That’s the whole point of the House-Senate split- that the more populous urban areas get more representation in the House, but proportionately less in the Senate.
That said- gerrymandering has fucked that up hardcore. The solution though is to stop gerrymandering, not to give urban areas universal control over the Presidency.
If you make the Presidency a popular vote only, then candidates will campaign in every major city and won’t give a fuck what rural areas want.
If you make the Presidency a popular vote only, then candidates will campaign in every major city and won’t give a fuck what rural areas want.
You may not be wrong but with the current system candidates pretty much only campaign in swing states. If you’re in a reliably red or blue state you likely arent getting a visit from a candidate.
Okay you hit on a much bigger issue- swing states. IMHO the fact that ‘swing states’ are a thing is a problem that we should fix. Why isn’t EVERY state a ‘swing state’? Why is the voting outcome of certain states essentially prewritten? THAT is a problem. EVERY state should be in play.
Some of that blame rests with lazy voters who will blindly vote red or blue without consideration of the actual candidates.
A bigger blame though rests much deeper in our electoral system. It’s not the electoral college that takes blame, it’s first-past-the-post voting (IE simple majority).
FPTP voting heavily rewards coalitions who rally behind a single candidate. So for example if fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, and libertarians all say ‘let’s elect the Republican’ while liberals (for example, hypothetical) split up into the Democrats and the Greens, the Republican will win EVERY time.
This is a problem because it means more often than not you’re not voting FOR someone, you’re voting AGAINST someone.
Recent DNC nominees have been a perfect example. Look at Kamala- she was polling at 2% before she got nominated, but she still got a huge % of the vote simply because she wasn’t Trump. DNC could have put forth a keg of stale beer as their candidate and it’d have gotten 30% of the popular vote because those people were voting AGAINST Trump, not FOR the DNC. And THAT’s a problem, because it’s forcing people to vote for someone they don’t actually support.
The solution is dump FPTP and switch to something like Instant Runoff Voting. In most suggested flavors of IRV, you don’t have a primary- you have a large ballot with everyone who gained enough signatures to be on the ballot. Ideally there’d be 8-10 candidates. You then vote for as many or as few as you like in order of priority. Thus you can vote FOR the guy you actually want, without losing your vote AGAINST the guy you don’t want.
To count the votes, all the #1 votes are added up and you see if a candiate got 50%. If none did, you find whoever voted for the least popular candidate, tear off all their #1 votes and reallocate their ballots based on the #2 votes. Again you look for 50%. Repeat as many times as necessary until you have a winner.
That’s the whole point of the House-Senate split- that the more populous urban areas get more representation in the House, but proportionately less in the Senate.
That said- gerrymandering has fucked that up hardcore. The solution though is to stop gerrymandering, not to give urban areas universal control over the Presidency.
If you make the Presidency a popular vote only, then candidates will campaign in every major city and won’t give a fuck what rural areas want.
You may not be wrong but with the current system candidates pretty much only campaign in swing states. If you’re in a reliably red or blue state you likely arent getting a visit from a candidate.
Okay you hit on a much bigger issue- swing states. IMHO the fact that ‘swing states’ are a thing is a problem that we should fix. Why isn’t EVERY state a ‘swing state’? Why is the voting outcome of certain states essentially prewritten? THAT is a problem. EVERY state should be in play.
Some of that blame rests with lazy voters who will blindly vote red or blue without consideration of the actual candidates.
A bigger blame though rests much deeper in our electoral system. It’s not the electoral college that takes blame, it’s first-past-the-post voting (IE simple majority).
FPTP voting heavily rewards coalitions who rally behind a single candidate. So for example if fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, and libertarians all say ‘let’s elect the Republican’ while liberals (for example, hypothetical) split up into the Democrats and the Greens, the Republican will win EVERY time.
This is a problem because it means more often than not you’re not voting FOR someone, you’re voting AGAINST someone.
Recent DNC nominees have been a perfect example. Look at Kamala- she was polling at 2% before she got nominated, but she still got a huge % of the vote simply because she wasn’t Trump. DNC could have put forth a keg of stale beer as their candidate and it’d have gotten 30% of the popular vote because those people were voting AGAINST Trump, not FOR the DNC. And THAT’s a problem, because it’s forcing people to vote for someone they don’t actually support.
The solution is dump FPTP and switch to something like Instant Runoff Voting. In most suggested flavors of IRV, you don’t have a primary- you have a large ballot with everyone who gained enough signatures to be on the ballot. Ideally there’d be 8-10 candidates. You then vote for as many or as few as you like in order of priority. Thus you can vote FOR the guy you actually want, without losing your vote AGAINST the guy you don’t want.
To count the votes, all the #1 votes are added up and you see if a candiate got 50%. If none did, you find whoever voted for the least popular candidate, tear off all their #1 votes and reallocate their ballots based on the #2 votes. Again you look for 50%. Repeat as many times as necessary until you have a winner.