Board 8 > If given the option, which recent US presidential election would you flip?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Smooth brained is thinking 52% ruling over 48% is functionally some radical change from 48% ruling over 52% in terms of "fairness." It's not. It's the tyranny of roughly half over roughly half in either case.

You'd think we'd realize this on GameFAQs Contests board most easily. Just looking at the history of Crono vs Mario. It's like did we have people complain when registered votes count double when it flipped matches? I think by and large it was considered a quirk in the format and didn't swing any matches by a huge amount, and the rules were presented at contest start.

I think if the EC wasnt a thing the election does potentially still go to trump anyway by the way.

Its not EXACTLY the same thing but the GOP won the House of Representatives popular vote in 2016 which suggests if republicsns in deep blue states had had a reason to vote for president, Trump still wins.

And its just a more sensible and fair system.

Youre the one insisting we need a more complicated system than "everyone gets a single vote that counts the same as everyone elses" for some reason.

Why does Ross, the largest friend, not simply eat the other five?

foolm0r0n posted...

And you're saying you will support the next fascist who wins by 1 popular vote, so that's good to know

If the Electoral College is supposed to stop fascists from seizing power, why did Trump get a presidential term?

Eddv posted...

Youre the one insisting we need a more complicated system than "everyone gets a single vote that counts the same as everyone elses" for some reason.

I'm saying the reason is to give candidates incentive to visit places that aren't population centers

It ends up distorted because the system isn't perfect but I do quite like the ideal at least. Give me a reformed electoral college over pure popular vote any time

Lopen posted...

Smooth brained is thinking 52% ruling over 48% is functionally some radical change from 48% ruling over 52% in terms of "fairness." It's not. It's the tyranny of roughly half over roughly half in either case.

If you are just removing any actual real world sense and looking at things as numbers and nothing else, then yeah. I'm not sure why you'd want to do that though. A majority and whoever the leader of that group is isn't by default a tyrant or represent tyranny in the actual sense of the word. US politics are no longer very nuanced; it's a lot easier to view things as Good vs. Evil. Or at least Meh vs. Evil.

I'm not sure why GameFAQs is being invoked either; this is a site that can be dominated by rallying in the right spot. That doesn't quite work in the real world as easily when you need to overcome millions rather than thousands.

Lopen posted...

I'm saying the reason is to give candidates incentive to visit places that aren't population centers

Does it? I assume most of their campaigning in swing states would focus on those states' major cities. It lets them ignore plenty of other heavily populated regions, but it doesn't force them to cater to rural areas in particular.

Xeybozn posted...

Does it? I assume most of their campaigning in swing states would focus on those states' major cities. It lets them ignore plenty of other heavily populated regions, but it doesn't force them to cater to rural areas in particular.

It's about driving distance more than a literal urban/rural campaign site. Everyone who wants to be heard is probably within reasonable driving distance of a campaign event. Much less so if it's 90% Cali and NY

This gets better with the district system too

Lopen posted...

I'm saying the reason is to give candidates incentive to visit places that aren't population centers

It ends up distorted because the system isn't perfect but I do quite like the ideal at least. Give me a reformed electoral college over pure popular vote any time

Trump and Biden didnt spend much time in fuckin Sheboygan anyway.

They just spend it in Cleveland Atlanta and Charlotte instead of LA San Jose Houston and New York

The presidential candidates still gonna get around because down ballot races exist and are important.

v_charon posted...

It's extremely unlikely the right will ever win the popular vote any time in the near future. I'm sure you already know that though.

I don't know that because political predictions are ridiculously weak in the world of statistics, which I'm sure you also know. I don't tie my anti-fascism to probability though, so it really doesn't matter to me. It must be stressful to know that you just gotta go with the fascists if a handful of people happen to vote differently one day. I get why centrists are on edge all the time.

swordz9 posted...

Gore and Hillary are such good options to pick. Gore because he actually took climate change seriously and Hilary because maybe 50%~ of America wouldnt be so openly proud of being Nazi humpers right now. I guess alternatively you could say if Obama didnt win we couldve avoided that, but he was the preferable winner and I wouldnt undo that

Are you a Nazi humper

Not_an_Owl posted...

If the Electoral College is supposed to stop fascists from seizing power, why did Trump get a presidential term?

I would never claim that. Obviously any system that rests an entire nation's balance of power on 1 election will be used by fascists to seize power. That's why the only valid anti-fascist policy is to weaken the feds.

