CAN WE GET RID OF THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE

LOL, mathematically that'd be the same or extremely close to the popular vote.... with the same outcome that the electoral college was designed to avoid in the first place, the smaller states would be totally ignored... who'd want to campaign in NH if winning it with 66% of the vote would only give you 1 electoral vote advantage.

Good luck with this DOA 'idea".

 

Nice try circumventing the Constitution. Too bad it's a total FAIL.

It's not that it's not going to be easy. It's not going to be impossible, it's not fooling anyone. Note that all 15 states who have signed up so far are uber-blue states. No red state, no swing state in their right mind will ever sign away their relevance in presidential elections and turn it over to CA and NY which is exactly what this "interstate compact" is trying to achieve.



Your chances to ever convince a swing or red state to join the compact are 0 or less. And I can assure you, the moment one of those compact states shifts right and gets republican legislature, they will drop out of the compact as one of the first orders of business.

 

For your edification regarding the matter: Donald Trump sexual misconduct allegations

Let's not get too naive about the guy. His problem is psychological and as such he could have very well thought, "Well, they were asking for it!"

In his head, he can DO NO WRONG! He may be indeed psychologically disturbed (and has been most of his life) and the profession has that opinion of him - to wit from their web-site Psychology Today: President Donald Trump

Excerpt:

And,

The analysis is a worthwhile read ...

 

You mean like how they are currently being ignored??? You do realize majority of campaigning is done in the battleground states, right?

12 states have received 96% of the 2020 general-election campaign events (204 of 212) by the major-party presidential and vice-presidential candidates (August 28 to November 3, 2020).
All of the 212 events were in just 17 states, meaning that 33 states and the District of Columbia did not receive any general-election campaign events at all.
Pennsylvania received 47 general-election campaign events -- the most of any state and 22% of the total. Florida received 31 events -- 15% of the total. Together, Pennsylvania and Florida received three-eighths of the entire presidential campaign.

The reason why voters in only a handful of states matter in presidential races is that almost all states award all of their electoral votes to the candidate who gets the most votes inside the state. Because of these state winner-take-all laws, candidates have no reason to pay attention to voters unless they live in a state where the race is within a few percentage points.

 

Yep, pretty much the same thing. Don't be a blue state, be a swing ground state and you will be drowned in all those campaign dollars.

The electoral college was a compromise made between big and small states which was needed to establish the Union in the first place. The big states accepted the compromise. It's too late to try to back out of the big states' end of the bargain now. A deal is a deal.

PS my point that "proportional distribution of electoral votes" is just another attempt to replace the electoral college with the popular vote and that it is a non-starter still stands.

 

Your positing your argument on the fact that some states will NEVER EVER vote anti-Replicant and want to repeal the EC. That rule is NOT baked in concrete.

It's is a supposition on your part. That's all. Nothing more, nothing less.

People have seen with Donald Dork what mental illness can do to the Most Important Person in the Land. There has to be a cure for the fact that a PotUS can go haywire.

S/he is also a human being ... !

PS: Btw, he has very likely undone himself. His behavior since the election shows how badly the man is out of control of himself. That he's going in a little more than a month is not soon enough.
PPS: And any bets for how much longer he puts up with himself? I have here in France a French-friend who is a psychoanalyst. He says the guy could turn to self-punishment.

 

No, my argument is that the goal of the compact is to steal republican electoral votes by forcing states that vote Republican to choose Democrat electors based on the vote tally in CA and NY and against the will of the majority of the people in those states.

And that is why all 15 compact states are uber-leftist ones and that is why the compact hasn't been able to recruit a single red/swing state and it never will.

 

So right now swing states are pretty much deciding elections. Does that make sense?
It wasn't until 1824 that the EC became all or nothing which not done for idealistic reasons. Rather, it was the product of partisan pragmatism, as state leaders wanted to maximize support for their preferred candidate. Once some states made this calculation, others had to follow, to avoid hurting their side.
Proportional EC is not an attempt to replace EC with popular vote. It would actually go along with how the founding fathers originally set it up.
I don't want popular vote to decide presidential elections. But I would like my vote to count, which it would with proportional EC.

