I'm not in favor of the electoral college, but wouldn't its elimination merely shift this problem to politicians only visiting the most poulated states (e.g. California) anyway?
> I'm not in favor of the electoral college, but wouldn't its elimination merely shift this problem to politicians only visiting the most poulated states (e.g. California) anyway?
“Politicians”, no, it only effects Presidential (and Vice-Presidential) candidates. It has no direct effect on other politicians.
Would it make them more likely to visit densely populated areas (where you can influence more poeple per unit time)? Yeah, probably. Right now, they focus on “swing states”, but within those states, on densely populated areas, for just that reason.
But as long as there is a Senate, they'd be encouraged to visit small states (where a small number of voters determine a large share of power in the Senate, which can block both laws and Presidential appointments) for coattail effects.
And they’d still be encouraged to spend efforts on campaigning in low-cost media markets where small money reaches lots of voters (even ones that would currently be neglected because the states aren't viewed as swingable), just probably not with personal visits as much, without some kind of broader free media exposure opportunities, because the candidates themselves can't be in more than one place at once.
I've seen this pointed out, and absolutely do not see it as a problem. What's wrong with politicians paying more attention to the needs of more people?
They're going to campaign somewhere, why should they pay more attention to Cleveland, Ohio (metro area population ~2m) than Los Angeles (city population 3m, metro population over 13m)?
What's great about the electoral college is you need to have cross-regional appeal to win. So its less about which states are going to be battleground but that you generally can't just appeal to 1 or 2 regions and win. In a goal of preserving the union, it's better to have a system that pushes cross-regional appeal than a system based strictly on number of votes IMO.
My recollection from civics was that the college is to prevent populist candidates from winning. Someone very popular only in densely populated areas may have an agenda that hurts rural ones (eg, noting that federal taxes disproportionately go to rural areas for things like maintaining highways, make it “fair” and leave rural people with shit roads and diminished services).
> My recollection from civics was that the college is to prevent populist candidates from winning
The college was a compromise to give a larger voting share to slave owning states that had a high overall population, despite having a relatively smaller number of possible voters.
They worked hand in hand. In other words, given the 3/5s compromise, how to you implement it from a voting perspective? For example, if your state has a population that was 50/50 slave/non-slave, then each non-slave vote was theoretically worth 1 and 3/5s of a vote, but giving individual voters differing weights was deemed unacceptable. The solution was the electoral college in which the votes available to the state could reflect the extra voting power of the non-voting population.
I don't think the electoral college was intended to work the way it does today. If I'm remembering correctly, it was originally a "Frank from town is really smart and well-informed, so I'll send him to DC to choose the president" type of institution. (This is also part of why there was such a long gap between election day and inauguration - the electors still had to get together in DC)
So while the electoral college might have also functioned as a way to redistribute votes within a state... I don't think that was its main purpose.
> If this were the case you'd expect to see a lot more faithless electors in our history than we have seen.
...other than the large numbers in the late 1700s and early 1800s, you mean?
And in any case, "intent" and "actual practice" were pretty different here. But that doesn't mean that the Connecticut Compromise [0] (which split the US legislative body into the House with representation apportioned by population and the Senate with set representation per state) was solely or even primarily due to slavery. And once you had that, using the total of Senators and Representatives for your number of electors makes a good amount of sense.
The 3/5 compromise was to reduce the power of slave owning states as they wanted slaves to count fully for determining the states’ representation in the house so they could maintain more control of the house.
The compromise reduced the control the slave states had.
It was indeed intended to prevent populism; the idea is that instead of voting for the president you vote for a group of people who you trust to then choose a president. But it has never in practice worked that way.
Interesting, though this sounds like it would really hamper the idea of the national popular vote compact which I'm personally pulling for. And really calls into question the whole electoral system if the electors cannot be constrained by their states at all. Just bribe or threaten 271 people and the whole presidency is yours really since states can't invalidate faithless votes...
> though this sounds like it would really hamper the idea of the national popular vote compact which I'm personally pulling for.
I'm a supporter of NPV. I don't think it's likely to be a problem, although this feels like something that will shake out a lot further in the federal courts.