You're the one trying to claim that popular vote election will make it impossible for fascists to seize power. When all it means is they need to get 2% more votes in the next election. And the bonus is millions of hyper-logical moralists will end up fully supporting them in that case.

Lopen posted...

Smooth brained is thinking 52% ruling over 48% is functionally some radical change from 48% ruling over 52% in terms of "fairness." It's not. It's the tyranny of roughly half over roughly half in either case.

You'd think we'd realize this on GameFAQs Contests board most easily. Just looking at the history of Crono vs Mario. It's like did we have people complain when registered votes count double when it flipped matches? I think by and large it was considered a quirk in the format and didn't swing any matches by a huge amount, and the rules were presented at contest start.

I could be remembering wrong but my memory of that was that people by and large thought it cheapened the contests. Anti-rally people thought "this is stupid, they should just ban rallies" while pro-rally people thought "this is stupid, they should just do nothing". Did it flip anything? Who knows. Anyway, the analogy there would be if the US used to go by plain popular vote, and even let citizens of other countries vote, until China rallied some random rice farmer to US president, at which point the US went "actually, China can still vote in our elections, but their votes are worth half a US citizen's". Which is, if nothing else, a system that would produce extremely funny results.

Kenri posted...

I could be remembering wrong but my memory of that was that people by and large thought it cheapened the contests. Anti-rally people thought "this is stupid, they should just ban rallies" while pro-rally people thought "this is stupid, they should just do nothing". Did it flip anything? Who knows. Anyway, the analogy there would be if the US used to go by plain popular vote, and even let citizens of other countries vote, until China rallied some random rice farmer to US president, at which point the US went "actually, China can still vote in our elections, but their votes are worth half a US citizen's". Which is, if nothing else, a system that would produce extremely funny results.

To run with your analogy which is more in depth than I was planning (I was going with the angle that inflating the value of some votes can't swing any elections by any notable amount)

Rallied votes aren't Chinese voting in American elections because they've always been allowed. Chinese votes in US elections are vote stuffing. Which have been banned by the rules.

Rallied votes are quite literally a case of "these votes are changing results more than we like by the rules given and now we want to change the rules to 'fix' it"

Basically if you want to go all in with the analogy counting registered votes as double is the attempt to replace the electoral college with pure popular vote. A new system that counts votes slightly differently and won't matter most of the time but will flip a few results in favor of the people who really wanted the rules changed. Hillary apologists are the GameFAQs users who are getting their votes doubled in this analogy.

Lopen posted...

Basically if you want to go all in with the analogy counting registered votes as double is the attempt to replace the electoral college with pure popular vote.

it turns out analogies can just be whatever you want i guess

Like if you want my radical changes in an ideal world voting system if it was up to me we'd have to take a quiz on some very basic information on the candidates and their stances on certain policies as part of the voting process. And if you got those wrong your vote would be counted as less or zero.

The only problem with that is you'd have a ton of people not voting and it'd be even tougher to rule out fraud or biased questions.

I don't frankly care if a candidate wins the election has 48% of the popular vote or 51%. Ignorant voters who know literally nothing about either candidate and are just party voting as well as outright voter fraud is probably skewing any close election to the point where we're basically at the mercy of random chance and corruption for any close election.

B-b-but the loser won the popular vote is just coping by the losers. It's not actually meaningful. People saying raw votes are more fair than the electoral college-- why? Do you really think a candidate having a couple more percentage of the votes really matters?

The rules are what they are and I've given the theory behind them-- you can say "the theory isn't working because they are focusing on battleground states" isn't the better solution then to make every state have at least one battleground district to ensure that the candidates hear concerns of every region of the US?

Making it pure popular vote is lazy or ape "me like big number" thinking at best, or disingenuous support of a system that picks the candidate you like better more often recently at worst. It doesn't fix anything meaningful in the process.

Lopen posted...

B-b-but the loser won the popular vote is just coping by the losers. It's not actually meaningful. People saying raw votes are more fair than the electoral college-- why? Do you really think a candidate having a couple more percentage of the votes really matters?

this is such a bizarre line to take that i'm having trouble believing you're actually confused by it. like yeah of course a few percentage matters when it determines who wins and who loses??

Lopen posted...

