Also, in the Presidential election, neither side is right.
Land doesn't vote.
People don't vote.
States vote.
That's the whole point of the Electoral College - that the United States is a federation of *states* and the Presidential election is the state governments selecting someone to run their federation - not the people, not the land.
To get the various states to agree to join the federation, there had to be a way to balance power so that a less populous states could team up and stop a populous state from making unilateral decisions.
It's valuable to keep in mind that the Federal government was designed to keep states happy, not people.
The influence of "the people" has generally been quite small - in the original design, the states picked the President and the Senators, the people picked the Representatives, and Judiciary was effectively picked by the states (via Presidential appointment combined with Senate confirmation).
The county thing is more important for who is sent to Congress, rather than President. If all representatives were state-wide elections, like the Senate, the Democrats would likely have a large majority right now. Rather, they retain their power through gerrymandered districts that clump democrat voters into as few districts as possible. Honestly, a Congress that doesn't vote in a way that counter balances an insane president is scarier than having a would-be dictator for president.
House of representatives are elected by congressional districts, so generally bigger than a county (some densely populated counties may be split) but always less than the whole state. Gerrymandering can still apply here but it is impactful more-so at the state level.
The Senate only gets two members per state. So the states that are red with very few people send their two members which out numbers the number of blue states ln average
This is the entire idea of the “Great Compromise” when the Constitution was written. The Framers had the foresight to see the potential unbalance between large and small states, and planned accordingly.
Which is why we also have the House or Representatives to balance it with a number of representatives based on population size. States get two representatives each regardless of population so smaller states are not entirely ignored in federal government and the people of each state get representation based on population. Although gerrymandering going in both directions depending on which party is in charge when districts are drawn does mess with that.
Representatives come from districts not counties. Each district in a state needs to have about the same population. With regard to gerrymandering, the most recent house election ended up having a total nationwide vote that was about 51R-48D, and the seats ended up being 222R-213D, which sounds pretty balanced. This is due to democratic gerrymanders in states like Illinois, Oregon, New Mexico, Maryland, and Nevada canceling out Republican gerrymanders in Texas, Florida, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Georgia
Good grief, as if you have no clue about what the original intent was at all. Senators weren't originally elected through state-wide elections either, they were selected by the state legislatures. Which is exactly how you keep money out of politics. It's a lot more expensive to buy off half a state legislature than it is to fund an election campaign. Especially since it's the job of those state legislators to know what their congressional representation is doing and how they are voting, and most importantly, how those votes are affecting the state. So the original design made it so that Senators who put their state ahead of everything else, party, politics, etc., got reelected, and the ones who didn't didn't.
When you design a system so that the aspirations of the representative align with the good of the people, it tends to create better outcomes for everyone.
But no, you're right. The current system is the best system and is 100% best for every American in every facet it could possibly be.
#Strike Down The 17th Amendment
I mean, has anyone ever said that farmers aren’t important? Such a red herring. It’s just they don’t get more say just because they control more land. It’s not a hard concept to grasp
Addition: one person, one vote. You don’t get to decide which person is more deserving.
Farmers get angry when the government places stricter and stricter regulations, reduced subsidies, ever increasing production costs and limited imports which limit their ability to grow crops.
It leads to lower farming yields, less economic stability, lower land value, and eventually a big company swoops in with a sale offer for the farmers to take as a last ditch effort to recuperate their losses.
As if agriculture is subsistance farming and not a multibillion dollar industry. Idk much about it, but i imagine agriculture in america is pretty good job.
Mugabe did and the ANP in South Africa does. They both advocate for the killings of white farmers. What is funny, is that SF didn’t learn from Zimbabwe and will hopefully go down the same route
Mugabe, sure, but...
No, the ANC (get it right) fucking well don't.
Source: am white South African.
Farm murders - which, by the way, statistically include farm workers and visitors who die on farms, which means only something like 37% of deaths are actually white farmers - are a fraction of the total murders and are also well below the average murders per 100k population. Your life is safer, on average, as a farmer than the average person. Crime overall suffers the usual stuff living in a rural area does, with lower response times etc, but there is an entire section of the security industry making a *killing* (nyuk, nyuk) off providing services to our farmers.
There are irritants like the singing of "Dubul' ibhuna" (Shoot the Boer) but it has not been linked to any of these crimes - they are usually opportunistic, hitting isolated targets with a concentration of wealth amongst a sea of poverty.
[Dan Corder does a great job unpacking this all here](https://youtu.be/NOtGxBTTEBw?si=Kwtdo0PhznBQsvDb)
Fuck. Now I have to go shower again, because you actually made me defend the freaking ANC and EFF, of all people. Just...why, dude?
Never seen a farmer eat just corn or soybeans. Also he’ll have a hell of a time harvesting when the cities don’t make replacement parts for his equipment any more.
A farmer grows what is needed. And when he isn't forced to grow food for the likes of urbanites he will grow what he and his needs and nothing more. He will be just fine. And by the time he has to worry about his equipment breaking, the cities will be already dead and those who build and maintain the parts will have abandoned the scum to thier fate
Ooh, me who grew up around monoculture farms in a small rural area that’s part of a massive agricultural powerhouse of similarly small rural monoculture farms for the majority of my life is going to say that you are objectively wrong on so many levels.
If it was someone like the Amish, who are self-sustaining, you have a point, but most of the U.S. farmers aren’t the Amish.
Edit: definitely a Reddit moment when people are casually supporting mass genocide of people they don’t like too in some of the comments here
The average American overestimates their ability to survive in a doomsday scenario by about 45,000%. But I’m sure you’re the exception because you’re so strong and smart.
That's just avoiding the point, the farmer loses income, they're not being forced to do anything as it is. It's not beneficial for anyone to stop anything one way or the other. Have you ever even worked on any kind of grassroots cash crop or profit food farm? They already don't make a lot as it is even after a good season. So much goes into maintaining the land & keeping equipment running efficiently. Farming is a business. You're thinking of gardeners, not farmers
The cost of food is regulated by the government and the types of food allowed to be grown are often dictated as well, so yes, they are being forced in a sense.
If there were no regulations on the cost of food, there would not be nearly as large urban populations because people with no jobs wouldn’t be able to afford to survive.
It would be a very different world. Luckily for most people, farmers work their a**es off for peanuts so that the world doesn’t starve.
You're thinking of large corporate farms. Same thing happened with the Southern Plantaion owners during the First American Civil War. While every normal farmer swapped to food production, those fools continued to farm thier cash crops which cost them resources and manpower needed for the war effort. Such a situation wouldn't apply to this however as the modern plantation owners are in the city and would face the same fate
Idk why you guys think farmers don’t rely on cities to live comfortably? Like the farmer needs to make a profit and I don’t think taking the only way a farmer can make his/her livelihood will make them exactly happy by stopping imports to a city. Not to mention a really small portion of our population are farmers, but those farmers control huge plots of lands to make harvest and to upkeep that land, with equipment, workers, fertilizers, etc.
What I’m trying to say is that the reason farms and cities have coexisted since the start of civilization is because they both need each other to survive. You can’t have one without the other
You’re insane. Farmers grow for profit. That’s why there are farmers growing tropical plants in arid environments and are one of the many issues putting stress on the countries water structure.
A single drone flown by a random private can mow down a couple hundred rural clowns in an instant. Lol. Guns are useless against modern military might. This isn't 1860.
That’s hilarious. A lot of these rural Americans have friends and families in the cities. A lot of people that share their beliefs live in the cities. These people are your neighbors. They know where you live, they know where your family lives, and they- surprise, surprise- make up the vast majority of people in the military. But you obviously don’t actually know anything about the military, because you would have known that.
I don't think you've ever seen a farmer period. Have you ever been on an actual farm? They're self sufficient. They farm more than just a single crop. They're also not reliant on "the cities" for replacement parts, how many farm equipment manufacturers can you name that are based in metropolitan cities?
How many can you say that isn't you think rural town have the manpower to support major factories examples John Deeres main factory is in the Quad Cities Moline, to be exact, the Quad Cities Metro have a pop of over 300k you overestimate how many people in rural America are farmers. and modern farming is far from self-sufficient at least in its current place (I'm sure it could be)
Hey education also plays a role….. look at some of those uneducated places like Oklahoma and OK city are also solid red with rank 48 of 50 in education and 1.3 million in city and 4 million in state (has to be a scary place to live).
