Exactly why a progressive candidate needs to win.
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Exactly why a progressive candidate needs to win.
The constitution dictates how many electoral votes a state gets. Anything that changed that would require a constitutional amendment and if there was enough political will to address that, it would be best to just eliminate the electoral college completely. Distributing EC votes within states based proportionally on the popular vote within the state can be done without changing the constitution because the constitution is silent on how states chose electors. Keeping the EC in any way could lead to a 2000 type election where in a close contest a candidate wins enough EVs to win the election but loses the popular vote by a narrow margin. It would eliminate the 2016 result though. I saw someone's analysis of the 2016 vote and Hillary would have won the electoral vote if votes had been distributed in each state proportionally.
Norbert
TSLA will win
Distributing EC votes proportionally, works only if all states, without exception, agree to it.
(As otherwise the states which do not participate would likely be able to decide the election on their own.)
So that requires "enough political will" as well.
Short of that, the "National Popular Vote Interstate Compact" (NPVIC) which you mentioned, is perhaps a solution, although it also requires more political will (270 electors) than is currently available. However, it more or less abolishes the indirectness of electors, where I don't know if some want to hold on to that.
So in summary it seems to depend on the reasons of those who are holding out so far. (Which I don''t know.)
Norbert
TSLA will win
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No, if done correctly that would not happen.
And if the number of EVs is not an even number, it would also not create a stalemate in that situation.
bhtooefr
Active Member
Rounding errors, especially with third-party candidates getting notable amounts of votes, could cause it AFAIK in very narrow scenarios.
Norbert
TSLA will win
If it is done in the current, incorrect way, yes, of course, and it has already happened. That's why I brought it up in the first place.
However not if it is done for example in the way that I proposed, not "in any way".
Norbert
TSLA will win
Side note: Perhaps it is really not about a quid pro quo. Perhaps it is about establishing the logic of dominance. Mutual perfection. You won't get a reward each time you do the man a favor.
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Any agreement between states to vote a certain way in the EC would probably end up in court and could get declared unconstitutional. But the constitution is clear about how many EVs each state gets and it would almost certainly be declared unconstitutional for states to give EVs to another state.
The EC does not always vote on just two candidates. In fact a handful of EVs went to other candidates in 2016. It's called faithless electors and it has happened a number of times. Another thing that has happened, but not recently is that a third party candidate can win some EVs. I believe it happened as recently as 1948, possibly more recently.
Norbert
TSLA will win
I have no idea what it would take to change the rules. I can imagine that some would consider the NPVIC an improper way to circumvent the existing system. What I do say is that it would be possible to create a system with electoral votes that would not create a majority where there isn't one. Worst case it might be necessary to give some EVs a fractional weight, but if so then only in exceptional cases.
I suppose if you want to rule out faithless electors, you would prefer a popular vote in the first place. Why bother with electors?
Changing the rules would favor the Democrats. Demographics have made it increasingly difficult for a Republican to win the EC. So the Republicans are against changing the EC.
The Electoral College was created because the founding fathers didn't trust the people to decide even who sat in the Senate. When states selected electors based on popular vote, the idea of keeping the EC was to have a backstop against a complete loon getting elected by the people. It utterly failed to do it's last fig leaf of a job in 2016.
Norbert
TSLA will win
I'd rather think it 'un-favors the Republican Party', so to speak, given current gerrymandering. BTW, did you mean to say: increasingly difficult to win the *popular* vote?
I'd say in a general situation where election outcomes are often close, it is very important to make sure that the actual majority is favored, that no vote counts more than another vote. Otherwise the corrective or balancing force of democracy does not work efficiently. I suspect in the not-too-distant future, Republicans will agree that it better did.
Well, the question is if there is a significant number of people who want to keep that ideal of the EC, and wouldn't agree with the direct popular vote becoming decisive, but might be willing to align the EC with actual majorities.
