The best argument for using popular vote for presidential race.

Joe Capitalist said:
Wrong.

If the popular vote in California is 51% dem and 49% rep then 100% of their electoral votes go to Washington.
If the popular vote in Wyoming is 98% rep and 2% dem then 100% of their electoral votes go to Washington.

So you see, the Electoral vote does what you say, not the popular vote. All you have to do is win the popular vote (51%) in the state to get 100% of the support. That's how the five most populous states decide elections. Not by popular vote.
With the Electoral vote, a candidate can win the Presidential Election by only winning the 14 biggest electoral states. Does that sound fair to you?

Every election is run by popular vote. Every one. Except the presidential election. Doesn't make sense.

If you can't comprehend that, then I can't help you.
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It is you that is wrong. In a popular vote for President, individual state voting percentages no longer matter. What matters is the total aggregate vote count across the entire country. So, your example above is meaningless.

In a popular vote scenario, just 7 states comprise more than 50% of the population. They'd be the only ones that really matter. The rest are just window dressing. California is one of those 7 states, Wyoming is not.

What any smart and reasonable politician running would do is concentrate their efforts on the 7 states with high populations while largely or entirely ignoring small state populations like Wyoming. When it comes to political clout in DC, the same thing would be true. The large population states would get all of the attention and they could trample over smaller states on everything in the desire to curry favor.

I'll go even further and say that the 17th Amendment should be repealed and direct election of senators stopped. We should go back to a system where each state government appoints the senators they want as the senate represents the states, not the people. The people are represented by the House, and the president represents the country.

Right now, the senate is nothing more than another House elected by the people and states go unrepresented.
 
Tinkerpeach said:
Buffalo also has far more electors then Wyoming does so it's all relative.

So basically it boils down to this.

However Buffalo votes erases the vote in Wyoming so how is that fair to the people in Wyoming who also are entitled to representation?

Wyoming may very well have different priorities than Buffalo but they will never be heard.
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No it doesn’t, New York State does, but not Buffalo, proportionally, Buffalo is underrepresented, especially when it comes to the Senate, the more powerful entity.

And Buffalo’s, which has more people, and better cross section of people, are heard less than the people of Wyoming

As I said, regardless of the validity of the arguments, it ain’t changing, as contrary to the intellectual rationale of the country, however, a step would be the elimination of the winner take all system, adopting a process as Maine and Nebraska has instituted
 
T. A. Gardner said:
It is you that is wrong. In a popular vote for President, individual state voting percentages no longer matter. What matters is the total aggregate vote count across the entire country. So, your example above is meaningless.

In a popular vote scenario, just 7 states comprise more than 50% of the population. They'd be the only ones that really matter. The rest are just window dressing. California is one of those 7 states, Wyoming is not.

What any smart and reasonable politician running would do is concentrate their efforts on the 7 states with high populations while largely or entirely ignoring small state populations like Wyoming. When it comes to political clout in DC, the same thing would be true. The large population states would get all of the attention and they could trample over smaller states on everything in the desire to curry favor.

I'll go even further and say that the 17th Amendment should be repealed and direct election of senators stopped. We should go back to a system where each state government appoints the senators they want as the senate represents the states, not the people. The people are represented by the House, and the president represents the country.

Right now, the senate is nothing more than another House elected by the people and states go unrepresented.
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They shouldn’t matter, hard to justify Wyoming having so much more say in national politics as the State of California which is umpteen times bigger in population

Those seven States should have more say, that is where the people live, you are saying less people should be represented more, which philosophically, contradicts democratic principles

As I said above, in the future, America is predicted to be seventy percent urban in the near future, and you are telling us cows should have more say in how the country operates
 
archives said:
They shouldn’t matter, hard to justify Wyoming having so much more say in national politics as the State of California which is umpteen times bigger in population

Those seven States should have more say, that is where the people live, you are saying less people should be represented more, which philosophically, contradicts democratic principles

As I said above, in the future, America is predicted to be seventy percent urban in the near future, and you are telling us cows should have more say in how the country operates
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You are wrong. The California Effect

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_effect for a primer into that,

has had a deleterious effect on the nation. What it does is allow one large state to dictate policy to smaller states forcing them to go along. This was something the Founders were well aware of and knew could happen. They set things up the best they could to avoid it occurring. But it has. One good example of this was California being allowed to set their own, and usually stricter, environmental standards. Instead of meeting the same ones the rest of the country had, California got permission to be an exception. What then followed was that because of their size and population, their rules were forced onto other states because companies, manufacturers, etc., found it too expensive to work to two different standards. They chose the larger (California) market not because they wanted to but because California could force them to.

