Should the American Electoral College System be abolished?

[Galiantus III]

Again, my position is limit presidential power, and have congress do their actual jobs. If congress is refusing to meet and vote on stuff, they need to be replaced. They shouldn't be giving the president ever more power - especially not in the realm of creating or discarding regulations. That is in the realm of dictatorship. The president should not be going around congress to do whatever he wants; "I've got a pen and a phone" is possibly the most authoritarian, monstrous thing a president has ever said.

Congress can do their job and the President will still have a lot of power, the two are not mutually exclusive. To be powerful the President needs congress to work, so that they can appoint various different jobs that require Congressional approval.

Sorry, I wasn't saying consolidation of state power was a result of FPTP. I was asking why a state would send delegates to give a split vote, which would diminish the vote of said state.

A couple of states already do, but again there is little reason for states to give up FPTP because it diminishes the power of the state, and reduces the likelihood of the outcome the legislature most prefers. That doesn't stop it from combining to create bad outcomes nationwide. It would likely require Congressional intervention or a constitutional amendment to get things changed.

We're still talking past each other on this point. I meant that the winner-take-all system makes sense from the perspective of a state that wants to please the majority of its citizens. I'm with you on FPTP.

Do you mean the electors of the electoral college? Because they pledge before the election to vote a certain way, they are chosen by the people, and there are laws against faithless electors.

So you see, you do understand. The electors elect the president, they serve no purpose but allowing the clearly expressed wishes of the people to be rejected. Just directly elect the president.

The electors literally carry the expressed wishes of the people.

Absolutely not. Democrats want to do this for the same reason they do everything else -- to seize and maintain power.

So you admit that the Republicans could not win the presidency if the contest was a simple popular vote.

If the contest for the presidency was a simple popular vote, both parties would play the game differently. I honestly don't think one party or the other would do better. However, I would say your comment applies equally to Democrats: if they're supporting the popular vote based on an assumption they would win Unlimited Power^TM (#DarthSidious), they really aren't arguing from a great position, either.

What would change is a president could win by making appeals based on geography - and I don't mean he'd appeal to large states over small states. I mean that he could win by picking geographically salient issues, which would be extremely divisive to the country. Even more than a lot of the issues we're dealing with now.

[Spirit of Hope]

No.

Just because A has X outcome, that does not mean B cannot also have X outcome.

For example, clapping your hands together makes a sound. That does not mean that no other sounds exist.

If the US had a single FPP electorate... the single national popular vote... then you wouldn't need a majority to win. You would, however, need what Americans call a plurality. Most votes win. That would be better.

Now, suppose that every US state assigned electoral votes using an IRV system. In each individual state, the final tally would have someone with at least 50% of the votes. But these states could all still give all their votes to that winner. Thus, even though FPP is gone, the US could still end up with someone who lost the popular vote but won the EC.

The EC exacerbates FPP's problems. Indeed, it creates the standard issues of safe seats and wasted vote and depressed turnout and so on, for a single winner election problem. It's quite the achievement, really. You'd be hard pressed to come up with a worse system.

Concerning the election of a representative or local official, I agree. But I really don't think just going by the raw numbers makes sense anymore when you go beyond the state level. Distribution is also important, especially if we're talking about a position that will be dealing with state governments. Again, the President is not your representative, but the commander-in-chief.

Even if we accept the suggestion that the president ought to be concerned with everyone's personal lives (he shouldn't), I still prefer the electoral college. The long and short of it is, I would rather have a president with decent support throughout many states than one with more total support concentrated in a few states. The President shouldn't be geographically biased. And I know what you're thinking "oh, but by playing at the state level, geography must be very important. If you want a geographically unbiased president, choose him using a geographically unbiased method". However, it is actually the reverse of that:

Under national popular vote, if a president campaigns on an issue that appeals to one geographic area of the country, he can potentially win on fumes elsewhere. What I mean is, if he's getting 80% of the vote on the East Coast, and 10% all the way out in California, he would still be a very viable candidate. But could you really call such a candidate president "of the United States"? I don't think so. The most viable candidates should appeal to issues with far more generality. And the electoral college enforces this by discouraging candidates from trying to rack up votes in geographic areas where they are already popular. For a president to win under the electoral college, they need to have pockets of supporters throughout basically the whole United States.

