But they'd be small and more easily controlled. Additionally, there are already mechanisms in place to handle this stuff.

What happens if state X implements NPV, and a statistical tie occurs in the popular vote? Can state X force all other states to conduct recounts?

Duh (I've made posts saying the same thing), but that's not what I'm questioning.

Getting rid of it would be a start. States may have the option for proportional allocation of votes, but that will never be fair to the 45% minority.
There are so many more important problems with government than this.

If recent history is any guide, the mechanism to handle a recount does not function smoothly at all.

Add in IRV in for each congressional district and you get the most bang for your buck IMO. More decentralized voting blocs, improved 3rd party support, and no need for a constitutional amendment.

So, do you think a nationwide scenario would be better or worse? Who would oversee this? Right now, there is no such thing as a "nationwide" election - there are 50 seperate state elections. If a nationwide popular vote is going to be held, you're going to need (well, you're going to GET) a whole new layer of bureaucracy.

One reason why you shouldn't think too long and hard about the bolded is that it's almost certainly not true; there's mountainous volumes of empirical evidence that suggest the electorate is far and away made up of the best educated and wealthiest cohorts of the population -- that "high-information" voters are most likely to vote, and this effect is even more drastic in low-turnout elections. In other words, there's a pretty good inverse correlation between turnout and education level/income/political-information-reception (ie, ability to score well on tests like "Can you name your two Senators? How many Representatives are there in the House? What year was the Constitution signed?" in exit polls). As turnout goes up, education level/average income/ability to score well on a political knowledge test of the electorate goes down.

So it's a nice theory, but is pretty clearly false.

I think the POTUS should be determined by a NCAA Basketball Tournament Tree style election.

FYP

Then we'd always get the right decision, ldo.

ldo

POTY

this should get interesting considering MT2R has been active in politards lately.

That's not responding to the exact point he made. DUCY?

Anyway, you should all pick up Patterson's The Vanishing Voter if you have even but a small interest in voter demographics. Pretty much the same as above -- Patterson's a professor at Harvard who conducted over 100,000 surveys before writing his book. An excerpt:

More here and here.

I know the cynics don't want to hear it, but it's the best educated and wealthiest cohort of Americans that vote, and that's especially true as turnout levels go down; it's the uneducated and the poor that aren't voting when outside events effect turnout.

But the exact point he made is still invalidated by the fact the same empirical evidence, namely that anytime turnout goes down, the education level and income level of the average voter goes up. So if the argument is that non-swing state voters are discouraged from voting because the result of the Presidential election isn't in question, it's the poor and the uneducated that are most likely kept away from the ballot box. DUCY? If not, read the links.

Hint: the point isn't that uneducated people vote more than educated people.

Are you even reading this thread? Please go back and read the thread and the links I posted before responding to me again with one-line crap. Or go ahead and respond, but don't expect me to do the same. Thanks.

That's not the argument, try again! The first part is right but the second part is not.

The point isn't that we want the best and most educated americans voting rather than the uneducated. To say a democratic election system is successful because it ends up keeping poor people at home is pretty odious.

The point is that the foregone conclusion of so many elections means that lots of people never even put forth the effort to learn about their options because they know it doesn't matter, and become less educated about their government. That would be a net negative for our country.

Well, if you say so then. I take it all back.

zomg more than one line!!!! Outstanding work. I didn't think you had it in you, but here we are. Boy, is my face red.

Anyway, this may be your point, and that's nice. But the point I was responding to -- what I'm about to quote below -- has nothing to do with what's a "net negative" for our country, nor whether or not the electoral college discourages people from "learning about their options". The point I was responding to:

Isn't true, and it's empirically proven to be false. If you had bothered reading the thread and the links I provided, you would be on top of all that and we could move along. But of course, you had a couple of one-line garbage posts to make, followed by a some silly strawman argument.

Politics forum FTW. Were the Ron Paul forums down or something?

The Electoral College exists to make sure we do not have direct democracy. The decision of who becomes President is far too important to be left the uneducated masses. At least so the theory goes.

The EC is yet another tool of the aristocracy used to subvert any widespread outbreak of grassroots democracy (aka socialism). Right now we have a soft version of fascism in which corporations sponsor candidates who will rig the rules of the game in their favor. The masses are kept in a hypnotic trance of endless spin and infotainment. Meanwhile the war machine marches on, we burn gasoline at 5 times the rate of the rest of the world, and Congress blames OPEC and speculators. Absurd.

The EC makes it easier to rig elections when necessary, so don't count on it being abolished without a sea change. The EC, like the Senate, preserves the power of states which is a core Federalist principle. Swing states especially have an inordinate say in Presidential elections, and they are unlikely to give up this power, either.

The problem isn't the electoral college as much as it is the will of the electorate to stop voting for multinational corporate welfare. The most immediately effective place to start changing the system is through the House of Representatives. The fact that we have one independent in Congress is a reflection of a binary A/B system. What's needed to change things is the spirit of the lower classes, representation of the poor in Congress. Third and Fourth parties.

Change starts district by district. When small Congressional districts show the courage to start electing Reps outside of the 2 parties, other people across the country will start to wake up out of the trance and begin to believe an alternative is possible. Too much focus on the POTUS and not enough on Congress.

Now THIS is a quibble We have no way of knowing who would have voted for who had things been different. That doesn't change the fact that when the smoke cleared the POTUS lost the popular vote.

Obv. it isn't perfect, but I think with popular vote we DON'T have the recount that we had in Florida because it isn't that close. That isn't to say that we won't ever have f-ed up scenarios, but obv. we get that with the electoral college anyways. Instead of trying like hell to avoid controversy, I'm more interested in "does the EC disenfranchise people" and the like.

THAT point is the quibble, because the popular vote is MEANINGLESS. There are no defined victory conditions. You might as well bitch and complain about Team X scoring more runs in the world series, but losing four games out of seven, and hence getting "robbed". Everyone knows the rules going in. those rules affect how the game is played.

Not really, because they're not "enfranchised" to begin with! DUCY?

The EC is an anachronism and I would have no problem at all with straight-up majority (or plurality with minor parties thrown in) voting.

OTOH, the EC does have one big point in its favor. Under the current system there's usually only one state that's a big pain in the butt when there's a close race nationally (like Florida in 2000 or Ohio in 2004) but if the EC were abolished, every single state's voting would have legal challenges. The parties and the lawyers would fight it out next-to-forever. Democrats would piss and moan about a few hundred votes in Utah and Republicans would be challenging ballot designs in Massachusetts. What a freaking mess.

Oh no, I'm a cynic and I agree with this. The only problem is that our electorate - even if representing the most educated of our country - still is quite moronic.

But seriously folks, I think that this issue rests to a large degree on how you feel about maintaining influence of the smallest states. And in that sense, the same concerns come up in giving each state the same number of senators.

How do you all feel about letting Wisconsin have the same number of senators as California?

(intentional straight line here)