The concept on which America was founded was that each state would have the greatest autonomy possible, and we wouldn't be a 'one-size-fits-all' nation. What you are saying is the opposite, that Washington DC should dictate every policy to the states and the largest states would rule over everything. Smaller ones would get kicked to the curb, and in the long run, the whole idea of independent states living in a republic would end in favor of a massively strong, likely authoritarian and even totalitarian, central government.

The Left would love that, and the vast majority of the population would come to absolutely hate it. That's the primary reason that states with strong state governments who are already doing exactly that are finding business, industry, and even their populations fleeing them for greener pastures and freer places.
 
T. A. Gardner said:
You are wrong. The California Effect

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_effect for a primer into that,

has had a deleterious effect on the nation. What it does is allow one large state to dictate policy to smaller states forcing them to go along. This was something the Founders were well aware of and knew could happen. They set things up the best they could to avoid it occurring. But it has. One good example of this was California being allowed to set their own, and usually stricter, environmental standards. Instead of meeting the same ones the rest of the country had, California got permission to be an exception. What then followed was that because of their size and population, their rules were forced onto other states because companies, manufacturers, etc., found it too expensive to work to two different standards. They chose the larger (California) market not because they wanted to but because California could force them to.

The concept on which America was founded was that each state would have the greatest autonomy possible, and we wouldn't be a 'one-size-fits-all' nation. What you are saying is the opposite, that Washington DC should dictate every policy to the states and the largest states would rule over everything. Smaller ones would get kicked to the curb, and in the long run, the whole idea of independent states living in a republic would end in favor of a massively strong, likely authoritarian and even totalitarian, central government.

The Left would love that, and the vast majority of the population would come to absolutely hate it. That's the primary reason that states with strong state governments who are already doing exactly that are finding business, industry, and even their populations fleeing them for greener pastures and freer places.
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Again, California should have more say, more people, lots more people, live there, because you don’t approve of their policies you want those people silenced?

In case you haven’t noticed, smaller States today as Wyoming have too much say on national politics, fewer people elect their Senators than vote for the those locally serving metro Buffalo, yet the power difference is unmeasurable

And of the overwhelming majority of Americans live in urban areas why would they hate having their voice in national affairs being lessened by some guy representing more cows than people

Bottom line is you are afraid of extending democracy because you don’t agree with the policies of those favoring it, your view has nothing to do with the value of the actual vote
 
archives said:
Again, California should have more say, more people, lots more people, live there, because you don’t approve of their policies you want those people silenced?
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They should have say in California. They shouldn't have more say over the whole nation or other states. Your comment is nothing but a cheap appeal to popularity or numbers.

In case you haven’t noticed, smaller States today as Wyoming have too much say on national politics, fewer people elect their Senators than vote for the those locally serving metro Buffalo, yet the power difference is unmeasurable
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Oh, so you justify that by an appeal to poverty essentially. Wyoming and other small population states should have a say on national policy and one relatively equal to that of other states.

And of the overwhelming majority of Americans live in urban areas why would they hate having their voice in national affairs being lessened by some guy representing more cows than people

Bottom line is you are afraid of extending democracy because you don’t agree with the policies of those favoring it, your view has nothing to do with the value of the actual vote
Click to expand...

An another irrelevant appeal to numbers. Why should people living in a city dictate in detail how people who live in rural areas live their lives? Why should one state be able to dictate to other states how they should do things?

You are calling for a tyranny of the masses, in essence, mob rule. What you want doesn't extend democracy at all. It turns the nation into rule by tyranny with an authoritarian and likely totalitarian government running things.
 
T. A. Gardner said:
They should have say in California. They shouldn't have more say over the whole nation or other states. Your comment is nothing but a cheap appeal to popularity or numbers.



Oh, so you justify that by an appeal to poverty essentially. Wyoming and other small population states should have a say on national policy and one relatively equal to that of other states.



An another irrelevant appeal to numbers. Why should people living in a city dictate in detail how people who live in rural areas live their lives? Why should one state be able to dictate to other states how they should do things?

You are calling for a tyranny of the masses, in essence, mob rule. What you want doesn't extend democracy at all. It turns the nation into rule by tyranny with an authoritarian and likely totalitarian government running things.
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Again, not true, why shouldn’t people regardless of where they live have proportional influence in national affairs? Why should some guy in Wyoming have umpteen times more say on what occurs in the country than the person in Texas?

Because more people, way more people live in cities, more Americans, and you want to deprive them of their proper representation in national decisions, to be dictated by others who live in sparsely population areas

And it has zero to do with poverty, those underrepresented areas is where the money is, those cities is where the nation’s wealth is, they are the locales that continues the most to the nation’s GDP
 
this argument about the electoral college proves two things.....