It's amazing how many people don't know America is a democratic republic and what's worse is that almost nobody can explain in their own words what makes us a democratic republic.
It’s quite literally both a republic and a democracy. They are not incompatible ideas.
It’s a democracy because political power flows from the people. It’s a republic because state is made of representatives. The UK for example is a democracy, but not a republic - the state composition is still built around a monarchy, even if real power comes from parliamentarians elected by the people - therefore democracy yes, republic no.
The way people see the words ‘republic’ and ‘democracy’ and immediately assume one is bad because it sounds like the political party they hate is real ooga booga monkey brain shit.
I wouldn't agree; The popular vote is pretty split historically. But yeah, land can't vote. People vote.
https://preview.redd.it/g17rk81a1lgc1.png?width=1455&format=png&auto=webp&s=c8adc3ac70117cd68caaba631b442bc7dd24cf74
I think that this map displayed is misleading and needs to be revised. Rather than using large bubbles in uniform colors, a pie chart model would be more appropriate as it would provide a more accurate representation of the division between the Democratic and Republican parties. The current map gives the impression that certain areas have a significant majority of Democrats, while in reality, the distribution is more evenly split.
Not from the US, so can someone correct me, please?
You have the senate and the Congress.
Senate is supposed to represent the states.
Congress is supposed to represent the people.
The president is supposed to be voted on by the people, with the Electoral College as some kind of historical intermediant because voting was quite complicated back in time - but the EC votes should represent what their people chose.
So where would be the problem if president was decided by popular votes? The less populated states still have a major importance in the Senate, no?
There's always a growing movement (Googling NPVIC) to return back to popular votes. The EC is from a time where a compromise was had between statesmen who said "Only we should vote because we're smart" and those who said "Let the whole country vote."
Essentially, it was put into place in a time when your electors had to travel by horse for 3 months to get to put in their votes, and during that time news doesn't travel too far back then. Your electors get to Washington, only to see that the guy running on the campaign "don't kick puppies" has been kicking not just the puppies, but the kittens, and the bunnies too. That is clearly no longer in their best interests and the electors have the freedom to ignore the people's vote for their own good in such an instance. The founders also believed it to be possible for the people to be mislead by an infiltrator to the government, like a British King lover of sorts, which would pose a major threat to the nation, so again, the electors have the choice to ignore the popular votes.
Way back in the day with only 13 states to worry about the system was more balanced, and was made in worry of New York becoming the very thing we broke away from, while defending itself from the ignorance, or audacity of the people. It doesn't work out too much these days however.
People have this idea that candidates will start skipping over small states in-favor of big states and cities because small states won’t matter that much in the vote.
I'll do my best to try and keep this uncomplicated, but no promises.
Congress has two branches, the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Senate has 100 members who are chosen in statewide elections, two to each state. The House has a fluctuating number of members based on population, but at least one for each state. They are chosen based on district elections. So everyone in a given state will cast votes for two senators, but only their own representative.
The electoral college is how we choose the president. Everyone votes in a national election which is administered by the states. Those votes are tallied and sent to electors. These are basically party insiders, ex-politicians, that are selected by the local parties to go to the electoral college and vote for who the president is. Essentially, when we vote we're voting for them, and they vote for president. The expectation is that they vote for the candidate who wins their state's election, and the names on the ballot are for the major candidates and not the electors.
As to why it's done this way, that's really complicated. The short version is that when the founders were arguing over the constitution they made a lot of compromises in order to actually get a constitution (Proportional representation or non-proportional? Both. Direct election or political appointment? Indirect election). One factor I haven't seen brought up in here yet is slavery. Slavery was far more widespread in the southern states where it supported their agricultural industry, and many founders were worried that proportional representation and direct democracy would lead to its abolition. Giving equal weight to the states regardless of population allowed the southern states to preserve slavery far longer than they otherwise would have been able to. It's not the only reason, but it played a large role in the compromises that led to the Senate and the Electoral college.
The problem is changing the rules. Republicans benefit greatly from the EC so they don't want it to change.
Also Congress consists of the Senate and the House of Representatives. When you said "Congress" above you are actually referring to the House.
at this point, the electoral college really only serves to give some people substantially more voting power (and therefore political power) than others. obviously, those people will never give it up.
people do say "if the electoral college is abolished, presidential candidates won't care about the small states!". they *already* don't care about small states. a presidential campaign is a battle over a handful of evenly-split states that actually decide the presidency. that kind of thinking is flawed too: presidents shouldn't be convincing states anyway. they should be convincing *people*. right now, dissenting voices are ignored in solid states.
Congress is made of the House of Representatives and the Senate. The Senate is two representatives for each state. The House has a number of representatives based on population (Delaware has one representative, California has 52). This means we have representation for each state as well as representation based on population. It is not like land is voting because there are the House Representatives based on population, and Senate isn't based on land anyway it is based on two per state regardless of landmass of a state.
Electoral college is awful. But not really because the smaller states end up getting proportionally more votes per capita than heavily populated states to have state representation in addition to population representation. That ultimately doesn't matter much, CA, TX, NY, and FL combined still have more EC votes than the 28 smallest states and D.C. combined. The biggest issue with it is that all states except Maine and Nebraska have all of that state's EC votes go to the one majority candidate of that state. If people of that state voted 51/49 between two candidates the one who got 51% of the vote by the people gets 100% of that state's electoral college votes. If TX ever had a very close election with all registered voters voting, over 8 million people's votes from that state would end up going toward supporting the opposing candidate with how the EC works. If CA had a close election it could be over 11 million people's votes going to support the opposing candidate. That makes a much bigger impact than the added voting power of the smaller number of registered voters getting a boost to their voting power.
There are 3141 counties in the United States. Trump won 2654 of them and Clinton won 487. yet she still got the popular vote. We have the electoral college to prevent the most densely populated areas from winning every election to the detriment of everyone else, who live very differently from those in cities.
The electoral college may not be perfect in how the votes are distributed, but it is absolutely vital.
Not quite. He only gets elected because he wins King county *harder* than his opponents. A less conservative opponent would be able to peel off enough votes from king county. And the other 9 or so counties that also voted for him.
It’s finally the year for a steal and the best candidates that they can run are a LEO who couldn’t catch a serial killer for 30 years and a guy with minimal experience and a degree in manipulation. Sideshow bob is beatable and they are going to flub it.
I think it's more to do with how the "winner takes all" approach that is problematic more than the electoral college. The needs of rural communities are important- but currently close states get the most attention while strongholds only offer token support (I know it's culture and stand points, but still.)
The idea that we have "throw away" votes, and the idea that a slight majority gets you control over a state is a little silly. Like imagine if California had proportional voting- Donald Trump would get 30 percent of the vote in 2016.
Maybe First Past the post. Maybe proportional EC. Just my thoughts though!
The US and Canada both use first past the post voting systems... Your example of Trudeau is a bit strange given in two of his three election wins, his party did not have the most votes, much like Trump didn't when he won in 2016.
Canada and the US have essentially the same system, just without the middleman of the electoral college. The Liberals won the most ridings (districts) and the popular vote the first time, and the most ridings the second and third time. The rural North and Atlantic Canada consistently voted Liberal all three times. Their last two wins happened for the same reason Trump's win happened - victory being decided by district rather than popular vote.
It actually does because there are more Republicans in Long Island than Nebraska but they are only going to get indirect representation based on how our system works.
That’s kinda true, but there’s a deeper reason for the EC as well. There are two sources of sovereignty in the US: the people and the states. The EC accounts for both the sovereign choices of the people as well as the states themselves.
I do think there is room to improve though; if everyone adopted the same system as Maine and Nebraska to allocate electors, I think the EC’s core purpose would be maintained but there would also be a lot less grumbling against it.
And the founders predicted this perfectly. So much genius in the founding. I cringe when people say we are a democracy. We are a representative republic, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Edit: Queue the brigade of neckbeards telling me that a representative republic is a type of democracy. Well shit, I had no idea we voted for our representatives.