I'll say it again: The president is not your representative. He's an administrator. His purpose is implementation. Now of course, politics is politics, and people have agendas, but the point of having a president is implementation, not agenda-setting. That is the job of congress. Or another way to put it: the President is like the CEO of a company, and Congress is like the board of directors. The CEO runs the company from day to day, but the board of directors has him on a leash and can pull him around wherever they like. So in reality, who the president is should matter a whole lot less to us than who controls congress. And as a country we've made a huge mistake directing so much power and attention to the office of the president.

You realize what you are arguing for is what the popular vote does, and what you are complaining about is what the electoral college does?

First the electoral college doesn't require you get a geographic representation of the country, people get that impression because of how US elections currently go but that doesn't make it true. You need win only the 11 most populous states in the US to win the electoral college as currently implemented.

Second the reality of the electoral college as currently implemented makes the sates that are actively campaigned in even smaller. In 2020 only 17 states had general election campaign events, but 4 states accounted for over half of the presidential campaign events. Pennsylvania alone received almost a quarter of all campaign events. Something similar holds true if you look at where presidential campaigns spend their money, 6 states have about 9/10ths of the money spent in them.

Third you can't win the popular vote by just concentrating in one region and running on fumes elsewhere. To use your east coast example, the east coast only has about a third of the US population. If you won 80% of that, but only 10% in California you would loose. Take a look at where people actually live. To get 50% of the population you need the top 40 metropolitan statistical areas, accounting for 34 states. And that's just 50% of the population who are unlikely to vote as one block.

[Senkaku]

Or another way to put it: the President is like the CEO of a company, and Congress is like the board of directors. The CEO runs the company from day to day, but the board of directors has him on a leash and can pull him around wherever they like. So in reality, who the president is should matter a whole lot less to us than who controls congress. And as a country we've made a huge mistake directing so much power and attention to the office of the president.

This analogy makes it hard to tell if you know less about corporate governance or political economy

[Ankuran]

It's why the Democrat National Committee used a former MI6 agent to compile a false dossier from two Russian intelligence agents to falsely frame Donald Trump and impeach him.

It's amazing how late in the game it is and I'm still hearing theories that are new to me.

They want their extreme-left big cities to be the sole voting centers

And...? That's how American politics have worked since at least 1800, and it's worked that way for both parties. You aim to maximize your supporters and minimize the supporters of your foes. That's how you get elected, whether it's through legitimate means or through gerrymandering, propaganda, smear campaigns, or straight-up thuggery. And the electoral college only serves to exacerbate the aforementioned gerrymandering for both sides of the aisle.

[Galiantus III]

Concerning the election of a representative or local official, I agree. But I really don't think just going by the raw numbers makes sense anymore when you go beyond the state level. Distribution is also important, especially if we're talking about a position that will be dealing with state governments. Again, the President is not your representative, but the commander-in-chief.

Even if we accept the suggestion that the president ought to be concerned with everyone's personal lives (he shouldn't), I still prefer the electoral college. The long and short of it is, I would rather have a president with decent support throughout many states than one with more total support concentrated in a few states. The President shouldn't be geographically biased. And I know what you're thinking "oh, but by playing at the state level, geography must be very important. If you want a geographically unbiased president, choose him using a geographically unbiased method". However, it is actually the reverse of that:

Under national popular vote, if a president campaigns on an issue that appeals to one geographic area of the country, he can potentially win on fumes elsewhere. What I mean is, if he's getting 80% of the vote on the East Coast, and 10% all the way out in California, he would still be a very viable candidate. But could you really call such a candidate president "of the United States"? I don't think so. The most viable candidates should appeal to issues with far more generality. And the electoral college enforces this by discouraging candidates from trying to rack up votes in geographic areas where they are already popular. For a president to win under the electoral college, they need to have pockets of supporters throughout basically the whole United States.

