Texas Republicans propose State Electoral college

[Nobel Hobos 2]

Why would a state need an electoral college? The reason America has it in the first place is so less-populous states get represented to ensure that politicians spread out their campaigning and don't entirely cater to the states with large enough populations to beat out the smaller ones,

Y'know, I don't think that was the reason. Or else the Founders were thick as mud and couldn't see that some states would vote so heavily one way that there wouldn't be much point in candidates campaigning there (particularly considering no airplanes). And therefore, most campaigning would happen in swing states large or small.

I think it was more a move of decentralization. States would run and oversee their part of the presidential election, then send trusted people (delegates) to represent the people of their state. It would be a decently alright system if the Founders had just considered that states having control over how their people were represented could be abused to give all delegates (Electors) to whoever won the popular vote in their state. Just on sentence including "proportional" would have solved that, and candidates would have no less incentive to campaign in deep red or blue states as in swing states ("winning" as state would make no difference).

And then the much milder advantage given to small states (guarantee of at least 3 Electors etc) would actually emerge from behind the strong pattern of swing states getting the most attention. As is it, most small states are deeply one way or the other, and any benefit they get from extra representation in the College is wiped out by less attention from candidates.

which matters on the large scale because the issues that cater to high-population states are completely different from the ones that cater to rural states, and states have large enough populations either way that a significant number of people aren't represented without the EC.

The issues that "cater" to the majority of people get the most political attention. Well gee wiz buddy, not much you can do about that except call your state congress-critter. Distorting the representation of your rural areas at the federal level is no solution: the majority will see you coming, correctly identify you as an enemy of democracy, and slap a poll tax on you. Probably ban postal voting too.

If rural people want their issues heard at the Federal level, they'll have to do what any other minority does. Seek allies with a cause in common, form a coalition with them, then swallow hard when it's time to vote for something you really don't want ... to serve that coalition and get the thing that they do want.

There is another option though. You could unionize.

It makes no sense unless you think that your state has cities taking up too much of the representation. And in Texas... the cities all go blue and almost the rest of the state goes red... and it's still about a fifty/fifty split...

That doesn't mean equal numbers. Just that the rural areas are VERY red.

Yeah, I can see why that might rustle a Republican's jimmies, especially now that the sitting POTUS has quite literally insinuated it's OK to tamper with the election system (mail-in voting is corrupt unless it agrees with me) to stack the books in their favor. That sets an ugly precedent.

It sure does. It's time to overhaul the whole Federal voting system. I'd give the Federal Electoral Commission sweeping powers to audit and if necessary replace local officials. But that's probably not possible, so the next best thing would be for State governments to take over.

[Thermodolia]

Ah yes because that's what the people need, is LESS REPRESENTATION.

Fuck it, why don't we just go back to voting weight according to wealth while we're at it, like the good old days.

Wealth? What a terrible idea. Weight the vote according to weight!

We'll have no more of that public health advisory about "obesity" (what a hoax!), no taxes on soda, and none of that nonsense about air passengers being charged double because they have to put the armrest up!

Also we'll get fewer objections about 12 year olds being allowed to vote.

XXVIII: The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen pounds of weight or over, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of weight.

So does that mean I get more votes the fatter I am?

[Fahran]

Then why propose this if it will take that long?

Possibly because the Lieutenant Governor has quite a bit of influence over the State Senate so it makes sense to tie the office, as well as the less powerful office of Governor, to the State Senate. Like I said, Texas is definitely more a purple or soft red state than a hard red state but the National Democrats are running a bit more to the left than they used to run and are dragging the Texas Democrats in that direction as well a lot of the time. I don't see them seizing the executive any time soon.

[Fahran]

So does that mean I get more votes the fatter I am?

You need to get thicc, Thermy.

[The Two Jerseys]

Wealth? What a terrible idea. Weight the vote according to weight!

We'll have no more of that public health advisory about "obesity" (what a hoax!), no taxes on soda, and none of that nonsense about air passengers being charged double because they have to put the armrest up!

Also we'll get fewer objections about 12 year olds being allowed to vote.

XXVIII: The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen pounds of weight or over, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of weight.

So does that mean I get more votes the fatter I am?

Plot twist: you'll have to go on a vote diet.

