Electoral college

[N e s s]

I voted for biden, but yes barbaric is the word id use, all the riots (not peaceful protests there is nothing peaceful about burning down a Walmart.) I’m scared, I’ve seen multiple groups on Facebook if biden doesn’t win they will burn things down loot etc... Instagram as well. Trump supporters also said they will shoot down people ... also burning, fighting, destroying private property isn’t a right.

Post automatically merged: Nov 4, 2020

Also I looked at the 2016 election and biden has only managed to switch two states to blue.. how disappointing.

Just so you know, there’s still over a million absentee votes that have not been counted in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and not every vote in the Atlanta area for Georgia has been counted either. If 2/3 of those end up going Biden, then he’ll eek out a win at 274. Him winning Arizona is what saved his campaign.

Post automatically merged: Nov 4, 2020

Oh, and I guess Michigan is looking to flip to Biden, but even then he still needs Pennsylvania OR to maintain his lead in Nevada, which only see one of those happening at this rate.

 

[daringred_]

i heard UPS managed to lose 300k something ballots and trump wants to stop vote counting early while the map is coloured in his favor (i didn't even know you could do that? the hell kind of fairness is that?) so i don't even think the electoral college is your biggest problem tbh. just one of many.

 

[mocha.]

Not American but honestly I believe they should judge it based on the popular vote. My bf has been explaining the voting process to me and it just seems like such a strange system, the whole election relies on the decisions of a few states?
Also I agree with daringred_, surely that’s unconstitutional? Interference with an election (because it isn’t in your favour lol)

 

[jo_electric]

Completely outdated and needs to go. 1P1V.

 

[hakutaku]

I'm not American but I did study American politics during my Government & Politics course at sixth form (UK's last 2 years of high school). Electoral college is a terrible system and there are multiple fairer ways to hold votes, the problem is that the EC system favours both the Democrat and Republican parties and hinders third parties and independents, so no Democrat or Republican politicians are ever gonna want to change it.

I can't roast America much on this though because my country's electoral system is just as unfair lol.

 

[-Apples-]

I voted for biden, but yes barbaric is the word id use, all the riots (not peaceful protests there is nothing peaceful about burning down a Walmart.) I’m scared, I’ve seen multiple groups on Facebook if biden doesn’t win they will burn things down loot etc... Instagram as well. Trump supporters also said they will shoot down people ... also burning, fighting, destroying private property isn’t a right.

I called them “barbaric” too. I wonder if you came up with that too, or was inspired by my choice of language. But yes, regardless of how appropriate it is to use that term, it’s not worth vandalizing other property or hurting other people for the sake of who wins an election. Heck, I don’t even approve of election protests once the results have been revealed. But riots are at a whole different level.

I have two other reasons to support the electoral college. As much as I don’t like two heavily populous states determining the winner, there’s also a good chance that some of these votes came from “dead people” and non-citizens. If the popular vote were to include dead voters and non-citizen voters, then that’s where it becomes a problem. Good thing they only make up a little part of the vote rather than a large part, but if the electoral college were abolished, most of the living population eligible to vote voted one candidate, but the other candidate one because 50% of the vote they got came from non-citizens, dead voters, and people too young to vote? That’s why voter fraud is such a hot topic, and is also why I’m against the popular vote. The other reason is an extension to the second reason from my original post is that there should be a balance in both parties. Since the urban voters are mostly democratic, abolishing the electoral college may push us to a one-party rule, which is not good. We need both parties in play, so there can be more bipartisan laws rather than purely partisan laws.

 

[nintendofan85]

i heard UPS managed to lose 300k something ballots and trump wants to stop vote counting early while the map is coloured in his favor (i didn't even know you could do that? the hell kind of fairness is that?) so i don't even think the electoral college is your biggest problem tbh. just one of many.

A lot of problems exist in the United States to suppress votes. Our democracy is flawed, in fact, calling it a "democracy" is probably too kind to our electoral system in terms of a description.

 

[LadyDestani]

i heard UPS managed to lose 300k something ballots and trump wants to stop vote counting early while the map is coloured in his favor (i didn't even know you could do that? the hell kind of fairness is that?) so i don't even think the electoral college is your biggest problem tbh. just one of many.

You are correct. I'm having flashbacks of the 2000 election where the Supreme Court intervened and stopped a state-mandated recount in a state that was won by only ~500 votes. There was all kinds of controversy and litigation and it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It was a terrible experience as a first-time voter and I really feel for the young people out there voting for the first time this year who have to go through this.

Our system is becoming increasing corrupt and when neither side can trust the results, that's when you know changes are needed.

