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Tim Walz calls for scrapping of electoral college to decide US presidential race
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2024
483 points (97.6% liked)
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Finally the dems are saying it out loud. They should have been yelling this from the treetops since Bush vs Gore.
It's easy to say and harder to do anything about. I believe it would take a constitutional amendment to fix on the national scale, or "opt-in" from enough states on the state level.
The first step towards change is elevating the conversation to high office, though, so this is something.
Completely agree!
The popular vote contract sounds interesting, but I like ranked voting more because it allows flexibility in sampling the public opinion of who they'd want. Think of any question a poll could ask you where you feel there isn't a clear yes/no or single answer. Isn't it better when it allows you to pick from a few choices that together reflect your answer? An election not only could turn out more voters, it could give statistical nuances on how people lean among the ones that voted in the winner. Eg., how many that voted both Democrat candidate as well as certain other parties.
Just had a thought that we could even see a person vote Democrat and Republican on a ticket. But at least they got their vote in and showed how they're torn.
Yes, the compact is definitely a way to get around the current system, not to overhaul it (which it desperately needs but would require 2/3 approval instead of >50% of the electoral college). I agree that if we are able to get constitutional amendments on the table, we should be looking at ranked choice or approval voting systems! But one of the big issues right now is unfamiliarity with either of those systems, and a lot of familiarity with popular choice. That's why it's so important that the many, many local and statewide initiatives for ranked choice get support!
Agreed, the more we see ranked choice locally the more support there will be to expand it. Also "easier" to get it changed at that level.
Those solve two different problems. The first solves the problem of a candidate winning despite having fewer votes; the second solves the spoiler effect.
I hope it happens but there’s no way the current Supreme Court would allow this to happen.
I am imagining a future when an amendment is ratified in the proper technique and Uncle Thomas just says “nah. Also, we give outselves that power. So, away go a bunch of other amendments!”
This and Ranked Choice Voting.
By 2032 Texas will be a solid swing state and the EC becomes near impossible for the GOP to ever win again
We can wait them out, and reap the benefits
Eight years of right wing malignancy left, may the odds be ever in your favor.
People argued this idea of a permanent Democratic majority in the 2000s and then again after Obama's election but it never materialized. GenX, with its liberal sensibilities, the rise of college educations, and increased diversity among the population will make it impossible for Republicans to win. Then GenX got older and more conservative and people realized that minorities and college grads could also be made to hate immigrants and queer people.
This idea that "just waiting" is all it will take to end conservatism and other bigotries is a fantasy.
Less that and more that it turns out a lot of people don't vote based on how their candidate or his party feels about immigrants and queer people. There are even a lot of single issue voters whose single issue isn't immigration or queer people.
Regardless, the only feasible way to go from the EC to the Popular vote will be if Republicans think they've lost the advantage the EC gives them.
There are two issues:
Parties aren't set in stone, Republicans will shift some positions to appear more palatable and move some states redder
If they take power now they are likely to increase Gerrymandering and voter suppression to give themselves an advantage.
I've been hearing that for a while. Of course then again the people that said that don't seem to have an answer for the fact that in 2022 Republicans swept the entire state by like 10 points. So maybe we should stop counting on that.
Here's a comparison of Barack Obama's, Hillary Clinton's, and Joe Biden's election results in Texas:
This is the trend
Here's a comparison of Bill Clinton's, Al Gore's, and Barack Obama's election results in Florida:
Florida is reliably blue now, right? Since 2010, the Hispanic proportion of the state has grown by 5 percentage points while the white proportion has shrunk by a similar number. It's gotta be like Dem +8 by now.
Florida is different because conservatives move there when they retire or to escape COVID restrictions. And don't forget, those Latinos in Florida are Cuban, so race isn't as good an indicator.
Texas is really opposite. It's getting large influxes of left-wing voters each year.
Yes yes, we all have our post hoc excuses for why a state with a historical trend toward the Democrats didn't continue on. All of those excuses were happening when Florida was getting bluer. It'd be great if all we needed to do was kick our feet up and demographics would solve our political problems, but this isn't a new idea. People in 2000s thought the Democrats would have a permanent majority by now. Turns out the money behind the Republican party isn't going to just sit back and let them wither into nothingness.
In 10 years we'll have a good excuses for Texas too. It will be obvious that some Hispanic group was going to turn conservative because they were fleeing failures in nominally left wing states, or were very religious, or had a machismo culture or something. The young people moving to Texas for economic opportunities will be scared away by the abortion bans. Or they'll crank their media propaganda to 11. Or maybe Texas really will go blue and we'll have an entirely different set of turning-point states. The Democrats weren't doomed to be unable to win the presidency because Florida is no longer a swing state and somehow after all the Republican's failures and odious behavior we're still in a toss up now.
If it was a simple matter of waiting for Democrats to break the cycle and win forever, it would have happened by now. People have been predicting the impending collapse of the Republican party for decades.
Actually a lot of people moving to Texas tend to be conservative from other states moving explicitly for the politics. Conservatives from California in particular.
For instance in Ted Cruz's last election he got a higher percentage of Voters from new residents than he did from native Texans and of course the inverse.
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2018/11/09/native-texans-voted-for-native-texan-beto-o-rourke-transplants-went-for-ted-cruz-exit-poll-shows/