Oh my solution is to discuss this, you are more than capable of finding solutions when you are willing to see the problems.

Well probably the biggest problem is that the problem you think is a problem is not in fact that big of a problem.

Compared to immigration, the economy, reproductive rights, gun laws, and wether or not the US is still a democracy this time next year, I’m pretty sure energizing more people to cast a vote is way down the list.

I know you think more voters would reduce the likelihood of Trump’s election, and potential fall of our Democracy. I’m really not so sure.

Plenty of countries vote their eventual dictator into power. And once that happens, it doesn’t matter how many voters would like them out, by then it’s too late.

I’m not saying Trump would end democracy, btw, but that’s certainly being suggested by political campaigns, so that’s clearly a thing people are voting on. Ironically, if Trump wins he might see it as a mandate to seize power, which would be totally **** up, but I could see the argument, precisely because of what the other side has been saying.

The fact that you only think this in a partisan way is very telling.
Anyway, as I said in my initial post, some stuff seems just outside the realm of what's possible over there, discussing reforms to the electoral system is one of them.

I'd like to point out that all parties are also aware of the fact that off year elections (non-presidential) turn out is often lower than a presidential election.

The elections of 2018, 2020 and 2022 were three of the highest-turnout U.S. elections of their respective types in decades. About two-thirds (66%) of the voting-eligible population turned out for the 2020 presidential election – the highest rate for any national election since 1900. The 2018 election (49% turnout) had the highest rate for a midterm since 1914. Even the 2022 election’s turnout, with a slightly lower rate of 46%, exceeded that of all midterm elections since 1970.

That is info from Pew Research.




And that's only if they agree that there is a problem.

I’m not thinking about this discussion in a partisan way. I’m evaluating Trump based on what he himself has said, and I’m drawing my own conclusions. What he has said, and more importantly done, leads me to believe it’s not safe to let him be anywhere near the Presidency again. So I’m voting against him, or I suppose for his opponent. I was a split ticket voter this year, with some of my votes going to Republicans, but most of my votes going to Democrats (as usual for me).

It really is that simple.

You haven’t given me a single reason to think reforming the electoral college would accomplish anything. At least not yet. I’m all ears though.

P.s.: the partisan viewpoint, for me, would be to be in favor of abolishing the electoral college. FYI.

I mean I have given you reasons the fact that you are unable to understand them is beyond me.

Extended Primaries, bipartisan system, Winner takes all, non popular vote for president.

Oh man, just saw the Blue Eye Samurai episode where she kills the dead girl. What a show. Gets you right in the feels. These be some complicated characters.

Those aren’t reasons, they are just features of the current system.

Why would eliminating the electoral change any of those things?

We could change the primary system without removing the electoral college.
Why would removing the electoral college change the two party system we currently have? It would still be winner takes all, you’re just changing how the winner is chosen.

Non popular vote isn’t even a problem.

Like I was asking, what is the problem that eliminating the electoral college solves, because it doesn’t solve any of the above except the one thing that isn’t actually a problem.

I didnt say you need to abolish the electoalcollege, I said that those aspects of it tend to make people think that their vote does not matter.
Change Winner takes all and the Primaries and you are pretty good IMO.

We are electing, count them, one President. So unless you plan to cut that person in half or something, or have each candidate serve time proportionately to their earned votes (I’m not in favor of that), you’re stuck with winner takes all.

It’s kind of the way things work… you have one position to fill, so one person fills it… aka the winner.

States can change their primaries anytime they want to. They don’t want to. I’m not aware of any popular movement, for example, to change Texas’ primaries. If there was any popular push to do so, here, I’d probably know about it.

The only issue with the primaries, and this may actually cause some future change: SCOTUS ruled incorrectly when it overruled states’ rights to refuse to put Trump on the ballot. That was a mistake, imo, even if it might have lead to other states refusing to allow Biden on their ballots in response.

That decision was massive overreach and completely reduces the power of states to choose the president of the United States. There is no way the founding fathers would approve of that decision.

But this is more a failure of the courts than anything else. Trump should have been proven guilty, or acquitted of his alleged crimes by then. The fact that it was still unsettled has caused all kinds of trouble.

Once again, the issue remains unaddressed. The current system incentivizes states to maintain their advantage in the Electoral College. Why would a solidly red or blue state want to give up its overrepresentation? Texas or California, for example, have no incentive to award votes to the opposing party. This imbalance is deeply embedded in the system. Similarly, why aren’t primaries held on the same day nationwide?

Regardless of personal opinions, awareness, or public organization around these issues, certain votes simply carry more weight than others. This disparity inevitably chips away at trust in the system itself.

What do you mean? Texas and California may have no incentive, but Georgia's Governor probably wished he could last election (as did about half of the state's population - who then did not insist that things change in time for this election). Some years it would be a good thing, other years it would be a bad thing (and people will have opposite opinions on which years). It just depends on the state. If your concern is with winner takes all electors, as I mentioned before: two states don't do it that way. If that were a popular idea, it would change in more states (it's not). Everyone might want it for other people, but they don't generally want it for themselves (or for states that align with their politics).

As for why a state would want to give that up... if California, for example, gave up its winner take all stance for electors, it would become front and center in US politics. It would forever change the current Democrat party, but California would certainly reap some benefits from the increased attention, and increased need for national parties to satisfy its citizens. Similar thing, but currently in reverse with Texas.