 

[nintendofan85]

I called them “barbaric” too. I wonder if you came up with that too, or was inspired by my choice of language. But yes, regardless of how appropriate it is to use that term, it’s not worth vandalizing other property or hurting other people for the sake of who wins an election. Heck, I don’t even approve of election protests once the results have been revealed. But riots are at a whole different level.

I have two other reasons to support the electoral college. As much as I don’t like two heavily populous states determining the winner, there’s also a good chance that some of these votes came from “dead people” and non-citizens. If the popular vote were to include dead voters and non-citizen voters, then that’s where it becomes a problem. Good thing they only make up a little part of the vote rather than a large part, but if the electoral college were abolished, most of the living population eligible to vote voted one candidate, but the other candidate one because 50% of the vote they got came from non-citizens, dead voters, and people too young to vote? That’s why voter fraud is such a hot topic, and is also why I’m against the popular vote. The other reason is an extension to the second reason from my original post is that there should be a balance in both parties. Since the urban voters are mostly democratic, abolishing the electoral college may push us to a one-party rule, which is not good. We need both parties in play, so there can be more bipartisan laws rather than purely partisan laws.

Where is your proof on the dead citizens and illegal aliens point?

Post automatically merged: Nov 4, 2020

You are correct. I'm having flashbacks of the 2000 election where the Supreme Court intervened and stopped a state-mandated recount in a state that was won by only ~500 votes. There was all kinds of controversy and litigation and it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It was a terrible experience as a first-time voter and I really feel for the young people out there voting for the first time today who have to go through this.

Our system is becoming increasing corrupt and when neither side can trust the results, that's when you know changes are needed.

And sadly, my vote for Joe Biden in Alabama basically meant nothing.

 

[Red Cat]

The electoral college is outdated and shouldn't be a part of a 21st century democracy. State boundaries are totally arbitrary and make no sense in their distributions of population and land area; they are mostly based on land acquisitions from over 100 years ago and never get updated. The EC may have worked okay before modern communication and transportation options became available, but now we can quickly report raw vote totals. The only reason to have a district based voting system like the EC is that if we went by national popular vote, a national recount of 150+ million votes in a close election would be a total cluster****. But each district should have approximately the same population and one vote each which is not the case with the EC.

We are proud of being the world's oldest republic, but with the ****show of this election, you can tell our constitution is over 200 years old and badly in need of some updates. The idea of having three separate branches of government checking each other sounds good in theory, but George Washington warned against having political parties for a reason. Basically our government has devolved into two feudal tribes jockeying against each other for power, and calls to reform our government never go anywhere because those two tribes have zero incentive give third parties any seats at the table. I think the U.S. is in a vicious death spiral and it's a matter of when not if the country snaps (could be this year depending on how things go over the next few days).

 

[daringred_]

since more than one person has now called the likely protesting that will occur following the election results "barbaric" i just want to say i think you're missing a big point here.

if biden loses, the protests and outrage will be from people who are scared and, yes, angry, but justifiably so and as an extension of said fear. these people are minorities who are likely to lose even more of their rights and whose lives and wellbeing are at serious risk, as if they haven't been already under trump's regime.

if trump loses, the protests and outrage will be from people who are simply angry because they are hateful. bigots who know they're not going to be allowed to get away with their hate crimes or killing/harming and discriminating against minorities anymore.

only one of those is barbaric and it's not the first.

 

[samsquared]

[snip]
... there’s also a good chance that some of these votes came from “dead people” and non-citizens. If the popular vote were to include dead voters and non-citizen voters, then that’s where it becomes a problem. Good thing they only make up a little part of the vote rather than a large part, but if the electoral college were abolished, most of the living population eligible to vote voted one candidate, but the other candidate one because 50% of the vote they got came from non-citizens, dead voters, and people too young to vote? That’s why voter fraud is such a hot topic, and is also why I’m against the popular vote.

where is the data on this? I can provide sources that prove it's a problem occurring with ~1,300 overall votes according to the leading voter fraud database in the country and only 19 cases of ballots being counted for dead people since 1997. obviously illegal immigrants don't have IDs, barring them from entry to polls and immigrant visas or green cards are very obviously not drivers licenses because.... well they look like this (and, having been acquainted with an "illegal" family, these seem to be made of paper instead of laminate plastic).

vs a drivers license

you cannot use a fake id to vote. you must have government issued ID proving you're a citizen to even register & you must register to vote. insufficient id is one of the many ways united states citizens are barred from voting every year.