I'll say it again: The president is not your representative. He's an administrator. His purpose is implementation. Now of course, politics is politics, and people have agendas, but the point of having a president is implementation, not agenda-setting. That is the job of congress. Or another way to put it: the President is like the CEO of a company, and Congress is like the board of directors. The CEO runs the company from day to day, but the board of directors has him on a leash and can pull him around wherever they like. So in reality, who the president is should matter a whole lot less to us than who controls congress. And as a country we've made a huge mistake directing so much power and attention to the office of the president.

You realize what you are arguing for is what the popular vote does, and what you are complaining about is what the electoral college does?

First the electoral college doesn't require you get a geographic representation of the country, people get that impression because of how US elections currently go but that doesn't make it true. You need win only the 11 most populous states in the US to win the electoral college as currently implemented.

But it does. If you compare two presidential candidates with the same level of support, the one with extremely concentrated support will do worse under the electoral college than the one with more spread out support. Why? Because the one with concentrated support doesn't have a fighting chance outside his area of influence.

Second the reality of the electoral college as currently implemented makes the sates that are actively campaigned in even smaller. In 2020 only 17 states had general election campaign events, but 4 states accounted for over half of the presidential campaign events. Pennsylvania alone received almost a quarter of all campaign events. Something similar holds true if you look at where presidential campaigns spend their money, 6 states have about 9/10ths of the money spent in them.

Naturally in whatever electoral system you implement, candidates are going to spend campaign time in a few places they think will help maximize their chances of victory. Right now candidates focus on activating voters in states where the margins are tight. If we go to national popular vote, candidates will focus on activating voters in population centers.

Third you can't win the popular vote by just concentrating in one region and running on fumes elsewhere. To use your east coast example, the east coast only has about a third of the US population. If you won 80% of that, but only 10% in California you would loose. Take a look at where people actually live. To get 50% of the population you need the top 40 metropolitan statistical areas, accounting for 34 states. And that's just 50% of the population who are unlikely to vote as one block.

It is more viable for a candidate to focus on one region under popular vote than the electoral college - or rather, if a significant region of the US were to diverge politically from the rest of the country and be politically homogenous, they could ride the fumes of the small percentage of voters outside the region who would vote for a presidential candidate they put forward, and win the presidency. However, the electoral college eliminates this possibility by making fumes elsewhere irrelevant - the winner must be a strong candidate across the whole US to actually win. And the thing is, the winner of the electoral college isn't usually different from what the popular vote suggests: I say suggests because a national popular vote would activate and deactivate voters across the country, so the winner of the "popular vote" under the electoral college isn't necessarily going to be the same as the winner under an actual popular vote. The difference is regional candidates aren't a thing now, but they could manifest under a popular vote.

Or another way to put it: the President is like the CEO of a company, and Congress is like the board of directors. The CEO runs the company from day to day, but the board of directors has him on a leash and can pull him around wherever they like. So in reality, who the president is should matter a whole lot less to us than who controls congress. And as a country we've made a huge mistake directing so much power and attention to the office of the president.

This analogy makes it hard to tell if you know less about corporate governance or political economy

I definitely know less about corporate governance, lol.

[Senkaku]

The difference is regional candidates aren't a thing now, but they could manifest under a popular vote.

Are you serious rn

[Spirit of Hope]

You realize what you are arguing for is what the popular vote does, and what you are complaining about is what the electoral college does?

First the electoral college doesn't require you get a geographic representation of the country, people get that impression because of how US elections currently go but that doesn't make it true. You need win only the 11 most populous states in the US to win the electoral college as currently implemented.

But it does. If you compare two presidential candidates with the same level of support, the one with extremely concentrated support will do worse under the electoral college than the one with more spread out support. Why? Because the one with concentrated support doesn't have a fighting chance outside his area of influence.

