Former President Donald Trump and Republican Gov. Jim Pillen have called on lawmakers to change the state’s Electoral College vote allocation to a winner-take-all system.
I have mixed feelings on the electoral college, but imo “winner-takes-all” voting should be unconstitutional. That particular implementation of the electoral college carries the potential to nullify 49% of the votes in our current two-party system, and it gets even worse when you have more than 2 parties. If there were 3 major parties, “winner-takes-all” has the potential to nullify 66% of the vote if it’s split 33%-33%-34%, and becomes more egregious as the number of major parties increases.
The solution to this is, obviously, ranked choice voting, and ditch the EC.
Citizens can cast multiple votes across parties, votes don’t get nullified, and it actually gives a chance to more than 2 parties while still accurately representing the popular vote.
The problem is, unfortunately, educating the entire electorate on how the hell it actually works and works for them. The first time that I participated in it, we ended up with mayor Eric Adams, because people didn’t know that they could choose more than one option at a time During the primaries. We could have had Mayor Kathryn Garcia instead if anyone had bothered to explain how ranked choice voting worked.
My ideal election laws would have an electoral college type setup, but based on congressional district rather than by state. Now, here are the changes that make it workable.
First, the number of congressional districts needs to increase. Massively. There needs to be a fixed ratio of Representatives to state population. At least 1 rep per X people. Then that number needs to be set in stone.
Congress got into a pissing match 100 years ago over how to do apportionment, so now we’re stuck with 435 Representatives when the population of the US has more than tripled and two new states have been added.
The next thing that needs to be set in stone is a way to draw districts. Shortest split-line is the method of choice here. Now, it can favor conservatives and rural areas a bit, but only if your number of districts is too low. With enough districts, the output starts to look a lot like actual population maps. If you squint.
I’d ditch the Senate. Or roll it into the House. Maybe say that each state gets an equal number of representatives who serve more than 2 years. So that there’s a group of people who have institutional knowledge when the next congress forms.
This would be important for the next change I’d make. Term limits, or rather, consecutive term limits. You’d be able to serve two terms, but then to serve a third you’d have to take one full term off, actually living in your district. You must spend 25 of every 30 days living in the district for at least 2 years to qualify to represent that district.
The final, and most impactful, change would be the voting system itself. We desperately need to ditch FPtP, and Ordinal voting systems in general. Cardinal voting systems are the only way to have viable third parties, with actual, separate identities.
My current favorite system is STAR. It’s the absolute best single winner election system out there. There may be better systems in the future, but for now, this is it.
So let’s talk practicality of these fixes.
Increasing the size of Congress is a single law. That’s it. If you want to push things a bit further, there’s James Madison’s Congressional Apportionment Amendment, which despite being introduced in the late 1700s, is still a viable amendment, and could theoretically finish the ratification process.
Fun fact, the 27th amendment, which was ratified within my lifetime, was introduced along with the congressional apportionment amendment.
Drawing districts is a State level thing, but Congress does have the power to set requirements on federal elections. They could require that federal districts be drawn via a certain way.
But still, an amendment is likely the only way that it would be implemented.
Term limits flat out need an amendment, same with ditching the senate.
And the final note, the voting system needs to either be done state by state, or via the ability to control federal elections. Possibly needs an amendment to actually apply to everyone,
Honestly? Because a national popular vote (for president) would take an amendment, or every state joining the national interstate voting compact, but wouldn’t actually fix the deeper issue of the dysfunction of Congress.
Also, the compact might be of questionable constitutionality.
A one time fix might be enough to fix things for a while…
But to truly fix things…
Set up something akin to Lemmy mixed with Wikipedia. Now, the only people who can post to this social media would be members of congress. Every single bill would have to be posted in its entirety to this platform for at least 30 days before a vote could be called. And then, members of congress could post in the comments, debating the bill. This would also give them ways to post links and research and shit,
Now, the important thing here, this platform would be open to anyone to view.
Hell, add in the ability to post video comments. Let these people play their popularity contests, but out in the open.