As I recall, the electoral college was primarily for logistical reasons— a number of people come to Washington, meet together, and the outcome of that meeting determines the next President, with no appeals because the people in the room are empowered to choose.
Communication happened at the speed of a horse, so if you need a decision quickly, you can’t have electors asking for instructions from their home government. For better or worse, the founders favored a definitive result in this case over a correct one.
That assumes that "only appeals to cities" is the only type of populist that we need protection from. The electoral college does nothing to protect against things like "only appeals to white people" or "only appeals to Christians" populists, which were not a big concern for America's founders or the much whiter and more Christian rural population today.
English and its ambiguous grammar... I mean when the founding fathers designed the electoral college, they wouldn't have been concerned about it taking power away from minority groups. In addition, the people in rural areas today who are so concerned about removing the electoral college giving more power to cities are not concerned about how the electoral college disenfranchises minorities because they are much less likely to be minorities or have many close friends who are than people in cities and suburbs so it's not something they'd normally think about.
> Why is cross regional appeal of any value, if these region don't make up even 10% of the combined US population.
Because those people control a large fraction of the country’s food supply and it would be a disaster if they decided to stop selling it to the rest of us.
You're probably being facetious, but I have heard some version of this argument before. It's akin to saying "give us what we want or we'll hold the country hostage."
In reality, free markets being a thing, this wouldn't happen. We can import from other countries and they need to sell their goods to live.
Do you want to eat unregulated Chinese mystery meat? Not that I agree with the sentiment of 'holding the urban areas hostage' but the US and the world need the agricultural production of the central US
California actually provides most of the produce (vegetables fruits and nuts) for the nation. The midwestern corn / soy / beef states are focused on producing bulk commodities for export to other countries.
More hyperbolic than facetious. It can’t be a good thing to disenfranchise the holders of your strategic resources en masse, and farmland was the easiest to point at.
You’re right that it’s extremely unlikely to get so bad that they get forcibly nationalized. However, my understanding is that market conditions are pretty bad for farmers right now, and have been for years. Any change that makes things worse for them will likely drive some to other lines of work and reduce overall production, driving food prices up.
This particular effect is probably extremely small in practice, but I felt the need to remind HN that not all value is produced in cities.
Why have those protections in the Presidency though who is the face of America. Low population states (more accurate than saying the EC favors small states really) already have an even more disproportional impact in the Senate where 40 Senators representing just 38.4M people can completely control the laws that get passed via filabuster (lowest 20 population states + 1 to prevent cloture). That's a little of 10% over the population that can in theory decide 100% what can get passed in the US. (Granted the 20 lowest population states do include a few democratic states, but it is largely consistently republican states)
Senators get elected at best about 70% to 30% in votes also so assume that only 70% of that 38.4M people actually 'control' the laws. "Completely control" is a bit of an exaggeration though, I think you mean not allow new laws to get passed. Having a small population with the ability to prevent new laws is less concerning to me than a populous majority with the ability to pass laws. New laws should have broad support and broad appeal before getting enacted. Due to the internet there is much more spread of culture and thought between states than ever before and I think we could see much more laws getting passed very soon if democrats and republicans, and the media, could stop acting like every single day is election day again and are contrarian to every single word that comes from the other party.
True they can only block but that's a lot of power just look at the whole last 4 years (plus a stolen SC seat) when Mitch was in charge in the Senate, it's a strong position. Also there's a lot of stuff that needs to pass just day to day that you can attach force things to be attached to if you have a solid anti cloture vote and are willing to use it.
I'm not so sure it's just the 24/7 life or death coverage that makes that happen though. In solidly red or blue seats the main threat to a senators seat is a challenge from the extreme of their party, left or right, which also pulls them further towards the extremes of their parties.
I don't think that was the core assumption. Recall that lack of representation in government was one of the reasons for the revolution that created the US.
Why do we only give disproportionate representation to people on the basis of their zip code?
Why not give disproportional representation to them on the basis of their race, or religion, or sexual orientation, or on whether or not they prefer big, or little-endian notation? Surely, it would only be appropriate that politicians should have cross-demographic appeal to win?
