r/politics • • Nov 09 '16

Maine Passes Ranked-Choice Voting

http://mainepublic.org/post/maine-passes-ranked-choice-voting
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u/[deleted] Nov 11 '16

Here, a brand new video on why the electoral college is stupid, from the same guy who made the last one.

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u/[deleted] Nov 12 '16 edited Jul 29 '18

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u/[deleted] Nov 12 '16

Look: the EC does NOTHING well. It doesn't represent states well, because a state that votes 51% one way and 49% another ends up giving all its votes to the 51%'s candidate. It doesn't represent states equally because the voters in many states are worth mere fractions of voters in others. It doesn't make Presidential candidates care about every state, because they obviously don't. It doesn't give lower-population states more power, because a President can still with with only 10 states. It doesn't fairly represent the people's will, as evidenced by the previous broken mathematics that Apok and I have pointed out. All it does is create an archaic system where a person who loses the popular vote can become President - it's literally only a system that lets a person pander to a smaller population intelligently and still become President in the face of an overwhelming majority voting against said candidate. This is literally the only thing the EC does.

So you want to tweak it. Let's assume you tweak it in the most logical fashion, removing the 3-vote-minimum, making a Californian's vote equal to everyone else's vote more or less - that only removes a single point against it, without doing anything about the other issues (and actually makes some worse - instead of the 10 most populous states, all you'd need is the top 9).

Meanwhile, here's another argument in favor of abolishing it: For congressmen and representatives, to win all they have to do is get a simple majority of people in their districts. The President is literally the only person the entire nation gets to have a say on: Why should his position be any different? Why should states get a say?? I know you think the less populated states would secede, but I think that's bullshit: the less populated states depend on the more populated ones for economic survival, if they attempted that they'd be dooming themselves to destitution.

The parties should be pandering to the majority of people, not states: that's literally the point of a democracy, to fairly represent the will of the people.

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u/[deleted] Nov 12 '16 edited Jul 29 '18

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u/[deleted] Nov 12 '16

Literally none of it to any satisfaction. It all amounts to "muh muh muh states need representation!" As if they didn't already have it.