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[McTraveller]

Hahah if you think the US is "unified" in any way, compared to how it was say during WWII, you must not be from the US.

There is so much animosity between regions and states... it's sad.  Heck in my state, we have massive animosity between counties. It's specifically "oh you're from that city, that's where all the <insert slur here> live."

Basically there are so many other political problems in the US, changing the EC is just noise.

[Micro102]

We literally have millions of people waving the confederate flag around. Reconstruction was never finished and Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. We did not become unified, the worst of us simply shut up for a while.

[Random_Dragon]

As a Texan, all I can say is: Imagine all the problems we could've prevented if we'd forced Sherman (emphasis on forced, he famously had no interest in getting into a political career) to be in charge of the reconstruction.

[Frumple]

I guess you guys are building a wall after all.

* da_nang raises his shield at the incoming hemming and hawing.

Ain't no hemming to haw; biden's admin's probably been its shittiest when it comes to immigration. Still better than trump's, that among every literally-goddamned other thing was trying to functionally destroy asylum as a thing, but that's a bar you need a boring machine to fail to clear.

There's some degree of indication trying to stop that would have ended up in lawsuits without actually doing anything but delay -- the actual construction and funding was allocated by congress in 2019, and there's not actually a huge amount the executive can, like... do... when congress has done a shitstupid that official -- but, like.

Dude could have said fuckit and delayed instead of expediting ecological collapse in chunks of the south in the process of fulfilling republican horseshit put through by the last administration. It wouldn't have been legal, but it was an option. So far as timing goes, the dumbfuck legislation that ordered it apparently had a deadline for this year, because approximately nothing the GOP authors is worth a damn, so it getting pushed along like this is probably due to that.

Hopefully the general incompetence of the border nuts and texas in general means the project runs out of time and money without actually doing much of anything but grifting millions of dollars. That's very much a possibility, ha.

[Lord Shonus]

Border barriers at specific points has never been particularly controversial. What was complete nonsense was the Trumpian ideal of sealing the entire southern border with a massive wall.

[Rolan7]

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-build-new-barriers-roads-texas-border-area-2023-10-05/

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement that there was "no new Administration policy with respect to border walls. From day one, this Administration has made clear that a border wall is not the answer."

Mayorkas said the construction project was appropriated during the prior administration and the law requires the government to use the funds, with an announcement made earlier in the year. "We have repeatedly asked Congress to rescind this money but it has not done so and we are compelled to follow the law," he said.

Yes the Biden administration is bad about immigration, but this isn't an example. 
Just superficially looks like one.

[anewaname]

I'd rather see rank-choice voting instead of changes to the electoral college, just for the effects of curbing vote-splitting fears and negative-campaigns.

People who normally lose their incentive to vote because "I hate both of the mainstream candidates" would have reason to still vote, and that alone would stop ass-hats from gaining powerful positions in times of voter-apathy.

[scriver]

The EC's job has always been specifically to balance the power of the states, giving small (by population) states a proportional advantage over large states by guaranteeing a minimum floor of per-state representation regardless of population. This is because the United States is a federation of united states, not a single unified country. hector13, you're a Scot, you probably understand the motivation.
Without the electoral college and the other main instance of this balance, the Senate, the United States simply wouldn't exist, because the small northeastern states refused to ratify the Constitution without protections against the federal government becoming fully captured by, at the time, Virginia. Given the specific conflict that motivated them, if you postulated such a US without the electoral college anyway, it follows that it probably would never have been able to abolish slavery.

Under the Constitution, for very good reasons, individual states are primitive to the federal government. Abolishing the electoral college would be idiotic, and just asking for a dissolution of the union.

We were not a unified country when we formed, but after the civil war the thinking changed from "these United States, and a citizen of Virginia," to "The United States, and a citizen of the USA." We are now a unified country, despite all the talk of red states vs blue states.
With the recent growing schism, now may not the best time for abolishing the EC, but I don't think it would be enough to spark a new civil war if the state-run initiative to go with the popular vote instead of the EC picked up enough steam to win.

Times change. The EC may have been useful over 150 years ago, but historic use from a long gone age does not mean we still need the EC today.

I don't think there is a single democratic country, except maybe the rare decentralised direct democratic example like Switzerland, that do not seek to alleviate the "sheep and wolves" issue by having areas with less people have larger influence relative to their per capita numbers than high concentration of population areas. It's widely recognised as one of the main problems democracies (and especially representative drmocracies) face.

Maybe the EC could stand to be changed, but there still needs to be safeguards to make sure that, say, Montana isn't completely run by New York.

[lemon10]

Maybe the EC could stand to be changed, but there still needs to be safeguards to make sure that, say, Montana isn't completely run by New York.

Yeah, those safeguards already exist, they are called the senate.
Even if you throw out the EC completely small states will continue to possess a significantly outsized influence on the national stage.

[hector13]

The EC just moves the influence from larger states to swing states.

But yeah, the two kinds of “fair” representation are covered by congress and the senate. Congress gives everybody’s vote more or less the same weight (I think it’s 750k people/congressional seat? It’s late and I don’t want to check right now) which favours bigger states - not considering gerrymandering in this, which is another kettle of fish - while the senate is all the states get two senators, which favours small states.

I’m not sure how to make the EC more equitable, but as I say, all it does is shift the outsize influence someplace else.

[Dostoevsky]

Just noting that the number of people per seat is variable since congress has locked in the total # of seats since the early 20th century (435 seats). So the number of people per seat has steadily reason over the last century, though it's still nominally equal...

However, we have reached the point where some states have less than the number of people per seat (Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska) or are otherwise sitting at a threshold that can result in giving them significant overrepresentation - or in a few cases significant underrepresentation. Per wikipedia, in reality the number of people per seat varies from about 540k to nearly 1 million. This isn't as bad as electoral votes, but it's still not ideal.