Every argument for why we should give extra influence to voters living in particular zip codes is just as valid, as any argument for giving extra influence to voters based on some other semi-arbitrary distinction.
Rural people have special, marginalized concerns, and are outnumbered by urban voters? Great. So do LGBT people, for example.
You don't get extra consideration for your vote for being a ______. Why should you get it on the basis of geography?
because the US is a union of quasi independent states. US government is built around that fact. The Senate, for example, represents each state equally Originally and by intent these were chosen by state legislatures. Similarly, originally and by intent, states governments play a large role in how Presidents get elected. Personally, I think the changes we've made have confused people about the basic theory of our constitutional system. People should be asking: why do we have states.
There is two methods that can be done by removing the electoral college that have vastly different results. First, without "removing" the electoral college, just deem that all electoral votes from a state are proportionate to that state's popular vote. So if a state is split 50-50 then electoral votes are split 50-50. The 2nd method is awarding all the state's electoral votes based on who wins the popular vote. This gives a vastly different outcome if only a few states implement this. It means even if you win even 80 percent of the votes of that state but lose the national popular vote then you still lose that state. I've seen more news about states leaning towards the 2nd option which is actually much worse than the electoral college in its current state.
> There is two methods that can be done by removing the electoral college that have vastly different results. First, without "removing" the electoral college, just deem that all electoral votes from a state are proportionate to that state's popular vote.
You can't do that with national effect by concerted state action with less than 100% of the states (you can simulate it by casting all votes for the candidate that would win by that rule with a bare makority, but that's just a chunky version of national popular vote.)
> I've seen more news about states leaning towards the 2nd option which is actually much worse than the electoral college in its current state.
It's worse if you care about the per-state vote and not the national outcome; it's better if you care about the outcome, since it produces the desired outcome of adopted by states with a majority of electoral votes (and the NPV only goes into effect in states adopting it when it has been adopted by states with a majority of electoral votes), while proportional allocation for electors needs universal adoption to implement it's effect.
What's the point of having "cross regional appeal" if you are appealing to virtually no one?
This isn't some discrimination thing. Those people can still vote. They just aren't given more representation than they deserve. That's the con of the electoral college.
Can you elaborate? You can't win while appealing to "virtually no one". In cases where the national popular vote didn't win - we're talking about a few % points of a difference.
What I mean is the states that are overrepresented based on their population. In EC, every state, regardless of population gets 3 electoral votes. Meaning low population states get more say than they should because they get electoral votes for free. This has caused elections in the past to be won because of this overrepresentation when they wouldn't have if the electoral college didn't exist.
A few percentage points is a big deal in an election where every vote is supposed to count. And this overrepresentation isn't a narrow margin like Brexit, we're talking about at least 5% more represented.
It has not produced that result. Instead it shifts the power from "most populated" (which at lease resembles SOME democratic values) to "most swing", which is totally arbitrary.
Define region and how the electoral college requires cross-regional appeal to win. You could technically win the electoral college with the 13 biggest states in the country, so I'm not seeing how the electoral college forces any kind of broad-based appeal.
Not the OP, but you could technically win the popular vote with those same 13 state's voters. When there is overwhelming support for one candidate the electoral college and popular vote would always be exactly the same. It actually only matters on a closely contest election and in that case the edge goes to the person with more broad support.
"Minority" does not always mean skin colour. John Stuart Mill wrote about the tyranny of the majority[0] in 1850's England∗, which I'll hazard a guess was 99% white, even with steamboats and the British Empire reaching right around the world.
∗and he appears to refer to it as a well established idiom so I suspect it goes further back
You can be a minority because you live in a small state,
or because you are LGBT,
or because you are black,
or because you have a disability.
But the small-state kind of minority seems to be the only one who deserves electoral protection from tyranny of the majority. Oh what a coincidence then, that these minorities also happen to be mostly white, christian, and straight.
Any of those minority groups can move to a small state (states being the usual voting boundary). White, christian, and straight cannot become those groups.
Would a register for who is LGBT be a good idea?
Would you support laws and voting based on ethnic background and/or skin colour?
