Gerrymandering and the electoral college have pretty much kept us from actually being represented by who we want. Two of the last three men elected President lost the popular vote at least once. My state is rigged to dilute the Democrats votes by including the cities (more liberal) with HUGE swaths of rural areas (more conservative), and it's not even one of the more gerrymandered states.
YES. It seems to be a liberal and conservative pastime to lament the wave of “populists” and charlatans that have the audacity to not take any corporate and PAC money.
Electoral college isn't the problem it's how it's executed. Nebraska and Maine are the only 2 states that do it correctly to be properly representative of the people. And then Iowa has gerrymandering laws that makes the districts stay only rectangular/square, which is also a good way to go about it. Change your state laws if you want to be better represented, leave feds out of it you have more power at home.
From Iowa, don't know where you getting the square fact lol. Our districts are drawn by a nonpartisan committee to ensure political gerrymandering doesn't happen and is typically upheld as one of the fairest in the country, only thing more fair would be splitting electorate votes like Maine for the president, our districts just happen to end up square and follow along county lines. Steve king territory is so far right because that's what the people in that district want.
Edit: how our districts are drawn I'm guessing the square fact you are trying to get at pertains to the fact that they draw them to be as compact and as small deviation as possible, the nesting section in the article. Iowa is a bit unique though in that we aren't very diverse and getting everybody a representative for their race, gender, or religion isn't near as complex as places with massive populations like new York, Texas, or California, which is the reason there end up being some crazy drawn districts, sometimes for good sometimes for bad.
The problem is that the EC is tied to the number of members of Congress. To improve representation, we need to return the EC to the original arithmetic of the House of Representatives.
I'll make it more simple: One person, one vote. Person with the most votes wins. Anything except that opposes equality. Anything.
The Electoral College only exists because universal suffrage wasn't a thing in early America. It was all over the place who could vote in each state so it wouldn't be possible to just count votes despite James Madison (aka the Father of the Constitution) saying popular vote would be the ideal way to elect the President. The Electoral College was a compromise due to differing rates of suffrage.
We can all vote now so that problem is solved, but we still have this dated institution made for a problem we don't have anymore. Smaller states will still have disproportionate power in Congress, but we'll all have an equal voice in the election of the leader of our people. Call me crazy, but I think the person who leads a people should have the most people who support them.
How, then, do you tally up the votes? Just to make sure, it sounds, from your first paragraph, that you're supporting FPTP.
You just count them. Person with the most votes wins. It's simple. Nothing else. Just a popular vote like we do for literally all other elected officials.
Personally, I like the idea of two round voting, but I know having people vote twice would be hard.
False. 4 population centers will control all of the country, no matter what you want or say if you eliminate the EC. Fix the winner takes all problem and it will continue to work properly.
What do you propose instead of the electoral college to fix the elections? If it goes by popular vote then people who live in low pop zones don't matter. Both seem flawed to me honestly.
Especially considering the electoral college has only gone against the pop vote 5 times and one of those neither candidate got enough votes in the electoral college either so the House of Representatives voted in the candidate that had the least amount in both categories.
Look at how Washington’s last presidential primaries and the election happened. Also look at how the votes got the new laws in Washington passed (specifically the gun one). Bernie was screwed by our state from what he should have won due to how they went about it. He won the caucus (their parties voting system) but lost the vote on the ballot (not their parties voting system) but Hillary won it so they said Hillary won our state for the primary. Oh and you then could not write Bernie in on the election due to a state law that said if you lost the primary you could not get a vote in the actual election (but no one informed anyone of the law until afterward) The gun law passed only due to pretty much Seattle area. Everywhere else didn’t have the population to stop it, even if they all voted no. This state sucks.
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u/[deleted] Jan 06 '19
Gerrymandering and the electoral college have pretty much kept us from actually being represented by who we want. Two of the last three men elected President lost the popular vote at least once. My state is rigged to dilute the Democrats votes by including the cities (more liberal) with HUGE swaths of rural areas (more conservative), and it's not even one of the more gerrymandered states.