[da_nang]

The EC just moves the influence from larger states to swing states.

Single-seat elections (especially winner-takes-all elections) move the influence to swing states. If there are N seats up for grabs in a district, the tipping points will be multiples of 1/(N+1), and they'll be worse for winner-takes-all. If your support is far enough away from any of those, you have no reason to campaign in that district.

Remove the winner-takes-all elections, and increase the number of electors per district by some integer multiple, and the influence will swing away from swing states while still giving smaller states more influence since you don't need to rally as many people.

[Bumber]

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-build-new-barriers-roads-texas-border-area-2023-10-05/

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement that there was "no new Administration policy with respect to border walls. From day one, this Administration has made clear that a border wall is not the answer."

Mayorkas said the construction project was appropriated during the prior administration and the law requires the government to use the funds, with an announcement made earlier in the year. "We have repeatedly asked Congress to rescind this money but it has not done so and we are compelled to follow the law," he said.

Yes the Biden administration is bad about immigration, but this isn't an example. 
Just superficially looks like one.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/biden-administration-waives-federal-laws-allow-border-wall-constructio-rcna118959

There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and
roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into
the United States in the project areas pursuant to sections 102(a) and 102(b) of IIRIRA.

Document from the same Mayorkas. He's lying. The Biden administration is lying. And when they're called out on their lies, they send out the press secretary to deflect, gaslight, and lie some more.

Kind of hard to claim you were forced to do something when you waive environmental laws to avoid getting slowed down by litigation.

The EC just moves the influence from larger states to swing states.

No, you still have to maintain a hold on the non-swing states or they turn into swing states. For popular vote, it literally doesn't even matter if some states go 100% one way or the other because they're ridiculously outmatched in population.

You don't need to appeal to whole states, either. Just major population centers. NYC (most populous city) is 14.6 Wyomings (least populous state,) or 6.1 New Hampshires (swing state,) or 2.7 Nevadas (another swing state.)

[Maximum Spin]

The EC just moves the influence from larger states to swing states.

But yeah, the two kinds of “fair” representation are covered by congress and the senate. Congress gives everybody’s vote more or less the same weight (I think it’s 750k people/congressional seat? It’s late and I don’t want to check right now) which favours bigger states - not considering gerrymandering in this, which is another kettle of fish - while the senate is all the states get two senators, which favours small states.

I’m not sure how to make the EC more equitable, but as I say, all it does is shift the outsize influence someplace else.

Just noting that the number of people per seat is variable since congress has locked in the total # of seats since the early 20th century (435 seats). So the number of people per seat has steadily reason over the last century, though it's still nominally equal...

However, we have reached the point where some states have less than the number of people per seat (Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska) or are otherwise sitting at a threshold that can result in giving them significant overrepresentation - or in a few cases significant underrepresentation. Per wikipedia, in reality the number of people per seat varies from about 540k to nearly 1 million. This isn't as bad as electoral votes, but it's still not ideal.

Just for a point of clarity since I imagine you are both foreigners, you're speaking of the "House of Representatives" - both that and the Senate make up Congress together.

[Rolan7]

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-build-new-barriers-roads-texas-border-area-2023-10-05/

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement that there was "no new Administration policy with respect to border walls. From day one, this Administration has made clear that a border wall is not the answer."

Mayorkas said the construction project was appropriated during the prior administration and the law requires the government to use the funds, with an announcement made earlier in the year. "We have repeatedly asked Congress to rescind this money but it has not done so and we are compelled to follow the law," he said.

Yes the Biden administration is bad about immigration, but this isn't an example. 
Just superficially looks like one.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/biden-administration-waives-federal-laws-allow-border-wall-constructio-rcna118959

There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and
roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into
the United States in the project areas pursuant to sections 102(a) and 102(b) of IIRIRA.

Document from the same Mayorkas. He's lying. The Biden administration lies just like all the others. When they're called out on their lies, they send out the press secretary to deflect, gaslight and lie some more.

Kind of hard to claim you were forced to when you waive environmental laws to make sure it gets done sooner.

As I said:

Yes the Biden administration is bad about immigration, but this isn't an example. 
Just superficially looks like one.

So we agree about Biden's overall stance on immigration, cool...

But where's the "lie" in his statement?  The funds are allocated and they can't free them without Congress, right?
From what I've heard the statement is somewhat misleading, but neither you nor I caught how.  Yet you're asserting it's a lie, and that Biden is just like every other politician...  Which is the sort of obstructionist faux-populism Republicans broadcast when their politician isn't in power.

Let's be real, this is a legacy of Trump which the Biden administration has been stalling.  They could have done more to facilitate immigration, but "He's just like the Republicans" is an actual lie.

The EC just moves the influence from larger states to swing states.

No, you still have to maintain a hold the non-swing states or they become swing states. For popular vote, it literally doesn't even matter if some states go 100% one way or the other because they're ridiculously outmatched in population.

People deserve representation, states do not.

And no I'm not calling for an absolute democracy ruled by majority.  We can keep representative democracy without putting states interests above citizens interests.  Obviously.

Republicans have no actual interest in States Rights other than allowing red states to be repressive hellholes, further dividing the country as LGBTQ+ and women are encouraged to leave (if they can afford to) or fuckin suffer.  They have no interest in the electoral college except that it's the only way their unpopular presidents get forced upon the rest of us.  They do not care about the citizens of red states (or any citizens), only guaranteed senate votes.

It's open partisan fuckery tied to protecting slavery, and the civil war should have rendered it obsolete.
(and if someone pretends to be ignorant of the Southern Strategy and the resulting party shift, as they always do, I'm not gonna dignify it with a response)