[Nobel Hobos 2]

Few states elect a education commissioner

That's not really a strong argument that we shouldn't elect one directly or even have one appointed via bureaucratic mechanism. It allows citizens to split the executive between disparate political faction or transforms the office from a partisan appointment to a potentially neutral and professional appointment.

A bureaucratic mechanism would do that better. "The citizens" aren't a single entity that makes strategic decisions to put the power over education in non-partisan hands. Nor are they particularly good at separating "I like and trust this one" from "they're professionally qualified".

Rather than try to banish partisanship by force of good will, I'd use a triumvirate. Which would only need to stand once to appoint a commissioner, though it may be required to reconvene if something triggers a recall of the sitting commissioner. A triumvirate composed one Republican, one Democrat, and an elected representative of all teachers, principals etc. I'd like to work a representative of parents in there too, but y'know, got to be an odd number.

[Nobel Hobos 2]

Wealth? What a terrible idea. Weight the vote according to weight!

We'll have no more of that public health advisory about "obesity" (what a hoax!), no taxes on soda, and none of that nonsense about air passengers being charged double because they have to put the armrest up!

Also we'll get fewer objections about 12 year olds being allowed to vote.

XXVIII: The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen pounds of weight or over, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of weight.

So does that mean I get more votes the fatter I am?

Hmm. I want to give preference to muscle mass over fat, but that would discriminate against our youngest voters.

Hmm, no. No wait. Yes, but only for the Senate. Making it more grossly un-representational would barely be noticeable!

[Ejercito Libertador del Sur]

You must admit that mexico‘s states elctoral system is more democracy than texas

[Ceranapis]

Funnily enough, if Texas had a state electoral college for determining office, Beto would have won. This is assuming every county as is treated like a "state", electoral votes are distributed by a "wyoming rule", and winner take all for each county.

Even though that's a victory for my tribe, this is still a moronic idea that thankfully will never be passed.

[Outer Sparta]

Funnily enough, if Texas had a state electoral college for determining office, Beto would have won. This is assuming every county as is treated like a "state", electoral votes are distributed by a "wyoming rule", and winner take all for each county.

Even though that's a victory for my tribe, this is still a moronic idea that thankfully will never be passed.

Of course since Beto won plenty of the biggest counties (including narrowing squeezing out a victory in Tarrant) which in that system, would have given Beto the slight edge electoral votes wise despite not winning the popular vote.

[Nobel Hobos 2]

Funnily enough, if Texas had a state electoral college for determining office, Beto would have won. This is assuming every county as is treated like a "state", electoral votes are distributed by a "wyoming rule", and winner take all for each county.

Even though that's a victory for my tribe, this is still a moronic idea that thankfully will never be passed.

This sounds like it would take quite a lot of calculation. Did you do it yourself?

Oh, I see. "Treated like a state" in the Senate. Every county gets an equal vote (and not actually the Wyoming rule) regardless of population.

Nearly representation by land owned or occupied. Absolutely terrible, don't tell San Lumen he'll pop an eyeball.

[Fahran]

Funnily enough, if Texas had a state electoral college for determining office, Beto would have won. This is assuming every county as is treated like a "state", electoral votes are distributed by a "wyoming rule", and winner take all for each county.

Even though that's a victory for my tribe, this is still a moronic idea that thankfully will never be passed.

I don't think the State Electoral College would apply to the Federal Senate.

You must admit that mexico‘s states elctoral system is more democracy than texas

Or nah.

[Nobel Hobos 2]

Funnily enough, if Texas had a state electoral college for determining office, Beto would have won. This is assuming every county as is treated like a "state", electoral votes are distributed by a "wyoming rule", and winner take all for each county.

Even though that's a victory for my tribe, this is still a moronic idea that thankfully will never be passed.

I don't think the State Electoral College would apply to the Federal Senate.

No it wouldn't. But I took the post as exploring a different (and worse) kind of electoral college.

The analogy would be if every state got an equal number of Electors, regardless of population. Yeah, it's terrible. A voter in Wyoming would have about 60 times the voting power of a Californian.

[Outer Acharet]

Y'know, I don't think that was the reason. Or else the Founders were thick as mud and couldn't see that some states would vote so heavily one way that there wouldn't be much point in candidates campaigning there (particularly considering no airplanes). And therefore, most campaigning would happen in swing states large or small.