As to it being their constitution, we're really talking about the Bill of Rights, and that was an updated version of the 1689 British Bill of Rights.
It's sad how we no longer have it, and that people in the past had more rights than we have now. American Constitutionalists are right to dig their heels in over anything that looks like it will encroach on their rights.
Because, without embarrassment at the facetiousness of the straightforward answer, it's a tyranny i.e. it (possibly) restricts or removes the liberty of individuals, sometimes with a big dollop of direct harm like violence.
That's a false dichotomy. The alternative isn't tyranny of the minority, it's a system that takes account of the views of everyone, by forcing candidates to appeal to a wide spectrum of the electorate.
How do you take into account the views of everyone, when different segments of the electorate sometimes have irreconcilable desires and views, and not wind up with "tyranny" of some sort simply by having to set some policy that can't please everyone?
You can take account of everyone without pleasing them all. For example, in systems with run-offs or some kind of ranked choice, you need to appeal to voters who might not have you as their first choice, but whose second choice votes you need. That's better than being able to use a divisive strategy that appeals only to your base, and positively repels the rest.
We are talking about the electoral college, which enables tyranny of the minority.
Not only can a candidate win the electoral college while losing the popular vote, but the winner-take-all system means that only votes in closely-contested states really matter. The Electoral College allows the minority to overrule the majority.
The president isn't the president of “the people” but of the states. It says so right there on the tin: “President of the United States.”
Which means the president is and should be, elected by representatives of the states. The House of Representatives should be the only federal office directly voted on by “the people.” If that were the case, especially eliminating the direct election of senators, you’d see a much less divisive, gridlocked system where governance is more about public service and less about these election soap operas.
If you want a system to appeal to a wide spectrum of the electorate, there are a large number of dimensions that are far better then geographic address. Gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, etc.
For some reason, though, I never see supporters of the electoral college feel that it's right and proper to give equal political power to social minority groups (Only geographical minority groups. As if where you live is more important to your interests than who you are.)
Because states are political units. If you don’t like the laws of one state you can move to another, and this extends to the state's voting power when choosing a president.
As to your innovation in voting, if you accept immutable aspects of identity as the basis for voting rights you're opening the door to some terrible ideas, like ethno-states and Jim Crow laws. Again, without embarrassment at the facetiousness, I'm also not sure how actually making the Jews have more power in 1930s Germany would've solved their problems. Would've probably fuelled grievances: "Hey, Adolf, you know that Jews really do run Germany?" Eeek!
The best way to protect minorities is by the protected freedoms of speech and to bear arms, not by weighting votes by arbitrarily chosen characteristics.
Most people are minorities in at least one aspect that they hold dear to their identity. Under tyranny of the majority, they risk finding that aspect made illegal.
The Electoral College lets the minority choose the president against the will of the Majority. That is called tyranny of the minority. I want to know why you think that's a good thing.
So, for one, I don't - I'm mildly in favor of direct popular votes combined with some form of runoff voting (either IRV, STV, or approval voting).
But I also get the arguments of people that say that without the electoral college, there is zero incentive for politicians to campaign in or pay attention to the interests of people in lightly-populated area. And I think that is a bad thing - whenever you completely disenfranchise people you get create a potential crack for revolution, secession, or other fragmentation processes to seep in. (It's also just shitty to the people involved.) I'd rather fix that by getting rid of first-past-the-post voting systems, but I also think you can't ignore that problem.
You still haven't answered why you believe there's an excluded middle. The opposite of tyranny is representation, and it's the system we have in the U.S. You can quibble about the degree of representation, but the fact that you can quibble about it means that we don't have a tyranny.
Do you think you are represented by the current system ?
You get to complain about being in jail when you are in jail but when you are innocent and complaining does that make it better ?
> But I also get the arguments of people that say that without the electoral college, there is zero incentive for politicians to campaign in or pay attention to the interests of people in lightly-populated area.
This is a lie probably told to you by a high school teacher who never really thought about it, and clearly you haven't either.
If the electoral college empowers lightly populated areas, how come no Presidential Candidate has ever gone stumping for those sweet sweet Wyoming voters?
