People seem to know that this won’t do much beyond initial raising of awareness. But when the same groups of people are approached to do something the powers that be can’t ignore, that will force them to change the way they do business - everybody panics and splits. Before any options can even be discussed. People seem terrified of the idea of being in charge of their government and usually prefer to wish for somebody they could trust to handle it.
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Yours won’t either. 
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That’s what Trump is doing, anyway.
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And yet … Alaska is utterly fucking irrelevant every fucking year. The final result is practically always called even before the polls in Alaska have closed.
You’re not voting for a state governor, you’re voting for the national head of state. Put all the votes in one big bucket, then everyone’s vote is worth the same amount, and candidates would have to spread themselves across the country to convince voters everywhere, instead of just spending all their time and effort in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida.
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The electoral college isn’t the only check keeping big states from taking all the power from small states though. Even if the Presidential election was decided by popular vote then Wyoming would still have as many Senators as California.
We’ve got a system that ensures a tiny subsection of voters will wield dramatically more power than the vast majority of Americans.
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So not the misogyny then? Cause, honestly, that’s what does it for me.
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Somebody could maybe make an argument for a Senate where votes are apportioned by territory (rather than just two each). That would (still) annoy city people, but outcomes would be less dependent (than they are now) on the random-yet-permanent gerrymandering of the state lines.
As they exist today, the Senate and the Electoral College are just star chambers where some voters get (enormously, disproportionately) more influence than others.
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I find it a little curious that you have you finger on America’s pulse both today AND 200 years ago. I forgot how monolithic we are, and have always been, in our thinking,
You must have been around a long long long time to not be doing anything other than making sweeping generalizations while generally talking out your ass. You are doing something other than that, right?
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Care to know what I think went wrong?
It’s not that we went with a woman, not at all. We can speculate how Warren would have fared just as easily as we can speculate about Sanders. I think she’d have beaten either of them, and more importanly, Trump. I hope she runs against him 4 years from now and gets right under his skin.
I think the problem with our candidate is that we basically went with Tracy Flick.
and lately, this is how America has felt.
and if you don’t get the reference, go watch Election.
ETA:
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I very seriously think most of this could be fixed by going back to the original apportioning of legislative votes. 2 Senators per state is actually fine by me. Beats hereditary peerage, and there is a sound reason for having a bicameral legislature. On the House side, though, we should go back to one representative per ~210K people as it was when the House was locked at 435 in 19somethingsomething, about 1910ish. This would mean a House with >1,500 members. Think on it. It would be a radical change, but it would also leave room for more diverse politics. In 1910 we probably didn’t have a way to manage more than 500 people, keep them communicating efficiently, but we do now.
And there is no actual reason beyond ceremony that being a US Representative needs to be done in Washington DC.
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Tom Perrotta nailed it as usual.
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Your analogy is bizarrely kind to Trump.
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I actually have a higher opinion of hereditary peers than I do the life peers, which is nothing more than letting Prime Ministers pack the house with their buddies and or donors (thanks for that one too, Tony).
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You mean like the supreme court justices?
Ted - utter twat or just poor timing?
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Well, have a nice Trump, then.
And many happy nukes to you sir.
to be honest - I don’t like the approach that much. it’s effectivly using the US as one electoral district and will lead to endless discussions if the result of the popular vote is narrow. some margin of error is unavoidable (humans are involved) and even outright fraud is easier if one has “only” affect the tabulated end result.
a representive system with smaller electoral districts is imo more robust, like the one Maine (I think?) and The-Other-State-I-Forgot is using. still better representing the popular vote compared to the current winner-takes-all approach* and errors/fraud is restricted to much smaller portions and cannot influence the end result as easy(ish) as the “the entire US is one district” idea.
* why do US Americans love this method that much?
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shush Don’t tell the Max_B and Michael.Lederman that, they’ll start going on and on regarding the perils of voter inflation and how common it is, and that, with the proper application of Voter ID laws, we can have an election that’s perfectly without error (i.e. minorities and Democrats voting). /sarcasm.
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