I think it was more a move of decentralization. States would run and oversee their part of the presidential election, then send trusted people (delegates) to represent the people of their state. It would be a decently alright system if the Founders had just considered that states having control over how their people were represented could be abused to give all delegates (Electors) to whoever won the popular vote in their state. Just on sentence including "proportional" would have solved that, and candidates would have no less incentive to campaign in deep red or blue states as in swing states ("winning" as state would make no difference).

And then the much milder advantage given to small states (guarantee of at least 3 Electors etc) would actually emerge from behind the strong pattern of swing states getting the most attention. As is it, most small states are deeply one way or the other, and any benefit they get from extra representation in the College is wiped out by less attention from candidates.

which matters on the large scale because the issues that cater to high-population states are completely different from the ones that cater to rural states, and states have large enough populations either way that a significant number of people aren't represented without the EC.

The issues that "cater" to the majority of people get the most political attention. Well gee wiz buddy, not much you can do about that except call your state congress-critter. Distorting the representation of your rural areas at the federal level is no solution: the majority will see you coming, correctly identify you as an enemy of democracy, and slap a poll tax on you. Probably ban postal voting too.

If rural people want their issues heard at the Federal level, they'll have to do what any other minority does. Seek allies with a cause in common, form a coalition with them, then swallow hard when it's time to vote for something you really don't want ... to serve that coalition and get the thing that they do want.

There is another option though. You could unionize.

It makes no sense unless you think that your state has cities taking up too much of the representation. And in Texas... the cities all go blue and almost the rest of the state goes red... and it's still about a fifty/fifty split...

That doesn't mean equal numbers. Just that the rural areas are VERY red.

For reference: https://thumbnails.texastribune.org/5xHoCtnXBfZFGsiA7IMNW3SLP6s=/1550x1038/smart/filters:format(webp):quality(75)/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/2016/11/10/TX2016-county-results.png
This is the map of the 2016 Texas election results. Numerically, the number of red counties is much, much higher than the number of blue counties. However, those blue counties include the major cities- Dallas/Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio, Houston, El Paso- and they have so much population that they hold much more influence. This performance was repeated in the Beto O'Rourke v. Ted Cruz race, and that was a close race. This is what I mean by rural interests and urban interests. If one wanted, they could campaign in only the urban areas, ignoring the interests of rural voters, and they could stand a chance at victory. Beto could have one if, let's say, Ted had turned out to be the Zodiac killer after all and enough red voters had gone blue without even setting foot outside of the large cities.

This isn't a problem for representatives in the House; they're elected based on regions. It's not that much of a problem in the Senate because Senators represent the whole state. But the POTUS represents the entirety of the nation in a single sitting individual. That means they need to represent everyone and put something on the ticket for everyone. This is why I'm opposed to removing the EC: It forces presidential candidates to go beyond seeking the simple majority. They have to have many different sectors' approval, at least in theory. You can't create a system where the majority is beyond simple, because what if neither candidate meets the mark? What then, redo the election? People will still vote the same, in all likelihood. Thus, the Electoral College forces one to go beyond their base by chunking the votes up by state. If you set up the system so the Electors can break from who won in their state it gets worse because then the advantage shifts to rural voters who have more Electors per capita than urban voters, but if you go to popular vote than the sheer number of urban voters outweighs the rural ones. I think that's what the founding fathers were thinking, and I think that's why they set up the Electoral College as they did.

Otherwise, I agree with you, though I think letting Electors vote freely removes the swing state advantage entirely as they then become split along regional lines and then all of a sudden you aren't winning, say, 10 votes for campaigning hard in a swing state, you win 5 and your opponent wins 5.

tl;dr, The Prez represents everyone, the EC mandates they go out and campaign to everyone, IMO. Texas sure as hell doesn't need one when they already have representatives by region, this is just people being fucks

[Soiled fruit roll ups]

Wrong thread

[Nobel Hobos 2]

Y'know, I don't think that was the reason. Or else the Founders were thick as mud and couldn't see that some states would vote so heavily one way that there wouldn't be much point in candidates campaigning there (particularly considering no airplanes). And therefore, most campaigning would happen in swing states large or small.

I think it was more a move of decentralization. States would run and oversee their part of the presidential election, then send trusted people (delegates) to represent the people of their state. It would be a decently alright system if the Founders had just considered that states having control over how their people were represented could be abused to give all delegates (Electors) to whoever won the popular vote in their state. Just on sentence including "proportional" would have solved that, and candidates would have no less incentive to campaign in deep red or blue states as in swing states ("winning" as state would make no difference).