The rules are what they are and I've given the theory behind them-- you can say "the theory isn't working because they are focusing on battleground states"

the theory isn't working because it's dumb as shit and produces garbage presidents. i honestly do not give a fuck about battleground states or whatever, you keep bringing that up, not me.

Lopen posted...

Making it pure popular vote is lazy or ape "me like big number" thinking at best

you keep saying this but why is "me like big number" worse than your position, which is just "me like smaller number"?

We should elect Presidents using Eurovision scoring.

Kenri posted...

this is such a bizarre line to take that i'm having trouble believing you're actually confused by it. like yeah of course a few percentage matters when it determines who wins and who loses??

In what way? Not the rules as written, because you're trying to rewrite those because it's not giving you the result you like.

You're saying 51% of the country choosing a president is more fair because the number is higher-- but that number doesn't matter for the rules. But my main point is that number also doesn't matter in a sense of being notably more representative of what the US as a country wants on the whole by percentage of population, because as said, it's still the tyranny of "about half" over the half that lost. Any major win by a candidate where it's a notably higher amount of the country preferring one or the other can't be flipped by the electoral college.

This is like saying we need to change where the 3 point line is in basketball because the teams that make more raw baskets aren't winning and you don't like that the Golden State Warriors are winning too many games due to 3 pointers counting as more. You'd arguably produce a better idea of which teams are better by doing that but are you sure?

To put it another way. I would want Gore to win if Bush beat him by 10 million votes because I think he would've done a much better job. I don't need to say "but he won the popular vote by 500k" to vindicate my belief-- dude lost. I still think the Maine and Nebraska way are better than popular vote even if they don't flip Gore to winning or Hillary to winning. I also think there are better ways still than the Maine and Nebraska way that possibly would flip Gore or Hillary but may not-- and frankly whether they do or don't doesn't really matter, it's about creating a system where all parts of the nation are properly engaged with and at least somewhat relevant in an election, and pure popular vote isn't the ideal way to go about that any more than the current EC is.

I don't get how "every vote counts" DOESN'T fit the criteria of "all parts of the nation are properly engaged with". Yeah, California has a lot of voters, but despite being a blue state, it's also got a lot of Republican voters. More Republicans voted for Trump in California in 2020 than Republicans voted in Texas that same year. At least making it purely popular vote means that candidates need to appeal to as many people as possible, rather than just solidifying a handful of swing states.

Even if you think there are better options that straight democracy, I genuinely do not understand how you can believe the current system is superior to that.

Can someone explain to me what the premise of the electoral college is? Like what does it solve, is it supposed to give more votes to more populated areas or what?

California, Texas, Florida, and New York combined have about 1/3 of the population of the US. If we went to pure popular vote I'm pretty sure 90% of campaigning and major campaign platforms would be central to those states.

The point of the US has always been the stronger parts lift the weaker parts and we use the resources of the weaker parts to become better overall than we'd be separately that's why we're not like Europe-- California is larger than most European countries in terms of population and land mass.

The whole "swing state" thing is a problem with the system but popular vote just means we focus on Texas California New York Florida vs the 10 or so swing states. It's not a fix it's just a different way of doing things that picks candidates you like better in recent memory and/or satisfies your monkey brain which likes big things better

There is no fixing inherent problems with purely popular vote system because it's so simplistic and frankly in its simplicity you lose tuning that might give you a better idea of what the nation wants compared to residents of California or New York or Florida or Texas-- Electoral College has problems but if you iron them out it can become something much more.

Lopen posted...

In what way?

in the way that that's how practically every vote on the entire fuckin planet works?? like do you understand how voting works, conceptually, outside of the very specific framework of this one vote in this one country?

Lopen posted...

But my main point is that number also doesn't matter in a sense of being notably more representative

But it is more representative.

How much more does it need to be to be notable, in your eyes?

Probably like 55-45 by percentage. Basically any result that is deep enough that running it a month later couldn't flip it.

Anything closer is going to be controlled by fraud, random chance, and ignorance in the end so I don't really think the guy with 52% winning really matters by any notable metric. The point is EC can't flip any huge wins so while you can flip some close elections in the end it's not like you're going to have a huge amount of the country way happier with one result vs the other-- it's just different sections.

Like if you think 50.5% Gore vs 49.5% Gore really matters in terms of fairness then you're just holding some arbitrary metric sacred while willfully ignoring the metrics actually used.

