
Larry Lessig wants to blow up the Electoral College before the 2020 election - smacktoward
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/09/electoral-college-supreme-court-lessig-faithless-electors.html
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derp_dee_derp
As a resident of a state deemed "flyover country" let me just key all you
California residents in on something you may not know: if you get rid of the
electoral college you also get rid of the consent of the Midwest to be in the
union. We refuse to be dictated policy by a bunch of coastal high population
states that can't even keep human feces off their major cities streets.

Getting rid of the electoral college is a good way to start a civil war.

~~~
athriren
California had 4.5 million Republican presidential votes cast in 2016, more
than the total votes cast in 41 states (in other words, more than all but 9
states, one of which is California itself). [0]

Many of these voters live in the Central Valley, which grows much of the crops
produced in the United States (over a third of the country's vegetables and
two-thirds of the country's fruits and nuts). [1]

If you throw in the over 3 million Republican presidential votes cast in New
York, the current system disenfranchises as many Republicans in 2 states as
30% of total votes cast in the 11 Midwest states won by the Republican.

I understand the impulse to push back against the coasts, as someone
originally from the Midwest and is trying to move back there, but the
electoral college is not a good system. It harms as many people as it helps.
Voters in ~10 “swing states” get bombarded with ads and visits, while the rest
of the country gets (comparatively) ignored.

Incidentally, I don’t really think the popular vote is a great system either,
particularly in historical examples of no candidate winning a majority of the
votes. I would much prefer a system like instant runoff where voters rank
candidates based on preference. [2] The Wikipedia hole on electoral methods is
a fun read for anyone interested. [3]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidentia...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election#Results_by_state)
[1] [http://www.cdfa.ca.gov/Statistics/](http://www.cdfa.ca.gov/Statistics/)
[2] [https://www.fairvote.org](https://www.fairvote.org) [3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method)

~~~
rufus_3
It's a good system for those who believe the country is in better hands when
we weigh the votes of those in rural areas and still connected to the land as
more important than the votes of those who dwell in the nihilism-inducing
urban centers.

------
thwythwy
"If the Court follows the 10th Circuit, then the public has a chance to
determine whether it wants to accept that result." The public already has that
chance. This isn't helping. It's based on a flawed theory of change that court
decisions provoke successful political backlashes that overturn the decisions.
Being able to express yourself in a patrician cadence and couch your arguments
in terms Courts understand does not make you a net-sum-positive political
actor at the highest level of democratic power. This isn't the right time to
bring this.

