this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2024
218 points (97.8% liked)
Technology
58159 readers
3702 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
So you’d rather the entity that never has and never will have your best interests at heart over the one that to an extent does? An interesting position to take.
The electoral college provides people significant representation in federal government as grouped by state. The. Each state gives people representation in their states government. It would only make sense to get rid of the electoral college after dissolving the 50 states and unifying under 1 federal government, which isn’t something that I think literally any American wants.
Everyone representing themselves is an extreme example but hopefully clearly shows how more representatives are better at representing a group than fewer. Compare a voting result of 50% A, 25% B, 25% C with a system that gives you 1 representative (from A) with a system that gives you 5 representatives (3 from A, 1 from B, 1 from C).
Electoral college permit states to choose electors who can cast their vote in a way that doesn't reflect how people in their state voted for. If a critical amount of states agree they can choose to make the overall result better represent nationwide what all Americans voted for (an election of an election results in a bigger misrepresentation error).
Why would ditching the electoral college require dismantling state governments? That makes no sense.
It wouldn’t require it. But it makes less than no sense to ditch it while we are still a 50 state union. The entire point of the United States is that you can choose a state to live in with an independent regional government that governs the place where you and your family live and work. A place where you have more control as a voter in how it’s run. Then you have a federal government which can when institute needed laws that apply to every state, which is a lot of power over the state you live in. Thus you want each independent state to have a vote in who’s running the country.
To get rid of the electoral college would mean handing over control of the entire federal government, a government that has the power to overrule laws in your state, to effectively four or five states.
But that’s already the case? Swing states get to decide national policy far more than other states. Giving proportional representation would at least ensure that the states with a bigger voice have more citizens. Citizens in small states would still have an equal voice, unlike the current system.
I think universal equality in political power is far more compatible with federalism than the current system.
It is not already the case. Without an electoral college, a single voter in North Dakota has effectively no voice at all. In fact, the states entire population would mean little more than a rounding error. With no electoral college the cumulative voting power of the entire state is 0.23%. With the electoral college they’re bumped up to over 1%
…no? A swing state is just a state that that has enough voters from each major party that they could go either way. They don’t have any more power than any other state.