Also for the record most votes don't actually work how you're describing. Certain vote participants having more or less voting power is extremely common and probably more common in settings that actually matter (ie not you and a few buddies voting what movie to go see or a meaningless Poll of the Day) than each person having one vote.

Lopen posted...

he whole "swing state" thing is a problem with the system but popular vote just means we focus on Texas California New York Florida vs the 10 or so swing states. It's not a fix it's just a different way of doing things that picks candidates you like better in recent memory and/or satisfies your monkey brain which likes big things better

Why are you dehumanizing people who disagree with you

Regardless, I don't really see the appeal. It's not as though the people in the states who wouldn't be campaigned in are actually disallowed to vote. I would rather my vote count the same as everyone else even if the candidates don't actually care about me that much, rather than my vote actually counting less because my state gives 10 less electoral votes than another state. It's still not perfectly fair but I think it's more fair.

Kenri posted the big monkey brain not me. Ask why he dehumanized himself.

Like I'm not saying Kenri is stupid because he's *insert random bad thing here*

I'm saying he's not actually thinking about the situation because he's shown no evidence he has thought about anything involved beyond "bigger number win"

But yeah you keep thinking you're clever because Para needs to cope by calling people she disagrees with random slurs

Lopen posted...

I'm saying he's not actually thinking about the situation because he's shown no evidence he has thought about anything involved beyond "bigger number win"

if you want effort from my posts you're going to have to show, at a bare minimum, respect for people who effortpost. preferably you would also engage with objective reality but i'm not holding my breath for that lmfao

until then you get:

Kenri posted...

you keep saying this but why is "me like big number" worse than your position, which is just "me like smaller number"?

Listen you can reduce what I'm saying to "me like smaller number" but that just shows you're not reading.

Me like smaller number because by the rules of the game smaller number is supposed to win

I have gone over in detail why the rules are what they are

You can disagree but I haven't heard any real reason from your side that your rewriting of the rules is better that isn't "me like my candidate" and "me like bigger number" and "me use big number to pick what movie to watch"

Again and again I've said "explain to me why 50.1% is meaningfully different than 49.9% in terms of how representative it is of what America wants" and you can't. I'm not saying EC is objectively better at the moment, just that there is a theory behind it and that I think that if the theory is realized it becomes better than popular vote (which is not an improvement over the current EC).

Like if you want me gun to head pick EC as it stands and guarantee it will never be replaced vs Popular Vote that will never be replaced I'd have to actually think about it, but reformed EC would undoubtedly be a better system than Popular Vote can ever hope to be in terms of representing the interests of the nation accurately and frankly, in terms of ability to reasonably catch voter fraud (imagine doing recounts when literally every Clerk's Office in the nation has to recount their votes)

Lopen posted...

Listen you can reduce what I'm saying to "me like smaller number" but that just shows you're not reading.

here's how it works: you engage with others in good faith and show an understanding of historical and contemporary politics, I read what you're writing and respond in kind. you don't bother reading and just regurgitate dumb garbage, i match that energy by not reading and by regurgitating dumb garbage

Lopen posted...

Me like smaller number because by the rules of the game smaller number is supposed to win

why do you give a fuck about the rules? who cares?

Lopen posted...

You can disagree but I haven't heard any real reason from your side that your rewriting of the rules is better that isn't "me like my candidate" and "me like bigger number" and "me use big number to pick what movie to watch"

Again and again I've said "explain to me why 50.1% is meaningfully different than 49.9% in terms of how representative it is of what America wants" and you can't.

you've gotten tons of reasons actually, but you keep ignoring them (or reducing them to something dumb-sounding, then ignoring them)

Lopen posted...

I'm not saying EC is objectively better at the moment, just that there is a theory behind it and that I think that if the theory is realized it becomes better than popular vote (which is not an improvement over the current EC).

Like if you want me gun to head pick EC as it stands and guarantee it will never be replaced vs Popular Vote that will never be replaced I'd have to actually think about it, but reformed EC would undoubtedly be a better system than Popular Vote can ever hope to be in terms of representing the interests of the nation accurately and frankly, in terms of ability to reasonably catch voter fraud (imagine doing recounts when literally every Clerk's Office in the nation has to recount their votes)

please engage with objective reality

Anyway I've gotta go to work or pound nails into my dick or something so ttfn

Kenri posted...

here's how it works: you engage with others in good faith and show an understanding of historical and contemporary politics, I read what you're writing and respond in kind. you don't bother reading and just regurgitate dumb garbage, i match that energy by not reading and by regurgitating dumb garbage

So you want me to drop random quotes from political figures in history gratuitously like that rando earlier that made you all hot and bothered because you lack the insight to determine whether people know what they're talking about if they don't

Well I'd rather just talk ideas than pander to your desire for me to seek validation by flexing like that so no thanks. Have fun at work.

