Massachusetts passes new law giving electoral votes to national popular vote winner

a conservative for limiting States rights?

 

Technically, the current system was put into place by 13 states, with the rest not having any say.

 

Who cares about these small towns they provide no value to the US. The just act as leeches will all these subsidies which as a republican you should hate.

 

Does this dilute the vote of the Mass. Citizen?
I mean if Mass OVERWHELMINGLY votes one way . . it does not matter
their votes goto the other side . . . .has their voice truly been heard?

Rocket River

 

Yes, their voice has been truly heard. In fact, more so than now. Right now, there is no difference if 51% or 99% of Massachusetts votes Dem - the minority gets 0% of the vote. In the alternative system, each vote incrementally matters. The actual proportion of voters in Massachusetts matters. I would argue that is much more hearing the voice of Massachusetts that not caring how 49% of the people vote after you get to 50% for one candidate.

 

Definitely - that seems to be a source of a lot of the confusion when debating this law. The idea behind it is that when you get this critical mass, then where the electors come from and how many vote for the President would no longer matter. All that would be relevant would be the national popular vote - the EC would just be an archaic mechanism to complete the process, but there would no such thing as a "close" or "blowout" election in the electoral college.

That goes to Weslinder's question about whether MA voters would be upset - that wouldn't because they are basically saying their vote matters at the popular vote level but the structure of the EC is no longer relevant to them.

 

While this may be true, you have to look at the reasons for the EC in the first place. If the popular vote is all that matters, do you think that candidates will campaign in smaller states the way that they have previously? Of course not. Iowa, for example, largely will not matter anymore. The candidates will spend their time in Texas, Florida, California, New York and Illinois. This is precisely what the EC was designed to avoid.

Of course, as you noted, it could lead to some interesting results. For example, say Washington state voted 60-40 for Democrat John Doe. Republican Billy Person wins the national popular vote by .1%. All of Washington's electors vote for the Republican despite the outcome of the election in that state. It just does not sound representative of the sentiment in that state.

 

Sure they will - look how Obama won the nomination over Clinton. He let Clinton win the big states by small margins and wiped the floor in all the small states, racking up huge margins of victory. Its easier to get huge margins in small states because of more uniform demographics and much cheaper media.

But beyond that, where do candidates campaign right now? They certainly don't go to Alaska, Hawaii, Delaware, Vermont, Utah, Montana, Wyoming, the Dakota's, etc. But not only do they ignore all those small states, they also ignore California, Texas, New York and plenty of other big states. All that matter right now are about a dozen or fewer swing states - that wasn't remotely what the electoral college had in mind when it was created.

So yes, this new system would not do what the EC originally intended - but the current system doesn't either.

 

But each and every single one of those %60 that voted for John Doe had their vote counted in the national popular vote. It's inaccurate to say that they weren't represented or didn't count.

I can see how rural areas would see some disadvantage because campaigns would run more in populous areas (which tend to be liberal.) I'd like to hear more discussion on the repercussions of campaigning in a popular vote. But to say that people's votes aren't counted isn't true. Some are nitpicking how maybe kind of sort of in this very special situation maybe their vote won't count. Similar unfairness/weidness exists in the EC, as we know someone can win the EC without winning the popular vote.

National vote= every single individual citizen in the nation has a vote that counts towards the total of the candidate they want to win. Every single one.

EC= the political minority in every state that isn't a swing state don't count for jack.

 

i agree. and right afterwards abolish the electoral college.

and soon thereafter, lets try to de-federalize as much as we can. the federal gov't should be handling many of the things the states are. e.g. there's no reason to have 51 sets of criminal law.

 

I actually disagree with this - I think it would be a huge boost to rural areas. Right now, no one campaigns on a pro-rural platform. There's simply no way to win that way, because you need to win big states that are majority-urban (or suburban).

But nationwide, 25% of the population is rural. With a national popular vote, there would be a significant benefit to a platform that directly appealed to rural voters (right now, the platform is essential social conservatism - but I'm talking about specific economics that benefit rural voters, etc).

I think you'd see a much more diverse mix of candidates in a popular vote system, because there are just many more ways to win by mixing different types of coalitions.

Keep in mind that the actual physical campaigning and going city-to-city is a fairly small piece of the puzzle. A candidate simply can't cover 300 million voters that way. Candidates already don't visit rural areas because they can't get big crowds. The real issues are TV advertising and the platform itself. I think a national popular vote expands the target market of both TV ads and the overall platform of the candidate, both of which would be huge in terms of generating more of a national campaign.