Would have been cool if the Dems got control of two states (or at least tied the GOP in a couple of state delegations, in which case I understand its counted as an abstention), deadlocking the vote in the House. Would Lieberman have become president then, thanks to Gore's vote in the Senate?snip
Math disagrees with you. Here, educate yourself:Your map proves in my opinion that the electoral college is extremely important. Without it, Democrats only have to campaign in coastal cities to win the election and can completely forget about the entire middle of the country if they wanted to.
Math disagrees with you. Here, educate yourself:
Keep in mind that 80% of the population lives near a big city.
IMNSHO, getting rid of the EC would be a) VERY HARD as you'd have to get a lot of states to vote for it who'd be hurt by the change, b) a terrible idea -- it was put in place for multiple reasons, some of which still exist.
And this is precisely why focusing on big cities can get you elected president - because a huge majority of Americans live in big cities.
That's absolutely true, but that doesn't mean that the EC is not flawed.
It can't. Allow me to demonstrateFirst, while it's true that just focusing on a few big cities won't get you elected, focusing on the areas in/around those big cities can.
This is false. Even going by the widest possible definition of "around", i.e. winning every vote from the entire state, down to the last God-forsaken hamlet on the other end of the states containing the cities you mentioned, it still not enough to win the election.So, spend a few days in/around NY, LA, SF, SD, Chicago, Seattle, Philadelphia, Boston, Minneapolis, Atlanta, and maybe Dallas/San Antonio, or Miami and you could be in -- you've hit a whopping 7 or 8 sates.
Keep in mind that 80% of the population lives near a big city.
This is also false, unless you count everything above Bellevue, Iowa (population 2,543) as being "big":And this is precisely why focusing on big cities can get you elected president - because a huge majority of Americans live in big cities.
You would have to go down to the 48th biggest 'urbanized area' just to get to 50% of the population.According to new numbers just released from the U.S. Census Bureau, 80.7 percent of the U.S. population lived in urban areas as of the 2010 Census
...
The New York-Newark metro area is still the nation's most populous, with 18,351,295 residents. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim is still the second, with 12,150,996, and the Chicago area is still third, with 8,608,208. Despite all the booms and busts in other cities over the years, these three have been the most populous since the 1950 Census, when urban areas were first delineated by the Census Bureau. Their dominance likely extends even farther back in history.
But we're not just talking about cities here. The new figures represent the population in "urban areas," which the Census Bureau defines as "densely developed residential, commercial and other nonresidential areas."
There are officially two types of urban areas: “urbanized areas” of 50,000 or more people and “urban clusters” of between 2,500 and 50,000 people. For the 2010 count, the Census Bureau has defined 486 urbanized areas, accounting for 71.2 percent of the U.S. population. The 3,087 urban clusters account for 9.5 percent of the U.S. population.
Though these smaller urban clusters account for a relatively small portion of the total population, they make up the vast majority of the roughly 3,500 "urban" areas in the U.S. But is a town of 2,500 people really what we think of as "urban"?
According to the Census Bureau, a place is "urban" if it's a big, modest or even very small collection of people living near each other. That includes Houston, with its 4.9 million people, and Bellevue, Iowa, with its 2,543.
With such a wide range in populations, there's also a wide range in average densities among these urbanized areas and urban clusters. The L.A.-Long Beach-Santa Ana metropolitan area has the highest population density, with 6,999.3 people per square mile. Hickory, North Carolina, has the lowest, with 811.1 people per square mile. Among urban clusters, Richgrove, California, has the highest density (and highest in the nation), with 10,016 people per square mile. Center, Alabama, has the lowest, with 363 people per square mile.
But 2,500 people is hardly what we'd think of as a city, or even 5,000 for that matter. Let's say we decided to call places with 20,000 residents or less small towns. Of the 3,573 urban areas in the U.S. (both urbanized areas and urban clusters), 2,706 of them are small towns, by this definition. That's 75.7 percent. If roughly 80 percent of our population is urban, roughly 80 percent of our urban areas are actually small towns.
They wouldn't, not in a million years, due to the free rider problem: California Democrats could in theory decide to award EC votes proportionally, but all that does is provide an advantage to Republicans, and as long as Republicans in red states don't reciprocate, it would be truelly idiotic for California to go it alone.Second, one of the problems he claims for the electoral college (EC) is that most states award their electoral votes (EVs) as winner-takes-all, so winning by 1 vote is as good as winning by a million. While that is how most states award EVs, that is NOT a feature of the EC -- THAT is a decision by each of those states. Some states award EVs proportionally and all could if they so chose.
This is just a non-sequitur.If you're going to get rid of the EC, you might as well do away with how congressional representation is done -- instead of having 435 people elected to state-based districts, just have 100 people elected in population-based districts that are computer-realigned after each census.
And I think people started using "The United States of America" instead of "These United States of America" for a reason. "States rights" should have died in a courthouse in Appomattox 151 years ago.Personally, I think the EC still has value supporting the idea that the US isn't just a 'flat network' of 300M people -- it's a collection of states, made up of 300M people.
This debate is better suited for its own thread (of which many exist in PolChat) rather than derailing this one.Certainly the EC is not perfect. Churchill's quote that, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others" applies with the EC and many other things in the constitution. That being said, the constitution (including the EC) has served the US pretty well for 200+ years and the EC is far from the biggest problem with the US government. Personally, I think the EC still has value supporting the idea that the US isn't just a 'flat network' of 300M people -- it's a collection of states, made up of 300M people. If you're going to get rid of the EC, you might as well do away with how congressional representation is done -- instead of having 435 people elected to state-based districts, just have 100 people elected in population-based districts that are computer-realigned after each census.
It can't. Allow me to demonstrate
This is false. Even going by the widest possible definition of "around", i.e. winning every vote from the entire state, down to the last God-forsaken hamlet on the other end of the states containing the cities you mentioned, it still not enough to win the election.
They wouldn't, not in a million years, due to the free rider problem: California Democrats could in theory decide to award EC votes proportionally, but all that does is provide an advantage to Republicans, and as long as Republicans in red states don't reciprocate, it would be truelly idiotic for California to go it alone.
The best possible proportionality, with zero rounding issues, where votes match voting population down to the last decimal, is to give each state as much voting power as there are valid votes expressed in said state - i.e. the popular vote. Every other solution is mathematically inferior.
This is just a non-sequitur.
And I think people started using "The United States of America" instead of "These United States of America" for a reason. "States rights" should have died in a courthouse in Appomattox 151 years ago.
Now, the main reasons why I think people oppose abolishing the EC are three-fold:
1. (applies largely only in the case of politicians) Opportunism - doing so can be politically dangerous to ones own prospects
2. Ignorance - they hadn't really thought about the issue in a rational manner
3. Tribalism - abandoning it would negatively affect their 'tribe' (in this case the GOP)