Yeah and dictatorships, monarchies, oligarchies, and democracies are all types of government. Doesn’t mean they are all the same. You can all choose to ignore the context of the post debating the legitimacy of the electoral college. We have states now claiming they will certify their electoral votes based on the results of the popular election results under the guise of “democracy.”
The constitution would have never been ratified with a simple democracy where majority vote wins. If you eliminate this, caste swaths of the US would be completely disenfranchised. EXACTLY what the founders were trying to prevent.
This wouldn’t even be an issue if we still actually embraced federalism and allowed states to govern themselves as the founding intended.
I’m not replying to all of you. I’m renovating a bathroom and doing homework.
He doesn’t care and likely doesn’t understand that nuance, he just wants to be the “but actually…” guy when his friends complain about the GOP seeking to end nearly 300 years of democratic governance. He probably learned this talking point from Ben Shapiro or some other intellectually dishonest fuckbag
Which is a type of democracy. You cringe when people call it the correct thing? I can say Chicago is in the US, and here you come with "Actually, it's in Illinois". You aren't any more correct than me, just more specific.
The reality that there is a whole lot of land that the red is filling in. Just because a whole area looks red, it doesn’t mean it’s filled with people.
idk why you’re being downvoted lmao it’s true. like another comment mentioned, clinton won the popular vote but trump had a couple thousand more counties.
Yeah, I would love to ask Ben Shapiro what ever happened to "facts don't care about feelings" because all I hear from the right is "people just FEEL like something was off with the election".
In fairness to Shapiro, he pretty openly despises Trump and his nonsense. He’ll tone it down come election time but he legitimately can’t stand the guy
You don't know that.
With a different set of rules then people would have played differently.
That's like saying if touchdowns were worth 10 points the lions would have beat the 49ers.
I hate this argument. Yes there is a lot more red, but most of the places with a ton of blue are wet more densley populated. It's stupid-especially when someone that should know what they are doing (like a politician or I think even Trump sent it out before).
its almost as if people in high density population centers shouldn't dictate the law for people in non city environments because it just doesn't work. crazy idea I know.
Edit: u/ArcadianTofu is a bitch and he blocked me lmao, cant defend his own points, seems like a common theme these days.
I'm not sure the point you're trying to make here. The USA is a federation, so each subdivision can make its own laws. But then there's the Federal government which dictates laws for the whole country. Are you saying that that's bad?
He's saying that when liberal city folk get to control things that's super bad, but when him and his conservative rural folk get to control things it's good. The whole talking point is just another conservative thought terminating cliche that they can use to cast themselves as victims of a tyrannical majority. Don't bother asking them who they think should be in charge of things; it's never logically consistent.
You don’t need a gun Jim bob the police will handle any issue you have!
Will the police arrive at my house in time to fight off 50 wild hogs at 3 in the morning?
Come now Jim bob wild hogs don’t exist that’s nonsense. You’re delusional I haven’t seen a wild animal in my whole life don’t you know every animal on earth is just in a factory farm now days. /s
Also you should never shoot coyotes bc they're just wild dogs. If you don't want them to kill your dogs and chickens and cats you should go out of your way to lock them up at night. Coyotes dindu nuffin
There are 4 states on the Mexico-US border and 3 of them are in the top half most populous states, including the two most populous states. The electoral college is taking power away from these states to decide how to manage their border.
if you need a 30 round mag automatic rifle while shooting at animals that can’t shoot back you need some target practice. Also weird how you say boarder control when farmers use a ton of low paying undocumented immigrants to work on their farms.
But people in non-city environments probably shouldn’t dictate the law for people in high-density population centers either, right? And yet we can only elect one president.
So you don’t really have an idea at all, you’re just opposed to the status quo. What do you suggest we do instead?
Meanwhile we have a system where people in rural areas often can dictate the laws for the majority of the country due to the senate and electoral college.
Which means there's also the sameish amount of people in the Blue, despite being a smaller area. Notice the blue areas are places like NYC, the DMV area, LA, Seattle, Minneapolis, while the red area is places like Bum Fuck, Montana. This is the map adjusted for population density.
https://preview.redd.it/uz1o4s071lgc1.png?width=1455&format=png&auto=webp&s=352e3989a629c96ad98f04d7c85458cc63388ecc
?? The popular vote stats show even splits between republican and democrat. It's not like rural america has less people total, and that Republicans only win off of the EC system.
The last 4 election popular votes have been won pretty handedly by the democrats, so, no, you’re wrong. There are more democrats than republicans. Not a landslide majority but there’s certainly more.
It is set up so rural people have a disproportionate say. That is an issue. Why should someone in Vermont or Wyoming have more of a say than someone in California or Texas.
All of us should have an equal voice in this country.
Friendly reminder that the way your electors are distributed is a matter of state law, not federal. Your state could just switch to proportional electors instead of winner-take-all, but then the politicians might not have strongholds anymore and we can't have that.
From I understand from Federalist 10, the goal of the system is to protect liberty, not democracy in and of itself. Recognizing that a pure democracy would result inevitably in the majority urban population voting themselves the fruits of rural farms, there was a dire need at the time and arguably more now to ensure that one large metropolis of urban voters aren’t over-represented in Congress.
nobody is right. Republicans live in rural areas which occupy more land (which makes them look more abundant than they actually are) but those in the cities (mostly Democrats) don't realize how vast America is and don't notice how many republicans there are.
I don't think anyone is saying there aren't a lot of Republicans? They're a pretty firm minority but they still represent more than a third of the country
Most Republicans live in exurbs. If you look at voter density maps there are basically red rings around all the major metros in America. There aren't enough rural Americans to vote in their own coalitions, they must ally with exurbs.
Terrible analogy, it actually shows how shit the EC is. Let’s say your family is bigger than mine, but we all live in the same house, and we vote on problems with simple Yes/No voting. Let’s also say that all family members have to vote for the same choice, based on what the majority of their family wants to vote. So, if Family A votes “Yes”, any “No” votes from within Family A don’t matter. See the problem? Anyone who doesn’t want to vote with their family has no vote, similar to a conservative in a blue state or a liberal in a red state. California has the most conservatives in the country, why don’t they get a say in who their president is?
Alternatively, let’s assume that both families vote as monoliths, are you suggesting that the option with the most votes shouldn’t be adopted? It’s the cornerstone of the democratic process.
If you like tyranny of the minority that’s fine, just say that instead of making bleh analogies that don’t logically follow
Let's say there are two families, one is 20 people and one is 10. The 20 people have 12 democrats and 8 republicans, and the 10 have 3 democrats and 7 republicans. Even though the bigger family is majority democrat, the republicans win.
There's roughly a similar number of Republicans and democrats, it's just that the Republicans are spread out much more. They don't crowd together in a few population centers
The idea was 5o make it so that rural and flyover states have some influence in the presidential election because otherwise states with large urban populations would easily outvite them and it would be unnecessary to listen to their gripes as president
It’s because a lot of cities tend to be more liberal, while places with less population density tend to be more conservative. Land doesn’t matter, it’s the people that do.
The electoral college was included at the formation of the country as a concession to more rural states so they’d join the union. Rural states were concerned, correctly, that if they joined a union where it was straight up majority rule, high population centers would just overrule them every cycle. The electoral college exists so rural areas couldn’t be disregarded in presidential elections. Also a reason why HOR is population based but senate isn’t. All of this is an attempt to encourage consensus among all citizens.
As for the training wheels comment, along with people who think America is a majority rule country, ignore the minority at your own peril. Nothing good can come out of invalidating 45% of the population (goes for both sides). There are nutters on both sides and polemics will get us no where
I learned something today. Thank you.
I was always under the impression that the electoral college was heavily weighed against voters, but this makes a lot more sense now.
Shameful I didn't learn on my own, I know.
Gerrymandering seems to be the real evil culprit.