Second the reality of the electoral college as currently implemented makes the sates that are actively campaigned in even smaller. In 2020 only 17 states had general election campaign events, but 4 states accounted for over half of the presidential campaign events. Pennsylvania alone received almost a quarter of all campaign events. Something similar holds true if you look at where presidential campaigns spend their money, 6 states have about 9/10ths of the money spent in them.

Naturally in whatever electoral system you implement, candidates are going to spend campaign time in a few places they think will help maximize their chances of victory. Right now candidates focus on activating voters in states where the margins are tight. If we go to national popular vote, candidates will focus on activating voters in population centers.

Third you can't win the popular vote by just concentrating in one region and running on fumes elsewhere. To use your east coast example, the east coast only has about a third of the US population. If you won 80% of that, but only 10% in California you would loose. Take a look at where people actually live. To get 50% of the population you need the top 40 metropolitan statistical areas, accounting for 34 states. And that's just 50% of the population who are unlikely to vote as one block.

It is more viable for a candidate to focus on one region under popular vote than the electoral college - or rather, if a significant region of the US were to diverge politically from the rest of the country and be politically homogenous, they could ride the fumes of the small percentage of voters outside the region who would vote for a presidential candidate they put forward, and win the presidency. However, the electoral college eliminates this possibility by making fumes elsewhere irrelevant - the winner must be a strong candidate across the whole US to actually win. And the thing is, the winner of the electoral college isn't usually different from what the popular vote suggests: I say suggests because a national popular vote would activate and deactivate voters across the country, so the winner of the "popular vote" under the electoral college isn't necessarily going to be the same as the winner under an actual popular vote. The difference is regional candidates aren't a thing now, but they could manifest under a popular vote.

This analogy makes it hard to tell if you know less about corporate governance or political economy

I definitely know less about corporate governance, lol.

I'm on my phone now so I can't as accurately respond. To sum up, what you say about the electoral college and popular vote is wrong.

The math, which I showed you, doesn't support a "regional" candidate winning in the popular vote scenario. The US population is rather well distributed across the country, again look at the metropolitan statistical areas, or this. Notice how to get half the population you are looking at those blue dots across the country and how while there is some concentration they are also widly distributed. To concentrate on population centers is to be non regional.

Second it isn't natural that resources get as concentrated as they do under the electoral college. Under a popular vote situation you can't discount votes because the area they are in is safely won by your side. After all the area doesn't mater, the vote count does. You will want to encourage people to vote for you everywhere because votes for you everywhere count! Currently a Republican vote in California is about as worthless as a Democrat vote in Texas, for president, which means both parties can ignore campaigning in both states. Not so in a popular vote scheme.

[Eahland]

Guys, for the last god damn time literally no other country on Earth uses this system. Sure, some countries do use an electoral college to elect a President, but all of those elections are indirect and the President is almost always a figurehead who has little to no actual power. The American President has a lot of power, and is elected directly in the sense that ordinary people go out and vote for them. I don't care about "muh constitution" or "muh state's rights" because in the end, the US should be a democracy and the electoral college is not democratic. No, California and New York won't decide who becomes President, that argument just makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Also, Presidents win with the plurality of votes all the time, it's at least better than the person who won less votes getting the Presidency. Plus, if you want to solve that problem just establish a two-round system or IRV. Literally anything else would work better than the current system.

We've successfully elected a president for over two hundred years, this system seems to work just fine.

Arguably there have been a couple of occasions when we haven't. And I'm not even talking about the big man-baby's tantrums over losing last time.

[The Confederate States of America]

Most definitely it should.

[Galiantus III]

But it does. If you compare two presidential candidates with the same level of support, the one with extremely concentrated support will do worse under the electoral college than the one with more spread out support. Why? Because the one with concentrated support doesn't have a fighting chance outside his area of influence.


Naturally in whatever electoral system you implement, candidates are going to spend campaign time in a few places they think will help maximize their chances of victory. Right now candidates focus on activating voters in states where the margins are tight. If we go to national popular vote, candidates will focus on activating voters in population centers.


