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Half the population lives in blue, half lives in gray. I’d rather not be completely ignored just because I don’t live in Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, or Kent counties

As opposed to the 10% of the country that's completely ignored in California? Scratch that, As opposed to the 90% of the country that's completely ignored because they don't live in Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania or Michigan? Someone is always going to be ignored, there is now system possible that stops that and the Electoral College makes the "people being ignored" problem greater than a Popular vote would make it.

If you look at a map, it does look like only a small portion of the country matters, but that's just factually wrong. You said it yourself, half the country lives in those blue counties, that's where half the country is, that's where half the people who are affected by the president live.

I’ve never understood this logic when arguing about the electoral college. How is a Vermont vote worth more than a California one when the national popular vote is irrelevant? A Vermont vote is only worth something in Vermont, where it decides who gets the three electors.

In fact, I’d argue a California vote’s worth far more than a Vermont one--a Californian is, after all, voting on who gets 55 electors, 18 times as many as a Vermontian would vote on.

It's too easy to not understand. A Vermont Electoral Vote represents the 208K people while a Californian Electoral Vote represents 705K people. A person from California's vote therefor only has 30% the influence towards the final result than a person from Vermont does. If you would reduce the nuimbers, you would find that if three people from California voted one way but only one from Vermont voted the other way, that one person from Vermont just out-voted three people.

I feel like I'm becoming a broken record but you people are placing too much importance over a voters location, too much importance over the voting power of the acre, and not enough on the actual individual making their choice, only to get silenced by their neighbors or outvoted by less people living in the right state.

You are underselling the flaws of the Electoral College system, you are ignoring that there are millions of people who literally have no say in the outcome of the election and that this is a system where minority rule can happen if the minority lives in the right location and the importance of the individual voice is determined my your address alone.

There are millions of people in California and Texas tired of not having a say and there are 40 states that are completely ignored by presidential candidates during the election because the Electoral Vote system makes it pointless to pay attention to anyone other than states you can steal from the opponent, aka, a game.

This argument that the less populated locations will get completely ignored simply holds no water when they already get completely ignored already, on top of the fact that the half of the country that lives in cities deserves the same amount of say at the half that live in the country, not 30% of the say because they take up less land area.

@xTSGx
>"I’d rather not be completely ignored just because I don’t live in Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, or Kent counties."

Why is it better for solid states to be ignored than swing states? Why is what the majority of people think should be ignored, but what people in random states like Florida matter? Why should my vote in Alabama be thrown away, but someone's vote in Florida not?
What issues does the president command over that have actual region differences?

So because you didn't get the result you wanted, you think your vote was thrown away? This is honestly sounding less like you want to abolish the electoral college, and much more like you want to abolish representative democracy. And its sounding much more like you want to do it because your candidate didn't win this cycle.

The system, from its very foundation, is designed to be a winner take all system. We vote for candidates and not parties, like other forms of democracy around the world. By doing it this way, we guarantee that only 1 person can win whatever position they are working towards, and that appointing a head of state is always a winner take all affair.

The United States doesn't run on a parliament. We don't vote for the parties and then have the parties nominate candidates after the fact, we do it opposite of that in fact. We also don't have any mechanic that gives both parties and voters the equal representation they want. If you vote 45/55 democrat versus republican, you don't get 45% of the house being democrat and 55% being republican. You get whoever was voted into the position, and if they weren't for your party you lose.

That's just the way it goes. If you equate you not getting the result you voted for to votes straight up not mattering, you're doing democracy wrong, frankly. You're talking like you want a autocratic state, with your party or candidate at the top of the pyramid. Part of democracy, republic, parliamentary, or direct, is that you need to accept that you won't always get the result you voted for. And wanting to reform the whole damn system because you lost this round doesn't help to fix the underlying issue you seem to have with the system, it just makes it worse.

But if you were really dead-set on changing how the electoral college works, maybe you should try and start a campaign to change it at the state level, where this shit is actually decided. Stop thinking like this is a feudal system where all the states are serfs and the federal government is the lord. State governments can decide how they handle the electoral college, and if its a winner take all system or a system done a different way.

Write into your state representative, your state senators, your governenr, and make it clear this is an issue on many peoples minds. Start a local petition and get real, physical signatures and send it to their offices. If you want to really change stuff, work for it with the tools the system has had in place for change. And stop acting like we live in a monarchy, checks and balance exists for a reason, dammit.