My main intent is to say that the majority should be represented as the majority, even if the EC remains. Wanting an EC is no excuse. Hope that clarifies.
dmckinstry
Model X 2019
The 5th district has'nt had a democratic representative since Tom Foley was unseated by George Nethercutt. Kathy McMorris Rogers has be quite adept at repeating republican talking points, taking credit for bills she's voted against, and like Trump pushing the right buttons for her base of one issue voters. Our best hope so far has been Lisa Brown, but while canvasing for her in 2018, two of the few negative comments we recieved were I've always voted republican and won't change now and "I'm pro-life" as if being pro-choice means you're "anti-life". Typical "love the fetus", but let the child die from neglect.
Gerrymandering affects who goes to the House of Representatives as well as who controls state legislatures, but it has no effect on the electoral college. That is a determination of population on the state level.
Since the 1960s the percentage of white vote every presidential election year declines by about 2% for an average of 0.5% a year. The Republicans are overwhelmingly a white party. There was talk that 2012 was going to be the last year a Republican could run on a primarily white platform and win, the margins were getting too thin. What Trump did was stop the trend for one election. A lot of minorities were turned off by Hillary and Trump was able to get some whites to vote who had given up voting. Between those two, the white vote in 2016 matched 2012 percentages and Trump was able to pull off a squeaker with 47% of the vote.
2018 reverted to the norm. Midterm elections are more white than presidential election years, but they have been seeing the same trendline. If you plot off election year turn out, the white vote has been declining there by about 2% per 4 years too. 2018 matched the trend with about 2% less than 2014. I expect 2020 to also go back to the trend which will be 4% less white than 2012. Potentially that means the Republicans might be looking at topping out around 43% of the vote. No matter how you slice the electoral college, it's pretty much statistically impossible to get 43% of the vote and win the electoral college unless there is a third party candidate who can suck up a large percentage of the vote like 1992 when Bill Clinton won 370 EV with 43% of the vote because of Ross Perot.
This is a good site for looking at past election results:
Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections
The only caveat is he uses red for Democrats and blue for Republicans.
The Republican party has become anti-democratic because they are nonviable in a fair fight. When they get power they gerrymander districts to favor Republicans, institute policies to discourage Democrats from voting, and rely on a propaganda TV network that masquerades as news to help tilt public opinion.
The Democrats have cheated in the past when the playing field didn't favor them. And there have been a few instances in recent years too. Neither party have clean hands, but in recent years the Republicans have done the vast majority of anti-democratic hijinks.
The 5th and 3rd were almost in play in 2018. Jamie Herrera's challenger did win the biggest county in the district (this one, Clark County), but lost big in the smaller counties which are very conservative. Jamie Herrera actually lives in the next town over from us. I haven't talked politics with anyone locally in a couple of years who had anything good to say about Republicans.
In 2018 the local Republican party had big signs up on the freeways that said "Be Bold: Vote Republican". I've been thinking of more accurate alternative slogans since, but the signs got defaced several times including with graffiti swastikas.
The fall from grace of the Republican party in suburbs is playing out here. But the problem is this district has just a bit too much rural territory to go blue. If the Republican brand takes more of a beating by election day 2020 maybe the 3rd and 5th will be in play.
Norbert
TSLA will win
Yes there I mixed things related to other elections with presidential elections. For presidential elections, the main reason for mismatches between popular vote and electoral vote, is the winner-take-all principle of most states, and the second, smaller reason is variations in number-of-actual-votes-per-elector among states, as far as I understand. Other reasons, if any, are minor, correct?
Smaller states also have an advantage with the electoral college. There are currently 538 electors. The House of Representatives is capped at 435 voting members, 2 for each state for the senators, and a constitutional amendment gave Washington DC the equivalent EV of a state which would be 2 senators and 1 House rep.
After the census, the House reps are divided up based on population in the states with the minimum being 1 representative no matter how small the population. I think in 2010 each House rep's district was around 700,000 people. Small population states always get 3 electors, so those states proportionally have more power in the electoral college than large population states, though presidential candidates focus on medium and large states because there is more of a payoff for nudging the needle in Florida and getting 29 EV than spending a long time in Montana for 3.
Small population states are rarely battleground states either, though Montana is turning purple.
