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[Nadaka]

Land is not people.

We don't assign more votes to people who own more land.

Those rural religious conservatives have an inherent structural power advantage.

Why should they have that advantage?

[Mephansteras]

As redking stated, it's there specifically to avoid a 'tyranny of the majority'. The founding fathers put a lot of thought into trying to create a system that prevents tyranny of any sort and this is one of the mechanisms.

I'm not sure it functions quite as well now, though, as it did back when the system was put into place.

[lemon10]

But it didn't avoid tyranny of the majority, the majority of people (blacks, women) had no power at all.

It did keep the states rather equal in power, but I don't think Wyoming should be the equal of California/Texas just because they are all states.

[kaijyuu]

Democracy is two wolves and sheep voting on what's for dinner.

Though yeah, I don't see the electoral college accomplishing much in the way of avoiding that.

[Sheb]

Obama winning while loosing the popular vote might get more Red States to adopt the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact

[Zangi]

Democracy is two wolves and sheep voting on what's for dinner.

Though yeah, I don't see the electoral college accomplishing much in the way of avoiding that.

Its more along the lines of a carnivore, herbivore and an omnivore voting on what is for dinner.

[Mephansteras]

Well, yes, there was a bit of a flaw in the original system. They sort of quietly excluded their own tyranny (of white male landowners) when writing it up, and since that group didn't want to give anyone else power it took a very long time to change.

Poor execution doesn't mean that the core idea is unsound, of course. Although I'm not at all convinced that the effect is necessary.

For one, we already have Wyoming being marginalized in the Presidential Election because it provides so few votes. Even a state that is a true toss-up (50/50) won't get too much attention if those few electoral votes don't measurably effect the outcome.

The only states who matter right now are battleground states with a large enough Electoral Vote to really tip the election. That's why Ohio gets so much attention. That one state is worth several other battleground states combined. 18 for Ohio is more than Colorado and Nevada combined.  Florida is similarly important for the same reason at 29 votes. Actually...I'm not sure why Florida isn't more important this election. It's leaning Red right now. Maybe enough not to be truly contended? In any case, no one is paying too much attention to small states even if they are up for grab when the big states are what will almost certainly win or lose the election for a candidate.

Given that, I'd much rather move to a pure popular vote. If we're not going to care about small states anyway, can we at least care about all of the big states equally?

[Bohandas]

Land is not people.

We don't assign more votes to people who own more land.

Those rural religious conservatives have an inherent structural power advantage.

Why should they have that advantage?

Thank you! "Land is not people", I couldn't have put it better myself.

We don't assign more votes to people who own more land.

In fact I would say that if anything they should get less votes.

[Nadaka]

What?

Why should they get less votes per person either?

[kaijyuu]

Because they have power in other ways that can't be practically stifled.

Same logic as is behind affirmative action: give those low on the totem pole an advantage so as to balance out the disadvantages you can't quite get rid of.

[Nadaka]

Because they have power in other ways that can't be practically stifled.

Same logic as is behind affirmative action: give those low on the totem pole an advantage so as to balance out the disadvantages you can't quite get rid of.

How is living in a state with a low population density a systemic advantage (aside from the electoral college issue)?

[RedKing]

Democracy is two wolves and sheep voting on what's for dinner.

Though yeah, I don't see the electoral college accomplishing much in the way of avoiding that.

Its more along the lines of a carnivore, herbivore and an omnivore voting on what is for dinner.

That's actually a brilliant metaphor. The problem is that interested outside parties (let's say, the National Corn Lobby and the Beef Council) are only going to be interested in swaying the omnivore's opinion, because they're the decisive vote. The wolf and the sheep will get lip service but they're essentially unimportant, in the same way that states like Oklahoma and the District of Columbia don't net a lot of attention because the AP could go ahead and call the winner in those races LAST YEAR.

[Leafsnail]

What?

Why should they get less votes per person either?

Bohandas likes to take a sensible position and push it a bit too far.

[PTTG??]

Preferential voting. Select everyone you like, in the order you like them in. Then, you're done.

If the person you selected as you top favorite wins, then that's that. Otherwise, your vote gets moved to your second choice automatically. Then the next.

Universal preferential voting would mean that no matter how overbearing two parties are, you could always vote for the people you really like the most without risking helping someone you don't like.

Alternatively, list all candidates, and then people vote yes or no for each. The person with the greatest total number of yesses wins.

[Leafsnail]

I prefer preferential voting/ AV/ STV/ whatever you want to call it to approval voting.  Approval voting is vulnerable to tactical voting in real life (while preferential voting is only vulnerable to tactical voting in weird scenarios that never happen).  The big parties would still dominate smaller parties since you'd feel obliged to tick them to keep the worse ones out.