Because it doesn't empower small states. It doesn't empower big states. It empowers closely contested states.
The electoral college makes no sense, it was not designed this way, the designers tried to get rid of it after they saw how it was being abused.
It's non-democratic, nonsensical, and there has been ~75% support for abolishing it for over 100 years but politicians have been holding off because it makes elections easier for them to fight because it lets them ignore most of the voters.
Does the EU presidency have a popular vote? Why aren’t the various leaders of the EU all German since Germany has the most people?
I love the electoral college. For those that bother to understand that America is a republic; the system was nearly perfectly designed. If we can get back to the original method of electing senators and back to the idea of “these United States” rather than “the United States,” we’d all be happier. States should have increased sovereignty. The 10th Amendment ought to matter.
Dude, the Electoral College takes sovereignty AWAY from the states, and concentrates it in only 4-5 states where the race is close.
If the Electoral College made every state matter equally, then candidates would be campaigning for support in every state equally. It is a fact that that's not what the Electoral College does.
Also, the Electoral College in its current form was not "designed". It was a mistake. The people who designed it, Hamilton and Madison, tried to get rid of it with constitutional amendments after they saw how it was being abused with "winner-take-all" laws.
You’re confusing where people campaign with who has influence.
Wyoming, as a state, has as much influence as California - and that’s how it was designed. Nobody campaigns in either state very much, because their state wide preferences are mostly set - but that doesn’t mean they have no influence.
A majority of state electors pick the president. The president won the most states, so he is president.
In the EU, is Ireland less important than Germany? Why doesn’t Germany get to pick the EU president each time? Since Germany has over 80 million people, they could team up with France and simply own the EU. Ireland and Poland would be forced to go along with whatever Germany and France wanted. Or, they would leave the EU.
If California and New York picked the president every single time, why would other states bother staying in the Union? If you just have to win New York City and Los Angeles and Chicago, then every single policy proposal would simply be to benefit those voters alone. You could deny federal protections and funding to every other part of the country because you’d rather have more money to spend in New York City. It would become just like the Hunger Games where the “districts” would serve the capitol.
The current system has worked for 200+ years. Just because some people didn’t like outcome, doesn’t make the system broken.
Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. Also, no witch burning.
It's an Electoral College witch burning, the majority said "no", but a lot of them live on the same street, so we're going to do it anyway, sucks to be you.
Seattle is still less white than the country as a whole, and Oregon has a weird history that makes it an outlier. In any case, a couple exceptions doesn't change that cities trend less white.
The issue is more that everyone should get attention, and removing the electoral college & going straight to popular vote will honestly erode that- as others have noted, politicians will spend more time in the highest population areas and possibly not the highest need areas.
They'll spend more time campaigning in the areas with the most people who can be convinced to change their votes. This isn't necessarily going to be the highest population areas, as those areas tend to be solidly liberal.
I don't know why the electoral college would be better at identifying high need areas than willingness to change your vote. Shouldn't people who need help be more likely to change their vote than to live in a purple state?
If a 10m pop area has a 70-30 split, it's still better to campaign there than a 5m pop area with a 50-50 split. In absolute numbers it's still 3 million supporters versus 2.5 million supporters.
My point is that you want to go to places where you can convince the most people to vote for you, not necessarily the places with the most people. This means you'll want to go to places with lots of undecided voters, supporters who need to be convinced to vote, and non-supporters who you think can be swayed to your side. You also want to avoid places with lots of people who will be energized by your visit to vote against you.
Under your model where the goal of the campaign is to visit your supporters, you'll favor smaller cities that strongly support you over larger cities that support your opponent. A place with 5 million population that's 70-30 in your favor has 3.5 million supporters.
They already don't spend time equally. Currently they spend time where the expected votes are closest to 50:50. Why is that preferable to going to where there are the most undecided voters, which is what would happen?
To be snide have they ever actually gone to the highest need areas? It has always gone towards whatever bloc will win them the most influence. The Dustbowl wasn't a major election campaign area - neighboring governors had to be told that they couldn't use the national guard to keep out US citizens at gunpoint.