It is more viable for a candidate to focus on one region under popular vote than the electoral college - or rather, if a significant region of the US were to diverge politically from the rest of the country and be politically homogenous, they could ride the fumes of the small percentage of voters outside the region who would vote for a presidential candidate they put forward, and win the presidency. However, the electoral college eliminates this possibility by making fumes elsewhere irrelevant - the winner must be a strong candidate across the whole US to actually win. And the thing is, the winner of the electoral college isn't usually different from what the popular vote suggests: I say suggests because a national popular vote would activate and deactivate voters across the country, so the winner of the "popular vote" under the electoral college isn't necessarily going to be the same as the winner under an actual popular vote. The difference is regional candidates aren't a thing now, but they could manifest under a popular vote.


I definitely know less about corporate governance, lol.

I'm on my phone now so I can't as accurately respond. To sum up, what you say about the electoral college and popular vote is wrong.

The math, which I showed you, doesn't support a "regional" candidate winning in the popular vote scenario. The US population is rather well distributed across the country, again look at the metropolitan statistical areas, or this. Notice how to get half the population you are looking at those blue dots across the country and how while there is some concentration they are also widly distributed. To concentrate on population centers is to be non regional.

My points about population centers and regional candidates were separate. My statement about population centers was more a passing comment on how campaign strategy would change. As for regional candidates: I know I just referred to "The East Coast" and "California", but my point was more that, if you have a high concentration of support in one geographical area, and low support everywhere else, that low support plus that concentrated support can reach 50%. Because obviously everyone who votes, between the East Coast and California, and in Alaska and Hawaii, is also going to vote. If the candidate's support region contained 40% of the population, with 80% support, and the remaining 60% of the population outside his region gave him 30% support, he would win. But such a scenario would be impossible under the electoral college, since such a candidate would only get 40% of the electoral vote.

Second it isn't natural that resources get as concentrated as they do under the electoral college. Under a popular vote situation you can't discount votes because the area they are in is safely won by your side. After all the area doesn't mater, the vote count does. You will want to encourage people to vote for you everywhere because votes for you everywhere count! Currently a Republican vote in California is about as worthless as a Democrat vote in Texas, for president, which means both parties can ignore campaigning in both states. Not so in a popular vote scheme.

I know. That is why I think it is a mistake for anyone to assume a national popular vote means Democrats will just own the presidency. There are people who vote under the electoral college who will stop voting under national popular vote. And there are people who don't vote now who would turn out under national popular vote.

And I suppose I'm not so much saying that a candidate would campaign on a regional issues as I am saying a regional conflict could easily result in the nomination of a regional candidate. Because candidates actually don't drive the issues as much as we give them credit for - they observe what issues are salient and then pick an issue they think will divide the voters in a way favorable to them. I believe we're moving toward regional conflict in this country, probably in the next decade or so. Based on that I don't want to actuate any regional conflict by making it easier for candidates to exploit for the purpose of their campaign. I want the candidate with 70% support in 60% of the country to win, not the candidate with 80% support in 40% of the country. The one candidate is obviously more unifying than the other.

[Spirit of Hope]

I'm on my phone now so I can't as accurately respond. To sum up, what you say about the electoral college and popular vote is wrong.

The math, which I showed you, doesn't support a "regional" candidate winning in the popular vote scenario. The US population is rather well distributed across the country, again look at the metropolitan statistical areas, or this. Notice how to get half the population you are looking at those blue dots across the country and how while there is some concentration they are also widly distributed. To concentrate on population centers is to be non regional.

My points about population centers and regional candidates were separate. My statement about population centers was more a passing comment on how campaign strategy would change. As for regional candidates: I know I just referred to "The East Coast" and "California", but my point was more that, if you have a high concentration of support in one geographical area, and low support everywhere else, that low support plus that concentrated support can reach 50%. Because obviously everyone who votes, between the East Coast and California, and in Alaska and Hawaii, is also going to vote. If the candidate's support region contained 40% of the population, with 80% support, and the remaining 60% of the population outside his region gave him 30% support, he would win. But such a scenario would be impossible under the electoral college, since such a candidate would only get 40% of the electoral vote.

