this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
1170 points (98.2% liked)

News

23376 readers
1981 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

65% of U.S. adults say the way the president is elected should be changed so that the winner of the popular vote nationwide wins the presidency.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Smacks@lemmy.world 169 points 1 year ago (23 children)

It'd be nice to go beyond and have some sort of ranked voting while we're at it. Essentially being forced to pick between two parties or risk having your vote being wasted sucks.

[–] Johanno@feddit.de 25 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I don't know how the american system works, but voting for small parties should not considered a wasted vote. It helps the party even if they don't get elected

[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 57 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's worse than wasted. It's effectively a half-vote for the major candidate you like the least.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] TunaLobster@lemmy.ml 23 points 1 year ago (7 children)

If a party receives 5% of the popular vote, they start to receive funding from the FEC. That hasn't happened in a while for a third party.

load more comments (7 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] namingthingsiseasy@programming.dev 12 points 1 year ago (9 children)

Unpopular opinion: ranked choice voting will do little to solve the USA's democracy issues.

For starters, there are plenty of countries that do use FPTP and still have plenty of third parties in their parliaments (Canada, UK, Taiwan, Australia off the top of my head). So FPTP does not inherently preclude third parties - rather, the USA simply doesn't have any culture of multilateralism. I'd say this is mostly a byproduct of various cultural phenomena - the wealth gap, corporate media ownership, private campaign financing, win-or-lose mindset, etc.

But the greater issue is that RCV doesn't really ensure proportionality. As long as you have a single winner from each district, there will be distortions between the proportion of parties for whom people vote and the ultimate parliamentary body. For example, even if you implemented RCV across the entire USA today, I'm pretty sure most legislative bodies would still be entirely dominated by a single party because of gerrymandering and single-member districts.

So if you want to fix the USA's core issue, what you really need is a more proportional system - either have fewer, larger districts with multiple representatives from each one, or adopt something like MMP which is what Germany has (where you also cast a party vote to declare your preference for which party you most want represented in parliament and distribute proportionally along this tally across all voters). Not only does this make the final representation more fair, but it also does a much better job of making all votes matter, instead of only the lucky few in swing states or the rare competitive Congressional race.

But RCV on its own won't do much. It is still a small improvement, and if you have the opportunity to adopt it, I say go for it. But at best, I think it would take decades, or maybe even generations, before it starts to improve things.

Also, while I know this doesn't pertain quite so much to Presidential elections as the electoral college is used for, the USA is also fairly unique in that it has a directly elected head of government with much more power than other countries that also have a directly elected head of state. This is also a part of the problem - the executive branch is supposed to be the weakest of the 3 Federal branches - but it's a discussion for another time.

load more comments (9 replies)
load more comments (21 replies)
[–] beebarfbadger@lemmy.world 89 points 1 year ago (2 children)

BREAKING: group of people whose only chance of getting elected is relying on the Electoral College not thrilled about the idea of abandoning the Electoral College

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] squirrelwithnut@lemmy.world 79 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Ranked choice voting please.

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] Changetheview@lemmy.world 58 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Part of this piece has an excellent insight into the dichotomy of the Republican Party. Of those highly engaged with politics, only 27% want to ditch the electoral college! These people understand the party is unpopular and the tactics used to hold power are a necessary way to get their policies.

The rest of the group feels otherwise, probably NOT because they don’t care if their candidate gets elected, but rather that they don’t understand how crucial it is to their party (along with gerrymandering). And their first gut instinct is that popular vote is justified/rational/logical whatever.

Now for a little thought experiment: What would happen if this became an actual campaign issue? I’d put my money on those 27% being able to convince the rest of the party how important it is, flipping their view. Maybe I’m wrong, but since many R voters tent to put self interests above all else, it logically follows that they’re just not understanding how critical the electoral college is. If their talking heads went on air/TV each day and stopped talking about how immigrants are stealing jobs or poor people are taking their hard earned money, and instead focused on the importance of the electoral college, they’d flip. Not because they think it’s right or justified. Because they think it’s best for themselves and their party. And it’s the current rallying cry.

Now apply this across an entire party, with those highly engaged telling the others how to vote, what to think about policy, and what the outcomes will be. Bring together uneducated people already susceptible to misinformation, and pair them with intelligent and extremely vocal/active groups who can sell snake oil like the best of them. Take that minority vote and put some real numbers behind it… likely not enough to get a majority, but enough to win a sophisticated electoral college or gerrymandered district.

[–] PupBiru@kbin.social 34 points 1 year ago (2 children)

they probably wouldn’t even try and hide it: they’d literally just come out and say the electoral college helps keep the democrats out and they’d vote for it

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] GiddyGap@lemm.ee 49 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Republicans would never win a nationwide election again. They'd actually have to come up with policies people want. Not gonna happen anytime soon.

[–] markon@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I've had family that votes Republican say this, they will literally defend the minority vote winning. They see democracy as "mob rule." Well, if a bunch of rich assholes getting to decide who's president, and a system where the people with the least votes win, how is that not mob rule?

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Moobythegoldensock@lemm.ee 49 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Americans, lobby your state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml 47 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If the president was chosen by popular vote, I think you could make a reasonable case that the last Republican president would have been George H.W. Bush in 1988. George W. Bush did win the popular vote against John Kerry in 2004, but he lost it to Al Gore in 2000 so it's debatable whether or not he would have beaten an incumbent Gore in 2004 I think.