> removing the electoral college & going straight to popular vote will honestly erode that- as others have noted, politicians will spend more time in the highest population areas and possibly not the highest need areas.
So I guess you're totally OK with the current system where they spend all their time in Florida & other swing states because the others don't matter...
The answer is probably complicated. Game theoretically, they’ll pay attention[0] to the places where their campaigning has the biggest marginal impact, but that doesn’t immediately tell us much.
That will make big urban areas appealing. However, if you think there are diminishing returns, it should cause them to spread that attention more, avoiding the last month where they repeatedly visit the same state over and over again.
[0] This might or might mean visiting those states.
I think the whole “visiting” thing is overblown. We have TV and the Internet. This isn’t the 19th century when the only way the average American might EVER see or hear a President would be a short speech off the back of a train car.
I totally underestimated the importance of visiting until I went to Iowa earlier this month. (My wife went to high school and college there and we went back for the state fair and some campaign events.) It shattered my East-coast preconceptions about how elections work. Because of the caucus system,[1] you actually have to meet people in person to encourage them to advocate for you at the caucus. My wife got selfies with nearly every democratic candidate. I met the mayor of New York at a Buffalo Wild Wings. (He was just there for a snack, as were we.) You go to a diner with like 20 people and a presidential candidate has to sit there and field rambling questions from 80 year old ladies. It’s completely nuts, but the people who engage in the process (and they are completely ordinary people) are incredibly committed to their role.
The other thing I came away with from the whole process is a newfound appreciation for the “who would I like to have a beer with” factor. The issues and policy proposals you read on the Internet don’t really matter—none of that stuff will ever get through Congress. Being able to look the person in the eye, and see how they carry themselves while shleping to half a dozen events every day—that really makes an impression.
[1] In the Iowa Democratic caucuses, registered party members in a precinct get together, discuss the candidates, take a first round vote where some candidates are cut, discuss the candidates some more, and then take a final vote.
I have a different opinion. Sanders and to a lesser extent Warren have created massive volunteer networks that do have a pretty big impact, like everywhere. Obama had that too, but it was dismantled when he took office (insanity). There's a good argument to say Obama would have been far more impactful had he kept it going.
Sanders has no intention of shutting down his "revolution" (not my words) whether he does or doesn't get the nomination. There's going to be some serious pressure (like there already has) on congress in the years to come. I don't think the same ol' same ol' will continue much longer.
I don't mean to be a fan boy, but it's pretty phenomenal what he / they have done since 2016, and it resonates with a lot of people. CNN and MSNBC don't talk about it too often, but it's very real.
Don't take my word for it though. Easily researched.
It's a 50/50 country. It would be alarming if, after one election, which will at best be decided 60/40 in their favor, a radically different (from their immediate predecessor) President was actually enable to enact their agenda. The system we have is literally designed to prevent that thing from happening. "Volunteer network" or not, Sanders isn't passing his agenda. If he was serious about doing that, he'd stay in the Senate.
Let's agree to disagree. I actually think big alarming changes are coming (and have already happened). I'm just a Canuck though, and not out to convince anyone. I'm really fascinated with the political changes I see happening (or think I see happening at least).
After 10 years in DC working in political circles, I can tell you that very little is actually changing. The giant, faceless bureaucracy still runs most of the show.
If you look into many of the "unprecedented events" you'll see that most of them aren't new and some of them are decades old.
Though if the events really are bad and were ignored before, it's worth asking "why?"
> After 10 years in DC working in political circles, I can tell you that very little is actually changing. The giant, faceless bureaucracy still runs most of the show.
Maybe but aren't you in danger of missing the big changes coming precisely because you are inside the bubble?
A political equivalent to "let them eat cake".
As an outside observer to the US it does seem like the pressure has to give somewhere soon at some point (and in a few other western democracies including my own though I think the US is further down the pipe on this one).
Valid line of reasoning but I'm 10 years out from that world specifically because the bubble was/is ugly.
I think you're 100% right that there's building pressure and something will give but that's precisely because things haven't changed much. If the general populace decides "no matter how I vote, things don't change" some will lose hope and give up.. while others will look to other approaches.
