Honest question: even if it were true that net voting stayed neutral, are you actually okay with that? That voters in one state are discouraged at the expense of another state getting extra motivation? Do you not consider that a cost?
I don't, for two reasons. One theoretical and one practical:
Theoretical: swing states fluctuate. I'd have a problem if any state were always more valuable, but they swing over time. So if their existence is a wash in terms of net voting in this election, the same logic would apply across multiple elections. (FYI, I'm not convinced more net voting is necessarily good to begin with.)
Practical: I don't think anybody votes because they think theirs will be the deciding vote, and reforming the system this way only decreases those odds, anyway. So we're talking about a hypothetical person who doesn't care about the likelihood they'll make a difference (since it's higher with the EC), but
does care about the vague symbolism of their vote counting, but somehow cares about that without caring enough to vote as-is. I have trouble believing even one such person exists, let alone enough to suggest that the system needs to be reformed.
This kind of cuts to the heart of the issue for me; votes for the same office shouldn't be more or less valuable than others (whether it's on the federal level, state level, municipal level, whatever) because it seems to imply that some people are better suited to select a president.
I don't think the system should statically or systematically select people based on this, but...well, maybe they
are better suited to it. Behind the veil of ignorance, which person would you want choosing the President: someone surrounded by the like-minded, or someone who lives in a state split down the middle?
There's something interesting, and self-balancing about the idea that the electoral college essentially incentivizes people to live around more people who disagree with them. I don't want it etched in stone, but if you're just asking if swing state voters would generally make better choices, I'd say: yeah, probably. They're less likely to live in a bubble.
Wyoming already has a place in government where they wield disproportionate power; and it's not just a solid compromise,
it's a great one.
Slow clap.
I think you misunderstood what I meant by "issues". I've tried to be consistent that votes for the same office or referendum or whatever should be equal.
Well, whether you meant "issues" or not, it's still the crux of the thing: as long as we have a large, diverse country, different areas of it will have vastly different considerations. So, to me, they're
not really voting for the same thing, the way two people living side-by-side in New Mexico are. They're often voting for completely different reasons, and the electoral college is a way to reflect that.
And again, it's not about large versus small. Michigan is much bigger than North Dakota, and their votes are more valuable. The "small states deserve a more equal playing field" line of logic doesn't work for this. If you are arguing for the electoral college you are arguing that votes (and by extension, voters) in swing states should have more valuable. Plenty of small states get screwed by it too.
Agreed, it's not really about size: it's about diversity of issues. It's just that smaller states would presumably get the short end of that stick more often compared to population centers. I think we can all agree the campaign would not be improved by taking place almost entirely in and around major cities. If you think there's an anti-elite backlash
now...
Put another way: the point of voting is not to express our highest civic notions, it's to produce good results. A popular vote may feel closer to the former, but I think the electoral college forces the diversity of issues that is more conducive to the latter.
Also, this isn't dispositive for me, but I'm pretty smitten with the idea that, before you can become the most powerful person in the world, you have to speak in a freakin' barn in Iowa, shiver shaking hands in New Hampshire, and stain your shirt with BBQ sauce in South Carolina. I like that you have to generally humble yourself around people you'd never have reason or occasion to meet otherwise.
You're going to need to make a case of why the popular vote, which makes every vote in the country equal to one another, constitutes centralized power.
Because it bypasses the states. Things get a little fuzzy here because,
technically, you could just have a popular vote that bypasses the states in this one area and stop right there. But I don't think that's how things work in reality: in reality, when we breach lines like that for one thing, we eventually come to think and act like they aren't there at all.
In this case, I'd actually say the push for a popular vote (such as it is) is more the symptom than the disease: it's only a discussion because people have already stopped thinking of states as being largely independent. So in one sense you have a very good point: if we're already trampling on the 10th Amendment, if we already have lots of Federal oversight, and if the Supreme Court can strike down state referendums by reading between the Constitutional lines...then sure, the popular vote seems like a positively quaint trespass over states' rights. But it's one of the few Federalist fronts left, so it's important by default for anyone who cares about this.
I agree with all of this. But I also think that ultimate control manifests in votes, which should be equal.
It all comes down to whether you think of the entity voting as the person or the state. I think of it as the state, because that's how it was originally conceived and that system has obvious benefits. Also because (per the paragraphs just above) that's the position more in need of support right now.
I do want to say though, there are a dozen things I'd do to increase turnout first before changing to popular vote.
Yeah, same.
I might feel differently about all this if I felt we had an actual choice between higher turnouts and the electoral college. I'd still have structural objections, but that would be a clear trade-off, at least. But I think we're at the point where people's disinterest goes way beyond things like the electoral college.
Closed Thread