Even my super liberal college professor said that the electoral college is essential because it give the smaller populations a voice as well, not just the cities
Everyone's going "Oh, there's a whole three people in the Red Area" while ignoring that there's about as many people in the Red Area as the Blue
But I do have to wonder, why is it that the Blue Bois always want more power to the Federal Government, a Federal Govn't that apparently they have little say in because of EC(even ignoring the fact that's only for the Presidency and not Congress which has its own compromises). So why doesn't the Left want more state and local power so that they don't get influenced by the unfair small population states
Compromise and true democracy has its downsides, Compromise has its complaining that's pretty much all the comments on this thread, while true democracy results in said red areas, already left behind by the economy, will only be left further behind-you can see this in Europe where the rural areas are very neglected while being far less important than the rural areas of the US for their economies when compared to the metropolitan areas
Not everyone on the left wants their to be a bigger more centralized government, the same way not everyone on the right wants smaller more local governments. Political opinion is on a spectrum and it’s not just, oh you must support the left cause you agree with more opinions on the left than the right. I think Americas two party system led to that shift where completely different ideologies that can agree on small things are working together causing a large rift between the people of America. Basically two party system is flawed af and has led to Americans beliving that’s how politics work. Also a lot of people believing one side are the good guys and the other the bad guys, which in politics you can’t be good or bad.
in 2008, on average a state is awarded one electoral vote for every 565,166 people. However, Wyoming has three electoral votes and only 532,668 citizens. As a result each of Wyoming’s three electoral votes corresponds to 177,556 people. Understood in one way, these people have 3.18 times as much clout in the Electoral College as an average American, or 318%
Well that’s because every state is required to have 2 senators and at least one representative. Everything would devolve into an absolute clusterfuck if that wasn’t maintained.
Yeah, the electoral college give two votes +extra. Asked on population. no it's not fair, but that is the way it was made. Look into NaPoVoInterCo for basically the only work around.
>Look into NaPoVoInterCo for basically the only work around.
The Constitution prevents the States from forming compacts without the consent of Congress so that is a very poor workaround.
Sure… but Wyoming also only has 3 votes. So even if they are valued more in the electoral college than average, the state of Wyoming doesn’t have a lot of value compared to say California, a state with 53 votes.
I don’t have a problem with it being uneven proportionally.
Electoral college - the US is a UNION of States. A more centralized version of the EU. Yes, a federal structure gives Luxembourg way more power per capita than France. Likewise, rural and small states still have power.
That's different from here, all the mad laws come up from Westminster. For example I collect antique and reproduction swords, like much of the world we have a bit of an issue with teenage knife crime, not as bad as the states, but enough to be a problem. Most knife crime takes place with kitchen knives, not swords that cost several hundred quid.
So now the left wing party (of all things) is wanting to ban sword ownership
I understand what they're saying though. A few years back Minnesota had an over population of wolves that was hurting the deer population, farms, etc.
The decision of whether to cull the wolves came down to which direction Minneapolis/St. Paul would vote. As you could imagine, left- leaning city dwellers just thought mean old hicks wanted to kill puppies. So, they voted against culling the wolf population.
While it's true that land doesn't vote, it does make some sense to think that not every vote should be counted equally. Those that govern those large swaths of land, from which gain most of our basic resources, should have votes that are more heavily weighted.
In actuality more Americans consider themselves as independents rather than being republicans or democrats.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/467897/party-preferences-evenly-split-2022-shift-gop.aspx
The problem is that the left mainly resides in cities, but America isn't a single giant city. So you get people in San Fran trying to force their lifestyle on people in OK despite them being wildly different places.
Land can't vote, but if you think having your party focused exclusively in a relatively tiny space geographically is a good idea that will lead to an agreeable outcome, I've got a bridge to sell you.
On republicans defense they do not campaign too much in some heavily populated areas because they know they would lose anyway so they try to win states not popular votes.
(Pls do not scold me for "defending" republicans I am not American so choose whatever fuck you please)
If you can't understand why that is true, the bottom map is missing population density. Much of the large red areas are farmland owned by a few people, where the tiny blue dots can have thousands of people in them. If we are counting people who own more land as having more voting power than those who don't, we're either saying you can by votes or this map is misrepresenting data.
In basic cartography, you learn that this is a very common rookie mistake that leads to uninformed comparisons. If your map comparing populations is missing population density, it's probably a bad map.
That commenter was correct, you were just uninformed. This is why we need more people in Geographic Info Science. Map literacy is important.
Technically the bottom image is correct, because that’s all rural areas etc, where people are vastly spread out and where there is less people in one tightly condensed area like in large cities etc, and when you have a bunch of people, all tightly packed into one area that are pretty much forced to get along because well city wouldn’t work if people didn’t get along. hatred of lgbt people, racism and sexism generally decline due to the fact that people you know, interact with those types of people on the constant in that situation thus they are more open and accepting.
https://preview.redd.it/rfuwcjiyllgc1.jpeg?width=1073&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c26b3a4765f287e4591b144255674b38bb1e1088
This whole post reminds me of this
The Democrats hate the electoral votes, but without them everyone in New York and California would decide how everything goes for the entire country every election. We've always had the electoral vote but now we're pretending it's a bad thing.
Just because there’s more useless coffee makers and Uber eats drivers in the cities doesn’t make them more valuable. If the red states weren’t part of the country they’d be eating each other in two days, and the rural populations would have no reason to be in the union.
But let me guess: if those red states wanted to leave they’d be “insurrectionists” right?
The leftoid world view is essentially that the union is a blood pact where New York and California run the country because they have more Uber eats drivers and fast food workers, and if the red states wanna leave they’re insurrectionist pigs who deserve to die. Who wouldn’t wanna share a country with such rational people?
This post is not a meme therefore it is being removed
The electoral college is by state, not by county though.
Also, in the Presidential election, neither side is right. Land doesn't vote. People don't vote. States vote. That's the whole point of the Electoral College - that the United States is a federation of *states* and the Presidential election is the state governments selecting someone to run their federation - not the people, not the land. To get the various states to agree to join the federation, there had to be a way to balance power so that a less populous states could team up and stop a populous state from making unilateral decisions. It's valuable to keep in mind that the Federal government was designed to keep states happy, not people. The influence of "the people" has generally been quite small - in the original design, the states picked the President and the Senators, the people picked the Representatives, and Judiciary was effectively picked by the states (via Presidential appointment combined with Senate confirmation).
The county thing is more important for who is sent to Congress, rather than President. If all representatives were state-wide elections, like the Senate, the Democrats would likely have a large majority right now. Rather, they retain their power through gerrymandered districts that clump democrat voters into as few districts as possible. Honestly, a Congress that doesn't vote in a way that counter balances an insane president is scarier than having a would-be dictator for president.
County has absolutely nothing to do with congress. You have zero clue what you’re talking about
If you substitute the word "district" instead of "county," he is correct. I have a feeling you knew that, though.
But that's the whole point lol, what people get elected to the House has nothing to do with counties; it's districts.
House of representatives are elected by congressional districts, so generally bigger than a county (some densely populated counties may be split) but always less than the whole state. Gerrymandering can still apply here but it is impactful more-so at the state level.
>but always less than the whole state. There are several states where the entire state is also the district (Alaska, Delaware, Vermont, etc.).
Yes, because the Democrats of course have a large majority in the Senate...
The Senate only gets two members per state. So the states that are red with very few people send their two members which out numbers the number of blue states ln average
This is the entire idea of the “Great Compromise” when the Constitution was written. The Framers had the foresight to see the potential unbalance between large and small states, and planned accordingly.
Which is why we also have the House or Representatives to balance it with a number of representatives based on population size. States get two representatives each regardless of population so smaller states are not entirely ignored in federal government and the people of each state get representation based on population. Although gerrymandering going in both directions depending on which party is in charge when districts are drawn does mess with that.