 

Sadly, but not surprisingly, you are incorrect.

"On Tuesday, voters in Colorado affirmed their desire essentially to do just that. By a 52-to-48 margin, Coloradans voted to stay in the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. The state joined the compact last year, but a repeal effort landed the issue on the 2020 ballot.

So what is it exactly?

The compact is basically a contract between states that goes into effect once enough states representing a majority of electors — 270 — sign onto it. The states in the compact agree that rather than giving their presidential electors to the candidate who wins the most votes in that state, they will award all of their electors to the candidate who wins the most popular votes in the country. While the Electoral College would not be eliminated, the result would be a president elected by a national popular vote."
https://www.npr.org/2020/11/06/9318...-of-states-some-have-made-a-popular-vote-pact

 

No worries then, because you're wrong.

 

You bet it is. EC votes are allocated proportionately between states. Proportional allocation of these electoral votes within states will yield the exact same result as the popular vote would, give or take a rounding error.... You can't argue with math.

 

Please provide such proof

 

There is nothing either true or fair about the absolute tyranny of the 51%. A pure democracy is perfectly fine as a way to conduct political matters in a small town or a group with similar interests. It is extortionate and tyrannous in all other situations.

 

Jeez, it's simple math really.

A state that has 10% of the population gets 10% of the electoral vote
a candidate winning 50% of the state vote gets 5% of the popular vote
the same candidate winning the same 50% of the state's vote gets the exact same 5% of the total electoral vote if it's allocated proportionately.

They are identical.

 

CA has 55 electoral votes. If the Dem gets 60% of the popular vote then he gets 60% of the electoral votes which is 33 and the Rep gets 22. How is that the same as the popular vote?

 

Dude, I am not good at teaching math, if you can't apply percentage to percentage, there is nothing I can do to help . Let me give it one more try though and I am done.

California's population is roughly 10% of the country's that's why they got 55 (10.2%) of the electoral votes

33 electoral votes out of 538 is 6.1% of the electoral college
winning 60% of the California vote is winning 60% of 10% of the population, it's exactly 6.0% of the popular vote.

Like I said, the results are absolutely identical within some rounding margin

 

Whereas right now we have about 12 states deciding on presidential elections. With proportional EC candidates would have to pay attention to more states. It's also gives a voice to people in states where their vote never counts.

 

Jeez, I just mathematically proved that the "proportional vote" is identical to the popular vote and it will give all the power to NY and CA. Sorry, not happening. Not now, not ever. The small/swing states will never agree to this.

 

It doesn't require 100% of the states. Only three fourths (I originally said two thirds, but three fourths is correct) That's 38 states. Of course it's almost impossible. But it would appear to be less so than getting them to just give all their electoral votes to a candidate that might have lost in their state. In no small part because it's just a "gentleman's agreement". Without an amendment it would be impossible to enforce it. And we now know, thanks to Trump, how this type of agreements could turn out in the end.

But it is an interesting proposal. I just think it's even less likely to succeed than a constitutional amendment.

 

BTW, I misspoke. It's actually 75% (38 states). And I understand that the GOP would not go along with the constitutional amendment. But I think it would be just as likely that they would go for the NPVIC. With the other problem that the agreement would be unenforceable without a constitutional amendment. So... as the kid in Jurassic Park says... "we're back in the car"

 

The senate keeps the more populous states from totally dominating the small states. Do they still teach civics in school? When the various states joined the union they were promised a degree of self rule.

 

That is just flat out wrong. Low population states are given a disproportional weighting in the EC. For example, a state like WY, with a population around 600K, get the same number of EC votes for their Senate representation as CA with a population of 40M. You can't argue with the math.

 

Straight out of Chairman Mao's little red book. Where did you learn that?

 

I didn't realize Mao was in favor of representative democracy.

 

This is very much a state's rights issue. A state could hold a beer pong tourney to make this decision, if they chose. Let's leave it that way.

Incorrect. 34 states need to agree for an amendment to pass. Not 50.

Two states proportion their votes.

California has approximately 10% of the country's population and approximately 10% of the EC votes. Seems fair.