Quote:
Originally Posted by David Sklansky
I'm sure that there are good arguments to abolish the Electoral College. So why do people use the dopey one? The circular reasoning one. Or begging the question? Or whatever the right word is. Actually I don't care if people use it. I only care that twoplustwoers do. That's not allowed.
If you said that the Electoral college is bad because it is immoral to have a system where the popular vote winner doesn't win, that's perfectly fine. But instead nitwits proclaim that "the clearest argument that the Electoral College should be abolished is that it sometimes results in a winner that didn't get the most popular votes". What? Of course it does, That is its reason for existence. It exists to CREATE that possibility. The talking heads argument boils down to "We shouldn't have a method that was designed to sometimes elect the popular vote loser because it sometimes elects the popular vote loser". Aristotle is turning over in his grave.
You're really just playing a semantics game at this point. Their argument is clearly that we should not use a method that elects the popular vote loser. If they word it in a way that doesn't explicitly say that, it's still pretty clear what they're arguing.
The dopey argument I keep seeing is that going to a proportional electoral vote will get candidates to campaign in small states more than going to the straight popular vote. It would have a very slight impact on that, and certainly not enough of one to change an optimal campaign strategy very much.