HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

>The electoral college is a form of protection for the naturally less densely populated agrarian states against the densely populated urban ones.

This is commonly repeated, but it's BS. What "protection" does the electoral college give to Kansas, Wyoming, the Dakotas, Idaho, or Montana? Presidential candidates don't pay any attention to any of those "less densely populated agrarian states". In addition, dense states like NJ, NY, CT, and Mass don't get attention from candidates. California doesn't get any attention either, so what gives?

The states that get the attention are the swing states with the highest number of electoral votes, simply because the electoral college incentivizes trying to swing a small number of voters in such states.

Watch some of these videos from CGP Grey for more info: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wC42HgLA4k

⬐ tastyfreeze

How about renegotiating the number of electors to be equal per state. If we are a republic of states each state should get equal say. By going to popular vote a third of the country loses a voice.

⬐ croon

> By going to popular vote a third of the country loses a voice.

By not going popular vote more than half the country loses a voice.

⬐ belltaco

The Senate is already like that and has a disproportionate amount of power compared to the House and the President.

⬐ Terrario

> What "protection" does the electoral college give to Kansas, Wyoming, the Dakotas, Idaho, or Montana?

Their collective voice along with the rest of the “heartland” is the backbone of the GOP. Trump and Bush both won without the popular vote because the electoral college amplified their collective voice.

The electorate doesn’t make them win, it gives them better odds. The campaign focus on swing states should explain itself...

⬐ nanny

Why should their voices be amplified while mine (in a rural part of NJ) is muffled? Why should the same persons vote be five times more powerful in Wyoming compared to if they lived in California? Why should we disenfranchise the millions of Trump voters in New York and millions of Biden voters in Texas? What about all the cities in red states and the rural areas in dense ones?

I don't see a single good reason for the electoral college. And you haven't explained what they're being protected from and why they need such protection.

⬐ gameman144

I think this is a better argument for proportional allocation of electoral votes per state instead of winner-take-all (a la Nebraska), rather than arguing against the electoral college itself. If you feel Trump voters' voices are muffled in NY or Biden voters' voices are muffled in Texas, I agree wholeheartedly and would be strongly in favor of proportional allotment of electors at the state level.

The electoral college, however, serves the explicit purpose of making Wyoming votes count more exactly because they are extremely disadvantaged when attempting to impact federal policy. The same argument against the electoral college could be made against the Senate (why should every state get the same number of Senators?), but I don't hear too many disagreements (yet, at least) that the Senate as an institution has value.

The top four states have roughly a third of the national population; if federal policy were enacted purely by population, why shouldn't they allocate all federal funds to themselves and deprive other states entirely? The Senate and the electoral college give enough of an advantage to small states that, even though no one or two small states are liable to flip an election by themselves, they are still able to have a voice in federal policy by coalition-building.

⬐ nanny

Proportional allocation of the electoral college is just a slightly less accurate popular vote. If we're gonna do that, might as well just do pop vote.

You don't hear the same argument against the senate as often because it's practically impossible to get rid of it. But many people are still against it (myself included).

>why shouldn't they allocate all federal funds to themselves and deprive other states entirely?

That's a funny argument, because red states currently receive a lot more federal funding than what they pay in taxes, and blue states pay more taxes than what they get back in return. Plus, blue states actually want to give red states even more money, when you consider that blue states support more federal funding for healthcare and other programs.

Everyone is always concerned with protecting the smaller, less dense states, but really it's those states that have disproportionately more power. California contributes so much to red states, and what do they get in return? A bunch of senators and presidents who do nothing about climate change, thereby letting California burn even more. California is the one that needs more protection here, not the states whose farmers are getting six figure checks as bail-outs because the president they elected doesn't understand how trade wars work.

⬐ nl

> California contributes so much to red states, and what do they get in return? A bunch of senators and presidents who do nothing about climate change, thereby letting California burn even more.

It's easy to imagine a political party that runs on a "cheap power for the cities" policy which involves mining and burning coal a long way away from any city.

⬐ nl

> The top four states have roughly a third of the national population; if federal policy were enacted purely by population, why shouldn't they allocate all federal funds to themselves and deprive other states entirely? The Senate and the electoral college give enough of an advantage to small states that, even though no one or two small states are liable to flip an election by themselves, they are still able to have a voice in federal policy by coalition-building.