Second it isn't natural that resources get as concentrated as they do under the electoral college. Under a popular vote situation you can't discount votes because the area they are in is safely won by your side. After all the area doesn't mater, the vote count does. You will want to encourage people to vote for you everywhere because votes for you everywhere count! Currently a Republican vote in California is about as worthless as a Democrat vote in Texas, for president, which means both parties can ignore campaigning in both states. Not so in a popular vote scheme.

I know. That is why I think it is a mistake for anyone to assume a national popular vote means Democrats will just own the presidency. There are people who vote under the electoral college who will stop voting under national popular vote. And there are people who don't vote now who would turn out under national popular vote.

And I suppose I'm not so much saying that a candidate would campaign on a regional issues as I am saying a regional conflict could easily result in the nomination of a regional candidate. Because candidates actually don't drive the issues as much as we give them credit for - they observe what issues are salient and then pick an issue they think will divide the voters in a way favorable to them. I believe we're moving toward regional conflict in this country, probably in the next decade or so. Based on that I don't want to actuate any regional conflict by making it easier for candidates to exploit for the purpose of their campaign. I want the candidate with 70% support in 60% of the country to win, not the candidate with 80% support in 40% of the country. The one candidate is obviously more unifying than the other.

Under the electoral college a candidate can win if they get 50% of the vote in 11 states. Those states represent around 190 million of the USs total of 330. So under the electoral college you can win with 96 million votes. (30% of the population) Its actually worse if you use small states, since they have disproportionately more voting power.

So no the electoral college doesn't stop regionalism like you appear to be worried about having happen with the popular vote, it actually makes it easier.

[Concejos Unidos]

We've successfully elected a president for over two hundred years, this system seems to work just fine.

You forget about the Civil War; the proximate cause of the Confederacy seceding was precisely the Electoral College system result in 1860.

[American Legionaries]

We've successfully elected a president for over two hundred years, this system seems to work just fine.

You forget about the Civil War; the proximate cause of the Confederacy seceding was precisely the Electoral College system result in 1860.

Well despite the highly violent fit that was thrown as a result, the fact remains that we did successfully elect a president in 1860. Also, Lincoln's election would have remained unchanged under a popular vote system, so I see no way the secession was related to the Electoral College.

[The Reformed American Republic]

The whole government should be restructured, but with that being said, yes, the electoral college should be abolished.

[Luziyca]

Abso-fucking-lutely. Pure unadultered FPTP would be an improvement over the electoral college.

[Concejos Unidos]

Well despite the highly violent fit that was thrown as a result, the fact remains that we did successfully elect a president in 1860. Also, Lincoln's election would have remained unchanged under a popular vote system, so I see no way the secession was related to the Electoral College.

Lincoln won an electoral college majority and a popular vote plurality, so in many modern popular vote systems he would have faced instant-runoff/run-off election. In any case, the precise reason he was viewed as illegitimate by Southerners was because he was elected with effectively no Southern votes and in a situation where he did not obviously command the support of the majority of the nation as a whole either. Enabled, of course, by the electoral college.

Also, it's hardly a successful election when the election is followed by 4 years of civil war. By that standard, the 2020 Myanmar elections, the proximate cause of the military coup and current civil war, were a resounding success.

[Eahland]

Well despite the highly violent fit that was thrown as a result, the fact remains that we did successfully elect a president in 1860. Also, Lincoln's election would have remained unchanged under a popular vote system, so I see no way the secession was related to the Electoral College.

Lincoln won an electoral college majority and a popular vote plurality, so in many modern popular vote systems he would have faced instant-runoff/run-off election. In any case, the precise reason he was viewed as illegitimate by Southerners was because he was elected with effectively no Southern votes and in a situation where he did not obviously command the support of the majority of the nation as a whole either. Enabled, of course, by the electoral college.

