cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/news@lemmy.world/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.
If two or three states end up picking the president, you’re going to have a problem where some geographical regions have disproportionate choice over who runs the country.
A lot of the systems in the USA are set up to help prevent a national divorce caused by disproportionate power accumulating in a few states. The more you eliminate those systems the faster you expedite a national divorce.
If two or three states end up picking the president, you’re going to have a problem where some geographical regions have disproportionate choice over who runs the country.
Moving away from the electoral college to something like STAR/approval voting would move us away from geographically weighted votes, which means that no such thing would happen. All voters would have equal representation.
Instead we currently have a system where a disproportionate amount of power is given to a select few states with fewer people. Tyranny of the minority is not acceptable. All votes should be equal.
So would you abolish the senate as well, with its 2 seats per state to ensure that each state is represented equally?
If you’re going to have a few regions basically having total dominion over who controls the country, why would the other state want to remain in such a union? The reason for the way things are set up is that different regions in the US had to be convinced to join the union in the first place. The farmers were concerned that the cities would have all the power. Start stripping away stuff intended to prevent a couple geographical areas from totally dominating the discussion and you will end up getting a couple geographical areas from totally dominating the discussion. That might work for a bit, but you could very well see it eventually causes a revolt and the end of the union since there’s no point being involved with a thing like that.
The President is not the representative of the 10 largest cities in America, they’re a representative of all of America. With the current system, a presidential candidate needs to convince people from all around the country that they’re the person to be president. With a pure equal voting system, presidential candidates would never spend any time at all in most states, and wouldn’t have anything in their campaign to help most states.
So would you abolish the senate as well, with its 2 seats per state to ensure that each state is represented equally?
I wouldn’t abolish it, I think the number of senators per state should reflect the population of a given state.
If you’re going to have a few regions basically having total dominion over who controls the country, why would the other state want to remain in such a union?
Why would big states want to remain in a union in which smaller states hold more power than they otherwise would in a system that holds all votes equal?
The system we have already incentivizes the dissolution of the union.
And the big states would not have total domination, because states don’t (or at least shouldn’t) vote, people do. You do realize that a significant number of people in these big states vote red, right? So there would be no domination.
That might work for a bit, but you could very well see it eventually causes a revolt and the end of the union since there’s no point being involved with a thing like that.
Our current system has historically been terrible for avoiding revolt.
The President is not the representative of the 10 largest cities in America,
And the president still wouldn’t be under a system that holds all votes equal. Because cities are not the only thing that exist.
Your whole argument is basically “We can’t have tyranny of the majority, we must maintain our current system of tyranny of the minority!” all while ignoring that all votes being equal is in fact not a form of tyranny by the majority.
With the current system, a presidential candidate needs to convince people from all around the country that they’re the person to be president
No they don’t. They just need to convince the swing states. And that’s all they do, spend time in swing states campaigning. They might go to stronghold states on occasion for funding, but other than that 90% of the time they’re in swing states.
presidential candidates would never spend any time at all in most states, and wouldn’t have anything in their campaign to help most states.
I live in a swing state. EVERY election, both candidates visit my city. Do you know what they don’t do? They don’t ever visit the surrounding states. They don’t ever stop by the smaller towns in my state. It’s only ever my city and 1-2 others for the entire state, then they skip off on a jet to the next swing state, flying over other states in the process.
The current system has all of the problems you are concerned about an equal vote system having.
65% of U.S. adults say the way the president is elected should be changed
Hmm this seems unfair. How about we redo the survey but this time break it down state-by-state where the majority option in each state will be considered the “winner” of the entire state (except for in Maine and Nebraska, in which the minority option is still given some points) and then these states will appoint a certain number of people (the number of people each state can appoint is equal to how many representatives they have plus two for their senators, except in DC where its capped at the state with the least amount of appointed people) where they will redo the survey again but now they have the opportunity to change the results if they feel like it (but don’t worry that basically has never happened so it’s all good) and after that each state will count the actual votes and then mail them to DC where Congress will count the votes from each state and the members of Congress get a chance to vote to ignore a state if enough of them feel like it (but again don’t worry this has never happened! It’s all good!) and after that hopefully one of the options has a majority because if not then the house gets to choose and if they can’t decide then the senate gets to pick and if nobody can make up their minds then the Speaker gets to temporarily decide until everyone figures their stuff out.
I think that’s how Americans should answer all their surveys since it’s more fair.
You don’t happen to have ADHD do you? Dont read to much into this, that wall of text tho
I copy and pasted how the electoral college works from Wikipedia and made it a run-on sentence to emphasize how nonsensical it is.