Anonymous #6 8w

Prepare to get downvoted into oblivion by said modern teenagers

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Anonymous #4 8w

Well they don’t visit entire states if they’ve consistently been red or blue, so this argument is whatever

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Anonymous #6 8w

idk man, I think it makes sense to vote as a state for state things, and as a country for country things. I’m not sure how me voting for how our state should vote for who should run the country which rules over the state which we live in sounds anything besides convoluted

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Anonymous #6 8w

The states can vote independently for state elections lmao. No need to do it for the presidential election. Pretty sure the whole system is mainly just set up the way it is because it used to be much harder to get an exact count for the popular vote

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Anonymous #4 8w

They already don’t visit smaller towns lol

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Anonymous #10 8w

That’s another great point, the popular vote encourages fraud as well.

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Anonymous #9 8w

Because then your vote literally doesn’t matter, only majority rule matters… remember whenever the majority of the country wanted slavery to be legal?

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Anonymous #10 8w

But then you as an American have literally no say in who the president is???

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Anonymous #13 8w

People should be advocating for the eradication of our two party system. Something our government was never supposed to be based around instead of changing the constitution.

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Anonymous #1 8w

America isn’t a democracy 🤦‍♀️

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Anonymous #1 8w

Democracy leads to mob rule, we are a constitutional republic which is much more intelligently designed with checks and balances LIKE THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE

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Anonymous #12 8w

It's majority rule either way, that's what an election is. Without the electoral college, at least everyone's vote would matter equally toward that majority. With the electoral college, your vote is worth WAY less if you live in a non-swing state with a large population like California or Texas. Yes those states have more electoral votes but it's not actually proportionate.

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Anonymous #12 8w

Mind you I completely agree that the states need their own representation but that's why we have governors, congress, and local government. We don't need a convoluted system that tries and fails to represent all the states fairly in the presidential election. The popular vote is the best option we have. It's still a shame that the losing side gets underrepresented for the next 4 years despite usually making up about half the country, but that's more of a problem with the two party system.

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Anonymous #10 8w

But that’s just not how our government was built and done so for a very good reason. A true democracy does not work at a large scale.

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Anonymous #6 8w

Yup did no one watch squid game 3 🤦‍♀️😂

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Anonymous #6 8w

The electoral college isn’t used for anything besides deciding president though?? Removing the EC doesn’t mean removing representatives completely. How would switching from a non-proportional vote to a proportional one in this specific case do anything to change any other part of the government??

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Anonymous #6 8w

We are a Democratic Republic, that is a form of democracy And no, the electoral college is not a check and balance, it was created because of practical limitations of speed and transport of information at that time. The house vs the senate setup is for checks and balances, as are the defined risks of different branches of government that have been increasingly undermined as more and more power has been concentrated in the executive and the Supreme Court

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Anonymous #13 8w

Most countries today in the world are Republica, none of them have the electoral college except this one And no, that is not why the senate typically requires 60 votes to pass a bill, that was not even a dynamic until recently. For most of our history, it virtually never took 60% to pass bills in this country. The Senate is already inherently undemocratic The US is a Democratic Republic, that is a type of democracy.

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Anonymous #13 8w

It wasn’t supposed to be based upon it, but the way it was set up makes it inevitable, the only way to fix that long term would be with a constitutional amendment And the constitution was made to be changed, that’s why they have the whole thing with the amendments set up

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Anonymous #12 8w

No, people would have majority rule, not places, which means rural voters in California would actually have a say, for example (which means a lot to me as someone from there) And the majority of the US population is in suburban areas, not cities The electoral college doesn’t really do much to help rural voters. The senate does, but not the electoral college

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Anonymous #14 8w

Yeah.. but by popular vote

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Anonymous #6 8w

Our founders didn’t set up the system this way is the thing, originally the electoral college votes were not decided winner take all for the states like it is today, and the house was supposed to increase in size with the population, the electoral college functions very differently than the founders intended

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Anonymous #12 8w

Remember when slavery was legal with the electoral college? What’s the point you’re trying to make?