[–] stopthatgirl7@kbin.social 27 points 1 year ago

And now you see why the Republicans are so against it. They can’t win in a straight vote.

[–] nxfsi@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I could also make a reasonable case that election strategies would have changed to more populist stances to accommodate for that.

[–] njm1314@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Bush did say if the popular vote mattered he'd have campaigned in Texas. Changes the entire landscape.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] kibiz0r@midwest.social 41 points 1 year ago (2 children)

National Popular Vote Interstate Compact

Introduced in 2006, as of August 2023 it has been adopted by sixteen states and the District of Columbia. These jurisdictions have 205 electoral votes, which is 38% of the Electoral College and 76% of the 270 votes needed to give the compact legal force.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] AgentGrimstone@lemmy.world 40 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (36 children)

My vote would finally matter. My state already knows who it's supporting with or without me.

load more comments (36 replies)
[–] Shadywack@lemmy.world 38 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Two things I'd love to see. Eliminating the electoral college and then getting rid of superdelegates. Two fundamentally anti-democratic concepts.

[–] aidan@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Well superdelegates aren't exactly something the government can legislate away because they're just an internal thing of the DNC.

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (7 replies)
[–] mojo@lemm.ee 35 points 1 year ago (5 children)

They will never allow that because it'll kill the entire republican party lol

[–] Wogi@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Won't be good for Democrats either. System is rigged for two parties and two parties only.

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
[–] DaCrazyJamez@sh.itjust.works 33 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The electoral college was created at a time when faster-than-horse communication didn't exist. It made sense then, but has not grown with the times.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 31 points 1 year ago (4 children)

The whole thing is absurd and overly represents rural areas and Republicans. We already have a huge problem with the "2 senators per state" thing and the House representing Republicans far too much in relation to their numbers.

[–] Cryophilia@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago (16 children)

I'm 100% okay with the 2 senators per state thing. That's a feature, not a bug. Even though cities are on the right side of history right now, I don't want to completely silence the rural vote forever.

However, arbitrarily limiting the number of House reps is absolutely absurd and counter to the purpose of the House. That is a bug.

load more comments (16 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] Buelldozer@lemmy.today 29 points 1 year ago (12 children)

Instead of tilting at the windmill that is removing the EC how about we do something much easier and simpler and simply expand the House of Representatives? Not only would this add votes to the EC and make the Presidential Elections more representative it would also, you know, make the HoR more Representative! For extra fun it would also diminish the returns of gerrymandering since there would be so many more districts.

All we need is a change to the Re-Apportionment Act of 1929. There is no good reason that the size of the HoR is fixed at 435. None.

[–] MiikCheque@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

For extra fun it would also diminish the returns of gerrymandering since there would be so many more districts.

you should lead with this

load more comments (11 replies)
[–] CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Unfortunately the elected representatives don't care what the majority of citizens want.

[–] sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz 17 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Hell, a good chunk of the citizens vote for people that don't support their lives or values. It's fucked top to bottom.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] foggy@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

When you say majority, do you mean by popular vote, or...

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] mrmeseeks1994@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago

I propose the National Popular Vote Interstate compact. Cgp grey has an amazing video on it. It's a "petition" of sorts that basically says that states that sign it will have its elective representatives vote with the majority vote of their said state.

Here's the video if anyone wants to watch it: https://youtu.be/tUX-frlNBJY

[–] KillAllPoorPeople@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

The "founding fathers" would be against the electoral college today too. The electoral college was an idea to try to get the people to directly vote for the president.

[–] Furbag@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago (6 children)

The electoral college was necessary because it would have been logistically impossible for people living in 18th and 19th century America to be able to participate in a single-day one person one vote election, given their level of technology at the time.

We live in the 21st century. We have instantaneous means of communication via the internet making designating an elector to travel to Washington unnecessary, a greatly expanded infrastructure via roads and mass transit for people to travel to polling places in a reasonable amount of time in a day, computers that can tally the ballots many hundreds of times faster than a human being can, and vastly expanded capacity for handling the logistics of running a nationwide election including a complex bureaucracy dedicated to oversight and enforcement of voting laws and regulations.

The electoral college is an archaic system whose only purpose has been completely supplanted by modern technology. Any notion of rogue electors defending the republic from authoritarians and populists is not only historically false, but given the fact that they failed to prevent exactly that situation from happening once already, laughably ineffective.

load more comments (6 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
[–] AnonTwo@kbin.social 17 points 1 year ago (18 children)

I feel like while the electoral college is an issue, it's the gerrymandering that is ultimately the biggest issue.

And in fact probably also contributes to the electoral college issue.

load more comments (18 replies)
[–] nucleative@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

First we need a federal initiative/ referendum system. Because the existing politicians will never vote to limit their own power.

After we have this, we can start with initiatives that set maximum ages, fix the voting systems. Fix Roe. Dismantle the terrible stranglehold the two party system has on getting anything done.

Do all the things that are popular but politicians will never do.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] _number8_@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago (7 children)

there is absolutely no valid argument to do anything that isn't simply tallying all the votes. because of course that's how it should work

load more comments (7 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›