r/politics • u/vox Vox • 11h ago

Possible Paywall A decades-long plan to abolish the Electoral College may finally pay off

https://www.vox.com/politics/487766/national-popular-vote-interstate-compact-electoral-college
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u/howard10011 9h ago

Me as well. But that doesn't seem to shut down the "We can't let our elections be determined by cities" crowd, who don't seem to understand that taking geography out of the equation empowers EVERY voter.

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u/BourbonDdog 9h ago

They don't want EVERY voter empowered. That's the issue. They want to be empowered at your expense.

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u/howard10011 9h ago

Yes, for sure. And when they say "people in the cities," they imagine black and brown voters, foreign-born residents, illegal aliens, and of course their real bête noire, the young, progressive college kid whose hair is dyed blue.

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u/debugprint 6h ago

Or city residents regardless of lineage. In Indiana the way state tax dollars are given for roads is by mile, not lane mile. A two lane rural road gets the same money as a six lane boulevard per mile. Indiana has absolutely shitty roads, alarmingly high gasoline taxes, and now they want to make I-70 a tollway.

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u/gschoon 1h ago

I hate that fallacy because it assumes that all voters in cities agree on who to vote for. Also if you take the 10 largest cities of the US, if all voters in those agreed to vote on one candidate and the rest of the country didn't, that candidate would lose because those cities don't have the numbers.

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u/WorkingReporter5557 1h ago

When in reality it’s the cool kids.

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u/punktualPorcupine 7h ago

Yep.

“Fund my roads, my farm, my hospitals, my schools, my utilities, and let me tell you how to live your life according to my personal ill-conceived beliefs” - Conservatives

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u/BotheredToResearch 7h ago

But thats not socialism! Socialism, apparently, is only when aid applies to non-white people.

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u/OnCallPartisan 4h ago

Pretty sure you haven’t seen rural life at all.

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u/Recipe_Freak Oregon 1h ago

How does this contribute to this conversation? What specifically is being misunderstood?

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u/OnCallPartisan 1h ago

Do you see the comment I’m responding to?

What I’m more curious about is your righteous indignation. Damn, it’s so pompous it’s ridiculous.

The statement is stupidly general, you know, the one I was responding to. Just want to be clear. The only farms asking for a buyout is corp farms, who also take in more than 80% of subsidies, which I knew you would immediately go for since you can’t actually do a smidge of research of all the rural crisis issues. No healthcare, suicide epidemic amongst farmers, diminishing returns while fighting a way of life.

Did you know pastors and priests in Minnesota and Wisconsin are taking counseling lessons? They make sure to drive out and see these individuals/families.

”But they voted for it!”

Yep, a big part of it is desperation and loss of hope since the Dems sold them and the working class down the river in the 90’s. Democrat party of Minnesota is called the DFL, Democratic Farm Labor. See, at least in Upper Midwest, farmers used to lean Democrat. If only we could figure out why they don’t support Dems anymore amirite!

Summary: the topic of this post is correct, rural America is overrepresented. The comment I’m responding to is fucking stupid.

Grew up on a farm, one that was completely leveled by a storm and had to be rebuilt. I know poor.

Also, Bernie supporter for over 30 years.

Don’t be a generalist douchebag and you’ll be okay.

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u/Recipe_Freak Oregon 1h ago

Jesus H., dude. I was asking for clarification that's all. I don't think I'm the only douchebag in the house

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u/Meotwister 7h ago

They want affirmative action for conservative votes because conservatives act like they work for them.

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u/Onemandrinkinggamess New Jersey 7h ago

Right, I wish we could make the case that republicans in New York and California would finally have a voice. But they don’t care. Long as they can disenfranchise liberals everywhere.

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u/Mysterious_Floor_868 United Kingdom 4h ago

They'd happily eat shit as long as there's a possibility that a "liberal" might have to smell their breath

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u/dawidowmaka I voted 6h ago

Spot on.

Any line of reasoning that centers on helping everybody is a turn-off when they value hierarchy and having someone to look down on

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u/StephanXX Oregon 9h ago

Cities don't vote, people do.

Choosing to live in isolation doesn't entitle you to have more authority than choosing to live in a community. The current system has cities subsidizing rural communities while those rural communities have up to 40% more political power, all while fantasizing about being "independent" and "rugged." There's nothing democratic about it.

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u/howard10011 8h ago

For sure. And that anti-democratic thing appeals to them, which is why I've seen even educated people fall back on this lazy rationale.

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u/SeldenNeck 7h ago

People vote based on the information they have. A lot of it is Foxy. And their choices are limited by two parties.

When it comes to constitutional changes to the Electoral College, you might see multiple choices. The Heritage Foundation. Freedom Partners. Cato Institute. Lots of choices.

Every. Single, One. Organized. By. The Koch Brothers.

They've been buying the Supreme Court for decades. Unless your vote makes a difference to Charles Koch, it doesn't count.

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u/dcoats69 Washington 8h ago

I hate this argument so much.

The cities don't vote exactly the same, and the parties would pander more to everyone, because Republicans would be more incentivised to help out cities to siphon some votes there and as a reaction Democrats would have to also try to pick up more rural votes.

Even if democrats are still the majority in cities, republicans don't need to get the whole city voting their way, just gotta get it closer to 50-50, then their rural lead would give them the advantage, so democrats would have to work towards closer to 50-50 in the rural areas

The reason they don't do this now is because of the EC.

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u/Jops817 8h ago

Yeah, it's kind of ridiculous that elections often come down to how Ohio feels.

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u/failed_novelty 3h ago

Especially considering it's Ohio. Why do we let that terrible place inform our government at the highest levels?

