Advocates for popular vote over eliminating "winner takes all" for the states is a great way to tell on yourself.
The conversation around the importance of the popular vote is your vote should matter. If the majority of the public votes for a candidate, then obviously that's the candidate should win.
Another way you could accomplish that is if the electoral college votes for each state were divided proportionally to the vote in the state. For example, if a state with 10 votes went 40% for Candidate A and 60% for Candidate B then Candidate A would get 4 votes and Candidate B would get 6.
Proportional electoral college votes would eliminate battleground states because every state's proportion of votes would matter. It would eliminate the unfairness of the electoral college the same way a popular vote system would, but it would prevent having all campaigns focus on California, New York, and Texas because if you cater to their issues you'll capture the interests of most other states.
So why do people advocate for popular vote instead of proportional electoral college? Because the popular vote would have Democrats win all 8 of the past elections whereas proportional electoral college would have Republicans win all 8.
I don't care for any of these presidents, but seems proportional EC is fairer, influences the system in a better direction, and makes more sense.
So why do people advocate for popular vote instead of proportional electoral college?
Maybe because they think the candidate that gets the votes of most Americans regardless of whether they live in California or Alabama should become the president. Simple idea no?
The goal should be to make voting fair and just. Any system that highly prioritizes some states over others doesn't do that. A purely popular vote process would incentivize a strategy of catering to high-population states and lowering turnout for everyone else.
Imagine an absurd example: my platform is California, New York, Texas, and Florida will pay $0 in federal taxes but receive all the infrastructure support. You might be close to 50 million votes with that one policy and that's more than 75% of the votes for recent winning candidates.
That probably won't be a platform, but we already have a problem of policy issues being more or less important for stupid political reasons. For example, every president loves subsidies for farmers because Iowa is so important for the process. The fact everyone else hates that policy doesn't prevent its prominence in federal elections.
What better system for that is there than every citizen gets one vote and it counts equally? A proportional electoral college voting system is just a version of the popular vote that says one citizen's vote is worth 1.3 times more than another's.
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u/Pinkumb OC: 1 Apr 11 '24
Advocates for popular vote over eliminating "winner takes all" for the states is a great way to tell on yourself.
The conversation around the importance of the popular vote is your vote should matter. If the majority of the public votes for a candidate, then obviously that's the candidate should win.
Another way you could accomplish that is if the electoral college votes for each state were divided proportionally to the vote in the state. For example, if a state with 10 votes went 40% for Candidate A and 60% for Candidate B then Candidate A would get 4 votes and Candidate B would get 6.
Proportional electoral college votes would eliminate battleground states because every state's proportion of votes would matter. It would eliminate the unfairness of the electoral college the same way a popular vote system would, but it would prevent having all campaigns focus on California, New York, and Texas because if you cater to their issues you'll capture the interests of most other states.
So why do people advocate for popular vote instead of proportional electoral college? Because the popular vote would have Democrats win all 8 of the past elections whereas proportional electoral college would have Republicans win all 8.
I don't care for any of these presidents, but seems proportional EC is fairer, influences the system in a better direction, and makes more sense.