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The Reason for the Electoral College (www.theepochtimes.com)

submitted 9 months ago by Amoxtli@thelemmy.club to c/conservative@lemm.ee

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[–] Zeppo@sh.itjust.works 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I'm obviously aware of electors. They're selected by what you called a 'popularity contest'.

A 'fair vote for president' is not really what I'd call the electoral college. Why would my vote count for more in Wyoming than Florida? It's not consistent either. Large states still have way more power, so I'm not sure what that's solving.

Okay, glad we can agree on swing states. How could that change under the current system, though? I guess small population states are never going to be as popular for campaigning as places where you can go visit 20x the population in just one city.

The left complains about this system because gives conservatives power disproportionate to their actual numbers, while we are still nominally a democracy. If there was anything like reasonable bipartisan legislative work, it might be better, but things have become so contentious. And yes, I don't expect to see it change because conservative states would have to choose to give up power.

[+] wintermute_oregon@lemm.ee -3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

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[–] Zeppo@sh.itjust.works 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

You are still missing who votes. You seem to think you vote, but it is really the state that votes.

Uh... no, that's my point. If electors are selected by a popular vote, that's the vote. Very rare for electors to switch candidates.

This states thing is a questionable proxy system. We are sort of, theoretically, a republic of states. Sure. However, it's a flawed system that isn't quite relevant to how the country has developed. It's silly to act like a system invented 250 years ago will always be the best or most effective. The founders of the country didn't expect for the systems to never change. They also didn't expect a party duopoly and hoped to avoid the current situation.

Anyway, it's clearly not purely a 'states vote' situation since it votes are weighed by population. A pure one state, one vote situation would be like that. Texas Republicans recently had a brilliant idea like that where each county would have one vote, which is obviously absurdly anti-democratic - imagine 4 million people in Houston having the same vote as 72 people in some tiny county.