1. Liberals do not care to understand that the founders created a Constitutional REPUBLIC, nor the whys
2. Liberals ultimately want all power to force their anti freedom agenda on the rest of the populace

Just because a liberal says something does NOT make it true. The country was set up to have 3 forms of representation.....the people, the states, and the nation. The people have their representation via the House. The state HAD representation via the Senate. The nation had representation via the president.

The 17th Amendment effectively destroyed the republic.
 
T. A. Gardner said:
They should have say in California. They shouldn't have more say over the whole nation or other states. Your comment is nothing but a cheap appeal to popularity or numbers.



Oh, so you justify that by an appeal to poverty essentially. Wyoming and other small population states should have a say on national policy and one relatively equal to that of other states.



An another irrelevant appeal to numbers. Why should people living in a city dictate in detail how people who live in rural areas live their lives? Why should one state be able to dictate to other states how they should do things?

You are calling for a tyranny of the masses, in essence, mob rule. What you want doesn't extend democracy at all. It turns the nation into rule by tyranny with an authoritarian and likely totalitarian government running things.
Click to expand...

California does not talk. The states with the most people have the most say in elections. A popular vote is how every other election in America is settled. Texas and Florida have more sway over the government than North Dakota. The popular vote is the way democracies determine elections. The EC is an anomaly. It made sense when we were trying to start a country with slave states. It makes no sense now. The reason the Repubs love it is because it has put Reds into office who lost the vote. Our supreme court was determined by the minority party to represent minority ideas.
If the Repubs lost by the EC, it would have been gone.
 
SmarterthanYou said:
this argument about the electoral college proves two things.....

1. Liberals do not care to understand that the founders created a Constitutional REPUBLIC, nor the whys
2. Liberals ultimately want all power to force their anti freedom agenda on the rest of the populace

Just because a liberal says something does NOT make it true. The country was set up to have 3 forms of representation.....the people, the states, and the nation. The people have their representation via the House. The state HAD representation via the Senate. The nation had representation via the president.

The 17th Amendment effectively destroyed the republic.
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The electoral college has nothing to do with the country being a Republic, and as far as the Founders, they didn’t put the electoral college in the Constitution, it was added twelve years after the Constitution was ratified

And you don’t understand Federalism, how are people a form of representation. The 17th Amendment was added to stop the level of corruption in the Senate, throughout the 19th Century, lobbyists, in particular monied interests, picked Senators, and the politicians they owned approved them.
 
Nordberg said:
California does not talk. The states with the most people have the most say in elections. A popular vote is how every other election in America is settled. Texas and Florida have more sway over the government than North Dakota. The popular vote is the way democracies determine elections. The EC is an anomaly. It made sense when we were trying to start a country with slave states. It makes no sense now. The reason the Repubs love it is because it has put Reds into office who lost the vote. Our supreme court was determined by the minority party to represent minority ideas.
If the Repubs lost by the EC, it would have been gone.
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Exactly
 
archives said:
The electoral college has nothing to do with the country being a Republic, and as far as the Founders, they didn’t put the electoral college in the Constitution, it was added twelve years after the Constitution was ratified
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wrong, correct, and correct.

archives said:
And you don’t understand Federalism, how are people a form of representation. The 17th Amendment was added to stop the level of corruption in the Senate, throughout the 19th Century, lobbyists, in particular monied interests, picked Senators, and the politicians they owned approved them.
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I understand federalism better than most, especially you, and you are attempting history revisionism with the lobbyists issue when it was actually done to prevent one party power in a branch of the government.
 
archives said:
Exactly
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If "All men are created equal", then their votes (representation) should be equal. Therefore, their vote for the presidential candidate should be equal to every other vote. Just like every other election in America.

It's that simple.

Get rid of the electoral vote. It's obsolete.
 
archives said:
Again, California should have more say, more people, lots more people, live there, because you don’t approve of their policies you want those people silenced?

In case you haven’t noticed, smaller States today as Wyoming have too much say on national politics, fewer people elect their Senators than vote for the those locally serving metro Buffalo, yet the power difference is unmeasurable

And of the overwhelming majority of Americans live in urban areas why would they hate having their voice in national affairs being lessened by some guy representing more cows than people

Bottom line is you are afraid of extending democracy because you don’t agree with the policies of those favoring it, your view has nothing to do with the value of the actual vote
Click to expand...

They do have more say by having more representatives in congress.
 
T. A. Gardner said:
Unless someone's intent is to increase the power of the federal government and with it make that government more authoritarian and tyrannical.
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It is about tallying the vote. It is about national voting standards. Policy is determined by the winner. Your far-right beliefs should not be involved in voting standards.
 
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