And then the much milder advantage given to small states (guarantee of at least 3 Electors etc) would actually emerge from behind the strong pattern of swing states getting the most attention. As is it, most small states are deeply one way or the other, and any benefit they get from extra representation in the College is wiped out by less attention from candidates.



The issues that "cater" to the majority of people get the most political attention. Well gee wiz buddy, not much you can do about that except call your state congress-critter. Distorting the representation of your rural areas at the federal level is no solution: the majority will see you coming, correctly identify you as an enemy of democracy, and slap a poll tax on you. Probably ban postal voting too.

If rural people want their issues heard at the Federal level, they'll have to do what any other minority does. Seek allies with a cause in common, form a coalition with them, then swallow hard when it's time to vote for something you really don't want ... to serve that coalition and get the thing that they do want.

There is another option though. You could unionize.



That doesn't mean equal numbers. Just that the rural areas are VERY red.

For reference: https://thumbnails.texastribune.org/5xHoCtnXBfZFGsiA7IMNW3SLP6s=/1550x1038/smart/filters:format(webp):quality(75)/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/2016/11/10/TX2016-county-results.png
This is the map of the 2016 Texas election results. Numerically, the number of red counties is much, much higher than the number of blue counties. However, those blue counties include the major cities- Dallas/Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio, Houston, El Paso- and they have so much population that they hold much more influence. This performance was repeated in the Beto O'Rourke v. Ted Cruz race, and that was a close race. This is what I mean by rural interests and urban interests. If one wanted, they could campaign in only the urban areas, ignoring the interests of rural voters, and they could stand a chance at victory. Beto could have one if, let's say, Ted had turned out to be the Zodiac killer after all and enough red voters had gone blue without even setting foot outside of the large cities.

As you say, outside of the cities is pretty red. But if the cities were as blue as you seem to think, not only would a Democrat win, but neither candidate would bother campaigning there. Or speaking to their issues.

As I said, the fact that candidates don't campaign much in certain areas isn't just because there aren't many people there. If that were the only reason, they'd still get visits, though only ... in proportion to their population.

There's a much stronger pattern overlaying that. Candidates visit most, the places where a visit is most likely to change the election result. Swing states. Swing districts. And the best cure for that is for the less-favored party to also get votes (less, obviously). This give BOTH candidates an incentive to visit EVERY state or district. A voter anywhere is just as important as any other. City or country.

Of course you can't expect the candidate to spend most of their time in the country (unless the country has most of the voters, which is true of some districts). It's not possible to meet the same number of voters per hour, when travel time is accounted for. Halls where they can speak are smaller and/or draw a smaller crowd.

This isn't a problem for representatives in the House; they're elected based on regions. It's not that much of a problem in the Senate because Senators represent the whole state. But the POTUS represents the entirety of the nation in a single sitting individual. That means they need to represent everyone and put something on the ticket for everyone. This is why I'm opposed to removing the EC: It forces presidential candidates to go beyond seeking the simple majority. They have to have many different sectors' approval, at least in theory.

"In theory" isn't actually how it works. Are you even sure rural people get more attention with EC than they would with popular vote?

You can't create a system where the majority is beyond simple, because what if neither candidate meets the mark? What then, redo the election? People will still vote the same, in all likelihood. Thus, the Electoral College forces one to go beyond their base by chunking the votes up by state. If you set up the system so the Electors can break from who won in their state it gets worse because then the advantage shifts to rural voters who have more Electors per capita than urban voters, but if you go to popular vote than the sheer number of urban voters outweighs the rural ones. I think that's what the founding fathers were thinking, and I think that's why they set up the Electoral College as they did.

We disagree then. I think they saw no practical alternative to states collecting the votes, and they just overlooked that states might assign their Electors all to the state winner. Perhaps they also expected Electors to use more of their own initiative (a really bad idea btw, which many states now ban).

Otherwise, I agree with you, though I think letting Electors vote freely removes the swing state advantage entirely as they then become split along regional lines and then all of a sudden you aren't winning, say, 10 votes for campaigning hard in a swing state, you win 5 and your opponent wins 5.

Well yes. It's worst in the smallest states (3 electors) where anything from 50% to 67% gets the same number of Electors (ie 2). If polling says you're on 58% you have no incentive to visit, even if the opposing candidate does. Not much way around this, without an amendment.

