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New Electoral college discussion
M was convinced that Trump became president because the few people in the country who were in charge of the electoral votes decided to pick Trump even though Hillary won the popular vote.

That's not how it worked. But it took a discussion of state electoral college votes and doing some math to show it. I wonder how many people think like she did, because she's not the only one.

So anyway, I tried to boil it down to the simplest/easiest explanation. If someone can make it any easier please do.

Imagine two states side by side. Left has 10 million people and 10 electoral votes. Right has 11 million people and 11 electoral votes. I know that's not how it works but I want to keep it as easy as possible.

Left state has 75/25 blue/red split.
Right state has 49/51 blue/red split.

Left state has 7.5 million Democrats and 2.5 million Republicans. Hillary gets 10 votes.

Right state has 5.4 million Democrats and 5.6 million Republicans. Trump gets 11 votes.

7.5 + 5.4 = 12.9 million Democrats.
2.5 + 5.6 = 8.1 million Republicans.

Huge difference. It takes far less than that difference to win. But as long as there's a difference, there are votes being thrown away by the system.

Trump wins.

From a popular perspective, the left state threw away millions of Democrat votes simply because they were unnecessary to win. They could have won the right state if they moved there but they didn't. Those votes were thrown away by the system but perfectly as it was designed.

The electors did exactly what they were supposed to do, there was no hidden coup. Not that they haven't been that corrupt in the past, just that it hasn't happened in our lifetimes.

So now she has a new life purpose. Abolish the electoral college, not because it's inherently corrupt at top, but it is simply wrong and does not represent the population. Okay.

It was part of the compromise to get the states to join together 200 years ago. It has outlived its usefulness.

Various edits as I reread and fixed stupid stuff. I shouldn't edit under pressure.
Expand Edited by crazy Aug. 19, 2024, 11:17:15 AM EDT
Expand Edited by crazy Aug. 19, 2024, 11:26:35 AM EDT
Expand Edited by crazy Aug. 19, 2024, 11:31:13 AM EDT
Expand Edited by crazy Aug. 19, 2024, 11:40:25 AM EDT
New Re: Electoral college discussion
Abolishing the EC would, unfortunately, require the consent (or the armed suppression) of the Ungovernable Tribal Regions, and this is unlikely to be forthcoming. Same with the Senate. Wyoming, with 1.5% of California’s population, gets two senators, just like the Golden State. The Dakotas, North and South, have a little over 4% of California’s population (hell, here in the Bay Area the contiguous counties of Alameda and Contra Costa exceed N&S D by a cool million), and get four senators. It’s been estimated that by decade’s end states representing in aggregate under a third of the country’s population will control seventy of the Senate’s hundred seats. Again, do you see Wyoming or Idaho or Alaska or any of the pissant states, red or blue, yielding up that advantage?
They could have won the right state if they moved there but they didn't.
I’m going to hazard a guess that very few people will be found to have pulled up stakes and moved away from families, friends, jobs in order to help tilt the political balance in a different state, although a few years back there was a fatuous libertarian—but I repeat myself—move to relocate a sufficient number of believers to, if I recall aright, New Hampshire with the aim of establishing a Galtian paradise on earth. I do know, although I am no longer friendly with, a QAnon-infected couple who moved recently from Southern California to rural Missouri, but their aims were (1) to escape California’s more stringent school vaccine requirements, even though their daughter just turned forty, and (2) to take advantage of the favorable real estate gradient between the two regions. To the extent politics entered into their decision, they did not imagine that they would flip Missouri red, but rather that they would now dwell among fellow knuckle-dragging fuckwits, thereby establishing a more perfect epistemic closure.

No, I don’t expect to see Senate or EC reform in my lifetime.

hopelessly,
New Electoral college
The whole purpose of this stupid thing was to keep the wealthy planters of the agricultural states in power. It has been very effective at that purpose.
New California should at least split into two states!
North and South Californias.
Alex

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

-- Isaac Asimov
New California is already two states . . .
. . effectively but not officially. It's not North and South, it's the coast, nicely Blue, and the interior, nasty Red. Guns, God, and Pickup Trucks. Fortunately, the interior is sparsely populated.
New Re: California is already two states . . .
Which is why we oughtn’t grant the gun-fondlers in the Ungovernable Tribal Counties two senators.

cordially,
New ignore
goddamn dup.
Expand Edited by rcareaga Aug. 25, 2024, 08:10:15 PM EDT
     Electoral college discussion - (crazy) - (6)
         Re: Electoral college discussion - (rcareaga) - (5)
             Electoral college - (Andrew Grygus)
             California should at least split into two states! - (a6l6e6x) - (3)
                 California is already two states . . . - (Andrew Grygus) - (2)
                     Re: California is already two states . . . - (rcareaga)
                     ignore - (rcareaga)

Now, right off the bat you have to worry about a recipe found in Chemical and Engineering News.
124 ms