04-03-2019, 12:31 PM
(04-03-2019, 11:57 AM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: I view the EC in the same terms I view the Senate. It's designed so that states have a separate say in the election of who leads them. I've seen many posts lamenting the inflated importance of a vote in Wyoming compared to California. This is no different than pointing out that each senator from Wyoming represents a fraction of the citizens that a senator from California does. The tyranny of the majority was a legitimate concern for the Framers and both these institutions acts as a bulwark against that.
Well, it is different. Because in the case of the Senate it is offset by the House of Representatives. There is no offset for the EC. The whole reason the EC was created was to have a body similar to Congress to make the decision, but not Congress because of separation of powers. However, the disparity between the populations was never as great as it is now, the number of individuals an Elector represented was never this great, and the winner-take-all system in place in most states makes it worse. This also gets into my argument in favor of a sizeable expansion of the HoR, though, so I'll stop here. Tl;dr: representation in this country is piss poor and needs to be fixed.
(04-03-2019, 11:57 AM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: I've seen many post lamenting the few "swing states" that decide elections and get most of the attention from candidates. Abolishing the EC won't change this, it will only change the targeted areas. Instead of campaigning in Ohio, Florida, etc. you'll get campaigning in NYC, LA, Chicago, Boston and Miami. Rural areas will be utterly ignored as the time spent in them won't justify the potential votes earned. Essentially, abolishing the EC does not fix this problem it merely shifts attention to other places.
Rural places are ignored, now, in the general. Campaigns focus their attention on where they will get the most bang for their buck. This won't shift the attention from one place to another, it will expand it. I agree it won't solve the problem altogether, but it isn't the wash you make it out to be.
(04-03-2019, 11:57 AM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: The United States is unique in many ways and one of those ways is that it is a collection of states with the ability to act autonomously to a certain degree. Population centers are naturally located near the coasts, but this not mean our inland states are any less important or any less a state than the coastal ones. The EC does an excellent job of giving each state their own, separate, say in who leads this nation. I think abolishing it would be an extremely poor decision and I do think this discussion is flavored with more than a little sour grapes (not here necessarily, but in general).
Would you agree that the winner-take-all system for Electors is an issue?
"A great democracy has got to be progressive, or it will soon cease to be either great or a democracy..." - TR
"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." - FDR
"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." - FDR
