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[martinuzz]

Don't worry, the rest of the western world is on standby to send a UN peacekeeping force to bomb your civilians and capture your oil refineries, in a righteous attempt to bring democracy to your country.

[MrRoboto75]

Don't worry, the rest of the western world is on standby to send a UN peacekeeping force to bomb your civilians and capture your oil refineries, in a righteous attempt to bring democracy to your country.

Not the fate we needed, but the one we deserve.

[Reelya]

I'd argue the only states that really matter under the EC are the four or five swing states.

The EC doesn't matter for that, what matters is that most states are winner take all states. You can keep the EC but if each state decided to apportion their EC votes proportionally, there would be no such swing states.

So the EC is broken for various reasons, but the problem of winner take all states is actually a separate issue, which is proven by the fact that if they just change how the EC votes are allocated then swing states wouldn't even exist, but the EC would still exist and no constitutional changes would be required.

[Dunamisdeos]

Am I the only one dying from laughter about the newly-minted Presidential Lawn-and-Dildo Store? Help me I can;t sto[

[Starver]

The EC doesn't matter for that, what matters is that most states are winner take all states. You can keep the EC but if each state decided to apportion their EC votes proportionally, there would be no such swing states.

It probably should be possible (if the vote-counts are sufficiently settled) to take the current/prior vote-counts and reconstruct as either purely proportional or (as per the couple of current exceptions) "district-proportional plus topdog" distributions and model the alternate outcome(s).

(Though, of course, if everybody was aware these other mechanisms were active, they'd campaign/vote subtly differently, at least after the first time. And once history has diverged any subsequent re-result would have drasticalky different preconditions.)

[feelotraveller]

The problem is that it is a version of the prisoners dilemna since each state decides for itself how to apportion EC votes, and those that do it proportionally basically stop being important to the election compared to those that don't.  Campaigning would then focus on those states who remain winner take all since they (exceptional circumstances aside) decide the outcome.

[Random_Dragon]

I'm not 100% sure that'd be the case. Not all the states are swing states, and maybe get rather little attention specifically because they trend towards one party or the other consistently. For those, there would be some incentive to phase out the winner-takes-all approach, though in this case the main obstacle would be convincing whichever party predominates in that particular state that the increased attention they'd get would be worth the risk of giving "the other side" a chance in their state.

If some of those non-battleground states succeed in overcoming that hurdle, then the incentive for the swing states to retain winner-takes-all electoral voting is reduced, though it'll still undoubtedly be a big hurdle for them, as they'd still likely benefit from their continued use of the current system even if electoral reform in "unimportant" states draw away from of that campaign focus.

[delphonso]

There's clearly only one way to fix the EC.

One gun = one vote.

[Egan_BW]

yee haw

[Starver]

"...current projections are that Yosemite Sam will end up at 170 million votes, just slightly shy of Quickdraw McGraw at 180 million votes. The remaining 43 million votes are expected to be roughly shared between Mr Magoo and various independent snipers who... *argh*"

[feelotraveller]

There's clearly only one way to fix the EC.

One gun = one vote.

I've got more guns than you.


@Random_Dragon
Yeah a couple of states already do the proportional thing. 
But unfortunately the less that remain winner takes all the more those states benefit from it, even if they are not currently swing states (although there is the caveat that it must be possible with a billion dollars and numerous promises thrown at them that they might just flip, so there's that).  Just some quick numbers: assume most states go proportional but a few don't.  Say 470/68 in terms of EC votes (about 1 in   Then assume a convincing margin for one side 55/45 (and assume that's homogenous just for simplicity sake).  Now neither side can win without some of the winner takes all states.  So those 68 EC votes literally decide the election.  The 55% side needs at least 11.5 EC votes (yeah numbers  ) whereas the 45 side needs all of them (to get to 269.5, ha ha).  Swinging the rest of the country by 10% only nets another 47 votes, less than 3/4 of what is up for grabs in a handful of states.  And on the meta-level each side benefits from the other colours states going proportional and loses from their own becoming so in the case they aren't at all close.

[Reelya]

The problem is that it is a version of the prisoners dilemna since each state decides for itself how to apportion EC votes, and those that do it proportionally basically stop being important to the election compared to those that don't.  Campaigning would then focus on those states who remain winner take all since they (exceptional circumstances aside) decide the outcome.

That's definitely not how it works.

If a state is solidly blue or solidly red, nobody campaigns there, since small shifts in the vote don't get you any advantage. Solid blue or red states are "in the bag" so to speak so neither party campaigns there. Currently all states bar two are Winner Takes All, but only 4-5 get campaigned in.

Other than those 4-5 swing states every other state would see an increase in campaigning if it was proportional. For example, no amount of effort by Democrats in Texas is going to hit that magical 50% mark, but if Texas was proportional, you'd no longer have to hit that magical figure, since you can campaign a little, and get some amount of extra votes. So, effectively, 45/50 of the states would see an increase in federal campaign spending if they moved towards proportional allocation. The reason they don't is because whichever party has a solid lead there has a strong vested interest in not doing so (basically, free votes without needing effort). Effectively, they're all putting their party ahead of the good of their state itself.

[feelotraveller]

Since according to you it is in the states best interest to be proportional then how come none of them are doing it?  (A couple of verys small outliers aside.)

[Egan_BW]

Because it's in the interests of whichever party is in control of that state to keep it winner-takes-all, for the good of their party if not the state itself.

[Reelya]

Because it's in the party's best interests. For example Texas might be 55% solid Republican, but the Republicans get 100% of the votes. That means nobody bother promising Texas anything since they don't need to. It's not hard to understand why this is bad for Texans, but good for the Republicans.

EDIT: if Texas moved to proportional voting then, 55% of the votes would go to Republicans, and 45% would go to Democrats. And then it would be viable for Democrats to campaign there since they could pick up a couple of extra percentage points in this high-population state, so you'd see more funding allocation towards Texas from both parties, since now it would be a battleground state. So, the Winner Takes All states system only benefits the parties and it means that both parties tend to neglect those states unless they're exactly 50/50, which almost never happens, since if both parties are neglecting Texas or California for example, both parties rise and fall the same, so the proportions hardly change.