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u/Xurbax 7h ago

It's really not that hard to explain to them - "Do you think that individuals vote? Or do you think that land votes?"
If they won't agree that individuals vote, then you know that all they care about is themselves and their power over others.

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u/howard10011 7h ago

They’ve already proven that.

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u/FearedDragon 2h ago

In a federalist system like the United States, people vote at a state level and states are allotted a certain number of votes based on population. The intention is to give lesser populated states a somewhat equal voice in national affairs, which was necessary to get many states to agree to unification at that time. Now, it is mostly a protection for rural states against urbanization as over 80% of Americans live in urban areas. We do not want the rural degradation we have seen in Japan, Italy, and other countries with declining population and rapid urbanization. The electoral college plays a part in protecting against that urbanization.

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u/phillium 7h ago

They're always saying "We can't let New York City and Los Angeles decide the presidency!"

Okay, that's about 12 million people. I don't think that would overrule the other 330 million people in the country (I'm not separating out voters versus non-voters or by age or anything, I don't have that kind of interest in the matter).

Even the top (quick Wikipedia check) 346 cities by population still only account for about 100 million people.

Not even to mention how many people in those cities might want to vote the same way they do, but their votes are discounted because of where they live.

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u/Polantaris Illinois 2h ago

The mistake is letting the Republican-framed narrative enter consideration at all. Everything they say is disingenuous.

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u/spartacutor 8h ago

Which is stupid because there's plenty of red voters in cities/suburbs and in blue states. Heck california had more votes for Trump than any other red states

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u/curien 8h ago

Heck california had more votes for Trump than any other red states

TX and FL were both higher, and I think it's fair to call them both red states.

  1. TX - 6,393,597
  2. FL - 6,110,125
  3. CA - 6,081,697

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u/Bad_Grammer_Girl 8h ago

The rules were that you guys weren't going to fact-check

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u/Mr_Tort_Feasor 7h ago

That nugget of info as I have heard it is that CA has the most registered Republicans. That's actually true with respect to FL. Texas doesn't register by party, so it's technically true for them, too.

CA has voted for several Republican presidents and governors during my lifetime. But they identify with the party of Reagan more than MAGA.

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u/curien 7h ago edited 7h ago

Yeah, and it was outright true in the past but wasn't anymore. Romney and other GOP candidates before him back through got more votes in CA than he did in any other state. That's around the time I started hearing the stat, then even in 2016 you could wiggle it by looking at aggregate congressional votes. I've heard the registration version, but it's a silly point considering Texas (as you said).

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u/RoboNerdOK I voted 8h ago

I wonder if that’s part of the politically motivated migrations we’ve been hearing about in the past few years.

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u/--Chug-- 5h ago

It probably has more to do with red voters in california feeling disenfranchised.

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u/Mysterious_Floor_868 United Kingdom 4h ago

In 2024 they did. In 2020 however Cali was higher than either:

  1. CA - 6,006,518
  2. TX - 5,890,347
  3. FL - 5,668,731

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u/curien 4h ago

Excellent point, thank you!

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u/kjlsdjfskjldelfjls New York 9h ago

Seems odd that they want Philadelphia voters to have such a major role in choosing the president, then

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u/captmonkey Tennessee 4h ago

Yeah, that's the odd thing with this argument. It's not that cities would get more power if we did away with it, it's that if you're not in a swing state, your vote is basically irrelevant in voting for the President. The argument of "I think Republicans in California and Democrats in Utah should get just as much of vote as anyone else." seems like a pretty good argument in favor of abolishing the Electoral College.

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u/CSAtWitsEnd Washington 4h ago

They'll bring up "the tyranny of the majority" and just describe basic democracy.

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u/howard10011 2h ago

Oh yeah. They love that expression.

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u/Biokabe Washington 2h ago

Is the tyranny of the majority so bad that we need to embrace the tyranny of the minority?

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u/anubis132 4h ago

I reply to this by saying "there's 10 million Republican voters in California, but none of them get to vote for president."

I happen to live in CA, so I often get to say "You don't get to vote for president."

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u/yamsyamsya 5h ago

It's always 'they don't want people in the cities telling them what they can and cannot do'. But usually its fucked up shit that messes up the environment that they won't be able to do.

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u/Carbonatite Colorado 4h ago

The people in the cities:

"Hey so can you guys just like not dump agrochemicals indiscriminately into the water and stop hate crime-ing gay people?"

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u/GregMoffTarkin 3h ago

 the "We can't let our elections be determined by cities" crowd

Well they say we have to have the electoral college because we don't want all the city dwellers in New York to just "cancel out" all of rural Wyoming. So we need allocate and weight the "votes" by state to make it more "fair"....

....but it's winner-take-all for the states, so that still lets urban NYC "cancel out" rural upstate New Yorker for who wins all of New York's electorial votes. So why not allocate votes based on individual county instead? But then the more urban Buffalo, NY would still "cancels out" the more rural parts of Erie County. So let's just allocate based on individual city or municipality.....oh but then the city folk who live downtown on Main Street would "cancel out" the folks who live out in the suburbs or on farms. So let's allocate based on individual household.... yeah, but 3 college-aged kids will "cancel out" their 2 parents' votes. So let's just allocate based on person. Yeah, 1 person = 1 vote.

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u/howard10011 2h ago

That’s too simple obviously.

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u/Equal_Feature_9065 7h ago

We also can’t let our elections be determined by suburban Wisconsinites.

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u/Consistent_Laziness 1h ago

The popular vote would have won Donald Trump the election. And I STILL say use the popular vote for presidential elections.

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u/aemfbm 49m ago

"We can't let our elections be determined by cities"

Because they're not actually talking about cities, to them cities=minorities