[Bill Konnoway]

I will simply leave it here. The title may sound a kind of boss-eyed, but the author did his best and collected very good info in one place.
Enjoy the analysis

[Suntzu]

The Electoral College was never designed to be democratic. Without it the five or ten most populous states would control every election.

[Hong Wu]

It's just real politics, identity exists locally to some extent. You have to balance the reality of people in the "rust belt" having a different culture if you want them to be in the same country as people who live off the taxes from bankers in NY etc.

Of course, liberals are so convinced of their fundamental superiority right now that many of them don't want to be in the same country with them. They think they can have open borders in a country that doesn't have its own industry and so-on. It's going to be pretty awkward when some of them get a chance to try that out.

[Potemkin]

It's just real politics, identity exists locally to some extent. You have to balance the reality of people in the "rust belt" having a different culture if you want them to be in the same country as people who live off the taxes from bankers in NY etc.

Of course, liberals are so convinced of their fundamental superiority right now that many of them don't want to be in the same country with them. They think they can have open borders in a country that doesn't have its own industry and so-on. It's going to be pretty awkward when some of them get a chance to try that out.

The problem is that middle-class liberals usually have no understanding of economics, which means they have no understanding of reality. Instead, they base their views on moralistic abstractions ("copy-book maxims", as Marx derisively put it) intended to make them feel good about themselves. Having open borders and unrestricted immigration sounds like the 'moral' thing to do, so that's what they do. The real-world effects of such a policy are irrelevant to them. After all, why should they care? For the most part, it's not their jobs which will disappear as a consequence.

[B0ycey]

Unfortunately that is the electoral system the US has adopted. The fairest system natually is a popular vote, but unless reforms to the system have been agreed before an election has taken place, if you believe in democracy, you have to accept the result with the laws and rules agreed, regardless on the outcome. The UK has a similar system and I have never been a fan of it. In essence depending on where you live, you vote is worth more or less than someone elses. ie if you live in Tory/Labour heartlands yet you vote opposite to your fellow residence, your vote is worthless. Yet if you live in a divided community your vote is worth everything. How is that democratic? Electoral representation is the fairest system and I wish every democratic nation adopted it.

[Potemkin]

Unfortunately that is the electoral system the US has adopted. The fairest system natually is a popular vote, but unless reforms to the system have been agreed before an election has taken place, if you believe in democracy, you have to accept the result with the laws and rules agreed, regardless on the outcome. The UK has a similar system and I have never been a fan of it. In essence depending on where you live, you vote is worth more or less than someone elses. ie if you live in Tory/Labour heartlands yet you vote opposite to your fellow residence, your vote is worthless. Yet if you live in a divided community your vote is worth everything. How is that democratic? Electoral representation is the fairest system and I wish every democratic nation adopted it.

The basic problem is caused by the effort to maintain a balance between the local and the national. After all, the electoral college exists to protect states' rights, to ensure that the voice of the less populous states doesn't simply get drowned out by states such as California. Likewise, when we elect the members of Parliament in the UK, we are elected our local MP, and all the local MPs are added together to make up a national government. If you want your local MP to be a Labour MP but you want your national government to be Tory (or vice versa), then you're out of luck. On the local level, the system is reasonably democratic, but on the national level you get anomalies such as you describe.

[Hong Wu]

Here's a map of the election by county, the red areas are the places the blue areas would be ruling over by majority vote due to population differences:


As I pointed out in another thread, even large portions of California had places where the majority voted for Trump. It's probably over 90% of the land.

[Albert]

Wow the rural/urban divide is strong.

[quetzalcoatl]

Wow the rural/urban divide is strong.

Compare the political map above to this map of population density:



The real question is whether governments represent people or regions - or some hybrid of the two.

[Albert]

The real question is whether governments represent people or regions - or some hybrid of the two.

Well Dems seem to represent more in the large urban centres.

[Rich]

Although understandable historically geographical constituencies are arbitrary and deforming. For example with modern technology you easily divide up the electorate based on age. You could make a good argument that are current system is far, far too biased to the interests of the old, that the weight of young voters needs to be increased.

