The National Popular Vote bill is 64% of the way to guaranteeing the majority of Electoral College votes and the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in the country, by changing state winner-take-all laws (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), without changing anything in the Constitution, using the built-in method that the Constitution provides for states to make changes.
It simply requires enacting states with 270 electoral votes to award them according to the nationwide, rather than the statewide, popular vote.
All voters would be valued equally in presidential elections, no matter where they live.
Virginia didn’t like it in 1789 either, but it was a deliberate feature to mollify tiny states like NH, RI and CT. It wouldn’t be so bad if the rest of the system were more functional.
And California in 2018 is getting screwed over more than three times as badly on that front as Virginia was in 1789. And that’s not even factoring in the issue that a huge portion of the population of Virginia was slaves, so white voters in Virginia were getting congressional representatives based on people they treated as livestock.
Stop for a moment and think about how you would feel if you were a resident of AK or ND after the senate were eliminated. You’d have about as much say in DC as PR does now. It amazes me in so many discussions how people seem to lack the ability to see the other side’s position, or see how changes like eliminating the filibuster may bite them in the ass when the wheel turns. It sure did eliminating it for justices.
I’m not asking for the elimination of the Senate but the current makeup is bonkers. There are lots of alternatives worth exploring. Like maybe we guarantee each state at least one Senator but divvy up the rest based on population.
I understand their position even if I don’t think it’s the fairest solution for all Americans. Residents of smaller states don’t seem to have much empathy for the position of Californians, though.
Another option would be to merge low-population states to get them above a certain threshold. Welcome to Montanyomingho! Idatanaying? Wyhoetana? 2 senators, pop. 3.3M. Eh, that’s not enough to get close to the median state population. Add the Dakotas? Still under 5 M. Nebraska? There we go, over 6.5 M.
Welcome Senator Smith from the great state of Idamonwyodakbraska!
That’s relatively simple to explain. California determined it’s own size before becoming a state. The state entered a system that it knew how worked, and still chose to be huge. Google tells me this was gold grab at time.
Not that anyone involved with either the decision about California’s size, or small Rhode Island’s original desire to not be irrelevant as a condition of joining is still around. But, we’re left with the consequences of those decisions and how they interact now.
Haven’t we seen several proposals to break up California into multiple states? Thereby giving the new states more representation in the Senate, among other things.
I’ll agree that California is getting a poor deal in the Senate based on it’s population today. But, the quick solution to simply eliminate the per state provisions and go to all population based has its own issues. It’s simply trading one problem for another. Right from the article, “the 30% of the US that lives in the depopulated 35 states”, put another way, an all population based system makes those 30% of people living in a now majority of states (35) irrelevant.
Finding a solution that works for both demographics, where smaller states are not irrelevant and larger states are also not dramatically underrepresented somewhere in the middle would be nice.
We also haven’t even discussed one of the biggest problems with the Senate’s current situation, that it makes it impossible to enter in new states. We have approximately 4 million citizens in PR & DC, more than the populations of the 5 smallest states combined, who are not represented by votes in DC. I find this continually appalling, and the reason is that both would likely be Democratic leaning states, bringing 4 more senators to the party, an intolerable occurrence to the GOP.
I’m not sure how you arrive at “too short”, but a lifetime should be pretty easily objectively probable as too long. Whatever the term is, MUCH shorter than lifetime is what I’d like to see.
FWIW, increasing the size of the House also has the effect of making the Electoral College somewhat less of an issue, since more of the electoral votes will be distributed based on population as well.
The size of a state and its population aren’t always strongly correlated. There are more Americans in the smallest U.S. State (Rhode Island) than the largest (Alaska).
The population of California in 1850 was one-thirtieth the population of New York.
I think those feelings are reciprocated. One example is the water from snowfall in Western Colorado. Californians seem feel that they are naturally entitled to that water. We disagree on that point.
But of course the proposal to have almost all electoral power transferred to a few urban areas sounds great to people living in those urban areas. A counter proposal to allow one vote for each acre of land owned would benefit me enormously, but would be just as unfair. Tinkering with the balance of power can have unexpected or even disastrous results.
The point of our system was never pure democracy. It was a balance of power. Pure democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what is for dinner.
That’s why the suggestion that the 100 Senators vote with the House (with the current number of representatives) as one body makes more sense. It would still give the less populated states a some relief from being buried by the more populous one, but doesn’t grotesquely overcorrect as the current system does.
The Senate itself isn’t abolished, so no state is denied that representation as promised by the Constitution. Large-population states don’t have to be broken up (as the so-called “Balk-Right” white nationalists would love – we see you!), low-population states don’t have to be combined, new states don’t have to be brought into the Union (although DC and PR really should be).
The Electoral College can also be reformed to more accurately represent the popular will. That comes down to the federal government setting standards regarding transparency, accountability and eliminating the winner-take-all outcome present in most states.
Article 5 of the US constitution prohibits doing away with the equal representation per state nature of the Senate:
“Amendments… shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution… Provided that… no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.”
Increasing the size of the House would not make every vote equal or guarantee the candidate with the most national popular votes would win. The National Popular VOte bill would.
The # does affect the work because they do a whole range of other/related tasks.