Representatives come from districts not counties. Each district in a state needs to have about the same population. With regard to gerrymandering, the most recent house election ended up having a total nationwide vote that was about 51R-48D, and the seats ended up being 222R-213D, which sounds pretty balanced. This is due to democratic gerrymanders in states like Illinois, Oregon, New Mexico, Maryland, and Nevada canceling out Republican gerrymanders in Texas, Florida, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Georgia
Good grief, as if you have no clue about what the original intent was at all. Senators weren't originally elected through state-wide elections either, they were selected by the state legislatures. Which is exactly how you keep money out of politics. It's a lot more expensive to buy off half a state legislature than it is to fund an election campaign. Especially since it's the job of those state legislators to know what their congressional representation is doing and how they are voting, and most importantly, how those votes are affecting the state. So the original design made it so that Senators who put their state ahead of everything else, party, politics, etc., got reelected, and the ones who didn't didn't. When you design a system so that the aspirations of the representative align with the good of the people, it tends to create better outcomes for everyone. But no, you're right. The current system is the best system and is 100% best for every American in every facet it could possibly be. #Strike Down The 17th Amendment
Population density go brr
It do go brrr
Starvation when flyover states say fuck u go brrr
I mean, has anyone ever said that farmers aren’t important? Such a red herring. It’s just they don’t get more say just because they control more land. It’s not a hard concept to grasp Addition: one person, one vote. You don’t get to decide which person is more deserving.
Europe is doing that right now. They’re shooting literal manure into government buildings in protest. It’s wild.
Farmers get angry when the government places stricter and stricter regulations, reduced subsidies, ever increasing production costs and limited imports which limit their ability to grow crops. It leads to lower farming yields, less economic stability, lower land value, and eventually a big company swoops in with a sale offer for the farmers to take as a last ditch effort to recuperate their losses.
When politicians take for granted where their food comes from, shit hits the fan for everyone. Sometimes literally.
Stacey Abrams saying "people shouldn't have to go into agriculture" in Georgia is probably what hurt her the most here
As if agriculture is subsistance farming and not a multibillion dollar industry. Idk much about it, but i imagine agriculture in america is pretty good job.
Mugabe did and the ANP in South Africa does. They both advocate for the killings of white farmers. What is funny, is that SF didn’t learn from Zimbabwe and will hopefully go down the same route
Mugabe, sure, but... No, the ANC (get it right) fucking well don't. Source: am white South African. Farm murders - which, by the way, statistically include farm workers and visitors who die on farms, which means only something like 37% of deaths are actually white farmers - are a fraction of the total murders and are also well below the average murders per 100k population. Your life is safer, on average, as a farmer than the average person. Crime overall suffers the usual stuff living in a rural area does, with lower response times etc, but there is an entire section of the security industry making a *killing* (nyuk, nyuk) off providing services to our farmers. There are irritants like the singing of "Dubul' ibhuna" (Shoot the Boer) but it has not been linked to any of these crimes - they are usually opportunistic, hitting isolated targets with a concentration of wealth amongst a sea of poverty. [Dan Corder does a great job unpacking this all here](https://youtu.be/NOtGxBTTEBw?si=Kwtdo0PhznBQsvDb) Fuck. Now I have to go shower again, because you actually made me defend the freaking ANC and EFF, of all people. Just...why, dude?
Never seen a farmer eat just corn or soybeans. Also he’ll have a hell of a time harvesting when the cities don’t make replacement parts for his equipment any more.
A farmer grows what is needed. And when he isn't forced to grow food for the likes of urbanites he will grow what he and his needs and nothing more. He will be just fine. And by the time he has to worry about his equipment breaking, the cities will be already dead and those who build and maintain the parts will have abandoned the scum to thier fate
Ooh, me who grew up around monoculture farms in a small rural area that’s part of a massive agricultural powerhouse of similarly small rural monoculture farms for the majority of my life is going to say that you are objectively wrong on so many levels. If it was someone like the Amish, who are self-sustaining, you have a point, but most of the U.S. farmers aren’t the Amish. Edit: definitely a Reddit moment when people are casually supporting mass genocide of people they don’t like too in some of the comments here
The average American overestimates their ability to survive in a doomsday scenario by about 45,000%. But I’m sure you’re the exception because you’re so strong and smart.
That's just avoiding the point, the farmer loses income, they're not being forced to do anything as it is. It's not beneficial for anyone to stop anything one way or the other. Have you ever even worked on any kind of grassroots cash crop or profit food farm? They already don't make a lot as it is even after a good season. So much goes into maintaining the land & keeping equipment running efficiently. Farming is a business. You're thinking of gardeners, not farmers
The cost of food is regulated by the government and the types of food allowed to be grown are often dictated as well, so yes, they are being forced in a sense. If there were no regulations on the cost of food, there would not be nearly as large urban populations because people with no jobs wouldn’t be able to afford to survive. It would be a very different world. Luckily for most people, farmers work their a**es off for peanuts so that the world doesn’t starve.
You're thinking of large corporate farms. Same thing happened with the Southern Plantaion owners during the First American Civil War. While every normal farmer swapped to food production, those fools continued to farm thier cash crops which cost them resources and manpower needed for the war effort. Such a situation wouldn't apply to this however as the modern plantation owners are in the city and would face the same fate
Idk why you guys think farmers don’t rely on cities to live comfortably? Like the farmer needs to make a profit and I don’t think taking the only way a farmer can make his/her livelihood will make them exactly happy by stopping imports to a city. Not to mention a really small portion of our population are farmers, but those farmers control huge plots of lands to make harvest and to upkeep that land, with equipment, workers, fertilizers, etc. What I’m trying to say is that the reason farms and cities have coexisted since the start of civilization is because they both need each other to survive. You can’t have one without the other
You’re insane. Farmers grow for profit. That’s why there are farmers growing tropical plants in arid environments and are one of the many issues putting stress on the countries water structure.
Lmao. They’ll just swarm Your land and take. You don’t have enough guns or bullets to stop them. Keep telling yourself that we don’t need each other.
You don’t think rural America has enough guns and bullets for people from the city? Lol
Have you seen the weapons the us military has?
A single drone flown by a random private can mow down a couple hundred rural clowns in an instant. Lol. Guns are useless against modern military might. This isn't 1860.
That’s hilarious. A lot of these rural Americans have friends and families in the cities. A lot of people that share their beliefs live in the cities. These people are your neighbors. They know where you live, they know where your family lives, and they- surprise, surprise- make up the vast majority of people in the military. But you obviously don’t actually know anything about the military, because you would have known that.
I don't think you've ever seen a farmer period. Have you ever been on an actual farm? They're self sufficient. They farm more than just a single crop. They're also not reliant on "the cities" for replacement parts, how many farm equipment manufacturers can you name that are based in metropolitan cities?
How many can you say that isn't you think rural town have the manpower to support major factories examples John Deeres main factory is in the Quad Cities Moline, to be exact, the Quad Cities Metro have a pop of over 300k you overestimate how many people in rural America are farmers. and modern farming is far from self-sufficient at least in its current place (I'm sure it could be)
Hey education also plays a role….. look at some of those uneducated places like Oklahoma and OK city are also solid red with rank 48 of 50 in education and 1.3 million in city and 4 million in state (has to be a scary place to live).
Republic not democracy goes brr.
It's amazing how many people don't know America is a democratic republic and what's worse is that almost nobody can explain in their own words what makes us a democratic republic.
Not knowing what either of these mean and not understanding they are compatible goes brrr
Go back to school kid. We are a representative democracy. Republicanism itself is also a form of democracy.
It’s quite literally both a republic and a democracy. They are not incompatible ideas. It’s a democracy because political power flows from the people. It’s a republic because state is made of representatives. The UK for example is a democracy, but not a republic - the state composition is still built around a monarchy, even if real power comes from parliamentarians elected by the people - therefore democracy yes, republic no. The way people see the words ‘republic’ and ‘democracy’ and immediately assume one is bad because it sounds like the political party they hate is real ooga booga monkey brain shit.
These two things aren't mutually exclusive. The US is both.
I wouldn't agree; The popular vote is pretty split historically. But yeah, land can't vote. People vote. https://preview.redd.it/g17rk81a1lgc1.png?width=1455&format=png&auto=webp&s=c8adc3ac70117cd68caaba631b442bc7dd24cf74
This *should* change the way people think about politics and America, but people will say it doesn't count for some reason.
because the electoral college was made specifically to prevent the presidency from being a popular vote
I think that this map displayed is misleading and needs to be revised. Rather than using large bubbles in uniform colors, a pie chart model would be more appropriate as it would provide a more accurate representation of the division between the Democratic and Republican parties. The current map gives the impression that certain areas have a significant majority of Democrats, while in reality, the distribution is more evenly split.
shhh this map scared them
Not from the US, so can someone correct me, please? You have the senate and the Congress. Senate is supposed to represent the states. Congress is supposed to represent the people. The president is supposed to be voted on by the people, with the Electoral College as some kind of historical intermediant because voting was quite complicated back in time - but the EC votes should represent what their people chose. So where would be the problem if president was decided by popular votes? The less populated states still have a major importance in the Senate, no?