Canada is very different, because the party in power in the House of Commons can basically do anything it wants. By contrast, the political system of the US is effectively designed to produce gridlock. The Canadian Senate rarely blocks and introduces legislation unlike that of the US, just to name one example.
There are benefits and drawbacks to both systems. Right now I'm pretty happy with this aspect of the US system. (There are other parts of the US system I'm less happy with—such as the Electoral College.)
A lot of people think the changes Trump is making are radically different, and the system has turned out to be a gentleman's agreement that doesn't prevent anything.
Except that it's prevented all sorts of things, including the two biggest-ticket items in Trump's agenda --- the repeal of "Obamacare" and the construction of a wall on the southern border. I'd extend the argument by observing that the widespread belief in the Republican party that anything and everything was on the table ended up royally screwing them; it is, for instance, why they failed to repeal the ACA.
The reason why they failed is because they were the dog that caught the car - they had no plans that were remotely workable.
They pounded it with demagoguery to get elected but they didn't have anything behind the policy and knew it. They also knew that going forward with their disasters would hurt them even more.
Trump has been able to get almost nothing done. He got a tax cut, which was billed as radical but mostly just brings our corporate taxes in line with Western Europe. And he put tariffs on China—one of the few things the President can do without the support of Congress.
Is was my understanding it moves our nominal rates in line with the rest of the world, but this reduces our effective rates to below the rest of the world.
It’ll take a few years for the data to play out, but that’s likely not the case. A CBO study found that our effective corporate tax rate before the Trump tax cut was 18.6%. https://www.npr.org/2017/08/07/541797699/fact-check-does-the.... France, Australia, and Canada were from 8.5-11.2%. The Trump tax cut dropped the nominal rate by about 1/3 (accounting for state corporate taxes, which didn’t change). Assuming a proportional drop in the effective rate (which is a wild ass guess), that would move us below Brazil, Germany, and India, but keep us slightly above France, Canada, And Australia.
The US media coverage of Trump’s corporate tax cuts really misrepresented how completely mainstream it was: https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/wp-content/uplo.... While the US nominal rate of almost 40% total was around the OECD average in 1990, the rest of the OECD dropped to just over 20% by 2017. Meanwhile, the US nominal rate didn’t drop at all.
As of August 14, 2019, the United States Senate has confirmed 146 Article III judges nominated by President Trump, including 2 Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, 43 judges for the United States Courts of Appeals, 99 judges for the United States District Courts, and 2 judges for the United States Court of International Trade.
Visiting here is a proxy for overall campaign message initiatives, which includes physical visits, but also ad buy and even shaping the candidates message and platform to better appeal to the swing stage demographic. Arguably the last one is the biggest potential problem since it means some minority has an outside influence on candidates.
It's not just visiting, it's pork too, there's a reason why there's a net wealth transfer through taxes from those states that are not in play to those that are.
A NPV would go some way to spread the federal spending around a little more fairly
As an example of this imbalance shaping platforms see American policy on Cuba, where conservative policy is enduringly punitive appeal to Florida voters
No, at the end of the day. People are humans and are affected by face-to-face interactions. Communication via television and internet feels impersonal. When a candidate visits your city, they discuss how your local and state politics tie together. So candidates can personalize their speeches towards a specific region per visit. Some people might not care about this, but many others will
You can't discount Trump's stadium tours as an important part in his campaign strategy. It's essential for emotionalizing the base. Almost the same way a Spotify stream compares to a live arena concert. I would even go so far that offline events have in these digital times a much higher voter activation potential.
Probably the biggest reason for physically visiting places is to get bigger donations from people and interest groups. Also to generate buzz that will land in the 24 hour media cycle.
Nobody cares about visiting. They can craft their policies to entirely exclude or screw over states that aren't worth their time. For example, favor specific industries over others that are heavy in one state vs another. They'll do that anyway, but may think twice if they need to build a coalition of smaller states vs just winning the popular vote.