Also, it's hardly a successful election when the election is followed by 4 years of civil war. By that standard, the 2020 Myanmar elections, the proximate cause of the military coup and current civil war, were a resounding success.

The South viewed Lincoln as "illegitimate" because he was a Republican and they were slavers. The reason Lincoln got effectively no Southern votes is that he wasn't even on the ballot in most of the slaver states, and South Carolina in particular didn't even allow a vote... their electors were selected by the state legislature until after the Civil War. There is no way that Lincoln could ever have been viewed as "legitimate" by the South, and that had nothing to do with the mechanics of the election, and everything to do with his politics and their willingness to murder hundreds of thousands of people to preserve their ability to keep people as livestock.

In any case, the elections I was referring to were 1824, where the Electoral College actually failed to choose a President, and it fell upon the House to do it, who appointed a candidate who had taken neither the most electoral votes nor the most popular votes; and 1876, where hilariously brazen electoral fraud in several states of the former Confederacy left a decisive bloc of electoral votes disputed, so they were assigned not by any election results, but in back-room negotiations that let the Republican win by 1 EV, but with a promise that he wouldn't run again and an end to Reconstruction.

[Forsher]

Concerning the election of a representative or local official, I agree. But I really don't think just going by the raw numbers makes sense anymore when you go beyond the state level. Distribution is also important, especially if we're talking about a position that will be dealing with state governments.

If state level distribution was actually important, you would have to win a proportion of states. The EC does not do this.

As Spirit has already pointed out, in order to win an electoral majority in the US with a single national vote, you would necessarily have to have a broad distribution of votes.

But distribution is complete bullshit. Even the framers knew that and they were fucking idiots.

Again, the President is not your representative, but the commander-in-chief.

That's insane.

The President shouldn't be geographically biased.

This is delusional.

Not only does the EC reduce the campaign process to a tenth of the total states (something like 75% of all campaign activities take place in literally six states), but the EC also the primary reason why the term "red state" and "blue state" even exist to start with. Even worse, how can sit there with a straight face and argue that the EC has prevented geographically biased presidencies? It'd be more honest to ask "in which elections did the winner manage to win some of all major state subdivisions?". I suspect the only answer is Reagan's rofl stomp.

Under national popular vote, if a president campaigns on an issue that appeals to one geographic area of the country, he can potentially win on fumes elsewhere.

That happens now.

Like, literally, 538 models the EC by assuming performance in neighbouring states is correlated.

What I mean is, if he's getting 80% of the vote on the East Coast, and 10% all the way out in California, he would still be a very viable candidate.

So fucking what?

At the moment a candidate could theoretically win 10% of the vote in the East Coast and win 100% of their electoral college votes. The only reason that doesn't happen is there's a two party system. This is insane for your complaint but the real problem is much bigger.

For a president to win under the electoral college, they need to have pockets of supporters throughout basically the whole United States.

All of the last four presidential elections worked the same basic way... the Republican grabbed the flyover states and the South, the Democrat grabbed the West and East Coasts, and the struggle was parts of the Sunbelt, Florida and Great Lakes, depending on the specific election.

You have to go back to Reagan, as I've already said, before you find a candidate that won some states everywhere. And that was only because he won almost all states. [edited in the following] Bush #1 did it too. As far as I can tell, this only happens when a candidate wins functionally everywhere. I'm investigating it in more detail now.

[Spirit of Hope]

I'm also interested in how often they think the someone could win 80% of a large regions vote, lets take a look at the last 100 years of Presidential Elections. Presidential candidates rarely win more than 80% of a votes in a state, you have 1964 with LBJ in Rhode Island and Barry Goldwater in Mississippi, 1948 with Strom Thurmond in Mississippi, FDR in 1944, 1940, 1936, and 1932, in Mississippi, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas, Al Smith in 1928 with South Carolina and Mississippi, and finally John Davis in 1924 with South Carolina and Mississippi.

