That damned Electorial College

...oh the irony of it all. Donald Trump won the Presidency on the backbone of the Electorial college being there were 3 million more Americans that voted for Hillary over Trump, three million, but the Electorial college says The Donald will run our country for 4 years.

Heres a great picture showing what the Electorial College does for us, this is what the voting would be like if it didnt exist...



I-Dont-Care!

This should be a voting decision made by the majority of the citizens of the United States - period. Geography is inconsequential. It may not look balanced, or presentable when mapping it out like the above Meme, but its sound.

Americans want to know their votes count. With the existence of the Electorial College...........now look who we got. 3 million votes ahead and she lost, thats 3 Rhode Islands guys.

Without the electoral college a candidate would only have to campaign in certain major cities to get the majority vote. And since the Dems have a lock on Chicago, LA, and NYC that would create a one party totalitarian rule. I don't know about you, but I like the two party system and am not thrilled about mob rule. Which would be fine for the Democratic Party leadership since the party is only really represented now a days in urban areas since they no longer seems to appeal to the rural working class. This trend is represented in the fact that Trump won former Blue states bastions Michigan and Wisconsin as well as Pennsylvania. These places have a heavy rural and urban working class. Blue collar to the core. And Hilary did not energize these voters.



But bitching about the electoral college is nothing new. The Dems cried their eyes out when W Bush won in 2000. Gore had the popular vote, W the electoral vote. The Dems hated it then. Then the scenario flipped. In 2012 the Republicans were pissed the the electoral college. See the above Trump tweet. And now that Trump won, it is the Dems turn to cry again.

As one of what seems to be the only people who never cried in either of the elections all I can say is this. The election was lost. The people saw what was presented in the election and rejected what was presented. Accept the results and make the best of what the future bring. You will survive. Crying about the Electoral College will not solve the issue. It is not going anywhere. I say this to the 2000 and 2016 Dems as well as 2012 Republican party.

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The campaigning for both would have been a lot different if there was no electoral college, and so would the turnout. So the popular vote is irrelevant, they both played by the same rules. Where Hillary was favored at that

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Man, there's just so much wrong here. I really didn't want to participate in this debate again because we already did this exact debate in another thread complete with the same exact two maps; but sometimes I just have to say something.

1) So first off just some math. The 3 cities you named have a combined population of about 15 million people (as of 2013). In 2013 there were 316 million people. Yet somehow, having majorities in those cities (~5% of the population) would constitute one party totalitarianism!

If you extended it to the top 10 cities you have 25.3 million, or 8% of the population. And it is just majorities. The democrats do not get 100% of the vote in those cities to the actual swing in each of those cities is even less. But even if the candidate said, "I literally love only the top 10 cities in America, and rural America can suck it" and that convinced every single resident in those cities to vote for them, they get a whopping 8%.

If you don't believe me on this, then please tell me, which certain cities would a candidate only have to campaign in to win the national popular vote? That list better be pretty long.

2) Out of the last 10 elections, Republicans won the popular vote 4 times! And 4 of the previous 10!

Please explain how the democrats would have one party totalitarian rule if they lose 40% of the elections? If you are saying that Republicans can't possibly win the popular vote you are either horribly misinformed or lying. I mean, you must have some indication that anti-electoral college sentiments wax and wane within parties because you mentioned the 2012 republicans, yet you still say that it'd be some sort of democrat only hellscape if the popular vote was used.

Do you really believe there won't be another republican president that wins the popular vote? Honest, do you even think the next republican presidential winner won't win the popular vote too? Let's not kid ourselves that the vast majority of the time, the electoral college and popular vote match up, so honestly please just quit the sic semper tyrannis BS and actually debate the electoral college.

3) I'm for popular vote as an election reform, as I previously said in the other debate. I'm not trying to overturn the results of 2016 or 2000, but I don't think the electoral college works as fairly as a simple popular vote would. But as I also said in the other thread, if I had the chance to choose election reforms that I could magically put into effect I don't know if changing to a popular vote would even be in the top 5 or 10 (certainly after campaign finance, voter restrictions, and changing when we vote to be more fairly accessible to the poor and working class all outrank popular vote).

People saying we should overturn the results of this election because of the popular vote are wrong. But people saying this is a great opportunity to discuss how the electoral college is possibly damaging in many ways are right.

4) You seem to be against the idea that candidates could just hold campaign events in a few key locations without actually traveling around the country. Hey, I agree with you; which is why I don't like the electoral college.The electoral college encourages static campaigning in few areas, not the other way around.

There's so...so much more wrong. But I have to stop myself.

Yall like maps, so here's one of the number of campaign events held in each state for the 2016 election:





But no, it's the popular vote that would cause concentrated campaigning, right?

We've had the same system since the beginning. If Hillary would have won, not one Democrat would have said a thing. They played by the same rules.

@SlappyDavis Population isn't the same as voting population

I had 3 bumper stickers on my car that died a couple years ago. One says Obama/Biden12, the other says Romney/Ryan12, the 3rd (in between) says tells you to vote, and tells you to reform the voting system (including changing voting day and changing to popular vote). I put those two opposing stickers together to try to get people's attention, to tell them that really in the end I just want them to vote, and that it sucks that they are discouraged from voting.

I've cared about this each and every election. But I also know that you strike when the iron is hot, and right now is the time for a re-evaluation of the electoral college.

