Um, no? The "state" is the fundamental political organization of a people. It is the basic level at which people repose their sovereign political power.

The "United States" is just a legal creation, a contract among sovereign entities.

The state, as in a US state, is clearly not the fundamental political organization of Americans; it's shared with the federal government, and yes, states are clearly subservient to the feds. Might want to consult the preamble of your nearest US Constitution. Might also want to check out Article Four, the Tenth Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment, the Sixteenth Amendment, the Civil War...

fun·da·men·tal (fnd-mntl)
adj.
1.
a. Of or relating to the foundation or base; elementary: the fundamental laws of the universe.

You might want to learn some elementary history.

So nice. Heaven forbid we don't leave you flyover yokels behind the wheel. Wonderful job you are doing there by the way, God's work really.

Many entities including the US are legal creations. None of the US, Illinois, Cook County, Chicago or Chicago's 10th ward have any preferences separate from the preferences of the people that compose them. That doesn't imply that states shouldn't have any power or anything, but that any power they do have should be such that they can better represent the preferences of their people and not some abstract notion of "the state".

It's not contradictory at all. States still have equal representation in the Senate. The electoral college does not offer any meaningful representation to States at all, as evinced by the last several elections (see DVaut's post below). It wouldn't bother me if States lost their equality anyway (I'm not a big fan of the overall structure of the US), but that's another issue...

Why? State legislatures were far easier for private interests to control than the electorate of the whole State. Personally I'd just as soon abolish the Senate altogether and go to a proportional representation scheme in a one-house legislature, but that's like, not what some 18th-century dudes thought was cool, man.

True, but that cuts right to the point and is an equally good if not better case for abolishing the EC. Since you only have to win 50%+1 of the "people" votes to get all the electoral votes, why should any candidate pay attention to "lock" States, big or small. Fact is, whether the "framers" intended it or not, the President represents the nation and the people of the United States, not the States themselves.

OK, I agree with this based on the rationale that sovereign power rests with the people, who, in this country, exercise that power collectively by reposing it in State governments, which, in turn, have ceded a fraction of the sovereign power to the central government (whether that fraction is 99.9% or .1%).

Really, the question is do you think of "the people" as "the people of the United States" or "the people of the several states."

At the founding, it is pretty clear that the preamble notwithstanding, the people were the people of the several states, and that, over time, we have begun to think of the people more as the people of the United States.

But I don't think the position that "the people of Rhode Island," have no interests that are distinguishable from the "interests of the people of the united states" has any merit at all.

And if you recognize that the people of a given state have interests distinguishable from those of other states, or from the nation as a whole, then you should think carefully about whether you want to do away with one of the key constitutional protections for people in the states that happen to represent the minority.

Think of a real world example, say, nuclear testing. It is at least arguably in the people of the united states' interest to conduct nuclear tests. Such tests have to be done somewhere. But it is at least arguably against the interests of the people of Nevada to have it done there. But the population of Nevada is what?--about the same as a few Chicago wards?--and would just disappear into the rounding error in a national election or poll on the subject.

The existence of the electoral college incrementally changes the calculation a president has to make in balancing the interests of the people of the united states with the interests of the people of Nevada. Instead of worrying about the opinion of .3% of the population (assuming unanimity in Nevada), he has to worry about .9% of the electoral votes.

IMO, if you support disbanding the electoral college, you may as well support disbanding the states, too. Those positions are more logically consistent than saying "I support eliminating the electoral college but retaining the existence of states." That's the worst of both worlds--you retain states, but eliminate a key protection the people of one state have from being used badly by the people of the other states.

The US Senate does a far more "effective" job of protecting the interests of small states. The Electoral College's small state advantage is pretty minor in comparison. The main effect of the EC is to cause undue focus on swing states, not small states.

In any case, what you're focusing on is the "tyranny of the majority", but "a small state" is only one of innumerable minorities than can be exploited by the majority. I see no reason to give them extra voting power but not West Texans or Midwestern farmers or blacks.

The idea behind having both a senate and an electoral college was to force both the executive and the legislative branches to have some sort of structural protection for the small states. It's not an either or, it's a both.

I agree with "but "a small state" is only one of innumerable minorities than can be exploited by the majority." That's not an argument against protecting small states via the electoral college, though; it is an argument in favor of making sure other minorities have a comparable protection.

The easiest way to do that is have supermajority requirements for certain policies. Indeed, the US has this for constitutional amendments.

For small state protection to be valid, I'd like to see evidence that smaller political entities are worse off than larger ones without malapportionment. There are lots of countries and states without malapportionment, and from what I know the bigger areas aren't ripping off the smaller ones, indeed it's usually the other way around.

There has got to be a ton of political science out there on the effectiveness of the electoral college as a protection for the small states.

Just did a quick google scholar search, and saw this article which says in its introduction that the "conventional wisdom," is that the electoral college promotes the interests of minorities and urban residents in big states, lolol, suggesting that the conventional wisdom is that it has had exactly the opposite effect intended.



This could be an interesting subject to kill a few hours on.

1978 for lolz. That may have actually been the conventional wisdom as NY, IL, CA and more were considered swing states then.

most of what I saw had old dates. old itself is not a valid criticism, although I also wondered whether conventional wisdom has changed. stopped looking after 10 or 15 minutes, google scholar is pretty frustrating when you're just curious, because most everything is pay to view.

New Mexico joins the National Popular Vote Compact.
http://www.scsun-news.com/story/news...vote/98173788/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation...rstate_Compact

They need another 100 EVs to join to make this work.

Sure doesn't seem passed, exactly.

This will never ever take hold even if they reach the number. I was all excited about this when I first learned of it a year ago but when I researched it further most of political analysts said the red and purple states who don't sign on will file a grievance with the courts and it will end up in legislation for years. The Supreme Court would most likely rule against it if it got to that point too. I've come to accept the fact at this point we will never get rid of the EC because 37 states are never agreeing

It wouldn't take that long to get to the Supreme Court, and although they may rule against it, i think the compact's chances are more than merely good, since article 2 section 1 specifically leaves appointment of electors to state legislatures. States' rights and all.

However, I think states that want to receive some attention from presidential campaigns, should implement the compact before they have 270 votes committed. Essentially the compact should become a voting block, and force the candidates to pay attention to the popular vote since they'd be wielding considerable power.