Eliminating the electoral college and going with the popular vote would favor Democrats in sheer numbers because the small, rural state advantage cooked into the EC would be gone, but it would also make campaigning for Republicans tougher. If you look at a detailed map like this:
An Extremely Detailed Map of the 2016 Presidential Election
Trump won lots of large precincts, but every urban center is blue, even places like the core of Oklahoma City (there are 5 precincts in OK City where Trump got less than 50 votes, not 50%, 50 votes). Other islands of blue are where non-white ethnic groups are located in rural areas like Native American reservations and Hispanic areas like the Rio Grand Valley. In a straight up popular vote scenario the big battlegrounds would be suburbs, but candidates also like to shore up their bases and Democrats can just visit the city centers, a Republican has to range further afield to talk to their bases.
Some states like California and Washington have taken the redistricting process out of the hands of the politicians and the law requires districts have some sort of sensible boundary like a major road, a county or city limit, or a natural boundary like a river. The non-partisan commission takes suggestions from the pubic as well as from experts. But in most states whoever controls the state legislature controls the redistricting process. That gives a lot of power to whoever wins the legislature in years ending in 0. The Republicans targeting state level races in 2010 to get control of the redistricting and they succeeded wonderfully. ( Rick Wilson has observed that Republicans are lousy at governing, but excellent at playing political games, and the Democrats are the opposite.)
Republicans drew districts so Democrats were super concentrated in a small number of districts and Republicans had 55-60% margins in the rest of the districts. That gave them almost guaranteed wins in more districts than they deserved. For example in Texas they divided up Austin (the most liberal city in the state) into several Congressional districts all with big chunks of rural population so that part of Texas ended up with 0 Democrats in Congress. Under the rules in CA and WA, there would be at least 1 Democratic district in that area.
By drawing districts like they did, a big enough swing in the vote could have a cascade effect and leave the Republicans with less than 100 seats in Congress. The Democratic win in 2018 was about 2 points shy of that threshold. If Republican turnout is lower in 2020 and Democratic turnout is high, it might hit the threshold and the next Congress will have few Republicans in the House.
ev-enthusiast
Active Member
Could a sucessfull impeachment of Trump have a positive effect on renewables and Tesla?
Ulmo
Active Member
No. Unfortunately, Democrats and Republicans both play useful idiots in the pro-Establishment fight against innovative anything and especially against clean energy. We've seen that over and over.
Every single political move by Democrats in California has actually impeded clean energy and promoted dirty energy. They just know how to lie lie lie. Democrats were front and center in complicitness in killing the electric car in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.
Elon Musk's most brilliant value is calling all their damned bluffs. Quixotically, they have little choice, just running around trying to save what's left of their houses of cards. The best thing is improvement for the future, and Elon could bestow upon them forgiveness for their sins due to the directionality of that improvement of the future.
The way I think you mean "impeachment" (Trump's removal from office and the success of Communism taking over the world), Communists do not care about clean energy. They would slow down innovation. The fastest way to fix problems is through a sensible free market (light regulation in the right places).
(For the ignorant: Impeachment means a great trial where the Senate gets to put a lot of Democrat-supporters in jail, and Trump will be wildly vindicated, and furthermore, his supporters will be very motivated to vote for him. His removal from office would similarly compel our country to be even more strong against Communism. The dirty status quo is being fought most by Trump and the pro-Trumpers, however, many of them remain useful idiots against innovation. Furthermore, everything is very confused by issues of scope: nearby, we need coal, and far out, we will only have solar. 2030 is a fake deadline invented by Communists attempting to steal power and money, not clean energy. The boats shipping Chinese products to USA pollute more than every car and truck in existence. Now recalculate who really cares about conservation of humans and the environment and stopping pollution. Elon Musk cares. Chairman Xi, Putin, and the Iran Mullahs do not.)
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In the short term, the entire market would tank.
There are a lot of reasons Mulvaney, Trump's chief of staff, is secure. He continues to do damage everywhere. Here is an example:
Opinion | The S.E.C.’s Clayton Turns Oversight Partisan
Opinion | The S.E.C.’s Clayton Turns Oversight Partisan
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