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[nubbe]

Horndogs make the best leaders, history proves this fact.

 

[Phoenix]

I've just looked at the numbers from 2000 that I have in a spreadsheet. I see that there were 105.3 million voters. But if you add up those who voted for the person who won their state, it was 56.9 million. 48.4 million people had no effect. That's 46% of the voters that may as well have left their choice for President blank, since their say never escaped their state borders.

So you're saying that the system has been broken since its inception and has no benefit? Outside of the 2000 election (which *gasp*) isn't the nations only election, what other cases to you have to cite?

I hate to disillusion you, but that is far from true. If we're talking about states not being heard in elections, look no further than the Democratic primaries. People forget that John Kerry wasn't always the Democratic candidate for president. He only became that after we chose him... or perhaps I should say, he only became that after Iowa, New Hampshire, and several other states chose him, since we Californians had essentially no say at all in the matter.

While the largest states have the largest say in who becomes president between Bush and Kerry, they did not get to "choose the president." The two possibilities for president were in fact chosen by the small puny states.

If you want to join in - stay on the subject. We're talking about the presidential voting process, not the presidential primaries. We're not talking about the choice for president, which again is decided by the democratic caucus, not the general public.

 

[Phoenix]

THIS IS ALL I AM SAYING!!! Seriously, this is ALL I am saying. Although I certainly wouldn't say that those eight examples within the last ~60 years dictate that change is on the horizon, but it has to be.

Change isn't really on the horizon. The vast majority of voters aren't pushing for change - just in a few states.

I would STILL like to see a popular vote because I still feel that an electoral vote caters to discounting lay voters. A popular vote would possibly get more voters out feeling that their actual vote is out to make a difference.

Your actual vote DOES make a difference in the election.... its just an infinitely small difference compared to the millions of other voters out there. Do a breakdown of the state populations starting from largest to smallest. Starting counting down from the top until you get 51% simple majority. Take a look at how many states you have - now tell me if the millions of people in the other roughly 40 states votes will make a difference. Have you made the system better? No. It may feel good to say 'people will have a voice' but you're fooling yourself based on some half-ass numbers. When I get into the office I will break it down for you and we'll see how many millions of voters AND state concerns you will crap on in this process.

As for the largest cities making the biggest difference, etc... I have already shown that the electoral college pretty much lines up with population distribution give or take a percentage. Taking into account actual voting runouts the numbers would probably be even closer.

No you haven't. You took relatively obvious states on two ends of the scale. If you're going to actually show it - give a breakdown of all 50 states, their populations as a percentage of the electoral total and their populations as a percentage of the voting total.

If I wer to want to run for a state office, without the backing of the DNC or GOP or a significant amount of personal money, I would have a damn near impossible time competing.

And you think that getting rid of a bipartisan system is going to change that how? That doesn't even make any sense. If you have no money, you have no advertising, you won't get your name out, and you will have a worse time as you will be lost in the noise of every other candidate running for office. You can look at your own county/state offices for what that would be like. I guarantee you you probably don't even know or have even heard of 2-3 of the candidates on the ballot. Why? Hasn't a damn thing to do with bipartisan politics - has everything to do with those people running with a $1k budget.

 

[borghe]

No you haven't. You took relatively obvious states on two ends of the scale. If you're going to actually show it - give a breakdown of all 50 states, their populations as a percentage of the electoral total and their populations as a percentage of the voting total.

I can't believe you made me go out and get numbers :\

State Percentage of Electors Percent of 2000 census Percent of 2003 Census
Alabama 1.6 1.5 1.5
Alaska .5 .2 .2
Arizona 1.8 1.9 1.8
Arkansas1.1 .9 .9
California 10.2 12.2 12.0
Colorado 1.6 1.5 1.5
Florida 5.0 5.8 5.6
Texas 6.3 7.6 7.4

So as you can see, the vote is "relatively" evened out. So while larger states would gain a little more power and smaller states lose a little more power, by either changing the way the college works (not commiting all votes) or doing away with it, you still allow California to cast votes separately. You say California would be able to determine the president, but right now california has a 10% determination in the president where as say California went 60/40, in a popular election they would only have a 7.32% effect on their majority vs. the existing 100% effect.

 

[Phoenix]

I can't believe you made me go out and get numbers :\

Of course I will. I don't take anyones stuff at face value. If you can't prove it - its meaningless.

So as you can see, the vote is "relatively" evened out. So while larger states would gain a little more power and smaller states lose a little more power, by either changing the way the college works (not commiting all votes) or doing away with it, you still allow California to cast votes separately.

Hehe, okay. So I took some time to drag out the facts of this whole affair for ALL 50 states.

You say California would be able to determine the president, but right now california has a 10% determination in the president where as say California went 60/40, in a popular election they would only have a 7.32% effect on their majority vs. the existing 100% effect.

Not sure where you got their numbers from but here is the breakdown pulling the numbers from the 2003 census estimates on the effect of change on the voting power of the states based on a change from the electoral college to a popular vote election. The MANY numbers in red denote a loss of influence. I'm sure it will become really clear which states would be courted.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

So you're saying that the system has been broken since its inception and has no benefit? Outside of the 2000 election (which *gasp*) isn't the nations only election, what other cases to you have to cite?

No, I'm saying it's broken NOW. I don't have the numbers for previous elections at my fingertips, since I've done my experimentations on electoral reform using the most recent numbers, but I'm sure things wouldn't change in the recent past. It would remain that a large percentage of people's votes never got our of their state. Even when there's someone like Ronald Reagan winning nearly every state in 1984, it's ridiculous that he ended up with something like 97% of the electors.

