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Electoral college. Why?

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by nolimitnp, Jul 10, 2013.

  1. pirc1

    pirc1 Member

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    Just why should the smaller states count more than bigger states? They are already represented more in the congress proportionally.
     
  2. justtxyank

    justtxyank Member

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    They don't count more.

    I don't think you understand how the system works at all.
     
  3. pirc1

    pirc1 Member

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    Of course they do. The EC is number of congressmen for each state. So since Senate is two per state, smaller states like RH have more EC counts than larger states like NY. Who is the one that does not understand EC?
     
  4. justtxyank

    justtxyank Member

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    You don't understand the electoral college. The electoral college is not the Senate.

    Each state has a different number of electoral votes. It's not two per state.
     
  5. SamFisher

    SamFisher Member

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    He didn't say it was the Senate. He said # of congressmen per state, which is more or less correct (save for DC). Wyoming ergo has 2 senators, 1 represenattive - that's 3 congressmen. 3 EV's.
     
  6. justtxyank

    justtxyank Member

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    Are you saying that a state like RH has more electoral counts than NY like he claimed?

    The fact that all states have 2 senators has 0 impact on the electoral college.
     
  7. pirc1

    pirc1 Member

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    Exactly. Show how much he understand the system.
     
  8. pirc1

    pirc1 Member

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    proportionally people in smaller states counts a little more than people in bigger states, how did you graduate from high school?
     
  9. justtxyank

    justtxyank Member

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    I don't know, maybe we are talking different things here?

    Are you saying that small states count more in the electoral college? :confused:

    Maybe I've misunderstood your posts?
     
  10. pirc1

    pirc1 Member

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    I am saying each person in smaller state counts more than each person in larger state. For example Alaska have 3 EC and have a population of 628933, California have 55 EC and have a population of 37341989. For each person in Alaska they have 3/628933 (0.000004769983) EC while in California they have 55/37341989(0.0000014728) EC, do you understand now? So each person in Alaska count more than three persons in California basically.
     
  11. SamFisher

    SamFisher Member

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    Yes, the number of electoral votes per capita in RH (is that Rhode Island or New Hampshire?...whatever) is higher than in New York.
     
  12. Major

    Major Member

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    Which is more than they do now. I don't care about retail vs TV - campaigning is campaigning.

    At the expense of where? They already campaign 24/7, so if you're putting more effort into NY (compared to none right now), who is losing out?

    Yes - to make campaigns and policies appeal to everyone.

    People are voting there. But candidates have no reason to make policies that appeal to them, and they have no reason to govern with Kentucky's interests in mind. Bush made protectionist steel policies not because they were good policy, but because it mattered in a state that he wanted to win. Kentucky will never get policy like that. It's just silly.

    Why? Right now, your vote has zero chance of influencing an election. Neither candidate cares for your vote or even bothers to ask for your vote because they both know you're irrelevant. On the other hand, if you lived in Ohio or Colorado or Iowa, you'd be the most important person in the world. Maybe that might change in 16-20 years, but otherwise, it won't have any impact anytime in the near future. That said, you're correct that Dems favor this more than GOPers, but it's not really a small vs big state thing. The states that have passed NPV legislation include large states like California and New Jersey, to small ones like Hawaii and Vermont.
     
  13. justtxyank

    justtxyank Member

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    It's whatever state he was referring to when he said RH lol.

    I agree that per individual electoral vote an individual voter in a small state has more representation. I didn't realize that was what the poster meant. Any extra representation an individual voter has is overwhelmed by the fact that the total votes are so overwhelmed by the larger states and that there is no proportional representation in most states in the electoral college.
     
  14. pirc1

    pirc1 Member

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    The question is why should other people's vote count more than mine or my vote count more than someone else's vote. It should be just one person one vote for national election. The smaller states are already over represented in congress, they should not complain.
     
  15. itstheyear3030

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    Dude, I respect the Constitution as much as the next guy, but 225 years is not that long a time in the grand spectrum of human history. There are plenty of cogent arguments for why the Constitution is worthy of praise, but the longevity argument as of yet is inconclusive.
     
  16. Space Ghost

    Space Ghost Member

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    I am not sure why you even bother to live in this country anymore since you hate it so much.
     
  17. Space Ghost

    Space Ghost Member

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    To answer the OP's question, we are a representative Democracy. This is our form of government and to simply change to a popular system shakes the foundation on what this country was built upon.

    A far better solution than the current EC system and a popular vote system is to simply require states to split the EC. With the 'winner takes all' EC system, politicians only concentrate on battleground states. A popular vote system would give the power to the highly populated areas and candidates would only campaign there. With a split EC system, it would significantly bring down the political strongholds in certain states.
     
  18. Deckard

    Deckard Blade Runner
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    I admit that it'd be cool to be able to send an Democratic electoral college vote from the Austin area, assuming it wasn't gerrymandered out of existence, which would be the case. No thanks.
     
    #38 Deckard, Jul 11, 2013
    Last edited: Jul 11, 2013
  19. Major

    Major Member

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    That would make small states more worthless than they currently are. For example, states with 3 EVs would split 2-1 under almost every circumstance. Any state with 4 EVs would almost certainly split 2-2 or 3-1, depending how you did it. Any state with 5 would almost assuredly go 3-2 one way or another. So instead of fighting for 5 votes, you'd fight for 1.
     
  20. Major

    Major Member

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    Hmm - I assumed he meant divide it up based on population. If you do it by district, you're just replicating the House of Representatives. You'd basically have a gerrymandered Presidency that has little to do with popular will.
     

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