>"So because you didn’t get the result you wanted, you think your vote was thrown away?"

uhh, what? My vote doesn't matter in Alabama because my state has been red for 30 years. Alabama, California, and many other states have been the same for decades, voting in those states have no impact on the election what so ever. With popular vote every single vote matters.

my vote doesnt matter might as well vote for myself thanks to electoral college corrupting shit up

Why do we have this anymore?

"So because you didn’t get the result you wanted, you think your vote was thrown away? "

Uh, no, I voted Blue but because more people voted Red in my state my vote didn't factor into the final count that actually determined the president. If I had not voted, the number of Electoral votes that the candidates got would be exactly the same. That's why my vote was thrown away. because it didn't factor into the actual election that determines the president. With a popular vote, my vote is guaranteed to at least make a marginal difference in the end count, but if you live on California and want to vote Red, you might as well not even get out of bed because your vote won't even be counted in the national election.

You guys really seem to think the electoral college exists soley to make your votes worth less, but I think it's pretty clear that it's supposed to make more people's votes worth something.

@Borike especially

Do you want people to ignore state interests because they don't work for you're argument or something? State interests are people's interests, and it's flat out intellectually dishonest to ignore that things that matter to people in California for example matter significantly less at the other end of the country and vice versa. xTSGx's pic on the first page illustrates the disparity in numbers I was talking about and how large population centers who are naturally gonna have different interests will easily outvote and practically render less populous areas interests unrepresented. If that isn't the democracy our founding fathers had in mind than it's not good enough for me either, plain and simple.

So the needs of the few matter more if they are spread out and the needs of the many matter less if they are clumped together? I think you are missing the main crux of the argument that "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" If 70% of the country needs something from president A, they should get 70% of the say, not 30% because they only take up 30% of the landmass. I've said it again and again, this focus on land area is complete insanity. I live in a town and my interests are going to be different than the farmers that lives twenty miles from me. Urban and Rural areas are divided much more finely than on a state level.

State interests aren't as important in America or to it's people as it did when America was first founded. When America was first founded and the States were few, the population was few and the States were like mini-countries in an alliance more than parts of a country, the Electoral College made perfect sense.

But that isn't the America we live in anymore. People aren't voting for the President based on state interests, they are voting based on national interests. People are voting based on whether or not the president will veto bills that affect the country uniformly or if they will enter a war that will affect the country uniformly. Protecting state interests is the job of the Congress, you vote for representatives that represent your state or your local area. The president is meant to speak for the country and all it's people as a whole, so they should be voted in as a whole, not in separated segments.

I don't get how the winner take all system is supposed to defend smaller states. Get rid of that and each state has the same voting power, but now people voting against what the majority of their state is voting for still have their say matter on a national level. That you have to admit is broken.

If that isn’t the democracy our founding fathers had in mind than it’s not good enough for me either, plain and simple.

You realize the democracy the founding fathers had in their mind forbade women from voting right? They weren't perfect and they knew it, that's why amendments are a thing, because the founding fathers knew that the needs of the future will not be the needs of their time so they left away for future generations to change the constitution if America ever changed and boy did it change.

Edit: To go even deeper into this topic, the main reason we have the Electoral College is because when America was founded the colonies did not get along and half of them wanted to keep slaves while the other wanted to abolish them, half of the states wanted pretty much 95% independent rule while the other half wanted a united country. However, the British were threatening to destroy America before it was even born and the colonies needed to be united to survive, which is why the compromise of the Electoral College, which allowed smaller states more power, was made, because it was that or death.

That is not the America we live in today. The difference between what states we live in affects us marginally more than what county we live in, the states all get along, and don't have the power they once had. People hardly care about national issues based on what state they live in and more about how it will affect them personally. People think of themselves as a citizen of the United States first and a citizen of their state second if at all.

The Electoral College is a relic of a time of state dominance that has long since past and more and more people are calling for change the founding fathers left us the ability to enact, foreseeing the possibility of a changing America that needs a changing law of the land. The Electoral College doesn't represent the will of the people, it represents the will of the states, but the citizens of America don't vote based on the will of the state, they vote based on their own will.