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Anonymous #12 8w

That’s not the way our government was built because a lot of this information had to be transported on horseback, it was much easier to send one person from each district for the count And it wasn’t states being won either, it was districts, this winner take all thing is much more recent

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Anonymous #15 8w

Actually, the electoral college was originally created to combat a bad decision made by the people. This is what Alexander Hamilton wrote in the federalist papers about it: “The immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station… It was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station.” The EC is a buffer between mob rule and a functioning society.

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Anonymous #15 8w

Now, we have never used the EC for that reason. Our representatives have always voted what we voted. But that’s the ORIGINAL POINT of the EC. The amount votes of votes each representative gets for the state has to do with what we were talking about, but I just want to correct you on what the founding fathers intended with the EC.

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Anonymous #15 8w

When the founders literally wrote the framework in of our government with timeless intent… this has nothing to do with horseback and everything to do with a successful government system. And the winner-take-all system is what was developed by the states, not the federal government. They left it up to the states how they wanted to count their EC votes, and that’s what we chose… as a majority. The type of rules you want btw.

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Anonymous #15 8w

I brought up slavery because the majority supported slavery. A direct democracy might’ve kept it legal even longer. That’s why majority rule isn’t always justice, and why the Founders wanted representatives to vote with discernment, not just mirror popular public opinion.

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Anonymous #12 8w

Supporting popular vote for the president—not for any other office, just the president—does not mean supporting anything that would be passed under that system, just as supporting the electoral college does not mean supporting everything that happens under this one Personally, I’d be open to a mix of proportion of the total and a certain amount of additional votes for winning different states, but the current system just makes a big part of the country not have much of any impact

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Anonymous #12 8w

I do not support direct democracy, I support the popular vote But no, the majority would not have kept it legal longer, in fact the electoral college specifically benefited the slavers because the enslaved people in their states increased how much the slavers votes counted for, that’s part of why it was so hard to deal with the issue in the first place And we don’t have good opinion polling on any issue from back then, so we don’t know the percentage who supported what in that front

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Anonymous #15 8w

So you agree with the winner-take-all system then? Why speak against it? You’re making two conflicting points here. Popular vote for presidency is advocating for direct democracy in the literal highest political office in the country. The 3/5 compromise indeed did give slaves states more representation, but that conversation only happened because slavery itself was held up by majority rule.. which is the flaw im pointing out that the EC combats. Our system isn’t perfect, but there’s a reason…

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Anonymous #15 8w

… it has held strong for 250 years. Our FF knew what they were doing. They were very intelligent men who just escaped tyranny. We should stop acting like we know better.

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Anonymous #12 8w

I don’t think we disagree in the way you think we do. The EC wasn’t a bad system for collecting something that represented the opinions of the people. But at this point in our country’s history, there is no difference from a popular vote besides votes from different areas being worth more or less, even without considering how little it does to vote in states that keep a strong party majority every year.

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Anonymous #12 8w

It had its uses, yes, it worked for 250 years, and most of the time it gets close to the popular vote anyway. But we no longer have things like slavery to try to adapt to. We have the technology to just count every vote. I’m not really seeing what benefits there are to keeping it today.

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Anonymous #9 8w

It’s not about the technology to count the votes. It’s about how the votes count. And an evil like slavery may not be a problem in America today, but to frame that like modern evils don’t exist or won’t come up, and we won’t have to vote on their legality, is not honest. We probably do agree more than we disagree. But this conversation was about whether we should rid the EC, no?

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Anonymous #12 8w

I guess I’m just not understanding how the EC could help us if any modern evils come up. Slavery was something that was compromised on when creating the system, but I’m not sure it makes sense to say that the EC did anything to combat that evil.

