This thread is wrong beginning with the title. NOBODY pretends that the US is or is supposed to be a pure democracy, except EC whiners. If it were a pure democracy, big cities would run the entire country, something that the current system was DELIBERATELY DESIGNED TO PREVENT. It was designed to prevent tyranny of the majority, which is what it would almost certainly become:
Again, the idea is to spread the power around. Of the three types of Federal elected officials, only the president is elected by the EC; the Senate is elected by state, so each state gets equal representation and the House is elected by popular vote, so states with large population get more representation.
95% of the U.S. population in 1790 lived in places of less than 2,500 people, and only a few states let males, with substantial property, vote
If the 2022 Election Were a Presidential Election, Democrats Would Have Won the Electoral College 280-258, but Lost the Popular Vote by about 3 million votes (2.8 percentage points).
The U.S. Senate and U.S. House and Governors, state legislatures, and local government officials, etc. represent us.
Math and political reality. There aren’t anywhere near enough big city voters nationally. And all big city voters do not vote for the same candidate.
The population of the top 5 cities (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Philadelphia) has been only 6% of the population of the United States.
Voters in the biggest cities in the US have been almost exactly balanced out by rural areas in terms of population and partisan composition.
65,983,448 people live in the 100 biggest cities (19.6% of US population). The 100th biggest is Baton Rouge, Louisiana (with 225,128 people).
66,300,254 in rural America (20%)
Rural America and the 100 biggest cities together constitute about two-fifths (39.6%) of the U.S. population.
In 2004, 17.4% of votes were cast in rural counties, while only 16.5% of votes were cast within the boundaries of our nation’s 100 largest cities.
19% of the U.S. population have lived outside the nation's Metropolitan Statistical Areas. Rural America has voted 60% Republican. None of the 10 most rural states matter now.
19% of the U.S. population have lived in the top 100 cities. They voted 63% Democratic in 2004.
The rest of the U.S., in SUBurbs, have divided almost exactly equally between Republicans and Democrats. Beginning in 1992, SUBurban voters were casting more votes than urban and rural voters combined
We have 519,682 elected officials in this country, and all of them are elected by who gets the most votes. Except for President and VP.
In 1969, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 338-70 to require winning the national popular vote to become President.
3 Southern segregationist Senators led a filibuster to kill it.
Instead, the National Popular Vote bill simply again changes state statutes, using the same constitutional power for how existing state winner-take-all laws came into existence in 48 states in the first place.
Maine (in 1969) and Nebraska (in 1992) chose not to have winner-take-all laws.
The bill will guarantee the majority of Electoral College votes and the presidency to the candidate who wins the most popular votes in the country.
The bill changes state statewide winner-take-all laws (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), without changing anything in the Constitution, using the built-in method that the Constitution provides for states to make changes.
States are agreeing to award their 270+ Electoral College votes to the winner of the most popular votes from all 50 states and DC, by simply again changing their state’s law.
All votes would be valued equally as 1 vote in presidential elections, no matter where voters live.
Candidates, as in other elections, would allocate their time, money, polling, organizing, and ad buys roughly in proportion to the population
Candidates would have to appeal to more Americans throughout the country.
Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in every presidential election.
No more distorting, crude, and divisive red and blue state maps of predictable outcomes, that don’t represent any minority party voters within each state.
No more handful of 'battleground' states (where the two major political parties happen to have similar levels of support) where voters and policies are more important than those of the voters in 38+ predictable winner states that have just been 'spectators' and ignored after the conventions.
We can limit the outsized power and influence of a few battleground states in order to better serve our nation.