This may appear like a lot, but notice what states this happens in and when it stopped happening, all besides Rhode Island were segregationist states during the height of the Jim Crow period. There is a reason it stops abruptly in 1964: the 1964 Civil Rights act killed the ability of segregationist states to deny African Americans the vote.

[Ifreann]

So you see, you do understand. The electors elect the president, they serve no purpose but allowing the clearly expressed wishes of the people to be rejected. Just directly elect the president.

The electors literally carry the expressed wishes of the people.

They literally don't.

So you admit that the Republicans could not win the presidency if the contest was a simple popular vote.

If the contest for the presidency was a simple popular vote, both parties would play the game differently. I honestly don't think one party or the other would do better. However, I would say your comment applies equally to Democrats: if they're supporting the popular vote based on an assumption they would win Unlimited Power^TM (#DarthSidious), they really aren't arguing from a great position, either.

Sure. It's still a good idea to ditch the electoral college, even if Democrats only want to do it to hold power.

What would change is a president could win by making appeals based on geography - and I don't mean he'd appeal to large states over small states. I mean that he could win by picking geographically salient issues, which would be extremely divisive to the country. Even more than a lot of the issues we're dealing with now.

Okay? People should still control the government they live under.

[Thomasi]

The electoral college is like if in baseball they counted the number of innings won instead of the total number of home runs. Like if a team got 16 home runs and their their compatriots got 20 home runs but they won five out of the nine innings then they won the game.

[Forsher]

The electoral college is like if in baseball they counted the number of innings won instead of the total number of home runs. Like if a team got 16 home runs and their their compatriots got 20 home runs but they won five out of the nine innings then they won the game.

I mean, tennis does work like that.

[Far East Blepia]

I'm also interested in how often they think the someone could win 80% of a large regions vote, lets take a look at the last 100 years of Presidential Elections. Presidential candidates rarely win more than 80% of a votes in a state,

Yes, regionalism and Southern nationalism are unfortunately not as strong as they once were with the advent of mass media and Yankee-West Coast accent tyranny. We now have political divides to which rural and urban lifestyles and associated modes of behavior are accessory i.e. carbon taxes.

[San Lumen]

Lincoln won an electoral college majority and a popular vote plurality, so in many modern popular vote systems he would have faced instant-runoff/run-off election. In any case, the precise reason he was viewed as illegitimate by Southerners was because he was elected with effectively no Southern votes and in a situation where he did not obviously command the support of the majority of the nation as a whole either. Enabled, of course, by the electoral college.

Also, it's hardly a successful election when the election is followed by 4 years of civil war. By that standard, the 2020 Myanmar elections, the proximate cause of the military coup and current civil war, were a resounding success.

The South viewed Lincoln as "illegitimate" because he was a Republican and they were slavers. The reason Lincoln got effectively no Southern votes is that he wasn't even on the ballot in most of the slaver states, and South Carolina in particular didn't even allow a vote... their electors were selected by the state legislature until after the Civil War. There is no way that Lincoln could ever have been viewed as "legitimate" by the South, and that had nothing to do with the mechanics of the election, and everything to do with his politics and their willingness to murder hundreds of thousands of people to preserve their ability to keep people as livestock.

In any case, the elections I was referring to were 1824, where the Electoral College actually failed to choose a President, and it fell upon the House to do it, who appointed a candidate who had taken neither the most electoral votes nor the most popular votes; and 1876, where hilariously brazen electoral fraud in several states of the former Confederacy left a decisive bloc of electoral votes disputed, so they were assigned not by any election results, but in back-room negotiations that let the Republican win by 1 EV, but with a promise that he wouldn't run again and an end to Reconstruction.

The 1876 election should have been thrown in the House. Weather Tilden could have won the contingent election in the House I cannot say.

[Page]

The Electoral College was designed for the preservation of slavery. That was its purpose. We sorta kinda don't have slavery anymore. Seems logical to scrap it.