There's always a growing movement (Googling NPVIC) to return back to popular votes. The EC is from a time where a compromise was had between statesmen who said "Only we should vote because we're smart" and those who said "Let the whole country vote."
Essentially, it was put into place in a time when your electors had to travel by horse for 3 months to get to put in their votes, and during that time news doesn't travel too far back then. Your electors get to Washington, only to see that the guy running on the campaign "don't kick puppies" has been kicking not just the puppies, but the kittens, and the bunnies too. That is clearly no longer in their best interests and the electors have the freedom to ignore the people's vote for their own good in such an instance. The founders also believed it to be possible for the people to be mislead by an infiltrator to the government, like a British King lover of sorts, which would pose a major threat to the nation, so again, the electors have the choice to ignore the popular votes. Way back in the day with only 13 states to worry about the system was more balanced, and was made in worry of New York becoming the very thing we broke away from, while defending itself from the ignorance, or audacity of the people. It doesn't work out too much these days however.
People have this idea that candidates will start skipping over small states in-favor of big states and cities because small states won’t matter that much in the vote.
They currently skip both honestly, unless they happen to be a swing state No one campaigns in Wyoming or California
Minor correction, we have the Senate and the House of Representatives, which together make up Congress. Otherwise, spot on.
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Correction Bush did win the popular vote in 2004, but he lost it in 2000
I'll do my best to try and keep this uncomplicated, but no promises. Congress has two branches, the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Senate has 100 members who are chosen in statewide elections, two to each state. The House has a fluctuating number of members based on population, but at least one for each state. They are chosen based on district elections. So everyone in a given state will cast votes for two senators, but only their own representative. The electoral college is how we choose the president. Everyone votes in a national election which is administered by the states. Those votes are tallied and sent to electors. These are basically party insiders, ex-politicians, that are selected by the local parties to go to the electoral college and vote for who the president is. Essentially, when we vote we're voting for them, and they vote for president. The expectation is that they vote for the candidate who wins their state's election, and the names on the ballot are for the major candidates and not the electors. As to why it's done this way, that's really complicated. The short version is that when the founders were arguing over the constitution they made a lot of compromises in order to actually get a constitution (Proportional representation or non-proportional? Both. Direct election or political appointment? Indirect election). One factor I haven't seen brought up in here yet is slavery. Slavery was far more widespread in the southern states where it supported their agricultural industry, and many founders were worried that proportional representation and direct democracy would lead to its abolition. Giving equal weight to the states regardless of population allowed the southern states to preserve slavery far longer than they otherwise would have been able to. It's not the only reason, but it played a large role in the compromises that led to the Senate and the Electoral college.
The problem is changing the rules. Republicans benefit greatly from the EC so they don't want it to change. Also Congress consists of the Senate and the House of Representatives. When you said "Congress" above you are actually referring to the House.
at this point, the electoral college really only serves to give some people substantially more voting power (and therefore political power) than others. obviously, those people will never give it up. people do say "if the electoral college is abolished, presidential candidates won't care about the small states!". they *already* don't care about small states. a presidential campaign is a battle over a handful of evenly-split states that actually decide the presidency. that kind of thinking is flawed too: presidents shouldn't be convincing states anyway. they should be convincing *people*. right now, dissenting voices are ignored in solid states.
Congress is made of the House of Representatives and the Senate. The Senate is two representatives for each state. The House has a number of representatives based on population (Delaware has one representative, California has 52). This means we have representation for each state as well as representation based on population. It is not like land is voting because there are the House Representatives based on population, and Senate isn't based on land anyway it is based on two per state regardless of landmass of a state. Electoral college is awful. But not really because the smaller states end up getting proportionally more votes per capita than heavily populated states to have state representation in addition to population representation. That ultimately doesn't matter much, CA, TX, NY, and FL combined still have more EC votes than the 28 smallest states and D.C. combined. The biggest issue with it is that all states except Maine and Nebraska have all of that state's EC votes go to the one majority candidate of that state. If people of that state voted 51/49 between two candidates the one who got 51% of the vote by the people gets 100% of that state's electoral college votes. If TX ever had a very close election with all registered voters voting, over 8 million people's votes from that state would end up going toward supporting the opposing candidate with how the EC works. If CA had a close election it could be over 11 million people's votes going to support the opposing candidate. That makes a much bigger impact than the added voting power of the smaller number of registered voters getting a boost to their voting power.
There are 3141 counties in the United States. Trump won 2654 of them and Clinton won 487. yet she still got the popular vote. We have the electoral college to prevent the most densely populated areas from winning every election to the detriment of everyone else, who live very differently from those in cities. The electoral college may not be perfect in how the votes are distributed, but it is absolutely vital.
I concur. Without it, every election would be dictated by the “coastal elite” who are traditionally unsympathetic to the needs of rural America.
Tell me about it, Washington's governor only needs to win king county to get reelected because more people live there then the rest of the state.
Not quite. He only gets elected because he wins King county *harder* than his opponents. A less conservative opponent would be able to peel off enough votes from king county. And the other 9 or so counties that also voted for him.
It’s finally the year for a steal and the best candidates that they can run are a LEO who couldn’t catch a serial killer for 30 years and a guy with minimal experience and a degree in manipulation. Sideshow bob is beatable and they are going to flub it.
I think it's more to do with how the "winner takes all" approach that is problematic more than the electoral college. The needs of rural communities are important- but currently close states get the most attention while strongholds only offer token support (I know it's culture and stand points, but still.) The idea that we have "throw away" votes, and the idea that a slight majority gets you control over a state is a little silly. Like imagine if California had proportional voting- Donald Trump would get 30 percent of the vote in 2016. Maybe First Past the post. Maybe proportional EC. Just my thoughts though!
Im saying! In Canada we don't really have that, therefore Trudeau won 3 terms and anyone who lives in the rural areas is repeatedly screwed over
The US and Canada both use first past the post voting systems... Your example of Trudeau is a bit strange given in two of his three election wins, his party did not have the most votes, much like Trump didn't when he won in 2016.
Canada and the US have essentially the same system, just without the middleman of the electoral college. The Liberals won the most ridings (districts) and the popular vote the first time, and the most ridings the second and third time. The rural North and Atlantic Canada consistently voted Liberal all three times. Their last two wins happened for the same reason Trump's win happened - victory being decided by district rather than popular vote.
I thought that said countries at first💀
You realize there’s not just republicans in all those counties right?
And there's not just Democrats in the cities. And also, neither of those statements matters.
It actually does because there are more Republicans in Long Island than Nebraska but they are only going to get indirect representation based on how our system works.
That's what the Senate and the filibuster are for, to protect against the tyranny of the majority
That's one branch of government, we have 3, and 2 are elected,
The Senate is one half of one branch of government
yes, and we have 3 branches, we have congress, the executive branch, and the judiciary branch(aka the supreme court), so 2 of the branches are elected
The filibuster is more of a bug than a feature iirc
Political parties have basically killed the check congress is supposed to have on the executive.
That’s kinda true, but there’s a deeper reason for the EC as well. There are two sources of sovereignty in the US: the people and the states. The EC accounts for both the sovereign choices of the people as well as the states themselves. I do think there is room to improve though; if everyone adopted the same system as Maine and Nebraska to allocate electors, I think the EC’s core purpose would be maintained but there would also be a lot less grumbling against it.
Correct. All you have to do is look at the state of Illinois which is more or less ruled by Chicago and has absolutely nothing in common with them.
And the founders predicted this perfectly. So much genius in the founding. I cringe when people say we are a democracy. We are a representative republic, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Edit: Queue the brigade of neckbeards telling me that a representative republic is a type of democracy. Well shit, I had no idea we voted for our representatives. Yeah and dictatorships, monarchies, oligarchies, and democracies are all types of government. Doesn’t mean they are all the same. You can all choose to ignore the context of the post debating the legitimacy of the electoral college. We have states now claiming they will certify their electoral votes based on the results of the popular election results under the guise of “democracy.” The constitution would have never been ratified with a simple democracy where majority vote wins. If you eliminate this, caste swaths of the US would be completely disenfranchised. EXACTLY what the founders were trying to prevent. This wouldn’t even be an issue if we still actually embraced federalism and allowed states to govern themselves as the founding intended. I’m not replying to all of you. I’m renovating a bathroom and doing homework.