Lopen posted...

The point of the US has always been the stronger parts lift the weaker parts and we use the resources of the weaker parts to become better overall than we'd be separately that's why we're not like Europe-- California is larger than most European countries in terms of population and land mass.

This would be a good point if the Electoral College didn't predate California. So this is clearly an unintentional side effect at best.

LinkMarioSamus posted...

This would be a good point if the Electoral College didn't predate California. So this is clearly an unintentional side effect at best.

Before California every state had equal population

Then that evil California arrived... and ruined our perfect Electoral College...

Shit, am I still living rent free in your head over that? Sorry, didn't realize I was going to leave that big an impression.

I just thought that if there was going to be a reasoned discussion or debate then if someone were going to just assert something about the motives for the origin of something, rather than following suit and just pulling shit out of my ass and trying to make it true by force of will it'd be more accurate to point to the primary sources because questions like "Why was the EC created and implemented" isn't some unknowable magic shit we got to speculate on - they fucking told us why themselves so it's a matter of fact not a "well, I want your opinion, bro" matter.

But if instead we're just here to argue for the sake of arguing and facts and evidence don't mean shit well I've had my fill of that over the years. Would it have made you feel better about it if I loudly declared why I wasn't going to bother engaging then instead so you could claim it was performative rather than just actually leaving like I did? Cuz you can use this post then, I guess.

Lopen posted...

Kenri posted the big monkey brain not me. Ask why he dehumanized himself.

I don't really think kenri posting a tongue in cheek meme arguably mocking you for thinking of them that way makes you any less hypocritical for continuing to mock them as such in a serious manner. I don't have an issue with you getting upset at last night if you feel you aren't what you were called in that channel, I have an issue with you then engaging in the same type of behavior you got so upset at. Belittling people and calling them smoothbrain and apes and lazy because they disagree with you. You're doing the exact same thing you claim others were doing to you.

If you think some random quote that some dude said about a thing they helped create is the only reason it exists and particularly helps your understanding a lot and aren't just doing it to flex then I don't think you have a lot to offer in the discussion to be honest. You're just that guy who is desperate to make their history degree relevant or that guy who is scrambling for wikipedia quotes to make themselves sound smart.

I'm just saying how our government is designed, on the whole, has a recurring theme of trying to make sure smaller states retain a voice in the face of more populated ones. Why does every state have 2 senators for example, and why is it not based on population like representatives are. I have given numerous hypotheticals and actual statistics that show why going purely popular vote for election of the president marginalizes that goal, and have questioned why pure number of people is a more "pure" result.

I don't need to quote some schmuck that said something about why there are 2 senators per state or a part of the constitution said it to support that premise-- it's plainly visible by basic understanding of how the US government works that this is a goal of the government. Kenri apparently needs the quotes from schmucks so you keep wowing him over there, but I'm not going to let people say I don't know anything about the subject matter because I don't care to pander to people who need displays of pseudointellectualism and can't be bothered to actually digest post content.

Emeraldegg posted...

I have an issue with you then engaging in the same type of behavior you got so upset at. Belittling people and calling them smoothbrain and apes and lazy because they disagree with you. You're doing the exact same thing you claim others were doing to you.

I belittle people entirely based on what they post as they post it

It is completely different. I'm not going to call Kenri an idiot in the next thing we discuss because I think he's being stupid in this topic. I can plainly see Kenri is not a stupid person. That's the difference. What he says doesn't change what I think of him as a person-- it just makes me think he's out of his depth in this discussion, and it ends there.

Sure putting a lot of words in my mouth when my only intent in a fairly benign post was to point out that the reason an indirect election system was chosen was largely based on the debate over slavery this country has grappled with since well before the Founding.

Also, kind of curious that they chose to go for an Electoral College that gave more voting representation to the most populous state at the time (Virginia) than it would have otherwise had had it been a straight popular vote, don't you think?

