United States | News & Politics

This take can sound reasonable at first but it's not the right way to look at it.

51% deciding the election is better than as low as 25% or so deciding in the system we have now. I mean, look at the candidates, they're only visiting a few swing states and ignoring the rest. The issue you're worried about is already happening.

You know what, you're right. It is much better for all of us if a small group decides things for the rest of us. We really should just get rid of voting altogether to streamline government.

No that's how it is now. Like 3 to 5 States decide the election. Without the Electoral College no States would decide the election, just the voters.

fewer Republicans winning will raise the quality of life for everyone.

Where the fuck have you been living for the past 24 years, in which we had TWO shitcunts rule by tyranny of the minority?

Wouldn’t this allow like three states to dictate the other 47?

No, that's both not mathematically possible and big states aren't uniform. And all your other statements don't in any way address how the current system achieves any of those goals. There's no perfect voting system, but we know our voting system is very bad. Right now most voters are completely irrelevant to a presidential campaign. Not 49%, 80%. If you're not in a swing state, it doesn't matter to the campaign what your issues are.

Unlike Norway, we don't have a parliamentary system, so there's no multi-party viability, only first-past-the-post which promotes a 2-party system. We do have state based representation in the Senate, which allows equal representation by state, and district level representation in the House. So ultimately any legislation has to go through both those to pass, removing any "tyranny" those of us who live in populous areas might have on the rest of the country.

Na, und?

We don't have proportional representation in the Executive Office. It's literally impossible. The only fair way of choosing the president is by having the majority elect her or him.

Replacing FPTP would help, too, but ultimately, the executive branch in the US as an ersatz king, and holds far too much power. Regardless, letting a minority elect them is the worse of two evils.

On top of what everyone else has said:

Changing the electoral college impacts the presidential election, the one who's supposed to represent everyone

You still have the other branches and local governments, the small states don't get magically fucked by this and it's weird people think they do

1. The current system allows for less than a 50% majority to decide the president (as what happened in 2016). The current system is worse than your concerns about a simple majority victor.
2. The three biggest states do account for a lot of votes (more than a quarter of the votes cast in 2020 came from CA, TX, or FL). However, your point goes against reality - TX and FL are right-leaning purple states whereas CA is a strongly blue state. They don't cancel each other out, but they alone definitely WOULD NOT decide the election nor "dictate the other 47".
3. "neglect 49% of the active voters and groom the 51%" - You make things sound so static. About 36% of voters are moderate voters and will shift. You can't just assume that your 51% base will stay same and can be groomed. And that's not even considering that people are dying and becoming 18+ years old everyday. Politicians in a simple majority election would have to appease the general public. They no longer could simply focus on making the swing states alone happy (though, on the flip side, I'm sure they would emphasize visiting larger population states).

That edit lmao

Went from “I am a serious deep thinker” to “I just want red to win” so abruptly I got whiplash.

wp:List of U.S. states and territories by population#State and territory rankings

Theoretically, 10 could.

However, just California, Texas, and Florida combined account for fewer than a third of Americans.

You said the goal is to raise the quality of life of everyone right? You have to get 51%(of the people who vote) to agree on something for the presidency the person who represents everyone in the nation. Why should Wyoming have as much power for voting for president as delaware. Wyoming has around half of the population. Also in another problematic shift why do we have a winner takes all system in all but 1 or 2 states. Your vote doesn't count and gets completely thrown away in most states if you don't vote for the popular party in that state. 1 electoral college vote is 536k people in the state of Florida. 1 electoral college vote in Wyoming is 144k people.

A popular vote would mean a democrat vote in Alabama matters as much as a vote in California. And vice versa in for Republicans. Right now neither party cares about either state because they will always vote for their respective party and all the losing party votes of that state get thrown away(except new Hampshire) the parties only care about "swing" states and states on the edge rather than the voter. We have a whole system that reallocate the Electoral college votes to population anyway but with a minimum and only gets reassessed every 10 years.

Why does a state have an identity to matter for voting for a president. They have congress and senate. Wouldnt be easier to find people who cares about the same issue across state lines. Farmers of Indiana would have a larger say if they combine with the farmers of Ohio and their voice can be heard more. Versus we can ignore one state because it isn't a swing state.

Majority tyranny versus a minority tyranny....which would be better...the constitution us there so we don't fuck each other up more. But why should the minority of people in America be able to tell the majority of people what to do in this country. Also again one office should represent just the majority opinion versus the senate which is the majority in each state and congress a majority in each smaller section of a state. Where as today the president is the majority of population in each state(essentially senate) weighted by population but we over weight smaller states and have different equalities all over the place which is what congress already is. Which also should be increased in size.

Lastly why are the states unequal the senate is ridiculously unequal favoring all the smaller states. Why shouldn't California be like 12 states?

You are literally (no hyperbole) anti-democracy.

In democracy only people should matter not arbitrary administrative entities such as states, towns, baronies or whatever.

Furthermore there is no suggestion to increase the powers of the office. If tyranny can happen by a democratically president it can also happen under a president elected under the current non democratic system.