this problem is of little concern when you consider the disenfranchisement happening across the country to plenty of citizens literally right at this moment. in georgia and florida today over 8,000 ballots were thrown out because the "signatures on the ballot didn't match well enough to signatures on the voter registration" (before arguing this point, attempt to sign your name the exact same way three times. if they don't deviate at all, congratulations! you have an incredibly steady hand- but if they do deviate, now imagine that you're doing that without thinking about it & no one told you they had to match exactly.) never mind how many people in FL were disenfranchised for not paying a poll tax. FL state law barred them from being eligible because formerly incarcerated individuals are required to pay a poll tax & many couldn't pay, didn't pay, or simply didn't know there was a tax to be paid. poll taxes in 2020. there is a much deeper problem with us citizens being denied their constitutional right to vote
just one of the many reasons the electoral college system is broken- it encourages purposefully lowering turnout, throwing out votes on technicalities, poll taxes and other forms of voter suppression in order to keep electoral votes under 1-2 parties' control & to keep certain segments of the population from having an equal say in their government.

 

[nintendofan85]

since more than one person has now called the likely protesting that will occur following the election results "barbaric" i just want to say i think you're missing a big point here.

if biden loses, the protests and outrage will be from people who are scared and, yes, angry, but justifiably so and as an extension of said fear. these people are minorities who are likely to lose even more of their rights and whose lives and wellbeing are at serious risk, as if they haven't been already under trump's regime.

if trump loses, the protests and outrage will be from people who are simply angry because they are hateful. bigots who know they're not going to be allowed to get away with their hate crimes or killing/harming and discriminating against minorities anymore.

only one of those is barbaric and it's not the first.

Exactly. I will admit I don't plan to demonstrate with this election, but as a LGBT person, I have a lot-and I mean a lot- to lose if Donald Trump gets four more years.

Post automatically merged: Nov 4, 2020

where is the data on this? I can provide sources that prove it's a problem occurring with ~1,300 overall votes according to the leading voter fraud database in the country and only 19 cases of ballots being counted for dead people since 1997. obviously illegal immigrants don't have IDs, barring them from entry to polls and immigrant visas or green cards are very obviously not drivers licenses because.... well they look like this (and, having been acquainted with an "illegal" family, these seem to be made of paper instead of laminate plastic).

vs a drivers license

you cannot use a fake id to vote. you must have government issued ID proving you're a citizen to even register & you must register to vote. insufficient id is one of the many ways united states citizens are barred from voting every year.

this problem is of little concern when you consider the disenfranchisement happening across the country to plenty of citizens literally right at this moment. in georgia and florida today over 8,000 ballots were thrown out because the "signatures on the ballot didn't match well enough to signatures on the voter registration" (before arguing this point, attempt to sign your name the exact same way three times. if they don't deviate at all, congratulations! you have an incredibly steady hand- but if they do deviate, now imagine that you're doing that without thinking about it & no one told you they had to match exactly.) never mind how many people in FL were disenfranchised for not paying a poll tax. FL state law barred them from being eligible because formerly incarcerated individuals are required to pay a poll tax & many couldn't pay, didn't pay, or simply didn't know there was a tax to be paid. poll taxes in 2020. there is a much deeper problem with us citizens being denied their constitutional right to vote
just one of the many reasons the electoral college system is broken- it encourages purposefully lowering turnout, throwing out votes on technicalities, poll taxes and other forms of voter suppression in order to keep electoral votes under 1-2 parties' control & to keep certain segments of the population from having an equal say in their government.

This. To me, any argument about illegal aliens or dead people voting are ones in favor of voter suppression. We should be making the ability to vote easier, not harder.

Post automatically merged: Nov 4, 2020

Ideally, if we were to have an electoral system I'd like, I think we should have a popular vote system with two rounds, akin to countries like France, Brazil, and Argentina. If we had the French system, third parties would also be more competitive-and while I'm a Democrat, it's still nice to have more options.

 

[DJStarstryker]

And sadly, my vote for Joe Biden in Alabama basically meant nothing.

That was, unfortunately, expected IMO, though I do understand your feelings. What's more insulting to me personally is that Doug Jones lost his slot to a guy who is only known for being a college football coach. I know the south is too obsessive about football, but come on...

 

[nintendofan85]

That was, unfortunately, expected IMO, though I do understand your feelings. What's more insulting to me personally is that Doug Jones lost his slot to a guy who is only known for being a college football coach. I know the south is too obsessive about football, but come on...

It's at least not Roy Moore. It's insane to me that in the 2017 special election, Alabamians nearly voted in a pedophile for a Senator...
Also, you could say though that in this close election, the incumbent president is a pedo himself given his associations, and visits to the island of, Jeffrey Epstein...

