How has the Dem establishment blocked this change?
Check out which states support the NPVIC…
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The Electoral College doesn’t need to be fixed – it needs to be scrapped.
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You are right that it would dillute the power of rural states. Of course, that’s the point. But it’s not like we would only be handing out Reps to the populous states. If we knocked the number down to around 200k per, then Wyoming would pick up a Rep too.
However the other killer would be that the House would have to start allowing remote or proxy voting which they are loathe to do.
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So take that incredible win for small states’ influence over the legislative branch and let the majority of the population decide who runs the executive branch. It’s both greedy and insane for small states to demand disproportionate representation over EVERY aspect of Federal government.
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NPVIC will never take effect since it requires the support of the states that will lose their extra power in EC. What’s their motivation to do so?
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Fixed… I think we mean “unfixed.” But yes, toss it in the bin. I used to think it was good, but it’s screwed the left for too long now, so fukkit. EJECT
I have another solution to put on the table.
The Left Coast + Hawaii can secede and become its own nation. Call it Pacifica. Then let the 46 remaining states do whatever the fuck they want with their electoral college. It won’t matter then.
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The National Popular Vote!
I can’t imagine any sensible means of ‘fixing’ the Electoral College. It’s very simple, unless of course one party or the other employs Gerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement to twist it to their ends.
And, unfortunately, I can’t imagine the GOP writing a new Amendment to scrap it… Why would they? it’s working quite well for them. They’ve had 2 presidents in office who were not elected by the people. The chance of writing a new Amendment to remove the College is therefore beyond the scope of reality.
There is a workaround that is in process right now. It’s called the ‘National Popular Vote’, which just requires a majority of states to sign onto. In fact, we’re getting close to passing it. And it’s very simple and requires no Amendment. : http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-explanation
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It’s a shamefully recent development from some (but not all) Dems in the establishment, coming after Junior “won” in 2000. When the unreformed Electoral College mainly served to cement the party duopoly they wouldn’t even entertain challenging it, lest it open the door to other reforms like preference voting. Too many of them still feel that way, especially those in the less populous states where Dems control the statehouses or governor’s mansions and those who represent rural districts.
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Is this after he finishes fixing the campaign finance system or is this something he will do this before lunch?
I supported Bernie and voted for Hillary and I did some canvassing last election. Institutions, such as political parties are important for structural change, slow as they might move. Grass roots organizations are important to create the needed support for these changes: Occupy, Black Lives Matters. I’m not putting too much stuck on a single individual tilting at windmills.
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Read Painter and Lessig’s article, then. 
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You do realize a majority of the states benefit from the status quo? Even the populous Red states that don’t benefit directly gain from the smaller Red states that do. It’s a nice idea but a nonstarter.
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You could do that, but it wouldn’t change the percentages; you’d just be creating more congressthings without actually increasing proportional representation very much (though I suppose it would perhaps make it easier for reps to actually rep their constituents).
This is basic is/ought confusion, except (as I’ll rant about below) he’s not really confused. Right now the “principle” that justifies it is called the Twelfth Amendment, and portions of Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution. He wants “legal recognition” of the functional disenfranchisement of millions? It already exists! We affirm it legally and procedurally every time we inaugurate presidents, whether they won the popular vote or not!
Put another way, while I’d prefer to live in Lawrence Lessig’s things-as-they-should-be world, in fact I do live in a world where the electoral college exists and is the means by which the president is chosen. And since Lessig is not a stupid man–not NEARLY so stupid as to think that the SC will just ignore the black-letter text of the Constitution in favor of some totally unenumerated principle of fairness–I can’t help but feel a little manipulated by him pretending otherwise.
I mean, that’s the bottom line. When you get space in USA Today to say that the Supreme Court could, should, might do something you know perfectly well they absolutely never could or would even if they agreed with you, then you’re not being intellectually honest. Instead you’re being, what’s the word, dishonest. He’s not advocating about what ought to be (which would be fine); he’s lying about what can be, which is… lying.
This is Lessig’s schtick: remember his presidential run? There’s nothing wrong with protest candidacies, including in the major parties. But his was nothing but gimmicks on gimmicks (“I’ll accomplish vaguely worded goals nobody will support, then resign!”), cynically designed to exploit the fact that if you’re sufficiently rich and/or famous and/or well connected, there’s always a spotlight you can jump in front of to complain that you’re being cruelly shut out from the halls of power.
It kinda works, too, because once you’ve anointed yourself the only true champion of campaign finance reform or anti-gerrymandering efforts (I guess he’s changed his mind about those) you can get people who support those concepts to feel vicariously excluded along with you. But the fact that attention isn’t that hard for cynical people to stir up doesn’t mean that he’s a good guy for doing it.
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Yes, because Rhode Island has so much more influence than California and Texas.
Even if Trump really did get less of the popular vote than HTRC, it wasn’t by much. The problem with the Trump (and Bush) elections was that far too large of a fraction of the American voting public voted for them.
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More influence per capita, absolutely.
And I’m not even getting into the way that the primary system skews the nomination process to give disproportionate influence to a handful of non-demographically-representative states. If you live in Iowa or New Hampshire every candidate vying for the nomination has to pander so hard that they’ll gobble down any deep-fried monstrosity someone shoves in front of them just to win over a couple of rural voters at a county fair. If you live in California you’re lucky if you even get a chance to vote for a candidate before the nomination is already locked down.
If you want to convince more people to vote then how about putting a system in place that shows their votes actually influence the outcome of the election. Millions of Californians think their votes don’t matter, and the last election essentially proved them right.
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I’m not sure that is really a meaningful concept away from the abstract. If your neighbor dies, your influence doesn’t increase. If the population of Texas dropped by 90%, its impact on the election (and everything else) would drop.
Big-population states exert disproportionate leverage on everything from textbook choice to seatbelt law, while the effect of unequal representation in the electoral college on elections is, like voter fraud and even disenfrachisement, just at the margins.
You might have a point w/r to the Senate, but if you look at the Senate and the House, do you really think the latter is doing a more responsible job of governing than the former?
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The last two Republican Presidents were only put in office because of the electoral college. I’d hardly call that a “marginal” effect.
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The effect was absolutely at the margins; the very slight distortion that the EC adds to the system was a minor contributor to the election, compared to all the people who voted for Trump and Bush (and of course the 3rd parties).
People like to use the expression “the straw that broke the camel’s back”, but blaming that last straw for the fracture is irrational.
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