Also keep in mind this so called "dehumanizing" is entirely based on what he is saying in topic-- it's not based on me prescribing some sort of identity to him that he has not already displayed

He thinks big number is better than small number because "it is more representative" and I'm asking him to prove it and he won't. That is literally his viewpoint in here.

Keep in mind we have over half of the nation not voting at all. Pardon me if I don't think getting a few percentage points more of the vote matters in a meaningful way in terms of being representative when you've got a ton of people not voting at all, and a ton of people just blindly party voting, and probably a ton of outright fabricated votes too. As the percentage difference increases it becomes more meaningful because it's harder to turn a blowout win with factors that aren't based on representation, but EC can't flip blowouts, so it's not a knock against it.

Like the viewpoint of popular vote people is that "well, more votes, therefore it's a better sample" but my viewpoint is "more votes doesn't matter enough in the margins the EC can flip that that's actually a good argument and we should talk about theory behind the system instead" but no one who just wants popular votes is even willing to discuss a system that would weigh votes. It is literally "one person one vote count em up" and that's end of discussion. I just don't think that's the best way and inherently a system that can completely lock down a branch of government with a candidate that 49.9% of the nation doesn't want has some problems.

Lopen posted...

California, Texas, Florida, and New York combined have about 1/3 of the population of the US. If we went to pure popular vote I'm pretty sure 90% of campaigning and major campaign platforms would be central to those states.

Yeah, the EC definitely forces candidates to focus on a wider audience. Instead of the one-third of Americans in those states, the actual 2024 campaigns will focus almost entirely on AZ/GA/MI/NC/NV/PA/WI. That's almost one-fifth of the population, and we all know five is more than three. That's clearly more democracy right there.

Thorn posted...

Sure putting a lot of words in my mouth when my only intent in a fairly benign post was to point out that the reason an indirect election system was chosen was largely based on the debate over slavery this country has grappled with since well before the Founding.

Here's a hypothetical for you.

Leave populations of voting people the same but now the north supports slavery (and owns the slaves, and the south is anti-slavery). Do you now think the Electoral College is good now because it helped staunch the voting population advantage in the north.

Having an escape valve for lower population areas to have say when majority vote is being unreasonable about their interests is good. Yes in that case the majority vote by population was the one you'd want to have the voice but the general idea makes sense. The raw majority isn't always who you want piloting-- the idea is that everyone should get a voice in the system and by doing so the general awareness of the problems of the minority will gain traction and become the majority if they're something with merit (and if they're not, they get shut down eventually, much like Slavery did)

Politicians of the time acknowledging that it advantages slave owning states doesn't mean that's the only reason it was chosen at the time or even necessarily accurate to why it was chosen.

I'm saying that if you think that's the case just because you can cite quotes that say so, you're not actually thinking about how the government as a whole works. The electoral college is consistent with everything else we've got in place and unless you think the entirety of United States government was built around preserving the power of slave states then there's no reason to believe the EC was made entirely because of slave politics, which I mean if you believe that you'd just give slaves voting power and let it be majority vote all the time. We'd likely still have slavery under that design with all those coerced slave votes shutting down opposition to it.

Turns out this is a heated topic for people for some reason

Lopen posted...

Here's a hypothetical for you.

Leave populations of voting people the same but now the north supports slavery (and owns the slaves, and the south is anti-slavery). Do you now think the Electoral College is good now because it helped staunch the voting population advantage in the north.

...How does this math work? I am being serious here, I can't grasp how this hypothetical works without collapsing immediately.

The Electoral College's abstraction of the vote tied it to the House of Representatives which necessarily and intentionally tied Electoral College votes to the Three-Fifths Compromise. If you're holding the number of freed people but just moving the slaves from the south to the north then in doing so the Electoral College will now disproportionately favor the North because the slaves are now giving them additional voting representation in the EC despite the fact that they are, well, enslaved, and have no suffrage. (And the South is losing the EVs they gained from having the slaves)

I pointed out that the EC, upon the completion of the first census, increased the voting weight of the state with the highest population relative to what it would have been had you left it to popular vote (assuming, for the moment, that the slaves are not granted suffrage. I honestly thought this was such a given it went without saying but apparently I have to rethink this if you intend to seriously advance the idea that the slave states would grant slaves suffrage to game the popular vote which just seems batshit insane to me to even suggest.)