I think this explains my point very well. Thanks

⬐ Izkata

> The electorate doesn’t make them win, it gives them better odds.

Y'know, this line makes me wonder if reframing it would help some people understand better:

The electoral college is affirmative action for voting minorities.

But the system (regardless of if you call it "points" or "an actual vote") means that one candidate could get 78% of the popular vote and still loose as discussed in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wC42HgLA4k (it talks about how it's possible to win the electoral college with only 22% of the popular vote).

I don't think that can be called a fair "actual vote".

⬐ SkyBelow

Can you give me the criteria for being 'fair'?

To me, the vote seems fair because it was the conditions to form the USA, and the USA has had centuries to change it but has chosen not to. At least, it is as fair as a vote that requires 'citizenship' to count, given that lack of citizenship doesn't stop one form being directly impacted by the decisions of the President.

>If presidential elections were just driven by popular vote candidates would only campaign in the top population centers. Entire regions of the country would be ignored.

This is definitely 100% false; this goes against the mathematical population distribution of the United States. The top 100 biggest cities in the United States combined only make up less than 20% of the population.

But even if it were true, it's not any different than the current status quo where candidates simply only campaign in "swing states," ignoring the vast majority of the rest of the Unites States. In fact, it would be better, because more Americans live in population centers than they do swing states.

https://youtu.be/7wC42HgLA4k?t=108

The other problems:

Many people who live in solidly blue or solidly red states don't even bother voting for president - they know their vote doesn't matter. I know this because I've literally heard people say it.

This it not even considering electoral college also entirely ignores 4 million Americans because they live in territories, not states.

⬐ srj

Late reply, but your math about the top population areas doesn't seem right. Are you looking at just city populations? I don't think that's an accurate picture. For example, the population of Boston is around 685,000 but you add in the surrounding suburbs and it's 4.8 million.

CGP Grey's video addresses this point: https://youtu.be/7wC42HgLA4k?t=197

⬐ exabrial

I think CGP Grey ignores the elephant in the room and doesn't account for the metro areas of such cities... And there's the fact the eastern seaboard is one giant city from NYC to DC basically with no breaks between townships.

⬐ exabrial

Boom, he just conceded to my point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3wLQz-LgrM&ab_channel=CGPGr... :)

Which brings me back to my original point: How can we improve it?

> It's been around for a couple of hundred years so it can't be that terrible.

Heh. If only everything that is old was good. The all-or-nothing electoral college system:

1. Removes power from all people, because they vote for electors not for the actual candidates.

2. Removes representation of people in both swing and predetermined states, because they don't get represented by their elector (all electors have to vote for the same party, not according to the fraction of their state that voted for party X). However, in a weird twist, not all states require that electors vote for the candidate the state told them to vote for -- meaning that they have insane amounts of power.

3. The way electors are assigned actually means that small states have more voting power than large states -- meaning that you can effectively become president if you can get the right 22% of the USA to vote for you.

Oh, and please note that the electoral college system came about because the founding fathers thought you (the commonman) was too dumb to understand how voting should work. So they gave the power of voting to electors.

Here's some videos on the topic:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90RajY2nrgk

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUS9mM8Xbbw

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wC42HgLA4k

That indeed is the problem, not the system itself. (if you want to continue with the cheap sarcasm)

I see this pattern so many times in the US, blaming parties involved instead of the original wrongdoers (e.g. "Facebook and Google are so evil", yet the NSA and USG are out of the argument completely). That even a fairly educated crowd such as the one on HN falls for these cheap tactics is a great proof that in fact this technique works great for manipulating masses of people. (bonus example: the broken bipartisan and electoral college systems – all the talk is about how horrible Hillary and Trump are, instead of maybe taking steps to fixing the system itself | bonus video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wC42HgLA4k)

⬐ raverbashing

I fail to see your point, though of course the abuse is allowed by the system.

Compare numbers of H1Bs in relation to number of employees and see how Tata compares with others

Not to mention most "Java engineers" are a dime a dozen

Some reasons why you shouldn't anymore (CGP Grey):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUS9mM8Xbbw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wC42HgLA4k

Even in the UK, where the concept originates, a lot of people view it as a bad idea. The issue right now is that nobody can agree what to change it to, since people gravitate towards the voting system that helps them in the next election cycle (and the big two want it to remain a two-party system).