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9/8/20
Last week, Nate Silver, the polling analyst, tweeted a chart illustrating the chances that Joe Biden would become president if he wins the most votes in November. The “if” is probably unnecessary. It’s hard to find anyone who disputes that Mr. Biden will win the most votes. This isn’t a liberal’s fantasy. In a recent panel discussion among four veteran Republican campaign managers, one acknowledged, “We’re going to lose the popular vote.” Another responded, “Oh, that’s a given.” The real question is will Mr. Biden win enough more votes than President Trump to overcome this year’s bias in the Electoral College. Mr. Silver’s analysis is bracing. If Mr. Biden wins by five percentage points or more — if he beats Donald Trump by more than seven million votes — he’s a virtual shoo-in. If he wins 4.5 million more votes than the president? He’s still got a three-in-four chance to be president. Anything less, however, and Mr. Biden’s odds drop like a rock. A mere three million-vote Biden victory? A second Trump term suddenly becomes more likely than not. If Mr. Biden’s margin drops to 1.5 million — about the populations of Rhode Island and Wyoming combined — forget about it. The chance of a Biden presidency in that scenario is less than one in 10.
I don’t know about you, but this makes me really angry. Yes, I am aware that the United States has never elected its president by a direct popular vote; I wrote a whole book about it. I still cannot fathom why, in a representative democracy based on the principle that all votes are equal, the person who wins the most votes can — and does, repeatedly — lose the most consequential election in the land. The Electoral College as it functions today is the most glaring reminder of many that our democracy is not fair, not equal and not representative. No other advanced democracy in the world uses anything like it, and for good reason. The election, as Mr. Trump would say — though not for the right reasons — is rigged. Every time a new national poll on the presidential election is released, it’s followed by a chorus of responses along the lines of, Who cares? The national popular vote is meaningless. Well, I care. So do tens of millions of other Americans. And so does Donald Trump. “The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy,” he tweeted on election night 2012. Why? Because he believed Mitt Romney would win the popular vote and lose the Electoral College. Not only has he never taken that tweet down, but he continues to claim that he won the popular vote in 2016. Why does he care so much about making that case unless he believed in his heart, like the rest of us do, that the person who gets the most votes should win?
The Electoral College Will Destroy America | The New York Times
And no, New York and California would not dominate a popular vote.
No other democratic country in the world uses a mechanism such as the EC. It is an anachronism and needs to be tossed onto the ash heap of history.
The Electoral College Will Destroy America | The New York Times
And no, New York and California would not dominate a popular vote.
No other democratic country in the world uses a mechanism such as the EC. It is an anachronism and needs to be tossed onto the ash heap of history.
It must anger you that we have a senate.
Well I guess we know your opinion. Now, that's over and we can move on. Instead of worrying about how we elect the President how about Term Limits to get rid of the dead wood in Congress 3, 4, 5 decades of the same old political BS from these folks.
I have little doubt that, if the situation were reversed, some republicans would be crying the same thing, and we would not hear a peep out of dems.The Electoral College Will Destroy America | The New York Times
And no, New York and California would not dominate a popular vote.
No other democratic country in the world uses a mechanism such as the EC. It is an anachronism and needs to be tossed onto the ash heap of history.
Can you explain that comment?
There are many purposes to the EC. The primary one is to prevent any one region controlling the entire country.
It also prevents any state being able to steal the presidency by voting fraud. Even if 100 million fraudulent mail in ballots are used in the Left Coast states, they still can not steal the presidency. Popular vote nationwide would allow nearly ANY state to steal the presidency.
The senate gives vastly more voting power to small population states, Wyoming has as much power in the senate as Cali.
That could be fixed by eliminating the arbitrary cap on the size of the House and increasing it until the ratio of Rep to citizen returns to where it was when that cap was created.
That would not effect the senate. You would still the same power inequality in the senate.
It would correct the overall power inequality. The issue is not that the Senate has unequal popular representation. The issue is that the House does and it only gets worse every single year that the arbitrary cap stays in place.
But if unequal voting power is a problem, which seems to be the OP premise, then the senate is a problem.
The senate gives vastly more voting power to small population states, Wyoming has as much power in the senate as Cali.
How much more power would that be exactly?
The issue is with the EC, where votes are allocated to states based on their number of Senators AND REPRESENTATIVES.
but the rationale thst it’s actually an “issue” is that it gives unequal power to some states in choosing the president, disproportionately to their small population size.
The senate gives the same disproportionate power to states in deciding legislation.
The Electoral College Will Destroy America | The New York Times
And no, New York and California would not dominate a popular vote.
No other democratic country in the world uses a mechanism such as the EC. It is an anachronism and needs to be tossed onto the ash heap of history.
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