Yup, that's pretty much the issue as far as the Electoral College goes. The other is that the voting system itself discourages independent and third-party candidates and leaves us with a bare minimum of (usually pretty bad) choices.
Electoral College: Closer to being gone than you think
- Thread starter ichab
- Start date
When selecting a politican (no matter the level of office) to vote for doesn't it boil down to which is the lesser evil.
Unles of course one of them so obviously inepet that you can't bring yourself to vote for them.
Only if not getting 100% of what you want is "evil," I guess.
Didn't help the US last year, in any case!
No. I know state and local usually have at least one candidate that I can be proud to vote for and in some cases a tough decision between two. In the presidential you always have third parties you can vote for. There's nothing forcing you to vote for the two major parties.
That is frequently the case, which is why we need ranked voting in addition to eliminating the Electoral College.
There's nothing forcing you to, but the system in place discourages it. You know that one of the major party candidates is going to win, so there's always the possibility that voting for an independent or third-party candidate will determine which of those two win (since we do have an Electoral College, people like me who live in places like MA can vote for candidates like Bernie Sanders without affecting anything, but that just underscores the flaws in the system). Again, this is why we need ranked voting.
1. No.
2. So you think there's nothing wrong when a minority wins an election and picks a president, but you think it's bad when the majority does?
No, he was right. Read his words again:
"Without gaining a MAJORITY of the popular vote." In other words, more than 50% of the vote. Lincoln received only 39.8% of the popular vote, due to the four-way race.
Neither did Bill Clinton. But they still got the most votes in their election which for me is what matters most.
What's the thought process on this one? In the abstract, I like the idea. I'll use this year's names to walk through why.
If you liked Johnson best (or despised the big 2), vote for him. If he gets enough of those, he wins. We'll assume the moonbats that voted for Stein were a minority, so when their first choice only ends up with 1% of the vote (or whatever it was), their votes then go to their 2nd choice. Maybe that bumps Johnson up higher, or maybe they go to one of the other two.
If no one is over 50% yet, drop the next least popular candidate. Let's say Johnson. Some of his votes go to Hillary, maybe some to Trump too. So if you voted for Johnson, at least you get a say in whether your backup choice was Trump or Hillary. And if you voted for Stein, then Johnson, your vote still ends up with a viable candidate at the end.
At this point, either Trump or Hillary has enough to win the vote (for that state, each one is doing this for their own EC votes), and it OUGHT to be the one that the most people are the least angry about. No more saying you threw your vote away voting for 3rd parties; they count. Either your guy legitimately is popular enough to win, or at least you get a voice on which of the major ticket candidates got your backup vote.
Avoids a situation where Trump gets 48%, Hillary gets 47%, and 5% went to 3rd party choices but they much preferred Hillary to Trump. Majority would rather have Hillary in that instance, but Trump wins with 48%.
Other than most Americans being too stupid to actually fill out this ballot without hand holding, pictures, and a crayon, what's the part of this system that sucks? Makes a lot of sense in theory, would help 3rd parties get legitimate votes, and the overall winner IS the person that the majority decided they can live with, so...?
I like the simple 2 round voting system that France has. Let all the candidates that qualify run in a general election round and if no one gets 51%, have the 2 candidates with the most votes face off in a second round a few weeks later. I wish the US could adopt this system.
I hadn't known about this system, but I think it would be even better than ranked voting. It makes total sense to me, and wouldn't be hard to re-train the general public on.
Also, I like that the same 2 parties don't always make it to the second round. The first round is often wide open. Sometimes, the second round is between an establishment right and establishment left candidate. Sometimes, it is between a centrist and a leftist or a centrist and a rightist. Or, as we saw in this past election, neither establishment parties made it the second round and the choice was between a centrist outsider and a far right candidate.
What would be drastically different between that and a Ranked Voting structure? Other than having to go to the polls twice. We get shitty enough turnout when we do it once every 4 years, can't imagine trying to drag people out 2 weeks later. Or more likely, turnout is really shitty for the first one because it's the "practice" election and "doesn't count". Which means the candidate could get more than 51% and win outright the first time by an even smaller minority than the pathetic 40% or so that bother to vote in our current elections.
At least with a Ranked system, it only has to happen once, and counts. If no one gets 51% (or whatever), the runoff election happens instantly and without having to turn out to vote again. Actually one of the bigger selling features of that system...
Well, France's turnout was great in both rounds, much higher than in the US. First round turnout was close to 80% and second round turnout was around 74%. So I don't think the 2 round system would cause low turnout. Of course, France also does voting on Sunday when people don't work, which probably helps turnout a lot. Voting on a work day and our shitty 2 party primary system is a big reason why the US has such low turnout.
I've been watching the coverage on France24, but even so I was under the impression that voting was compulsory there, because people turned out to cast "white votes" - votes for nobody, essentially. But no, I just looked, and it turns out that (surprise, surprise) the French just have a much stronger sense of civic duty than my countrymen (and -women) do - such that they turn out to vote even when they don't actually want to cast for anyone.
Agreed. Ranked voting accomplishes the same thing in one fell swoop.
That's another good point. Weekend voting or a voting holiday would be a big improvement. The increasing use of early voting helps with that, but figuring out a secure method of voting by mobile device would be prime. Then we'd just need candidates worth voting for.
On the one hand, I'm appalled by low voter turnout, but on the other hand I can hardly blame people for being apathetic. Most of the time, it is a sense of civic duty alone that brings me to the polls. Our lame two-ideology system breeds both weaponized politics and grassroots extremism. The only cure for that is direct and ranked voting.