But they're valuable electors! Not many voters need to be influenced to get that extra one (this is the small state advantage in the EC) but that incentive is not enough to overcome such odds. Increasing the power of voters in small states until it IS enough, would be unfair to every other voter. Also it might not even work: it's not THAT much harder to reach a lot of voters in California or Texas, and the odds for one or two more Electors their way are better (within the margin of error of polls for that matter).

Candidates campaign where there are the most voters, but it's not the only factor. They greatly favor places where winning a few votes could change the result. Not every city gets the lavish attention those in swing states do, particularly not the serious percentage who live in small cities.

tl;dr, The Prez represents everyone, the EC mandates they go out and campaign to everyone, IMO. Texas sure as hell doesn't need one when they already have representatives by region, this is just people being fucks

Oh yes. Note though that it's just one Texas Republican who wanted it on the party agenda. And was rebuffed.

[Outer Acharet]

For reference: https://thumbnails.texastribune.org/5xHoCtnXBfZFGsiA7IMNW3SLP6s=/1550x1038/smart/filters:format(webp):quality(75)/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/2016/11/10/TX2016-county-results.png
This is the map of the 2016 Texas election results. Numerically, the number of red counties is much, much higher than the number of blue counties. However, those blue counties include the major cities- Dallas/Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio, Houston, El Paso- and they have so much population that they hold much more influence. This performance was repeated in the Beto O'Rourke v. Ted Cruz race, and that was a close race. This is what I mean by rural interests and urban interests. If one wanted, they could campaign in only the urban areas, ignoring the interests of rural voters, and they could stand a chance at victory. Beto could have onewon if, let's say, Ted had turned out to be the Zodiac killer after all and enough red voters had gone blue without even setting foot outside of the large cities.

As you say, outside of the cities is pretty red. But if the cities were as blue as you seem to think, not only would a Democrat win, but neither candidate would bother campaigning there. Or speaking to their issues.

As I said, the fact that candidates don't campaign much in certain areas isn't just because there aren't many people there. If that were the only reason, they'd still get visits, though only ... in proportion to their population.

There's a much stronger pattern overlaying that. Candidates visit most, the places where a visit is most likely to change the election result. Swing states. Swing districts. And the best cure for that is for the less-favored party to also get votes (less, obviously). This give BOTH candidates an incentive to visit EVERY state or district. A voter anywhere is just as important as any other. City or country.

Of course you can't expect the candidate to spend most of their time in the country (unless the country has most of the voters, which is true of some districts). It's not possible to meet the same number of voters per hour, when travel time is accounted for. Halls where they can speak are smaller and/or draw a smaller crowd.

This is true, though I feel that "for the less-favored party to also get votes" only raises the importance of visiting every state or district relatively. You said yourself, the reason swing states are campaigned in is that they pose the possibility of allowing candidates to secure a state's votes by only convincing a relatively small portion of the population. In most swing states the same "my team good other team bad" mindset is still there, it's just close enough to a fifty/fifty split that the votes of swing voters matter. Electors voting freely would allow that partisan division to take over, I believe, and the swing states wouldn't hold so much importance. But campaigns in the modern day are so expensive I feel the reaction of the political system would be to dig into those partisan divisions more, not increasing inter-partisanship, if only to save the cost of needing to put so much effort into every state. Maybe that signifies a problem with our current system?

And, yeah, I feel I did maybe go a little overboard on digging into that red/blue split. My bad.

"In theory" isn't actually how it works. Are you even sure rural people get more attention with EC than they would with popular vote?

I might be wrong, but doesn't the guarantee of two extra seats from a state's senators mean that the votes of states with smaller populations, including rural states, carry more weight proportionally? If it was based solely on population they would have much less of an impact on the Electoral College's results. And I wrote "In theory" because I originally had a sentence there bringing up how in practice partisan politics means that those incentives have largely been lost solely by the sheer force of sectionalism in the modern US. I excised it as I felt it wasn't that relevant to the paragraph itself.

We disagree then. I think they saw no practical alternative to states collecting the votes, and they just overlooked that states might assign their Electors all to the state winner. Perhaps they also expected Electors to use more of their own initiative (a really bad idea btw, which many states now ban).

Maybe. But the practice was done while they were still alive, unless I'm mistaken. Surely if they found that onerous they would have said otherwise?

