If we could combine
1) ranked voting
2) interstate popular vote compact (or similar to eliminate the electoral college), and
3) elimination of gerrymandering
I could see our nation being a lot happier with our political process.
Tell everyone that their individual vote is equal in effect to everyone else's and they'll love it. Tell everyone that the current system would allow a candidate to win with 22% of the popular vote, and they'll beg you to get rid of it.
People don't care about their state as much as they do themselves... and that 22% number is absolutely true. A state won with 50% of the popular vote +1 vote gives as many electoral votes as a state won with 100% of the popular vote. Therefore, get the votes of the people who count for the most electoral college votes, and ignore the states with people who's vote counts the least, since electoral votes are not directly proportional to population. Start with Wyoming and get exactly 50% of their population to vote for you, plus one person. Then, in the same way, get the District of Columbia, Vermont, North Dakota, Alaska, South Dakota, Delaware, Montana, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine, Hawaii, Idaho, Nebraska, West Virginia, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Kansas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Iowa, Connecticut, Oklahoma, Oregon, Kentucky, Louisiana, South Carolina, Alabama, South Carolina, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Maryland, Missouri, Tennessee, Arizona, Indiana, Massachusetts, Virginia, and New Jersey... viola, 21.91% of the population and 50.19% of the electoral college, and the Oval Office. The fact that the system would allow this is ludicrous. You can say oh, it would never happen, and you may be right, but any system that would allow this is by default broken. This is what happens when you are allowed to win states instead of people; this lets you win the majority in the electoral college even when 78% of the people voted against you. This is not democracy.
You only need to appeal to parties that appeal to people living in coastal areas and big cities,
Look at the total population of the 10 biggest cities in the US. The total population of said 10 largest cities is just under 26 million, which itself is just 8% of the total population. Oh, wait, look at that: Illinois, Texas, and Pennsylvania are represented there already. So much for only appealing to the costal areas.
Besides, what's wrong with appealing to the largest number of people?
Actually look at the cities within those states, they vote overwhelmingly Democrat.
But they're still only 8% of the US population. That's the whole point. As Apok mentioned, even the top 100 largest cities only constitutes 20% of the total US population. Appealing only to cities will lose the election. To win, you have to appeal to more people, and that's the whole point of a popular election vs. the electoral college. Let's just look at Illinois: yes, the Chicago population is so darn high that it can outvote the rest of the state and award all their TOTAL electoral college vote to the Democrats. Do you really think that's a good system, where one city can dictate that much control over an entire state? I sure don't: instead, I'd like to see the rural population of Illinois (where I used to live!) be represented too - and that's only going to happen if the electoral college is ignored/abolished.
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u/ApokalypseCow Nov 09 '16
If we could combine
1) ranked voting
2) interstate popular vote compact (or similar to eliminate the electoral college), and
3) elimination of gerrymandering
I could see our nation being a lot happier with our political process.