This idea doesn’t seem obvious to me. The biggest states are:
California
Texas
Florida
New York
Pennsylvania
Ohio
Illinois
Georgia
North Carolina
Michigan
Which major industry unites them? Which major industries are not represented? You have tech, finance, automakers, agriculture, tourism, and oil. Maybe not much mining and fishing? Probably something else, but these are very different states.
It's worth adding that those states aren't even close to as homogeneous as most tend to assume. Only 60% of California voted Democrat in 2016, and you have to assume the turnout for Republicans would be higher if it wasn't guaranteed that their vote (for president) was meaningless. With the current system, you can cater only to the populous parts of California and win the whole state, and that goes for most other states as well. With a popular vote, that ~30 to 40% of California is relevant again, along with significant chunks of other states.
It's also worth noting the math really doesn't work out, the electoral college makes it easier to win the whole thing while carrying less states/votes (Which really shouldn't be surprising). With both the popular vote and the electoral college, you only have to take the 10 most populous states to win the whole thing. But the difference is that, with the current electoral college you generally only need to get 51% of the vote to win the whole state, which is significantly easier and turns states like California from a 60% to a 100%. With the popular vote, to actually win in that fashion you would have to take almost every vote in those states, which is practically impossible considering the diversity.
Iowa and NH are targeted because of early caucus and primary, key in nomination contests because perceived momentum drives donations, media coverage, and later votes.
Because of primary campaign dynamics where those are literally the only stayed voting at the time, and underperforming there means you have no money, no positive news coverage and no reason to campaign anywhere else. So all energy goes into them at a certain point in the nomination campaign. (As a rough approximation.)
Totally different dynamic than general elections, which happen all at once rather than different dates in different states.
No, politicians would not need to visit California because the way in which the electoral college is being eliminated is by keeping it intact, but forcing the state electors to follow the federal trend instead of the local one. The result will be ALL of California's electors going "blue" regardless of how the individual people vote. If we figured out a way of actually eliminating the electoral college, then it's entirely possible that a presidential election would result in no candidate winning more than 50% of the popular vote, and there would need to be some way to conduct a run-off election. If this scenario had unfolded in the 1992 election, Bush would have won instead of Clinton.
What it shifts is advertising from expensive media markets with small geographical boundaries (NY, LA) to less expensive ones that have large boundaries (Kansas City, Raleigh.) It works out that, because of the large boundaries, the cost to reach each consumer is far lower.
Moreover, I'd wager that the stumps that stump speeches occur on will go to more places with more concentrated populations - there are more butts within n square miles to put in seats, as well as the most-watched news media.
My opinion is that both outcomes are preferable to stumps AND media going to half a dozen battleground states.
We already have a problem with politicians getting the majority of their donations from people out of their district and even have very low approval ratings in their district.
Something needs to be done to ensure all districts are equally represented and the representatives work for their constituents, not benefactors from out of state.
The issue is that states aren't - really. There is no barrier so said division is arbitrary and unenforcable. Local has been pushing its siren song for a while when marketing but it is actually a reactionary countertrend to essentially everything else.
The region that gows all of our food affects us all. Just because you dont live in the midwest and population density is lower, does not make them less important.
They would go to places where people are. Particularly the sort of people who might be amenable to changing their mind. It's true that because more people are in populated states, they would go to populated states more, but that's just fairness. See also https://xkcd.com/1138/
I predict a presidential popular vote would have a moderating effect. Meaning more voters would be targeted.
With FPTP, each side tries to have the smallest winning coalition. This results in more competitive races. So every vote would matter.
Said another way, our current unfair gerrymandering worsens partisanship.
Said yet another, when my local city council went from at-large positions to districts based, so kinda the opposite of from electoral college to presidential popular vote, candidate platforms went from "appeal city wide" mush to "better appeal to my district".
(A better moderator would be to change from FPTP to approval voting or ranked choice voting. But that's another thread.)
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But to your point, in practical terms, with modern get out the vote (GOTV) technology and strategies, most every voter is already targeted. They're certainly accounted for.
As the de facto head of their parties, presidential candidates are expected to do well every where, to help with down ballot races.
As an extreme example, HRC 2016 was criticized for running up her margin in "safe" areas. But that's expected (demanded) of national (and statewide) candidates by the locals.
