Anonymous #3 4w

No, because states alone have the power to decide how their electoral votes are allocated

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Anonymous #5 4w

The senate and electoral college exist to create friction to progress so a minority conservative base can hold us back. The only way forward is to eliminate such dogshit systems🔥

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Anonymous OP 4w

Unbelievable

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Anonymous #6 4w

This literally just makes it so the president who wins the majority of the country’s votes will win. It’s that simple. Some swing voter in Pennsylvania who can’t make up their damn mind shouldn’t be who the entire national election is hinging on

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Anonymous #2 4w

So then wouldn’t presidential candidates only cater to hot topic issues for Americans living in cities? Wouldn’t it also encourage candidates to ignore minority groups in favor of capturing votes from social majorities?

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Anonymous #6 4w

So, you’re arguing that catering to what the majority of voters want is worse than catering to what the swing states want? Interesting.

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Anonymous #6 4w

The president should try to appeal to the majority of Americans and not 15,000 indecisive white dudes from Ohio

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Anonymous #2 4w

Should the president only appeal to the majority white population and not racial minorities? Should they only look at the Whites, Blacks, Latinos, and ignore Native Americas if it means they gain a majority vote regardless? We can’t just ignore people’s voices because they make up a minority.

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Anonymous OP 4w

I believe that a popular vote would devalue the voices of minority groups and effectively disenfranchise them.

3

Anonymous #6 4w

All of this is only relevant if the electoral college empowered minority groups…which it doesn’t. It only empowers voters who are indecisive in states with populations large enough for that to matter. So a tiny proportion of the population (overwhelmingly either white or Latino working class men mostly in the Midwest) are who the entire election hinges upon

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Anonymous #6 4w

And the current system allows a minority of people to control the election. How does it make more sense to allow the swing states to determine election outcomes rather than the majority?

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Anonymous #2 4w

Black people aren’t appealed to in these elections because they tend not to be swing voters, they tend to vote for democrats regardless. Native Americans have small populations and mostly live in heavily republican states, so their votes don’t swing anything at the national level. Latinos matter, but only in that they are a swing demographic with large populations in Florida, Nevada, and Arizona.

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Anonymous #2 4w

Like if anything this just *devalues* minority votes. Because it doesn’t matter if you appeal heavily to minorities if they aren’t swing demographics in a handful of states. All these elections hinge on the indecisive working class white dudes in the Midwest.

5

Anonymous #7 4w

Of course the reason they did this is because historically it’s the other way around (a dem wins pppular, rep electoral college) But what if there were an election where the rep won popular and not EC

0

Anonymous #7 4w

Yes, the NPVIC is binding … it’s state legislation.

3

Anonymous #7 4w

Best solution would be to scrap EC altogether not keep the electoral college and states say they will vote by national pop vote instead of who their respective state voted

3

Anonymous #7 4w

That’s the whole point of the NPVIC. It does not matter who wins EC, it is better in many ways to do popular vote. Less campaigning in swing states and more where the people are. The EC doesn’t benefit small states it benefits weird swing states.

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Anonymous #7 4w

Wow that’s almost like that’s what the NPVIC is trying to get at Almost like it’s a compact wherein states say they will vote by national popular vote instead of their own states winner-take-all 🤔

5

Anonymous OP 4w

The issue here is that you assume swing states have been and will remain the same, thus allowing the same minority to decide elections. This is not true. Many states have changed political alignment (Florida, Pennsylvania, Vermont, etc) over time and been classified as that elections ‘swing state’. Thus political alignment even in modern ‘safe states’ can be shifted with enough effort. Politicians thus need to put some effort into appealing to each state’s population.

0

Anonymous #6 4w

With a popular vote, emphasis would more consistently remain on large population centers. Basically, in an electoral college system, power does fall to a minority but that minority tends to shift over time, more evenly distributing power to different groups. With a popular vote power would consistently remain only with one population or regional group, threatening to push the very real concerns of smaller groups to the side.

0

Anonymous #6 4w

Ah yes, because right now the smaller states are represented great

8

Anonymous #6 4w

I’m not saying the electoral college doesn’t have issues. Take gerrymandering for example. I just don’t think a popular vote would fairly represent the concerns of smaller groups but important geographic populations like midwestern farmers who provide the very backbone of society (food). It might also fail to accurately represent geographic concerns fairly.

1

Anonymous #6 4w

Dude the electoral college already erases the concerns of smaller groups, because if you’re a dem voter in Wyoming you’re fucked and your vote will never matter. It’s a goddamn election, the guy who gets the most votes should win. We don’t separate governor elections county by county (rightly so) because then they wouldn’t be decided by the actual majority of their state (and Texas tried to change it to country by county because they know that would benefit republicans).

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Anonymous #2 4w

The small states already have way more power than they should relative to their population through the house and senate. We dont need to keep fucking our presidential elections on the basis that Wyoming voters should matter more than New York voters just because of where they live.

