Well, that sure is a lot of effort spent on making maps that are not useful to anyone.
It’d be way more interesting to make a map of states according to some set of ideal electoral college criteria. Like consistently produce results close to proportional across several last elections. Be evenly competitive across states (so there’s as few safe states as possible.) Stuff like that.
The behaviour of the electoral college system is abso-fucking-lutely a bug, because the people who wrote the Constitution did not anticipate the existence of political parties in the first place. There is no element of the current situation they anticipated. Like, hell, they didn’t give the vote to the vast majority of the population. It’s a ‘feature’ in the same way the pause/break button on your keyboard is a feature.
The idea that the system somehow prevents the dictatorship of the majority, because the current form of it gives disproportionate power to states most of which did not exist at the time, because of a pecularity of the geographic spread of voting patterns of political parties which again did not exist at the time offends both history and logic.
America does not vote Democrat. They vote Democratic. Don’t use the Republicans’ language fuckery propaganda.
I voted for amendment 69 last year (ColoradoCare) ballot initiative but the reason it failed was not because people here don’t want a single payer system but because that particular proposal was very badly flawed. It was too much too fast and they didn’t think through all the ramifications and issues involved with such a complicated system.
Don’t make the mistake of a few failed ballot initiatives as proof that people reject the concept of universal healthcare.
The fact that states are at least trying to implement something that the federal government should really be doing indicates there is strong desire to fix the real problem of out of control healthcare costs. The problem is too big to remedy at the state or local level however.
Helicopters. 
Here are a bunch of articles written prior to the election which discuss Clinton’s expected “blue electoral wall” in favorable terms. Not a lot of complaints about the electoral college here.
I suspect most of the newly found outrage about the EC is, shall we say, situational??
http://www.insidesources.com/clinton-learning-to-love-the-electoral-college/
http://www.politico.eu/article/hillary-clintons-path-to-victory-trump-election-news-america/
If there is clear national consensus on what needs to be done, usually the Congress will find a way to do it.
When the body politic is as evenly split as it is today, it’s not hard to understand why Congress is split, too.
And the problem then becomes Presidents like Obama and Trump who believe that they should use executive power to enact just those policies which are desired by only their respective halves of the electorate.
I think that gets to the heart of it. America seems (to this outsider at least) to be incredibly polarised.
This section of course illustrates that nicely.
Given a deadlock in Congress, what should a more or less democratically elected president do?
Sit on his hands and state that nothing will happen until Congress breaks the deadlock?
Or do his best to enact the policies he was elected on using what powers the Constitution gave him?
Ultimately, it seems to me you are at the same time praising the Constitution for setting things up in a way which balances out competing interests and then bemoan the means used to try and ensure that anything happens in the face of the success of the balancing exercise, i.e. complete deadlock.
Absent a cataclysmic national emergency, the president can do a fine job for the country by just administering the laws already in effect.
So, option one. Sit on his hands and let the legislature sort themselves out.
Fair enough. I can see that being a viable stance.
Just one question. In that case, what is the President for?
You might just as well simply have a ceremonial head of state rather than giving the President executive powers.
A reason for the west coast to divide into more states - more senators - more electoral votes
The President has plenty to do otherwise. Run the military, prosecute federal crimes, prepare the budget, negotiate treaties, nominate judges.
If we went a couple of years without passing any new laws (or the executive equivalent of same) we might even discover that no damage was done.
If Trump were simply to revoke as many of his predecessors’ EOs as possible, without imposing new EOs of his own, it would be incontrovertibly a good thing. One of the reasons I did not vote for him was that I knew he would not take that course.
Hmm.
This will take a little more investment.
Very interesting, and thanks for putting in the work!
You wouldn’t even have to raise taxes. I did some (admittedly back of the envelope) calculations in a thread maybe three weeks ago - 10% of the current military budget would be enough.
Edit: found it.
Link please?
If that could happen, I see nothing to prevent the creation of East and West Montana, as well.
Keep your eye on MA if the exchanges are made to fail and the ACA repealed.
If we’re talking popular vote outside of the electoral college, we should ask PR who they want to be president, too.