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Anonymous #9 8w

You have a point, and I’m sorry for framing it that way. The EC doesn’t stop the evil itself. It stops mob rule while also giving voices to rural citizens. My point was that evils like slavery can come through mob rule.

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Anonymous #12 8w

I think I know what you’re trying to say, but I don’t see how it stops mob rule, except in cases where the “mob” is grouped together by location more than any other factor. That was more likely in the past, but nowadays the “mob” that supports some specific injustice is just as likely to be spread across the country relatively evenly, in which case the EC is likely to make the mob more effective, rather than less.

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Anonymous #9 8w

You’re assuming modern mobs are evenly spread, but most radical or unjust ideas still concentrate in dense cities with a large scale media and institutional power. The EC isn’t perfect, but it forces national coalitions instead of letting the five biggest states decide everything. The electoral college is preventing domination that otherwise would happen. It represents more people. And even is part of the reason we ended slavery. The EC is the reason Abe Lincoln was even voted in. Whom ended…

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Anonymous #9 8w

… slavery in the USA. That balance would not have existed, because the south did NOT vote him in. He would’ve lost under popular vote.

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Anonymous #9 8w

Abe Lincoln won ZERO Southern electoral votes but still won. The South had 3/5 representation, but even that couldn’t block him. Without the EC, slavery may have lasted longer, and racism could be even worse today

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Anonymous #12 8w

Lincoln won because the Democratic vote was split two ways, the South had far fewer voters relative to their representation than the North

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Anonymous #15 8w

You’re actually reinforcing my point. You’re right that the Democrat split played a role, but that split only mattered within the EC system. Without it, the South’s disproportionate power from the 3/5 Compromise might’ve blocked Lincoln entirely. The EC helped bypass Southern dominance and gave anti-slavery regions actual leverage.

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Anonymous #15 8w

Oh that’s embarrassing didn’t realize you just responded 💀

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Anonymous #12 8w

The 3/5 compromise would have only mattered for congressional elections of there was no electoral college, when it’s one person one vote counting people who don’t vote is irrelevant

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Anonymous #15 8w

Dude stop for a second with the convo…. what u downvoting every comment I make for 💀

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Anonymous #15 8w

But thats not actually how it worked. The 3/5 Compromise directly boosted Southern states’ electoral votes because those votes were tied to population which included 3/5 of enslaved people, who couldn’t vote.

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Anonymous #12 8w

I understand that Lincoln’s election is generally considered a success of the EC, but I don’t see how that’s evidence that it will be positive in the future. That example also doesn’t support that unjust ideas are concentrated in cities. The EC might prevent direct domination of the vote by cities, but it just moves that dominance to swing states. So if our hypothetical mob is concentrated in those places, it is given more power, not less, while needing less of a majority at the same time.

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Anonymous #12 8w

I understand that it seems unfair for population to be the be all, end all for voting power. But how is lumping groups together as a total vote the best solution? This in-between winner takes all is convoluted and unnecessary. The points you’re making - assuming everyone even agreed on them - could be better addressed by simply scaling the vote counts before adding them together.

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Anonymous #12 8w

Yes, but states only have numbers of electoral votes assigned to them becauss if the electoral college. In a popular vote system, states wouldn’t have different numbers of electoral votes assigned to them, it’d just be about the total votes for each candidate

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Anonymous #12 8w

I’m downvoting your replies since they’re saying info that is just wrong Lincoln won the popular vote, and it wasn’t even close, he won by over 19% of the vote lover the next closest candidate. Please, just look up the vote totals, Lincoln won due to the election being made up of three other candidates who split any opposition vote The electoral college with the 3/5ths compromise benefited slave state voters so much that there are some people who argue it was put into place for that reason

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Anonymous #16 8w

I support Ranked Choice Voting, but that is a voting system, the electoral college and popular votes are electoral systems. You could do popular vote or the electoral college with RCV, STAR voting, first past the post, or many other models

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Anonymous #12 8w

Honestly, having given it a little bit of thought, I care less about whether the EC is theoretically useful, and more about the extent to which it enables corruption. Take a look at some of the proposals for how districts should be split. Google “Texas dvr planc2203” for a particularly egregious example. Even if you defend the current distributions, this level of gerrymandering even being possible, let alone submitted as a serious proposal, is clear evidence that the system can be abused.