By freed people eligible to vote, Virginia had the highest population but was in a virtual tie with Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. However, the latter two had very few slaves (and Massachusetts had none) so in the first Electoral Colleges occurring after the first census, instead of these states weighing about equally - Virginia, already the most populous, ended up with 21 EVs compared to 15 and 16 for PA and MA. You even see some of the smallest population states actually having their EV representation share drop in such a comparison because this effect in some cases even overpowers the advantage they are given by the existence of the Senate (another undemocratic abomination but we can leave that for another topic.)

This can't have surprised the Founders. By tying the Electoral College to the Three-Fifths compromise, they were giving any state that held slaves extra voting power. You can see this pretty clearly if you compare a % of population (freed people) to % of EV representation because it's blindingly obvious. When certain states get more EVs because they have slaves and those states count towards apportionment (even at "only" 3/5) like... "duh."

They didn't merely "acknowledge" that it advantaged slave states, they said it was explicitly why it was chosen over a straight popular vote. It was a feature, not a bug.

Lopen posted...

and unless you think the entirety of United States government was built around preserving the power of slave states then there's no reason to believe the EC was made entirely because of slave politics

Again, you're putting the words "entirely" in my mouth. Certainly I am arguing it was the prime motive. I wouldn't say the US government was built entirely around preserving the power of slave states but I sure as fuck am going to say it was a key component. The Founders took their first shot at a government with the Articles of Confederacy and it failed catastrophically. They needed to get all the states on board a new framework and yes the slave states and their desire to protect slavery was a major part of that. I'm honestly a bit flummoxed this needs to be explained, it was basically the defining conflict that dominated national politics for the first hundred years of the country until it resulted in a fucking civil war. From the Three-Fifths Compromise to the Missouri Compromise where we had to make sure any time we added a free state we added a slave state to make sure abolitionists wouldn't be able to obtain enough power to threaten slavery in the South.

Like, the whole "the Electoral College was designed to make sure the smallest states among us still had an important voice in government" is a thing we're taught from kindergarten because it's a nice story but I don't believe an actual examination of the history suggests that to be true and that's it's just another part of the absurd mythology that has been built up around the Founders like they hadn't failed pretty miserably at constructing a government on attempt #1 and weren't just making what deals they could to keep the country together so it wouldn't be picked off by the European colonial powers again. If you're asking if I'm denying the idea that they were some philosopher-kings who descended to implement some idealistic vision where even the small guys had a voice too - then, uh, yeah, I am. They absolutely did not give a fuck about that.

Guys, it's 2023. Stop arguing with Lopen. You're better than this

I'm not saying you emancipate slaves. I'm saying you allow slaves to vote while enslaved and let them vote "how they would" (coerced).

You also straight up don't have the 3/5s compromise in this hypothetical. You're tying the EC to that and yes that's probably more "correct" to do but it's also completely irrelevant to the discussion we're having here (EC in current day) as we don't have any slaves contributing to populations at the moment.

The 3/5s compromise is the problem, not the EC in and of itself. The 3/5s compromise gave slave states more representatives than they should have proportional to their voting population. That doesn't mean the EC is made to tilt the system to slave states-- it means a system that happened to tilt the system to slave states a bit due to more voting population existing there was then amplified because people got greedy.

Lopen posted...

Like if you want my radical changes in an ideal world voting system if it was up to me we'd have to take a quiz on some very basic information on the candidates and their stances on certain policies as part of the voting process. And if you got those wrong your vote would be counted as less or zero.

See this is a horrendous idea.

Like here's I guess where you're diverging from me

I'm thinking it was
Random politician guys think "hey this would be cool"
Shitty slave owner politician guys stonewall it until provisions are put in to help them out because slave votes don't count
Provisions are put in because politics sucks like that and we wouldn't get anything done otherwise

You're thinking it was
Shitty slave owner politician guys concoct a scheme to give them more power in politics because slaves can't vote
Insert contrived system that exists only because we need to undermine the popular vote system so slave states get their power
Mustache twirling commences

I don't know why you keep bringing up the 3/5s compromise like it matters in present day. It's not relevant anymore.

Eddv posted...

See this is a horrendous idea.

I think it's horrendous just because I don't trust the question selection to be unbiased (and possibly can't be even without corruption in the mix-- I was just talking ideal systems, not necessarily plausible)

Now if your issue is that I don't think ignorant party voters should count the same as people who actually follow politics and make an educated decision then agree to disagree I guess.

Eddv posted...

See this is a horrendous idea.

Does he not know he described jim crow?