Let's solve this whole Electoral College thing...if it needs to be.

TC said:
There is no such thing as a perfect system. Democracy is all about winner takes all. The minority, who are often about 45% of the population in our elections, are SOL.
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I'm not shooting for perfect, just for better.
As it sits now, more people are SOL than not. Most people didn't even bother to vote because winner takes all means their vote really doesn't matter, regardless if they're rooting for the winning or losing candidate in their state.

Democracy isn't all about winner takes all. With a proportional multi party legislature, compromise means few need to lose. I know that's even less likely for the US though...
 
UPDATE: As of Thursday, November 17, at 2 p.m. Eastern Time, Clinton?s popular vote lead had expanded.
The new numbers were: Clinton, 62,829,832; Trump, 61,488,190. That?s a lead of one full percentage point, 47.9 to 46.9.

Read more at http://www.inquisitr.com/3721755/20...bolish-electoral-college/#Pu8vyCyCDIqsXuDV.99
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:rolleyes:

Fuck the electoral college.

On a related note, a physics professor decided to make some maps...

One way to reveal more nuance in the vote is to use not just two colors, red and blue, but to use red, blue, and shades of purple in between to indicate percentages of votes. Here is what the normal map looks like if you do this:

countymappurple512.png


And here's what the cartogram looks like:
countycartpurple512.png
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Fuck the electoral college even more.

The rest of his findings can be found here: Link
 
I'm having trouble seeing the cartogram with the colors used. Any chance someone can use black and white with greys, or soemthing? These colors are sort of bouncing off each other.
 
Here's a fun thing to ponder: Based on this year's state-by-state turnout, you could in principle win over 270 electoral college votes with about 27.7 million votes... out of about 130 million votes cast, that's under 21.3%.


The number could be even lower if you assumed stronger 3rd party candidates, lowering the percentage needed to winner-take-all electors in a state. I left 3rd party votes unchanged in the calculation, just took the smallest 40 states plus DC minus Massachusetts (not necessary to get to 270, most voters per elector from the smallest 40) and divided the votes for Trump+Clinton by two.
 
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prizrak said:
That's another thing, if we went to straight popular vote we would likely get many more 3rd party votes since it would no longer be about "throwing votes out"
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That is a good point.

I don't see the electoral college being repealed. 38 states would need to ratify the amendment. There are more than 12 less populous states that benefit from the system.
 
I forget who said that in this thread but a good middle ground would be getting rid of winner take all, still have EC but now the votes could be awarded proportionally.
 
I read an interesting piece about how the dems have sort of capitulated. Just fell into their minority role while the other side are acting as if they had a moment. EC aside....more people voted for their ideas/issues/candidate and they should act like it.

I think it's a fair point ...all isn't lost for the democrats. Their issue isn't so much about ideas/issues as it was running such a politically damaged candidate. Which goes into larger problems with favoritism etc
 
It is ironic though. The two least popular candidates in US history and even after the election we still can't figure out which one should be the president least.
 
It comes right back to the "None of the Above" option we don't have.
 
narf said:
Here's a fun thing to ponder: Based on this year's state-by-state turnout, you could in principle win over 270 electoral college votes with about 27.7 million votes... out of about 130 million votes cast, that's under 21.3%.


The number could be even lower if you assumed stronger 3rd party candidates, lowering the percentage needed to winner-take-all electors in a state. I left 3rd party votes unchanged in the calculation, just took the smallest 40 states plus DC minus Massachusetts (not necessary to get to 270, most voters per elector from the smallest 40) and divided the votes for Trump+Clinton by two.
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That...is actually really interesting. And terrifying.
 
NecroJoe said:
That...is actually really interesting. And terrifying.
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I've frequently heard "protect the minority from the majority" as a reason for the EC... Who protects the majority from the minority?

In an election between essentially two choices, anything but majority wins is utter nonsense.
 
narf said:
I've frequently heard "protect the minority from the majority" as a reason for the EC... Who protects the majority from the minority?
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I've made this point to a number of vehement HRC haters and all I got was: "A majority rules system does not work."

...which made no sense to me.
 
That guy is largely an idiot panderer though.
 
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