 

[-Apples-]

It's at least not Roy Moore. It's insane to me that in the 2017 special election, Alabamians nearly voted in a pedophile for a Senator...
Also, you could say though that in this close election, the incumbent president is a pedo himself given his associations, and visits to the island of, Jeffrey Epstein...

Roy Moore is Jeffery Epstein, Roger B Taney, Pope Urban II, Pastor Terry Jones, and Fred Phelps in one person. Even I don’t want him winning. Not to mention, but he’s the biggest sore loser in the world when he lost to Doug Jones.

 

[mayortiffany]

The electoral college is a very strange system for me.

In Canada, we don't directly vote for the Prime Minister - we vote for a Member of Parliament (MP) who will represent us in the House of Commons. Essentially, whichever party has the most MPs in the House of Commons gets to form government, with their party leader becoming Prime Minister. Canada is split into 338 electoral districts (ridings), and whichever candidate wins the majority of votes within each riding gets to become the MP for that riding.

I can see how it may be a little bit messy in the US as I imagine there are a lot more than 338 electoral districts, but at the same time, I feel that that would allow for a greater amount of representativity whilst also ensuring that less populous regions don't get entirely rolled without going as far as proportional representation (which full disclosure, I generally dislike). It would be even better if there was a non-partisan elections commission in charge of organizing elections, fielding questions rather than leaving everything up to elected Secretary of States, which is what appears to be happening in the US.

If the concern is that some areas are having more representation to the exclusion of others, isn't that more prone to happen when you have such large groupings as the state, as that the most populous areas of that state (typically urban areas) have a greater say in deciding the vote of the state?

Also, there seems to be a lot of controversy over mail-in ballots? There have been a number of provincial elections since the pandemic which have seen high amounts of mail in voting, and we haven't seen any significant problems of voter fraud, to my knowledge. Mail in voting is how Americans overseas like service members have been voting for a long time, so I'm assuming that if the system has held up then, it's going to now.

 

[EmmaFrost]

As a Canadian, the electoral college concept mystifies me. It makes no sense.

 

[dioscuri]

States don’t need a voice the people do. The fact that the majority of the people don’t get to pick isn’t true democracy and is rigged from the start.
Abolish it

The founding fathers established our system of government in a way that true democracy would never be how our leaders are elected. They thought that true democracy was just as evil as despotism. Under "true democracy," with a popular vote, you are essentially living under mob rule; the 51% will always outvote the 49%, which can lead to some pretty disastrous effects when the rights of the 49% are on the line.
As mentioned before by Kaioin, the popular vote can still be won with a minority of the population--one party with 28%, one party with 27%, and the rest of the vote split across various third parties.
Pure, unfiltered democracy sounds nice and representative on paper, but would you really want to live under that system? The truth is, we need elements of a republic in order to uphold the rights of the citizens.

 

[Red Cat]

The founding fathers established our system of government in a way that true democracy would never be how our leaders are elected. They thought that true democracy was just as evil as despotism. Under "true democracy," with a popular vote, you are essentially living under mob rule; the 51% will always outvote the 49%, which can lead to some pretty disastrous effects when the rights of the 49% are on the line.
As mentioned before by Kaioin, the popular vote can still be won with a minority of the population--one party with 28%, one party with 27%, and the rest of the vote split across various third parties.
Pure, unfiltered democracy sounds nice and representative on paper, but would you really want to live under that system? The truth is, we need elements of a republic in order to uphold the rights of the citizens.

People excessively romanticize the "founding fathers" and often gloss over the fact that they were all white men who designed the U.S. government to be completely controlled by wealthy white men. The only minority group the U.S. Constitution was designed to protect was rich white men, and the only reason that changed is because eventually after over a century the white men in power decided to be decent human beings and acknowledge that owning people as property is wrong in every way (after a war was fought over that) and that women and people of color deserve to be able to participate in government. Of course, the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments haven't fixed everything and wealthy white people (especially men) have kept finding ways to deny power to people of color and the less wealthy. The Electoral College is one of those things that skews the balance of power towards white landowners. The EC prevented the U.S. from having its first female president and instead handed the presidency to another rich white man who has rolled back progress made on racial, gender, and LGBT equality. It's the EC that takes away the rights of people, not a direct popular vote.

Ranked choice voting helps to avoid the problem of a candidate winning with minority support and would give third parties a legitimate chance to build support without making people "waste" their votes. Unfortunately ranked choice voting is very rare in the U.S. since the one thing Republicans and Democrats can agree on is not giving third parties any chance of winning.