Note under proportional representation you can still vote for a regional or localist party, its just parties have no inbuilt advantage. I'm not generally in favour of minimum thresholds, but I think a 5% threshold could have been advantageous in European Union elections forcing people to form cross national parties.

[Doug64]

The Electoral College is fundamentally democratic, in that the states have collectively decided to select their electors by vote. But beyond that, yes, there is plenty about the US system that is in place to avoid simple majority rule (thank God!).

[RightUnite]

I will simply leave it here. The title may sound a kind of boss-eyed, but the author did his best and collected very good info in one place.
Enjoy the analysis

The US electoral college is there to ensure that denslely populated areas do not speak for the majority of the country. The integrity of that is maintained and this proves it:

There are 3,141 counties in the United States.

Trump won 3,084 of them.
Clinton won 57.

There are 62 counties in New York State.

Trump won 46 of them.
Clinton won 16.

Clinton won the popular vote by approx. 1.5 million votes.

In the 5 counties that encompass NYC, (Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Richmond & Queens) Clinton received well over 2 million more votes than Trump. (Clinton only won 4 of these counties; Trump won Richmond)

Therefore these 5 counties alone, more than accounted for Clinton winning the popular vote of the entire country.

These 5 counties comprise 319 square miles.
The United States is comprised of 3, 797,000 square miles.

When you have a country that encompasses almost 4 million square miles of territory, it would be ludicrous to even suggest that the vote of those who inhabit a mere 319 square miles should dictate the outcome of a national election.

Large, densely populated Democrat cities (NYC, Chicago, LA, etc) don’t and shouldn’t speak for the rest of our country.



The electoral college is therefore Democratic.

[One Degree]

The real question is whether governments represent people or regions - or some hybrid of the two.

We definitely need a government to represent regions. Representing people requires an emphasis upon having more people, such as through immigration, to give your area more power. We do not need this in a world of 7 billion plus. The earth should be the consideration, not the people. The people in each area of the earth are responsible for maintaining that part of the earth for future generations. Large populations are a detriment to this and should be discouraged, not encouraged. Standardized autonomous areas each having one vote is best for the earth.

[AFAIK]

They should use proportional representation to stop swing states from dominating electoral campaigns. It's ridiculous to allow someone who won 45% of the vote to win 100% of the state.

[Rich]

The US electoral college is there to ensure that denslely populated areas do not speak for the majority of the country.

Well it was written by retards then as it ensures no such thing. Rural voters within a state votes carry the same weight as urban ones. The weighting favours the smaller population states, which will tend to be Rural, but the winner takes all system favours the larger states, but such pretty basic mathematical analysis was obviously way beyond the cretins that created the American Constitution.

[Rugoz]

The electoral college is an archaic system.

If you want to give smaller states more weight just multiply their votes by a factor. There's no reason to give all votes of a state to a single candidate.

[MistyTiger]

I would like to see either smaller states having more reps in the EC or states like NY having fewer reps in the EC to make it more fair.

The EC seems more rational but it is disappointing when a candidate wins the popular vote but then loses during the EC voting process.

[XogGyux]

When you have a country that encompasses almost 4 million square miles of territory, it would be ludicrous to even suggest that the vote of those who inhabit a mere 319 square miles should dictate the outcome of a national election.

Large, densely populated Democrat cities (NYC, Chicago, LA, etc) don’t and shouldn’t speak for the rest of our country.



The electoral college is therefore Democratic.

You know what is ludicrous? That you think that land and not people is what should decide governance.

[One Degree]

You know what is ludicrous? That you think that land and not people is what should decide governance.

Absolutely. People die. Land, the earth, lives on if we don't kill it. The people living on each section should have the same say over those living on any other section. It is the earth we need to preserve. Government by popular vote encourages more people which the world no longer needs. They are a surplus commodity and therefore their value should be diminished in our thinking. Why should the people of New York have more to say about what happens than the people of Montana? The fact there are more of them does not give them more insight to the problems of Montana than the people who actually live there. This is why I believe in local autonomy and one vote per autonomous area. Popular vote is fine as long as it is restricted to local concerns.