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Anonymous #2 4w

This entire thing is ridiculous because the argument is “if all votes count the same, then people who live in remote areas won’t have their votes matter as much because there’s less of them” yes that’s how democracies work???? We don’t need some “all votes are equal but some are more equal than others” bullshit. Nobody should automatically matter more because they live somewhere rural

8

Anonymous #3 4w

I’m glad it says it’s binding, but what I’d say Massachusetts would rather cast its electoral votes dem when rep wins. Would other states be able to sue for breach of contract in the hypothetical Again I hate electoral college, best way is to scrap it not create this complicated impact.

0

Anonymous #7 4w

To be clear dem wins their state, rep wins national popular vote, they want to circumvent the contract. And I’m not singling out blue states and state (red blue or purple) could break contract

0

Anonymous #7 4w

I think the reasoning here is that the only people who will win the electoral college but not the popular vote are Republicans. If a Republican wins the popular vote, they will have won the electoral college anyways, so these states putting their votes behind a Republican wouldn’t change the outcome.

2

Anonymous #2 4w

Ok I’ll stop mentioning political parties in my hypotheticals. But breach of contract is a concern and there isn’t a series of court precedents for this.

1

Anonymous #7 4w

I don’t think it would be another state suing, it would be the people living in the state suing the state And that would go straight to the Supreme Court I assume .

5

Anonymous #3 4w

Yes it’s difficult to sue a state but I assure you there would be multiple lawsuits filed immediately if someone attempted to go around the NPVIC.

4

Anonymous #2 4w

You literally say that under your proposed popular vote system some people’s votes would matter more than others. Literally, you state, “people who live in remote areas won’t have their votes matter as much”. The system you propose would just make it so voters in urban areas matter more than remote ones, as those regions would now have greater influence. It wouldn’t create greater voting equality, just shift the power elsewhere. This isn’t solving the problem you claim to be worried about.

1

Anonymous #6 4w

Besides, how would a popular vote address the real geographic concerns of sparsely populated areas that serve major roles in American livelihood? Farmlands feed us after all. Pushing a popular vote would divert attention primarily to the urban areas and ignore geographic concerns of other important regions.

6

Anonymous #6 4w

Fr

1

Anonymous #6 4w

Their votes won’t matter as much relative to how they are now, because right now they are greatly overvalued. In a democracy, everyone’s votes should count the same. No person is superior for living in a rural area, so their vote shouldn’t be superior either. It would definitionally create voting equality because every person’s votes should count the same.

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Anonymous #2 4w

This logic falls apart when you apply it to any other minority. Should the votes of Mormons be worth 10 times more so they aren’t drowned out by the non-Mormon majority? How do we know the concerns of Mormons are being validly addressed if we don’t make Mormon votes count more? If Mormon votes didn’t count more, politicians will just appeal to all the non-Mormons!

1

Anonymous #6 4w

Dude, urban areas are the primary economic driver that funds all the rural areas. If it’s economically important it will be focused upon based on said importance. And this conversation is ONLY about the president. We still have a house and senate which gives disproportionate power to rural regions.

1

Anonymous #2 4w

I live in a rural area. The am the same as someone who lives in New York City. Hence, my vote in a presidential election should count the same. The current system just means presidents only try to appeal to swing voters in swing states, which is an exceedingly small minority. America is more than middle class midwestern white dudes, they shouldn’t arbitrarily be the decisive demographic.

1

Anonymous #2 4w

It also must be noted that the electoral college fucks over rural areas in blue states. I live in rural Oregon. I am a democrat, however my county is predominantly republican. In presidential elections, their votes don’t matter, because the state always goes blue. The same goes for republicans in California, or democrats in Texas. A national popular vote means that we don’t have a system where if a candidate wins a state slightly, he gets all the electoral votes.

1

Anonymous #2 4w

The cities in TX R All blue

1

Anonymous #5 4w

Correct. The cities in Texas are all blue, but because the state votes red as a whole, all their votes are invalidated in presidential elections, and all of Texas’s electoral votes go to the Republican candidate. The electoral college unfairly boosts whoever wins a state even by a small margin, because then they win 100% of the electoral votes even if they won 51% of the popular vote in said state.

3

Anonymous #2 4w

That isn’t how that works

1

Not true

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Anonymous #5 4w

That’s not how electors work, what. #1 explained it very well.

4

Anonymous #5 4w

Dude went “nuh uh” to something you can easily google to see it’s true

6

Anonymous #2 4w

But It’s not, it’s first past the post at State & winner take all at the district

0

Anonymous #5 4w

Dude have you seen an electoral map? If individual electoral districts had independent electors then swing states wouldn’t be a politically relevant thing. I don’t even know where you got this from.

4

O my goodness

1

Anonymous #2 4w

Why is redistricting and gerrymandering so big

0

Anonymous #5 4w

Gerrymandering affects the United States House of Representatives as well as lower level state houses. It does not impact presidential elections.

10

Wdym

1

Anonymous #2 4w

Speaking of gerrymandering dems in Va want to do aggressive gerrymandering and say they’re “saving democracy” while Texas “dismantles democracy” which is gerrymandering ok ever. I think 90% of people all accross the political spectrum hate gerrymandering but it will stay because th politicians (on all sides) want to stay incumbents for decades

1

Anonymous #7 4w

Most people hate it but most politicians love it, th divide is not left vs right

8

Anonymous #7 4w

2nd the “blame on the politicians not the people”

1