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We have traditions on when primaries are held. People like those traditions. That's the least rational of your remarks, btw. You should drop that one, because nobody (and I really do mean just about nobody) cares. The primaries that matter happen on Super Tuesday. No serious candidate drops out before that, and honestly if they do badly on that day it bodes poorly for their future (even though sometimes candidates keep limping on, they usually have no chance). You can get some help from momentum from earlier states leading into that day, but that day is pretty good at eliminating poor candidates. I get that you think this is causing some filtration of potential candidates, but I don't think that's true. If every primary happened on the same day, it would greatly limit candidate abilities to talk to the voters, and learn about what they want/need -> that would actually filter out certain candidates (Obama probably doesn't get to be president, for example). I think staggered primaries are a good thing - they give people a lot more opportunity to interact with prospective candidates and that lends those people a political voice. It also helps find and remove the candidates who aren't consistent enough to get through the primary season without making a major faux pas (this is a good thing, because the goal is to win a general election, not just the candidacy).



Certain votes carry more weight? I suppose that's kind of true in a presidential election - when you completely ignore what each vote can unlock in terms of total electoral voters, and focus exclusively on the elector to voter ratio.

The alternative system would make certain voters completely irrelevant. Take Alaskans as an example. Right now, Presidential candidates may have a reason to give a crap about Alaskan voters. If we switch to a popular vote there would be NO reason to care about Alaskan voters at all - there simply aren't enough of them. The new campaigns would be completely subject to the whims of cities like New York and Los Angeles, and those cities are probably the only kinds of places candidates would bother campaigning. No reason to care about rural voters, and in fact they'd be discouraged from caring about them for reasons of pure efficiency. You can reach a lot more people with one stop in an Urban area than an entire tour of rural lands.

This would replace the quasi-tyranny of low-population states (lol at that btw, because the House of Representatives exists, limiting their power to little or none), with actual tyranny of city folk (who would also control the House of Representatives).

Has Alaska been relevant ever in an Election? How many times a year Presidents visit Alaska?

Who cares about Alaska?

PS: About Primaries I could be convinced, about the "Winner takes all" VS split votes its clear that that could only happen in swing states.

When Trump wins coz Winner takes all, this is gonna be so tragic.

I don't know... if Gore had won Alaska (or for that matter Wyoming), he'd have won the Presidency. Maybe he should have cared or considered tempering some of his stances to gain a wider appeal.

You're somewhat undercutting that overweighted votes argument with that statement.

In fact, if Democrats figured out how to gain appeal in some of those states that aren't as relevant, those states would become relevant at the cost of the relevancy of places like Florida.

p.s.: a Trump win needs to be evaluated based on the people living in the country he's elected in. In the US, while I'd agree a Trump win would be a tragedy, the people voting for him would not agree. And he, if elected, would represent the will of the American people - for good or for ill. And it would also represent the clear failure of the Democrats to engage with the general public.

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Btw, Cucho. Has it ever occurred to you that Swing states may actually be good representations of the broader US population. In order for these elections to be close, you need a pretty diverse mix of rich and poor, races, ages, etc. There's a reason why more homogeneous populations tend not to be swing states, but are those populations good arbiters for national politics? perhaps not.

Maybe the reason Florida is so important to national elections has more to do with the demographics of Florida than some unfair distribution of voting power. The opposite would be true for places like NY, which are bastions of the intellectual and financial elite, and thereby terrible representatives of the nation as a whole.

We'd live in the United Media Markets of America

So, a little bit of news/info that has been missed

Ranked choice voting is a thing

Meanwhile some states are choosing to undo RCV as pointed out in the link. And it's basically the only real reform with any chance of happening nationwide as opposed to ditching the electoral college. Also before before the current primary system it was a bit of a mess

It's funny when you think about how much the electoral process has changed since the country's inception.

Yeah, the electoral college may feel a bit dated, I suppose, but how we choose those electors is, and can be, constantly evolving.

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I don't know if I like ranked choice voting or not. In the end, it may further force us into the two party system, because, under RCV, third party spoilers become truly irrelevant, since a voter can vote for them as some meaningless rebellion, and still choose someone who can actually win as their second choice.

It all but eliminates the power of third-party candidates to do any real damage, thereby eliminating the need of the major parties to capitulate to any third-party desires or demands.

On the other hand, it allows people to state their preferences, so it may help new parties emerge over time.

Hard to say which force will prevail. It may simply depend on the third party, tbh.

so on my ballot along with the Dems and Reps, No party affiliation (RFK jr) the libertarian party,the green party, and lastly socialism and liberation party.

If I had ranked choice voting, I'd totally vote for PSL (mostly for the memes), followed by libertarian, followed by Democrat. And my vote would end up being counted for Democrat.

I just don't know if that solves anything, or makes things worse.

I don’t get the talk about our democracy being in decay because of our process for electing pres. We’ve had essentially the same system for electing pres in place for a couple hundred years and been fine. More than fine, we became a modern Rome. We will fall eventually as all empires do, decline is unavoidable but we had a run most countries only dream of. We’re a couple hundred years deep in this game, we didn’t just start doing this yesterday

In terms of damage to American democracy, I’d rank the rise of the internet and the way it undermined network news (consolidation of national narrative) and allowed people the ability to silo off into ideological bubbles with separate and wholly disconnected narratives waaayy above the electoral college

And at any rate all this talk about needing to Fix the process of electing pres just feels like cope for Dems not running away with this election. If Kamala was killing it in the polls we wouldn’t be having this conversation, I’m sure of it. Feels like the real issue that needs to be Fixed is what drove enough of the population into his voter base to make this race contentious

We are having this talk coz of this.
Coz people in a close eleccion dont think their vote maters at all, thats not a sign of a thriving democracy, wheather its happening in the US or Uganda.