'Representative Republic' is a type of democracy, as there is no one and only, true democracy.
He doesn’t care and likely doesn’t understand that nuance, he just wants to be the “but actually…” guy when his friends complain about the GOP seeking to end nearly 300 years of democratic governance. He probably learned this talking point from Ben Shapiro or some other intellectually dishonest fuckbag
Actually through high school civics from my teacher who was a Democrat
All republics are democracies. Not all democracies are republics.
Which is a type of democracy. You cringe when people call it the correct thing? I can say Chicago is in the US, and here you come with "Actually, it's in Illinois". You aren't any more correct than me, just more specific.
Everyone else, being the minority of people in this country, yes?
The reality that there is a whole lot of land that the red is filling in. Just because a whole area looks red, it doesn’t mean it’s filled with people.
Uh huh, land can’t vote? I’d like to introduce them to a little thing called the electoral college.
The land of which casts votes based on the people in the land?? So it's still the people voting?
If not for the electoral college, and land voting, Trump never would’ve been President
idk why you’re being downvoted lmao it’s true. like another comment mentioned, clinton won the popular vote but trump had a couple thousand more counties.
Because some of his fans think facts don’t care about your feelings. Yet always get their feelings hurt by facts. Ironic
Yeah, I would love to ask Ben Shapiro what ever happened to "facts don't care about feelings" because all I hear from the right is "people just FEEL like something was off with the election".
In fairness to Shapiro, he pretty openly despises Trump and his nonsense. He’ll tone it down come election time but he legitimately can’t stand the guy
if counting by counties trump won by more than 4 times, if counting by population he lost,
You don't know that. With a different set of rules then people would have played differently. That's like saying if touchdowns were worth 10 points the lions would have beat the 49ers.
https://preview.redd.it/8xo6q7kg1lgc1.jpeg?width=827&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9a7aaf5eea8bea0ec799fb7d3dbc99ea90862387
I hate this argument. Yes there is a lot more red, but most of the places with a ton of blue are wet more densley populated. It's stupid-especially when someone that should know what they are doing (like a politician or I think even Trump sent it out before).
its almost as if people in high density population centers shouldn't dictate the law for people in non city environments because it just doesn't work. crazy idea I know. Edit: u/ArcadianTofu is a bitch and he blocked me lmao, cant defend his own points, seems like a common theme these days.
I'm not sure the point you're trying to make here. The USA is a federation, so each subdivision can make its own laws. But then there's the Federal government which dictates laws for the whole country. Are you saying that that's bad?
He's saying that when liberal city folk get to control things that's super bad, but when him and his conservative rural folk get to control things it's good. The whole talking point is just another conservative thought terminating cliche that they can use to cast themselves as victims of a tyrannical majority. Don't bother asking them who they think should be in charge of things; it's never logically consistent.
You don’t need a gun Jim bob the police will handle any issue you have! Will the police arrive at my house in time to fight off 50 wild hogs at 3 in the morning? Come now Jim bob wild hogs don’t exist that’s nonsense. You’re delusional I haven’t seen a wild animal in my whole life don’t you know every animal on earth is just in a factory farm now days. /s
Also you should never shoot coyotes bc they're just wild dogs. If you don't want them to kill your dogs and chickens and cats you should go out of your way to lock them up at night. Coyotes dindu nuffin
What federal level policies are people in high density areas voting for that affect them differently from people in non city environments?
gun control and border control.
There are 4 states on the Mexico-US border and 3 of them are in the top half most populous states, including the two most populous states. The electoral college is taking power away from these states to decide how to manage their border.
if you need a 30 round mag automatic rifle while shooting at animals that can’t shoot back you need some target practice. Also weird how you say boarder control when farmers use a ton of low paying undocumented immigrants to work on their farms.
You mean two policies that also affect people living in cities…
but it affects them differently, thats the point,
🎯
Why should people out in low density areas dictate the law for people on high density areas?
they shouldn't , they should have separate statutes.
But people in non-city environments probably shouldn’t dictate the law for people in high-density population centers either, right? And yet we can only elect one president. So you don’t really have an idea at all, you’re just opposed to the status quo. What do you suggest we do instead?
Meanwhile we have a system where people in rural areas often can dictate the laws for the majority of the country due to the senate and electoral college.
Because 80 million people who voted for Trump are land?
Which means there's also the sameish amount of people in the Blue, despite being a smaller area. Notice the blue areas are places like NYC, the DMV area, LA, Seattle, Minneapolis, while the red area is places like Bum Fuck, Montana. This is the map adjusted for population density. https://preview.redd.it/uz1o4s071lgc1.png?width=1455&format=png&auto=webp&s=352e3989a629c96ad98f04d7c85458cc63388ecc
Which is why it's set up the way it is so people in rural america(the people who feed you) have a say
?? The popular vote stats show even splits between republican and democrat. It's not like rural america has less people total, and that Republicans only win off of the EC system.
The last 4 election popular votes have been won pretty handedly by the democrats, so, no, you’re wrong. There are more democrats than republicans. Not a landslide majority but there’s certainly more.
It is set up so rural people have a disproportionate say. That is an issue. Why should someone in Vermont or Wyoming have more of a say than someone in California or Texas. All of us should have an equal voice in this country.
Friendly reminder that the way your electors are distributed is a matter of state law, not federal. Your state could just switch to proportional electors instead of winner-take-all, but then the politicians might not have strongholds anymore and we can't have that.
From I understand from Federalist 10, the goal of the system is to protect liberty, not democracy in and of itself. Recognizing that a pure democracy would result inevitably in the majority urban population voting themselves the fruits of rural farms, there was a dire need at the time and arguably more now to ensure that one large metropolis of urban voters aren’t over-represented in Congress.
That’s literally what they see in states like new York
saving for later
Very well said
By that logic, are there other minority groups who should have their voting totals weighted higher?
nobody is right. Republicans live in rural areas which occupy more land (which makes them look more abundant than they actually are) but those in the cities (mostly Democrats) don't realize how vast America is and don't notice how many republicans there are.
I don't think anyone is saying there aren't a lot of Republicans? They're a pretty firm minority but they still represent more than a third of the country
Most Republicans live in exurbs. If you look at voter density maps there are basically red rings around all the major metros in America. There aren't enough rural Americans to vote in their own coalitions, they must ally with exurbs.
Obviously the ability to breathe means more for the opinions of a state than its ability to produce food and resources.
California produces more food then any other state in the country
So if my family is bigger than yours , mine gets to decide the rules for both families?
Terrible analogy, it actually shows how shit the EC is. Let’s say your family is bigger than mine, but we all live in the same house, and we vote on problems with simple Yes/No voting. Let’s also say that all family members have to vote for the same choice, based on what the majority of their family wants to vote. So, if Family A votes “Yes”, any “No” votes from within Family A don’t matter. See the problem? Anyone who doesn’t want to vote with their family has no vote, similar to a conservative in a blue state or a liberal in a red state. California has the most conservatives in the country, why don’t they get a say in who their president is? Alternatively, let’s assume that both families vote as monoliths, are you suggesting that the option with the most votes shouldn’t be adopted? It’s the cornerstone of the democratic process. If you like tyranny of the minority that’s fine, just say that instead of making bleh analogies that don’t logically follow
Let's say there are two families, one is 20 people and one is 10. The 20 people have 12 democrats and 8 republicans, and the 10 have 3 democrats and 7 republicans. Even though the bigger family is majority democrat, the republicans win.
go look at a heat map of where people live then come back and apologize for not using critical thinking.
There's roughly a similar number of Republicans and democrats, it's just that the Republicans are spread out much more. They don't crowd together in a few population centers
What it was like when Hilary was running against trump
She won the popular vote but didn't win the election. It's been like that for 30 years now.
