2024 US Presidential Election Thread
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I fundamentally agree with the concept that the states vote for the President rather than the people, but also disagree with the concept that each state should be winner-takes-all - which I think harms third parties waaaaaay too much.
I did a thing a few elections back where I calculated what the results would look like if each state's EC votes were assigned by the percentage split of the popular vote within the state, and it does give some fun outcomes.
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- Alabamistan
I think that by doing away with each state's electors, you take the power from these election boards, like Georgia, to make these absurd rules in order to interfere with the will of the people.
Plus I believe that by making the election decided by the popular vote, you make more improbable for an extremist candidate like Trump to succeed because they have to try and appeal to everyone. Not only their fanatic base but they have to try and win over as many moderates as they can. You can't do that being extreme right or left.
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5ltr V8s with 150hp? 
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Danoff
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Adjusting the EC votes to be appropriated according to population, or even awarded based on the national popular vote outcome, is definitely an improvement. But the EC has vulnerabilities that were on display on Jan. 6th 2021.
The idea that the presidency serves the states is real, rooted in the founding of the US. But it is also somewhat antiquated in light of the civil war. Prior to the civil war, states definitely viewed themselves and the federal government in the way you're describing, with each state being its own little country with independent sovereignty. That idea was tested during the civil war, and the resolution was that the states are actually one nation, beholden to a federal government which unifies the nation. So leading up to the civil war, the states viewed themselves as, in some ways, higher in the pecking order than the federal government. The civil war made clear that it is the other way around.
In the years following the civil war, the idea of the federal government or the presidency serving the states has fallen away, and it has been replaced by the idea that the federal government serves the people directly in a unifying layer of government that the states play an organizational role within.
If you really step back and think about it, this was something of a required outcome, as too much state sovereignty can deeply erode the functioning of the nation. Not only did it threaten to break the nation due to a rights issue at the time (slavery), but it has already started to cut deep groves and erode commerce and travel, and create friction between state law enforcement in the US again over another rights issue (abortion). From this perspective, I think the notion that the EC is somehow essential to the functioning of the US or superior in some way to the popular vote has been upended by the civil war and is something that we're stuck with as a vestige. All it does at this point is create unrest, erode confidence in government, and create vulnerabilities for opportunists like Trump.
*It's worth noting that the EC and democracy itself played a role in the civil war. The south believed that they could not win elections, and it resulted in war. The same can be seen playing out today, as authoritarians grasp at ways to lock out democracy because of perceived shifts in the electability of certain concepts or parties. The "permanent minority" brand seems to immediately give way to fighting and disenfranchisement rather than to the soul-searching it should.
Edit: Somehow I wrote all of this without discussing the EC's role in slavery and the 3/5ths compromise. Not sure how I managed that. Notes for next time.
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Very much so; if there were a way to remove the human electors from the process (which would eliminate both fake and faithless electors) and make it a purely mathematical exercise that'd be a good step to closing one of the more gaping ones.
I suppose really it's just FPTP I take issue with
Danoff
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Very much so; if there were a way to remove the human electors from the process (which would eliminate both fake and faithless electors) and make it a purely mathematical exercise that'd be a good step to closing one of the more gaping ones.
I suppose really it's just FPTP I take issue with
I hear that for sure. And I see what you're doing with apportioning the EC in such a way that third parties get a few EC votes. But I think it's lost when you're still talking about electing one person. So for the presidency, it's still FPTP even if a few EC votes go for the green party or the libertarians.
The better way to combat the FPTP problem and get some third party representation (and fight gerrymandering while we're at it) seems like it's to vote state or even nation-wide for representatives and then apportion congressional seats based on percentage of votes. More like how you folks do it.
UKMikey
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I have two questions:
- Aren't the only people who defend the Electoral College Republicans and other people living in rural areas with a higher per-capita percentage of influence over the result compared to the city-dwelling coastal elites (i.e. the majority of voters)?
- Seventeen states including California as well as the District of Columbia have joined something called the NPVIC. Does this count as 207 EC votes which are determined by popular vote?
Danoff
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Generally it's the "state's rights" crew that defends the EC. A few decades ago, I was one of those people. The state's rights group championing the EC consists of two major factions. One is the opportunists who would turn on it the moment it no longer suited them. Those people largely called themselves republicans. The other group were people who believed in the principled arguments behind the EC, and often these people had other ideas that made them more third party supporters. So... libertarians. I don't think it comes from the left very much, because the left tends to align more with pure democracy and populism rather than the notion of a sovereign entity like a state.
These days you have folks like a friend of mine, who is voting for Kamala Harris but who believes in the EC and still thinks its strengthens the US. He lives in Los Angeles. That's partly why I think it's important to address the EC from the perspective of principle and history rather than immediate benefits. Because for some, it's not just about having more power.
The NPVIC doesn't go into effect until we get enough signatories to get to 270. So those states don't apportion their votes according to the national popular vote at this time. There aren't enough states signed up.
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Ignoring the history of the EC, what does it do now, practically and/or on principle? I can only think of one thing and that is to disenfranchise voters in dense/urban areas to benefit those in rural areas. Does it do anything else?
As an outside observer, it seems like Britain's parliamentary system is simply better...if a little less stable...which sometimes is a good thing? The instability in the British system seems like part of the design...when there is instability in the American system it means there's some serious strife.
As an outside observer, it seems like Britain's parliamentary system is simply better...if a little less stable...which sometimes is a good thing? The instability in the British system seems like part of the design...when there is instability in the American system it means there's some serious strife.
Danoff
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The typical argument I hear in favor of it is that it focuses elections on regional interests that would otherwise get no notice. The dumb example that always gets trotted out is if the entire country decided to make north dakota a landfill, they could just vote to do that and north dakota simply doesn't have enough people to even come close to making a dent in any elections. The only way to give poor north dakota any recourse is to give them more weight in the election.
In practice, of course, north dakota still gets ignored, the crazy part is that so does california. The theory of the EC is that small states will get a voice. The reality is that only mid and large sized swing states get a voice. One outcome is that PA gets favorable treatment in national conversations compared to all others, North Dakota and California alike. I think it's worth questioning whether so much consideration of fracking would exist on the national stage if not for Pennsylvania. But I still struggle to see why this is good, especially at the expense of issues that larger states like Texas or California might really care about.
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Danoff
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Criminal charges against Trump/Vance for knowingly making false statements about Ohio immigrants.
www.nbcnews.com
Haitian group in Springfield files criminal charges against Trump and Vance after false pet claims
The leader of the Haitian Bridge Alliance filed the criminal charges over false claims the former president and his running mate made about Haitian immigrants' eating local pets.
www.nbcnews.com
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It's still protected speech. However offensive, it doesn't fall outside of protection to which exceptions are few in number, narrow in scope, and defined in great detail. That's without diving into how the charges came bout per Ohio statute.Criminal charges against Trump/Vance for knowingly making false statements about Ohio immigrants.
Haitian group in Springfield files criminal charges against Trump and Vance after false pet claims
The leader of the Haitian Bridge Alliance filed the criminal charges over false claims the former president and his running mate made about Haitian immigrants' eating local pets.
Danoff
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I agree with you that the case seems to be an uphill battle. It does help their case that Trump and Vance have continued to make those statements despite knowing the harm and falsity. But I'd wager that nothing comes of it, and it'll ultimately give Trump more reason to argue that he's persecuted by lawsuits that go nowhere. Rather than what's actually happening which is that he's harming people and they're trying to fight back.
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