cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]/t/488620
65% of U.S. adults say the way the president is elected should be changed so that the winner of the popular vote nationwide wins the presidency.
cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]/t/488620
65% of U.S. adults say the way the president is elected should be changed so that the winner of the popular vote nationwide wins the presidency.
Restrict the federal government’s power to only those powers explicitly delegated to them by the Constitution and I’d be ok with eliminating the Electoral College.
Why would that be relevant to switching to a voting system that produces winners that more accurately reflects the will of the people?
Because the will of the people in your definition is the will of a handful of cities and our country is too big for that.
Also it’s the law. It’s literally in the Constitution.
No it’s not. A popular vote is a vote that reflects what the majority want. It has nothing to do with the location of the voter. We should not have the weight of our votes be effected by where we live, like we currently have with the electoral college. My vote should count the same way as anybody else’s, and so should yours.
Ideally the presidency and all other offices would be handled with STAR or approval voting, as they do not produce spoiler effects, weights by voter location, and help reduce extremist candidates.
And it needs to change because the current system is fundamentally flawed. Our current system weights a voter’s voice by where they live, ignores huge swaths of people, has a spoiler effect, and does nothing to stop extremist candidates.
People in swing states should not get the only say.
Swing states don’t get the only say, a vote in an uncontested or lopsided race is still counted. All you are complaining about is you want your state to feel special on election night.
They effectively do.
But they are effectively meaningless because California will always vote blue and Texas will always vote red. If you try to vote against your state’s pre-selected candidate your vote basically just gets tossed.
Actually it’s worse, since your population contribution actually ends up going towards electors that vote against what you voted for.
No, I want all votes to be counted equally. I live in a swing state, and unless you live in a tighter swing state, my vote means more than yours ever will. That’s bullshit, and a fundamentally bad design.
My state shouldn’t be special. That’s the whole point of getting rid of the electoral college, to ensure all votes are counted equally regardless of origin of state.
Applying your logic to a popular vote, people’s votes won’t matter as the margin will be more than 100,000 their vote makes no difference. Is your goa tol make everyone’s vote not matter?
But each of those votes are counted the same, and I don’t want FPTP like you seem to think.
Instead I want STAR or approval voting. So that complaint doesn’t really apply because with both STAR and approval, each vote is counted equally, and give you more control over how your vote contributes to the final count.
Votes are counted equality in the electoral system, popular voting, ranking systems, or approval. Your perceived value of a vote in the swing states vs a vote in solid states is just that. The votes still count no matter which state they are from.
Slabs of stone don’t have will. People have.