Oh yeah, if the bill is amended, then the 30-day timer restarts. Also, no more breaks. Congress is always officially in session. Then allow voting via the platform. Allow votes to be cast beforehand, but they finalize on the 30th day. If the bill does not get enough votes to pass, it’s dead, but can be resubmitted, or kicked back to committee. (a sub-lemmy for particular topics)
Maybe add in hired transcribers whose only job is to post transcribed text of any meeting or such.
Then make the software open, and get states to use it, and city councils. Basically all government should be done in text and in the open. With time for those making the laws to actually read them, and for the public to be able to know exactly what’s going on in government.
The benefit of my idea here is that it can support quite a bit of expansion, while still allowing a fairly local feeling representation. Because congress could easily work from home most of the time.
Which completely deprives them of representation. Even if they only got 10%, that 10% of people will have no voice.
It needs to be more like Nebraskas current method but in every state, along with ranked choice voting. Winner takes all, let alone FPTP and the EC as a whole, are horribly stupid.
It doesn’t matter how you change the voting system. Only one person can be president. And once a president is chosen, by whatever means, anyone who wanted someone else “has no voice” by your definition.
The president almost always gets a majority of the popular vote.
Of course I think the president should always, not almost always, get a majority. But that just requires switching to a national popular vote, not one of the various other schemes under discussion.
While we’re changing things that should be one of the things we change as well. There should not be a unitary executive with ability to override the will of the people. There should be a council or something similar where a group of views are represented and a decision come to. Making things more democratic is always a worthy goal.
False. The Senate is anti-democratic in intent. Meant to block the will of the people. And the house has been artificially capped for the last 100ish years. Becoming largely unrepresentative and horribly gerrymandered. It should be representative, democratic, and not over-ruleable by a single person or non speaking filibuster.
I have mixed feelings on the electoral college, but imo “winner-takes-all” voting should be unconstitutional. That particular implementation of the electoral college carries the potential to nullify 49% of the votes in our current two-party system, and it gets even worse when you have more than 2 parties. If there were 3 major parties, “winner-takes-all” has the potential to nullify 66% of the vote if it’s split 33%-33%-34%, and becomes more egregious as the number of major parties increases.
The solution to this is, obviously, ranked choice voting, and ditch the EC.
Citizens can cast multiple votes across parties, votes don’t get nullified, and it actually gives a chance to more than 2 parties while still accurately representing the popular vote.
The problem is, unfortunately, educating the entire electorate on how the hell it actually works and works for them. The first time that I participated in it, we ended up with mayor Eric Adams, because people didn’t know that they could choose more than one option at a time During the primaries. We could have had Mayor Kathryn Garcia instead if anyone had bothered to explain how ranked choice voting worked.
Gerrymandering would make the president like the House. 55% of voters select Democrats but then 52% of selected representatives are Republicans 🤔
Absolutely. Its taking an already flawed undemocratic system and making it even worse.
My ideal election laws would have an electoral college type setup, but based on congressional district rather than by state. Now, here are the changes that make it workable.
First, the number of congressional districts needs to increase. Massively. There needs to be a fixed ratio of Representatives to state population. At least 1 rep per X people. Then that number needs to be set in stone.
Congress got into a pissing match 100 years ago over how to do apportionment, so now we’re stuck with 435 Representatives when the population of the US has more than tripled and two new states have been added.
The next thing that needs to be set in stone is a way to draw districts. Shortest split-line is the method of choice here. Now, it can favor conservatives and rural areas a bit, but only if your number of districts is too low. With enough districts, the output starts to look a lot like actual population maps. If you squint.
I’d ditch the Senate. Or roll it into the House. Maybe say that each state gets an equal number of representatives who serve more than 2 years. So that there’s a group of people who have institutional knowledge when the next congress forms.
This would be important for the next change I’d make. Term limits, or rather, consecutive term limits. You’d be able to serve two terms, but then to serve a third you’d have to take one full term off, actually living in your district. You must spend 25 of every 30 days living in the district for at least 2 years to qualify to represent that district.
The final, and most impactful, change would be the voting system itself. We desperately need to ditch FPtP, and Ordinal voting systems in general. Cardinal voting systems are the only way to have viable third parties, with actual, separate identities.