If you want to join in - stay on the subject. We're talking about the presidential voting process, not the presidential primaries.

Hey, if the discussion morphed from whether foreign-born citizens should be able to run for President to electoral college reform, I see no reason why it couldn't morph into primary talk too. I'm all for something like a national primary day, to eliminate the massive advantage the winner of the first few primaries get, regardless of what people thought before.

 

[Phoenix]

No, I'm saying it's broken NOW. I don't have the numbers for previous elections at my fingertips, since I've done my experimentations on electoral reform using the most recent numbers, but I'm sure things wouldn't change in the recent past.

When you can get a rundown of numbers for other elections then we can talk. You can't be 'sure' of anything if you haven't look at the numbers or run those cases through their paces in anything other than one use case - the 2000 election.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

When you can get a rundown of numbers for other elections then we can talk. You can't be 'sure' of anything if you haven't look at the numbers or run those cases through their paces in anything other than one use case - the 2000 election.

It is a good idea to find the numbers anyway, so I can do the same calculations I've done for 2000 on others. But when you need a bare majority of the electoral vote, and only a plurality of a vote in the state to earn each of those electoral votes, it seems pretty easy to see that given the right 30% of the voters, you could win the presidency easily.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781448.html

Clinton got about 50% of the popular vote, and ended up with 70% of the electoral vote.
Dole got about 41% of the electoral vote, and ended up with 30% of the electoral vote.
Perot got about 8% of the electoral vote, and ended up with 0% of the electoral vote.

The percent of people whose vote actually reached outside of state lines would be about 51%. So nearly 49% of voters' say never got outside of their state.

If I go by the measure of the votes that REALLY mattered, that is the votes for the eventual winner in states where they actually got any electoral votes, the election was decided by 38%.

Of course, some of those were superfluous. Since Clinton had 379 electoral votes to Dole's 159, he could've lost a lot of support and still won. Hell, he could lose California, New York, and Illinois, and still have won 270 electoral votes to 268. So if I count up the Clinton supporters in all the other states he won, since they were enough to take the election, that means it was really less than 27% of the voters who controlled the election.


Splitting up each state proportionally, though (down to decimals), one ends up with about 268.3 electoral votes for Clinton, 223.7 for Dole, and 46.0 for Perot.

 

[Phoenix]

I'm afraid that doesn't really support your scenario.

Clinton won that election as was dictated by the popular and the electoral vote. If we take a look at another page on your source (The Closest Presidential Races)

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0884861.html

We see that the next close race for president is in 1976 where carter still beats Ford after getting most of the popular vote. Nixon wins the popular and electoral in 1968, Kennedy wins the electoral and popular in 1960, Wilson wins the electoral and the popular in 1916, and Garfield wins the electoral and popular in 1880. (none of the other elections are listed as close).

We have to go all the way back to 1876 to see a scenario that supports your conclusion where the popular candidate loses the election and even then there are some issues with the voting returns.

So if I take the two scenarios 1876 and 2000 I see one issue - voter returns in question. In no other cases has this even been an issue. And in both those cases, the election was so close in the popular vote to be a relative tossup.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

I'm afraid that doesn't really support your scenario.

What do you think my scenario is? My beef is that the electoral system is unrepresentative of what the populace thinks. They may normally match up, but when picking what is currently the most powerful human being on the planet I think it important to tie up loose threads and be sure. And as far as I'm concerned, any system that potentially allows someone to win with 26% of the popular vote is fatally flawed.


EDIT: As well, the site with 1996 information didn't give numbers for anyone but the big three. It even rounded Clinton's percentage of the popular vote to 49% rather than 50. So he didn't get a majority, in which case it would be preferable for some Condorcet or instant runoff system to kick in.

 

[Phoenix]

That's great. You talk about what you want to talk about, and I'll talk about what I want to talk about. Good deal, eh?

Its all good....

 

[Phoenix]

What do you think my scenario is? My beef is that the electoral system is unrepresentative of what the populace thinks. They may normally match up, but when picking what is currently the most powerful human being on the planet I think it important to tie up loose threads and be sure.

When a system routinely does what its supposed to, its generally considered to 'work'

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

I didn't vote in 2000 because I didn't think my vote mattered, and it would not have. I believe this to be a reason many people don't vote. I'm all about getting the will of the people. The more accurate we make the system, and the more each person's vote has the chance to influence things, the more people will choose to vote. And the more people who choose to vote, the closer we get to what the people as a whole really want.

One thing I haven't calculated for 1996 or 2000, but that would be interesting to see, is how turnout differs from state to state based on how close the election is. I'd be a bit surprised if one couldn't find such analysis already done using Google, really.

 

[Phoenix]

I didn't vote in 2000 because I didn't think my vote mattered, and it would not have. I believe this to be a reason many people don't vote.

Its called Election 2004 and not Presidential Election 2004 for a reason. There were some 18 things to vote for today for me - just one of them the president of the US. If you don't vote because you don't think your vote counts or because you don't like the candidates for president, you are misguided.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

Its called Election 2004 and not Presidential Election 2004 for a reason. There were some 18 things to vote for today for me - just one of them the president of the US. If you don't vote because you don't think your vote counts or because you don't like the candidates for president, you are misguided.

Sure there are other things to vote for. However, none of them are nearly as important or have the amount of information available for making a choice. Perhaps I was misguided, but that in itself is a problem. I believe modifying our voting systems for the better would increase... guidedness!

Off to vote now. My vote for governor does have a chance to make a difference.