Otherwise, I agree with you, though I think letting Electors vote freely removes the swing state advantage entirely as they then become split along regional lines and then all of a sudden you aren't winning, say, 10 votes for campaigning hard in a swing state, you win 5 and your opponent wins 5.

Well yes. It's worst in the smallest states (3 electors) where anything from 50% to 67% gets the same number of Electors (ie 2). If polling says you're on 58% you have no incentive to visit, even if the opposing candidate does. Not much way around this, without an amendment.

But they're valuable electors! Not many voters need to be influenced to get that extra one (this is the small state advantage in the EC) but that incentive is not enough to overcome such odds. Increasing the power of voters in small states until it IS enough, would be unfair to every other voter. Also it might not even work: it's not THAT much harder to reach a lot of voters in California or Texas, and the odds for one or two more Electors their way are better (within the margin of error of polls for that matter).

Candidates campaign where there are the most voters, but it's not the only factor. They greatly favor places where winning a few votes could change the result. Not every city gets the lavish attention those in swing states do, particularly not the serious percentage who live in small cities.

Y'know? Looking over the relevant bits of the Constitution:

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.

The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse the President. But in chusing the President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representatives from each State having one Vote; a quorum for this Purpose shall consist of a Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the States shall be necessary to a Choice. In every Case, after the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal Votes, the Senate shall chuse from them by Ballot the Vice-President.

The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.

There's nothing that says the Electors have to all go by their states.
I'm not aware, though, if there is a system for the Electors to represent the votes of specific regions within their states, but I don't believe there is. So, while I might not wholly agree with the idea of letting Electors vote freely, there's nothing in the way of it, except for the "this is how things have been done" precedent of the current system!

[Greed and Death]

I for one welcome our new Gerrymandered Overlords.

[The Black Forrest]

I for one welcome our new Gerrymandered Overlords.

Oh you know Gerry Mander as well? He was over here complaining he couldn’t get enough trumpests into blocks to convert the state.

[The Rich Port]

I for one welcome our new Gerrymandered Overlords.

Isn't it awesome our votes matter less than the votes of others!

[Outer Acharet]

I for one welcome our new Gerrymandered Overlords.

Isn't it awesome our votes matter less than the votes of others!

[San Lumen]

Then why propose this if it will take that long?

Possibly because the Lieutenant Governor has quite a bit of influence over the State Senate so it makes sense to tie the office, as well as the less powerful office of Governor, to the State Senate. Like I said, Texas is definitely more a purple or soft red state than a hard red state but the National Democrats are running a bit more to the left than they used to run and are dragging the Texas Democrats in that direction as well a lot of the time. I don't see them seizing the executive any time soon.

Again I ask what is the point In proposing this then?

[Fahran]

Again I ask what is the point In proposing this then?

The more efficient functioning of the State Senate potentially. The Lieutenant Governor effectively sets the agenda of the State Senate and has broad powers in that area, so tying the office to the State Senate makes a modicum of sense. It does give a slight advantage to Republicans arguably but, as I pointed out before, it's much less of an advantage than your reporters in Austin are making out. If you want to talk about party corruption in Texas, there's a pretty massive conversation to be had given how strong parties are down here. But I don't think this is the massive issue.

[Outer Acharet]

The more efficient functioning of the State Senate potentially. The Lieutenant Governor effectively sets the agenda of the State Senate and has broad powers in that area, so tying the office to the State Senate makes a modicum of sense. It does give a slight advantage to Republicans arguably but, as I pointed out before, it's much less of an advantage than your reporters in Austin are making out. If you want to talk about party corruption in Texas, there's a pretty massive conversation to be had given how strong parties are down here. But I don't think this is the massive issue.

Actually I think if what someone higher in this thread pointed out is true, then it would give Blue Team an advantage, which is absolutely hilarious if you ask me

[San Lumen]

Again I ask what is the point In proposing this then?

The more efficient functioning of the State Senate potentially. The Lieutenant Governor effectively sets the agenda of the State Senate and has broad powers in that area, so tying the office to the State Senate makes a modicum of sense. It does give a slight advantage to Republicans arguably but, as I pointed out before, it's much less of an advantage than your reporters in Austin are making out. If you want to talk about party corruption in Texas, there's a pretty massive conversation to be had given how strong parties are down here. But I don't think this is the massive issue.

How in any way does it make it more efficient?