Tell me which argument changes.

I will respond in time. I had a big post in another thread. brb

It is all about being angry and hurt or happy and go lucky - THIS (OUR, for those of us from here, or otherwise citizens) country IS built on laws and rules and balance.

If it is not broke do not fix it. Some will say it is broke, but I disagree.

Sure it may need some fine tuning, but the foundation is the same and it is why America is one of the greatest countries in the world today and throughout history.

I am very proud to be an American today just as much as I was in the 70s - protest and fight for what you think is right, but also respect the ability to do so.

The EC is not infallible, but what is? It works, like it or not.

Just sayin'

Except the DEMS won both the popular and the electoral. So why bitch and complain? I don't get it, explain?

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Cause they lost? Sheshhhh get with it man .

Apparently some conservatives penned the notion that abolishing the electoral college would help the Republicans after the 2012 election. Don't ask me, I like the institution.

But I googled an article.

link

This system in weird, and shouldn't be implemented in other countries. but from what I see it works for America. So I'm cool with it. It's not why Hilary lost to Trump, although according to numbers it is.

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I did not mean to say it had to be JUST those three cities. But the Democratic vote is now concentrated in mostly large urban areas. If the electoral college was abolished, one would only have to campaign in said large urban areas to get to a majority vote to get elected. This would give Democrats the advantage since that is where their base is now. That is what the electoral college was meant to prevent. And it helped the prevention of of what Madison called in the Federalist Papers:

"a number of citizens whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community."

Simply put, it is a safe guard against mob rule.

As for the map, yeah, those states you have painted in grey, they were called swing states this past election. They have this nasty habit of occasionally being up for grabs in an election. Some states are always going to vote one way. Those are givens. New York is going to go Democrat, Texas is Republican etc. Other states not so much. The campaigns in other areas were battleground states too. Look at the last few elections and they have been won by both parties at different times. Hence why they campaign there.

This institution is not going anywhere. We need to get over the election and move on.

That made me curious. So I googled electoral college and apparently other countries have one too. But not a lot.

Even back when I knew practically nothing about politics I knew that just winning the popular vote didn't get you elected. I actually think this system makes sense and agree with it because the country is called the "UNITED STATES" of America which means that every state should have an equal say in who gets to be president, not just the majority of people that live in California or Texas or New York.

If they change it, they'd have to do it at least 2 years before the next election, since the next campaign will start very shortly.

1) That quote is more related to political parties and people dividing themselves into factions (it's kind of grey, parties weren't as strong back then). It has nothing to do with the electoral college, and everything to do with representative government vs direct democracy. Which, possibly could be related if we actually elected electors to vote for us, and not bind them to the popular vote directly. However electors are pretty much bound, and if the electors had defected from their state vote to prevent Trump from winning, I'd be upset with them.

(Unrelated to your point, Madison was wrong about party's longevity in Fed 10. Madison argued that as the country grew, parties wouldn't be able maintain their strength as there'd be too many specific/regional interests. Not that I blame him, just have to be mindful that founders got a lot wrong.)

2) I am glad you changed your claim from "Under NPV, Democratic urban concentration = one party totalitarian rule" to "Under NPV, Democratic urban concentration = Significant Democratic advantage". Which, I don't think is true anyway, but even my only effect is improving arguments, I'm happy.

3) You seem to be saying that in elections where you have a popular vote and the majority of people are urbanized, then you only need to campaign in those urban areas. But that happens under EC.

Take a look at this chart to see which states are relatively urban and which states are relatively rural.

So let's say that you believe that the electoral college incentivizes campaigning in rural states. Well let's test that theory. Look at the 10 most relatively rural states and cross reference it with the campaigning map:

Maine got 3, which is pretty good. Because it was lucky enough to be somewhat of a swing state (and it splits their electoral votes) . Mississippi got 1. And of the other 8 states with relatively high rural populations (Vermont, Vest Virginia, Montana, Arkansas, South Dakota, Kentucky, Alabama, North Dakota), they got zero. So out of 399 events, the ten most rural states got only 4, or one percent. This happened under EC, not NPV.

The combined population of those states is about 21 million. About 6.5% of the total population. They should have gotten about 6 times more attention than they did.

Also, let's consider the states that did get the most campaign attention. Let's not forget that the states have popular votes to decide their winner. So if your premise is that popular vote elections are dominated by urban/democrat interests if the population is urbanized, how did Pennsylvania go red when it has about a 79% urban population and the US has an 80% urban population? Or Florida with a 91% urban population?

Your premise does not function. Republicans still win urbanized states, and Republicans can still win urbanized national elections. And the electoral college does not promote rural voters, it promotes swing state voters.

4) Here's the basic point. The states that do benefit from the EC are swing states. No doubt about it. So if you want to argue that the EC is better than NPV, you must argue why swing state voters deserve more relative power than non-swing state voters. Why don't Texans and Californians deserve presidential attention? Democrats in Texas and Republicans currently do not matter under EC, but they would matter just as much as everyone else under NPV.

Why should some votes matter more than others?

Say these words out loud, then look at this map of campaign visits in 2016:



Say those words again.

This isn't big states versus small states, it's swing states vs non swing states.

Also, "equal say by states" seems to imply the senate should elect the president (or electors are based only on senate seats). That already doesn't happen?

Or, even better, maybe say these words: