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[NullForceOmega]

TBF, you just asked us to do THIS EXACT THING, and now you're bitching about time?  You don't even know what you want, you're just scared, angry, and confused.  You want something to happen to make it so that you aren't anymore, and you're lashing out at anything you don't agree with, JUST LIKE THE PEOPLE WHO GOT TRUMP ELECTED.

This election has made absolutely everyone stupid.  I'm done with this.  AND YES, I AM INCLUDING MYSELF IN THAT EVERYONE.

[Sensei]

You've shown that it's possible for the electoral college to result in weird shit in extreme circumstances. Sure. That, however, doesn't prove that the electoral college is evil, bad, worse than any other given proposed solution, nor does it disprove the claim that it balances out geographical groups (especially city folk VS country folk) when one group is more populous than the other, which is what Evaris has been saying.

In short, you're going to do more to prove your point if you think that the electoral college is the worst kind of gerrymandering, or whatever your claim is.

[Antioch]

(...)

Allow me to point out, that were it not for the abnormally large percentage of Californian voters who went with hillary over trump, than Trump would have won the popular election.  It's just that California has an absurd population, that culture there has a large impact on the popular vote. 

The electoral college is in place so that all states have at least a minimum of a level of impact on the vote of the country, as we live in a federated republic of states - each state is meant to be represented in national elections.  The electoral college was designed so that urban demographics are on equal ground with rural demographics, as the founding fathers were worried of mob rule scenarios, as well as concerned that farmers had as much a voice as academics.   Etc, etc, etc.

End of the day, the electoral collage is there for a reason, and was built from the lessons learned of the Athenian democracy and the Roman republic. 

The lesson learned is that rural voters, in popular vote systems, are often ignored, which tends to lead to a lot of issues down the line as urban demographics become the only groups pandered to by politicians, and rural voters needs/concerns become ignored completely over time.  The electoral system allows for multiple rural states to equal a heavily populated state, instead of being completely irrelevant.  You'll notice that Trump won 29-30 states to Hillary's 20-21, and Trump won the vast majority of the USA's physical landmass, including the states with the greatest amounts of industry and agriculture. 

Meanwhile, service and technology oriented states, which see extreme urbanization, went for Hillary.  This is the balancing of interest group priorities the electoral college is there to protect, instead of the government being controlled by only a couple of interest groups.

Why do rural voters need to be protected? What makes them more special than any other group of society?

Are there special rules to protect the interests of minority voters? Are there special rules to protect the interests engineers, firemen or bakers?

[Criptfeind]

I think it is worth promoting rural interests in various ways and having some representation based on area instead of population does have value to the system.

That's why we have a Senate. (Edit: And to a lesser degree, the house.)

The presidency is a zero sum game there can only be one winner. You're not raising up the rural populations representation to match the urban populations by using the electoral collage, you're simply making the majority loosers and the minority winners. Any "good" or increase in representation you gain from it is at the cost of a larger amount of "bad" or decrease in representation.

[Sheb]

The EC fails to represent rural voters in another way, because it forces the candidates to focus on swing states. Small rural states are red enough that no one needs to care about them.

[smjjames]

I like how this thread has turned into a discussion on the Electoral College,

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Anyone else think the Twelfth Amendment was a bit of a mistake, and what led to it being made a bit bullshit?

[smjjames]

Twelfth Amendment? Um... *looks that up*

The bit about the VP may have been more of an issue when the nation was still young, but not so much now. Bush-Cheney did run into that problem a bit since Cheney was residing in Texas at the time, but he set it back to Wyoming (or Wisconscin, I forget which) for the election.

Unless you mean the second part, that was in response to problems that happened early in our history. And yeah, it's kind of BS, why else would we be discussing it otherwise?

[Starver]

Slightly ninjaed by alternate countergarguments, but still...

[infographic]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cw6528WXcAUYX1b.jpg[/infographic]

If half of the population lives in those blue areas, then half the population lives in those blue areas...

Why should land area be an over-riding factor, above numbers of people?  "I'm the only person living on the side of this mountain, therefore I control a whole mountain's worth of votes"? " You live in a tower-block with hundreds of other people, therefore you get the same amount of votes to split between you all as the family that lives in the large single-storey house with the same footprint..."?

[Neonivek]

I love that the USA would just COMPLETELY fall apart if California split.

[Sheb]

Nah it wouldn't.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Twelfth Amendment? Um... *looks that up*

The bit about the VP may have been more of an issue when the nation was still young, but not so much now. Bush-Cheney did run into that problem a bit since Cheney was residing in Texas at the time, but he set it back to Wyoming (or Wisconscin, I forget which) for the election.

Unless you mean the second part, that was in response to problems that happened early in our history. And yeah, it's kind of BS, why else would we be discussing it otherwise?

Election of 1800 is what I was referring to as the bullshit they pulled.  I personally like the sound of the person coming in first becomes president, while the person coming in second becomes vice president.  If they nuked it to each elector only having one vote and kept that, then the smaller political parties would have a much higher chance of gaining at least the latter position, granting much higher odds of gaining an at least 3 party system, likely more.  And if that happens, a lot of the problems resulting from a 2 party system wouldn't exist.

I love that the USA would just COMPLETELY fall apart if California split.

I've only been seeing the argument that California would fall apart if it split off, but not the US.

[Starver]

I love that the USA would just COMPLETELY fall apart if California split.

Or is it that if the USA fell apart, California would split.

(Also reference...)

[Criptfeind]

I think you'd have to fix first past the post before you did that, otherwise you'd still easily just have a republican and a democrat. If you had some sorta run off that was run twice, once to pick the president, then again with the winner removed, then maybe you'd get third parties in the vice presidential seat.

[Antioch]

I think it is worth promoting rural interests in various ways and having some representation based on area instead of population does have value to the system.

That's why we have a Senate. (Edit: And to a lesser degree, the house.)

The presidency is a zero sum game there can only be one winner. You're not raising up the rural populations representation to match the urban populations by using the electoral collage, you're simply making the majority loosers and the minority winners. Any "good" or increase in representation you gain from it is at the cost of a larger amount of "bad" or decrease in representation.

But I once again would like to ask why "rural" voters are the only group that get their interests protected like this.

EVERYONE has interests, why are those of rural voters more important than those of others?