a vote cast in one of those places is going to be closer to the weight of a vote cast somewhere else.
 

EatTheRich

President
Winner-take-all is one problem, but another is the imbalance between a state’s share of the population and the number of electoral votes it gets.
 

EatTheRich

President
No. I believe electoral votes should be apportioned as they always have been.

It's your ilk that's jacking with the system.
2 states already split their electoral vote allotment based, at least in part, on the popular vote shares of candidates ... as is their constitutional prerogative.

Allotment of electoral votes to the winner of the statewide popular vote winner grew up in the 1820s and 1830s; it is not the way it has always been done, and there is no constitutional requirement to do it that way.
 

Spamature

President
No. I believe electoral votes should be apportioned as they always have been.

It's your ilk that's jacking with the system.
But you support those voters having no voice in election. How else can you describe it other than, sit down and stfu you conservatives, in those states and others, where their votes don't make up the majority of votes cast ?

You support that, period.
 

Spamature

President
Winner-take-all is one problem, but another is the imbalance between a state’s share of the population and the number of electoral votes it gets.
That imbalance was purposely baked into the Constitution. We would have to change it to change that. What I am talking about does not change the Constitution but it does go towards leveling that imbalance.

Their voices are still outsized but they wouldn't be outsized, and completely one sided, regardless of how the people who live there voted.
 
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middleview

President
Supporting Member
Agreed.

It is a horrible law that shreds the constitution.

But........that's dimocRAT'S for you. The party you love.

You should call Sheets Northam and register your displeasure as a dimocRAT. Maybe they'll listen to their own kind. ........maybe. But I doubt it.
What constitution are you talking about? Certainly not the US constitution, which says that a state may award it's electors by any means they choose.

According to the text of Article II, however, each state government was free to have its own plan for selecting its electors, and the Constitution does not explicitly require states to popularly elect their electors.

When changes were proposed in the Electoral College to be what it is today, both Madison and Hamilton objected. There were some states that had their state legislature pick the electors.
 

middleview

President
Supporting Member
That is still winner take all and it does even worse than the current model in my opinion by taking the voice away from the entire population of voters in that state and gives it to all the other voters in all the other states. But it does partially negate voter suppression in individual states. So in that way it's an improvement.
How in hell do you figure it takes the voice away from the entire state? Do you know of a state that voted 100% for a candidate?

RIght now population per EC vote is 700,000 for California and 200,000 for people in Wyoming. So 170,000 voters in Wyoming were worth 3 Electors...that is how many voted for Romney. Each elector speaks for 60,000 voters.

8,753,788 voters cast votes for Hillary in 2016. 55 Electors. Each elector is about 160,000 voters.
 

Spamature

President
How in hell do you figure it takes the voice away from the entire state? Do you know of a state that voted 100% for a candidate?

RIght now population per EC vote is 700,000 for California and 200,000 for people in Wyoming. So 170,000 voters in Wyoming were worth 3 Electors...that is how many voted for Romney. Each elector speaks for 60,000 voters.

8,753,788 voters cast votes for Hillary in 2016. 55 Electors. Each elector is about 160,000 voters.
I am saying that because Virginia is now that they are allowing their votes to go to whom ever wins the national popular vote. Means the majority of the totality of the nation's voters, rather than the majority of Virginian voters, who decide which candidate gets Virginia's EC votes. They could just as well all not vote in that state and the outcome could be the same. Even more so the majority of the nation could vote the opposite of what the voters in Virginia voted, and it wouldn't matter even if 100% of Virginians voted the other way. Now ALL OF THEM have no say.

They are being fairer to the rest of the country than they are to themselves.
 
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Nutty Cortez

Dummy (D) NY
You don't seem to know what you are talking about. The Electoral College is left up to the states as to how they apportion electors. They don't even have to vote for the candidate who got the most votes in their states (faithless electors).

The EC as it is today is not how it was designed by the founding fathers.
Now I see why everyone is laughing at you. LOL

Electoral College is exactly how the Founders set it up. It's what's causing your butthurt.
 

Nutty Cortez

Dummy (D) NY
We still do not get equal voices. The number of electors is not based on the number of voters, nor is it based on the number of votes cast. It is based on both voters and non-voters. The pretense of somehow "hearing the voice" of a state when most of them are not even voting is laughable. If only 50% of the population votes, then the state should only get to award 50% of their electors. Then do it proportionately...that isn't perfect, but it doesn't reward a state that discourages turnout.

Uh, doofus. The Presidential election is basically 50 separate elections (then add territories)

Just as the founders intended.

You know the Founders? People smarter and wiser than you.
 

oldgulph

Council Member
The Constitutional Convention rejected states awarding electors by state legislatures or governors (as the majority did for decades), or by Districts (as Maine and Nebraska now do), or by letting the people vote for electors (as 48 states now do).

Anyone who supports the current presidential election system, believing it is what the Founders intended and that it is in the Constitution, is mistaken. The current presidential election system does not function, at all, the way that the Founders thought that it would.

Supporters of National Popular Vote find it hard to believe the Founding Fathers would endorse the current electoral system where 38+ states and voters now are completely politically irrelevant.

10 of the original 13 states are politically irrelevant now.

Policies important to the citizens of the 38 non-battleground states are not as highly prioritized as policies important to ‘battleground’ states when it comes to governing.


“Battleground” states receive 7% more presidentially controlled grants than “spectator” states, twice as many presidential disaster declarations, more Superfund enforcement exemptions, and more No Child Left Behind law exemptions.

Today, any state legislature simply could enact a law to just appoint their electors directly, ending their citizens voting in presidential elections

The Founders created the Electoral College, but 48 states eventually enacted state winner-take-all laws.

Unable to agree on any particular method for selecting presidential electors, the Founding Fathers left the choice of method exclusively to the states in Article II, Section 1

“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors….”

The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as "plenary" and "exclusive."

Neither of the two most important features of the current system of electing the President (namely, universal suffrage, and the 48 state-by-state winner-take-all method) are in the U.S. Constitution. Neither was the choice of the Founders when they went back to their states to organize the nation's first presidential election.

In 1789, in the nation's first election, a majority of the states appointed their presidential electors by appointment by the legislature or by the governor and his cabinet, the people had no vote for President in most states, and in states where there was a popular vote, only men who owned a substantial amount of property could vote, and only three states used the state-by-state winner-take-all method to award electoral votes.

The current winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes is not in the U.S. Constitution. It was not debated at the Constitutional Convention. It is not mentioned in the Federalist Papers. It was not the Founders’ choice. It was used by only three states in 1789, and all three of them repealed it by 1800. It is not entitled to any special deference based on history or the historical meaning of the words in the U.S. Constitution. The actions taken by the Founding Fathers make it clear that they never gave their imprimatur to the winner-take-all method. The winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes became dominant only in the 1880s after the states adopted it, one-by-one, in order to maximize the power of the party in power in each state. The Founders had been dead for decades

The constitutional wording does not encourage, discourage, require, or prohibit the use of any particular method for awarding a state's electoral votes.

States have the responsibility and constitutional power to make all of their voters relevant in every presidential election and beyond. Now, 38 states, of all sizes, and their voters, because they vote predictably, are politically irrelevant in presidential elections.
 
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