The power of the states still stand in the Legislative Branch in the form of the Senate, however the President represents the nation as a whole and all it's population, not the individual states, so it should be that the people vote for the person that represents them.

At this point, this might be the last thing or close to the last thing I will say on this topic, seeing how this conversation is going in circles and going nowhere, and how I'm probably going to disappear for the next few days, so I'll just leave this here and say if you don't agree, then fine, but this is what I wholeheartedly believe.

I ran out of edit time. To add one more thing to my last sentence, this is not a view I just adopted because I'm salty due to the election results, this is view-point I made after the first time I voted and after a deeper look into the voting system, it's just the topic never really came up until after the election. In case people think I'm just making this up on the fly and am just being salty, I'm not. This is just something I feel strongly about and am mad at the fact that any change to the voting system will never happen.

Your guys votes did matter for the final electoral college vote. If enough people vote blue, the states electoral votes go to the dems. If they vote red, they go to the red. Even in a popular vote setting, none of that changes. If the republicans win the majority in your states, they win the majority voters, and the other candidate will get a disadvantage from your states votes compared to their opponents advantag. The same thing for if your state goes blue, you think 44% of the vote from a state is really going to matter when the other 56% voted for the other guy? What exaclty is the popular vote going to do to make 44% of every states vote matter compared to 55% of every states vote? How does it solve the disparity if no matter what only 1 candidate gets to be in the poisition of power at the end of the day.

Stop scapegoating the problems with the system you have and actually tackle it. You want a parliamentary system and everything you've said points to that. No amount of adhereing to the popular vote is going to change the winner take all system in the united states politics, which is encouraged by voting for candidates rather then party in this country.

Ok for real last post (hopefully, but probably not) because you are missing the whole point of my argument completely and think I am arguing for something I'm not.

If I vote Red, and red wins 45% of the total vote and Blue wins 55%, I'm fine with that, because my vote, my individual and no ones but my own affected by no one around me vote still counted towards what determined the actual outcome of the election. But in our current system, if Blue wins 55% of the vote, they win 100% of the vote, and that's not fair to the individual nor the minority of the state. Red winning 2% or 49% makes no difference in the count that actually determines the president, all Electoral Votes go to Blue regardless of how many people voted Red.

This system allows for a President that only 25% of the people voted for to win, because the winner of the state takes all of the states votes. I don't want my vote to only matter if people around me agree with me and vote the same as I do, I want it so If I vote for some random guy that only I voted for, the final results show that that man got .000000001% of the vote. Even if my vote only makes a marginal difference in the final tally, I want it to make some difference rather than zero.

Without the winner take all system, the 30% of the Red voting Californians win 16 electoral votes for their candidate, more than enough to make a difference in who actually becomes president, but in our current system, they win zero. THAT'S THE CRUX OF THE PROBLEM If your state votes Red every election, in our current system, there is no incentive to vote Blue because your vote won't count towards the final tally but without the winner take all system, the 30% of Blue voters can still have their vote help the Blue candidate win even if 70% of the vote goes to Red.

We don't want a Parliament, we want our individual votes to count towards what determines the president. I don't want it so the person I voted for will have some power, I want it so that my vote goes into the vote that determines the president, not the vote to determine if my vote goes into the vote that determines the president. I don't want my city interests to be over shadowed because I live in a rural state, and I don't want my concerns to be silenced for not agreeing with the majority of my state, even if they agree with the majority of the country.

I want the 30% of Red Californians that live in the country to have a say in who becomes president, and not be silenced by the 70% of Blue Californians. I would be mostly fine with keeping the Electoral College system if we got rid of the "Winner Take All" portion of it that makes it so that only 4 states are visited by the candidates and makes it so people voting against the majority of their state have some say.

Sorry for bumping his old thread, but I have to get this off my chest.

The fact that Congress exist, makes the Electoral College utterly pointless. Individual states can already vote for their own representatives. If certain states don't like who's president, they can simply vote for their own representatives to counter him. Everyone, including the Founding Fathers, seem to have forgotten that the president doesn't get ultimate power.

Why can't we vote for a single representative as a nation? Why should the vote of someone who lives in bumfuck nothing be worth more than others? Why should the votes of Republicans in blue states and Democrats in red states be worthless? Why should a small group of jackasses we don't know get to decide who's president, making our votes ultimately meaningless? Why should we keep an electoral system with a 7% failure rate?