My current favorite system is STAR. It’s the absolute best single winner election system out there. There may be better systems in the future, but for now, this is it.
So let’s talk practicality of these fixes.
Increasing the size of Congress is a single law. That’s it. If you want to push things a bit further, there’s James Madison’s Congressional Apportionment Amendment, which despite being introduced in the late 1700s, is still a viable amendment, and could theoretically finish the ratification process.
Fun fact, the 27th amendment, which was ratified within my lifetime, was introduced along with the congressional apportionment amendment.
Drawing districts is a State level thing, but Congress does have the power to set requirements on federal elections. They could require that federal districts be drawn via a certain way.
But still, an amendment is likely the only way that it would be implemented.
Term limits flat out need an amendment, same with ditching the senate.
And the final note, the voting system needs to either be done state by state, or via the ability to control federal elections. Possibly needs an amendment to actually apply to everyone,
Why do all this stuff and chunk at the district level rather than just using the popular vote?
Honestly? Because a national popular vote (for president) would take an amendment, or every state joining the national interstate voting compact, but wouldn’t actually fix the deeper issue of the dysfunction of Congress.
Also, the compact might be of questionable constitutionality.
But fixing congress… This link spells out the problem as well as a one time fix for a problem that’s always going to exist.
A one time fix might be enough to fix things for a while…
But to truly fix things…
Set up something akin to Lemmy mixed with Wikipedia. Now, the only people who can post to this social media would be members of congress. Every single bill would have to be posted in its entirety to this platform for at least 30 days before a vote could be called. And then, members of congress could post in the comments, debating the bill. This would also give them ways to post links and research and shit,
Now, the important thing here, this platform would be open to anyone to view.
Hell, add in the ability to post video comments. Let these people play their popularity contests, but out in the open.
Oh yeah, if the bill is amended, then the 30-day timer restarts. Also, no more breaks. Congress is always officially in session. Then allow voting via the platform. Allow votes to be cast beforehand, but they finalize on the 30th day. If the bill does not get enough votes to pass, it’s dead, but can be resubmitted, or kicked back to committee. (a sub-lemmy for particular topics)
Maybe add in hired transcribers whose only job is to post transcribed text of any meeting or such.
Then make the software open, and get states to use it, and city councils. Basically all government should be done in text and in the open. With time for those making the laws to actually read them, and for the public to be able to know exactly what’s going on in government.
The benefit of my idea here is that it can support quite a bit of expansion, while still allowing a fairly local feeling representation. Because congress could easily work from home most of the time.
A losing vote is not “nullified”. It is simply a losing vote.
Regardless of the voting system, when voting for President there are going to be people who vote for a losing candidate.
Which completely deprives them of representation. Even if they only got 10%, that 10% of people will have no voice.
It needs to be more like Nebraskas current method but in every state, along with ranked choice voting. Winner takes all, let alone FPTP and the EC as a whole, are horribly stupid.
It doesn’t matter how you change the voting system. Only one person can be president. And once a president is chosen, by whatever means, anyone who wanted someone else “has no voice” by your definition.
@FlowVoid @Soulg true, but then it won’t be the *majority* of people who didn’t “have a voice” which is a stark improvement over the current situation
The president almost always gets a majority of the popular vote.
Of course I think the president should always, not almost always, get a majority. But that just requires switching to a national popular vote, not one of the various other schemes under discussion.
Republicans won both 2000 and 2016 despite losing the popular vote.
Right, which is why I said almost always instead of always. Out of 57 contested elections, the popular vote winner won 52.
While we’re changing things that should be one of the things we change as well. There should not be a unitary executive with ability to override the will of the people. There should be a council or something similar where a group of views are represented and a decision come to. Making things more democratic is always a worthy goal.
We have that too, it’s called Congress
False. The Senate is anti-democratic in intent. Meant to block the will of the people. And the house has been artificially capped for the last 100ish years. Becoming largely unrepresentative and horribly gerrymandered. It should be representative, democratic, and not over-ruleable by a single person or non speaking filibuster.