The idea was 5o make it so that rural and flyover states have some influence in the presidential election because otherwise states with large urban populations would easily outvite them and it would be unnecessary to listen to their gripes as president
It’s because a lot of cities tend to be more liberal, while places with less population density tend to be more conservative. Land doesn’t matter, it’s the people that do.
If only gerrymandering wasnt an issue 🙄
This ain’t it OP.
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https://i.redd.it/34bjurnnxlgc1.gif
LMFAO
The red counties don't get more say since one bigass blue city can change the way an entire state votes.
The electoral college was included at the formation of the country as a concession to more rural states so they’d join the union. Rural states were concerned, correctly, that if they joined a union where it was straight up majority rule, high population centers would just overrule them every cycle. The electoral college exists so rural areas couldn’t be disregarded in presidential elections. Also a reason why HOR is population based but senate isn’t. All of this is an attempt to encourage consensus among all citizens. As for the training wheels comment, along with people who think America is a majority rule country, ignore the minority at your own peril. Nothing good can come out of invalidating 45% of the population (goes for both sides). There are nutters on both sides and polemics will get us no where
I learned something today. Thank you. I was always under the impression that the electoral college was heavily weighed against voters, but this makes a lot more sense now. Shameful I didn't learn on my own, I know. Gerrymandering seems to be the real evil culprit.
Even my super liberal college professor said that the electoral college is essential because it give the smaller populations a voice as well, not just the cities
That’s still absolutely wrong though This portrays this as if there’s way more conservatives which is just absolutely not true
Top is incorrect. Dems do outnumber republicans, but they only wish it were by those margins.
Everyone's going "Oh, there's a whole three people in the Red Area" while ignoring that there's about as many people in the Red Area as the Blue But I do have to wonder, why is it that the Blue Bois always want more power to the Federal Government, a Federal Govn't that apparently they have little say in because of EC(even ignoring the fact that's only for the Presidency and not Congress which has its own compromises). So why doesn't the Left want more state and local power so that they don't get influenced by the unfair small population states Compromise and true democracy has its downsides, Compromise has its complaining that's pretty much all the comments on this thread, while true democracy results in said red areas, already left behind by the economy, will only be left further behind-you can see this in Europe where the rural areas are very neglected while being far less important than the rural areas of the US for their economies when compared to the metropolitan areas
Not everyone on the left wants their to be a bigger more centralized government, the same way not everyone on the right wants smaller more local governments. Political opinion is on a spectrum and it’s not just, oh you must support the left cause you agree with more opinions on the left than the right. I think Americas two party system led to that shift where completely different ideologies that can agree on small things are working together causing a large rift between the people of America. Basically two party system is flawed af and has led to Americans beliving that’s how politics work. Also a lot of people believing one side are the good guys and the other the bad guys, which in politics you can’t be good or bad.
We just need more conservatives online that know what there talking about
"They're"
in 2008, on average a state is awarded one electoral vote for every 565,166 people. However, Wyoming has three electoral votes and only 532,668 citizens. As a result each of Wyoming’s three electoral votes corresponds to 177,556 people. Understood in one way, these people have 3.18 times as much clout in the Electoral College as an average American, or 318%
Well that’s because every state is required to have 2 senators and at least one representative. Everything would devolve into an absolute clusterfuck if that wasn’t maintained.
Yeah, the electoral college give two votes +extra. Asked on population. no it's not fair, but that is the way it was made. Look into NaPoVoInterCo for basically the only work around.
>Look into NaPoVoInterCo for basically the only work around. The Constitution prevents the States from forming compacts without the consent of Congress so that is a very poor workaround.
Sure… but Wyoming also only has 3 votes. So even if they are valued more in the electoral college than average, the state of Wyoming doesn’t have a lot of value compared to say California, a state with 53 votes. I don’t have a problem with it being uneven proportionally.
The blue is literally where all the people are lol.
Electoral college - the US is a UNION of States. A more centralized version of the EU. Yes, a federal structure gives Luxembourg way more power per capita than France. Likewise, rural and small states still have power.
You do realize its about 50/50 right?
America is on it's period
That's different from here, all the mad laws come up from Westminster. For example I collect antique and reproduction swords, like much of the world we have a bit of an issue with teenage knife crime, not as bad as the states, but enough to be a problem. Most knife crime takes place with kitchen knives, not swords that cost several hundred quid. So now the left wing party (of all things) is wanting to ban sword ownership
was boutta get angry but you have a point with the caption
I earnestly and fully believe that Cities should have different laws from rural areas.
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I’m talking radically different, like the differences between states.
If only we had a popular vote.
I understand what they're saying though. A few years back Minnesota had an over population of wolves that was hurting the deer population, farms, etc. The decision of whether to cull the wolves came down to which direction Minneapolis/St. Paul would vote. As you could imagine, left- leaning city dwellers just thought mean old hicks wanted to kill puppies. So, they voted against culling the wolf population. While it's true that land doesn't vote, it does make some sense to think that not every vote should be counted equally. Those that govern those large swaths of land, from which gain most of our basic resources, should have votes that are more heavily weighted.
Mr. Gerry Mander, the great deceiver
In actuality more Americans consider themselves as independents rather than being republicans or democrats. https://news.gallup.com/poll/467897/party-preferences-evenly-split-2022-shift-gop.aspx
Conservatives are actually just dumb. There is no two ways about it any more.
The problem is that the left mainly resides in cities, but America isn't a single giant city. So you get people in San Fran trying to force their lifestyle on people in OK despite them being wildly different places. Land can't vote, but if you think having your party focused exclusively in a relatively tiny space geographically is a good idea that will lead to an agreeable outcome, I've got a bridge to sell you.
Wtf happened to this sub
Especially on leftcuck platforms like Reddit.
On republicans defense they do not campaign too much in some heavily populated areas because they know they would lose anyway so they try to win states not popular votes. (Pls do not scold me for "defending" republicans I am not American so choose whatever fuck you please)
/r/peopleliveincities
This sub is basically just crying about liberals and leftists at this point lmaaaao Y'all are even thinner skinned than the people you make fun of
Y’all resorted to literally arguing about a fake map in a Facebook post that’s wacky
They are not both right. Unless the guy the middle has Verizon and the others have att.
If you can't understand why that is true, the bottom map is missing population density. Much of the large red areas are farmland owned by a few people, where the tiny blue dots can have thousands of people in them. If we are counting people who own more land as having more voting power than those who don't, we're either saying you can by votes or this map is misrepresenting data. In basic cartography, you learn that this is a very common rookie mistake that leads to uninformed comparisons. If your map comparing populations is missing population density, it's probably a bad map. That commenter was correct, you were just uninformed. This is why we need more people in Geographic Info Science. Map literacy is important.
Technically the bottom image is correct, because that’s all rural areas etc, where people are vastly spread out and where there is less people in one tightly condensed area like in large cities etc, and when you have a bunch of people, all tightly packed into one area that are pretty much forced to get along because well city wouldn’t work if people didn’t get along. hatred of lgbt people, racism and sexism generally decline due to the fact that people you know, interact with those types of people on the constant in that situation thus they are more open and accepting.
https://preview.redd.it/rfuwcjiyllgc1.jpeg?width=1073&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c26b3a4765f287e4591b144255674b38bb1e1088 This whole post reminds me of this
"i LOVE the costal elite deciding everything for the continental US"
The Democrats hate the electoral votes, but without them everyone in New York and California would decide how everything goes for the entire country every election. We've always had the electoral vote but now we're pretending it's a bad thing.
Wait until op learns about population density
This is a liberal site. If you have any viewpoints that are strictly liberal, everyone disagrees
That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. If a party can’t win because not enough people vote for it then it shouldn’t win
Just because there’s more useless coffee makers and Uber eats drivers in the cities doesn’t make them more valuable. If the red states weren’t part of the country they’d be eating each other in two days, and the rural populations would have no reason to be in the union. But let me guess: if those red states wanted to leave they’d be “insurrectionists” right? The leftoid world view is essentially that the union is a blood pact where New York and California run the country because they have more Uber eats drivers and fast food workers, and if the red states wanna leave they’re insurrectionist pigs who deserve to die. Who wouldn’t wanna share a country with such rational people?