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Anonymous #9 8w

That’s state-level gerrymandering. Not because of the federal EC. The EC doesn’t cause gerrymandering & gerrymandering does not control the EC. Those are separate things. The EC doesn’t draw any lines, they just take the votes which the state won, and represents what the state voted for. If there’s gerrymandering that causes the EC to vote a certain way, that’s the state’s fault. And the federal government has every right to intervene. The Texas example is a state districting issue, not bc of EC

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Anonymous #15 8w

Lincoln got 39.8% of the popular vote. But it was between 4 candidates. There was less support for Lincoln nationwide than there was for other options. America didn't want him. Saying "it wasn't even close" is a lie too. Should I downvote you for that? Anyway, let me correct you, he got zero southern electoral votes. He swept nearly all Northern states, which had most of the ec votes, giving him a 180- 123 EC win.

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Anonymous #15 8w

Ok imma reframe that cuz it was kinda rude and egotistical: He didn’t win the majority of Americans; that’s my point. He won the presidency because of how the EC amplified regional (the north) support. I suppose you could be pedantic with the semantics, or you could not focus on a misuse of words between majority and popular vote. The facts are Lincoln won with major help from the EC.

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Anonymous #15 8w

What actually bothers me was being called dishonest for stating a historical fact… accusing someone of lying just because they know the details better? That’s out of pocket. And you’re actively spreading misinformation and people are falling for it. Ironically, this thread shows why we need the EC… look at this mob rule 😭

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Anonymous #12 8w

The electoral college is not the cause of gerrymandering, but it is affected by it, whereas the popular vote is not

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Anonymous #12 8w

He didn’t get a majority in the electoral college either is the thing. This happens in other countries too that don’t have electoral college systems, where some political factions are too divided. Popular vote does not require a majority, it requires a plurality, which a Lincoln won Lincoln didn’t have support from a majority of American voters but he had more than any other candidate did. The Democratic Party’s coalition fractured over the expansion of slavery

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Anonymous #12 8w

The electoral college did not amplify regional support, where are you getting that idea? How can you argue that? Lincoln got more votes than the Northern and Southern Democratic candidates combined, and the Constitutional Union party had even less of a constituency than the Whigs did. Sometimes a political party and opposition to a candidate can’t unite behind one person and they lose, this happens in popular vote systems all the time globally

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Anonymous #15 8w

The Electoral College didn’t amplify regional support? Lincoln didn’t even appear on most Southern ballots and still swept the North because of how EC votes are distributed by state, not population clusters. That’s the entire mechanism that allowed him to win DECISIVELY despite being regionally isolated. Without the EC, his win would’ve been far less secure given how split the popular vote was. The EC does amplify regional support when one region is unified and others are fractured

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Anonymous #12 8w

Does this not directly oppose what you’re saying about the EC fighting mob rule? If Lincoln’s voters were mostly regionally isolated to northern cities, does that not make them a “mob” that had their opinion magnified, under what you’ve previously said? His victory wasn’t “decisive” under the EC, OR popular vote, so it doesn’t make any sense to guess whether it would’ve been less secure.

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Anonymous #12 8w

The EC amplifies support of *fractured* regions. If a candidate gets 51% of a states vote, it is functionally exactly the same as if they had gotten 100%. This reduces the effect of unified areas, not helps them. Hence what you were originally saying about mobs. I don’t understand how you’ve suddenly swapped to the opposite conclusion.

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Anonymous #9 8w

Exactly, all the arguments for keeping the EC are moot points at best

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