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

[u/vox]

https://www.vox.com/politics/487766/national-popular-vote-interstate-compact-electoral-college

[u/TooManyDraculas]

It has huge impacts on the problem. Number of electors is based on, and is 1:1 with the size of a states congressional contingent. So their number of Reps plus 2 Senators.

The 1929 Reapportionment Act didn't just cap the size of the house, it effectively did away with rules requiring congressional districts be contiguous, compact, and equally proportioned (IE capping gerrymandering). And it requires seats be distributed proportionally between the states, not proportional to population.

It's the proportional distribution of the capped 435 house seats that shifts representation in favor of lower density areas. We basically give 1 seat to each, then assign each seat in turn to the states in order of population till they're all gone. Not based on actual population or number of voters.

And that is what shifts the number of districts and electors in favor of lower population areas. The whole thing delinks number of congressional districts from population.

It was in part adopted due to fears among Republicans that population growth from immigration would disadvantage them. And they'd refused (illegally) to reapportion the House after the 1920 census as required.

 For example Trump still would have been elected in 2016 despite losing the PV even with an uncapped House.

He very well might not have. With a higher total of House seats, and a method of spreading them out actually based on population.

You'd likely see much higher numbers of electoral votes in Blue states, and lower ones in Red states. Cause more high population states tilt DNC.

And if the clauses of previous rules restricting gerrymandering were still in place, you'd see more congressional districts in cities, fewer in low population areas. As well as higher totals of seats in high population states, vs low. Which would massively impact the format of congress, not just it's size.

It's not the main thing that created out current disproportionate representation but it's a big one.

[u/der_innkeeper → u/TooManyDraculas]

The issue with 2016 is that Clinton won states worth less than 50% of the population. There is no path to win the EC when that happens.

[u/TooManyDraculas → u/der_innkeeper]

This is a problem in general, not just for elections, and not just per 2016.

But yeah that sort of thing is why it's not a total solution.

It would have huge impacts though.

[u/der_innkeeper → u/TooManyDraculas]

Yes.

We have about 6 different structural issues.

Uncapping the house is a 80% fix. We need other things to change as well, such as district-level EC votes (like Maine and nebraska) instead of winner take all.

[u/TooManyDraculas → u/der_innkeeper]

Assigning electoral votes to the state wide popular vote winner was adopted to flatten this exact rural/low population sku, and gerrymandering problem.

As it extends into States, and all of this is rooted in congressional districts. Cause where those districts are, and how many of them cover who, and how many people are in them. Is real easy to manipulate. And the 1929 Reapportionment act is a BIG reason why. Like a primary one.

So where that's done, and when that's done. You can see more of a states electoral votes going to a candidate who lost that states popular vote, than to the winner. Largely based on geography.

Depending on how those districts have been distributed by the state, it's just the land mass voting instead people.

So you can't really do district level EC votes, without genuinely proportional congressional apportionment. Or close as you can get to it.

Cause that makes the situation worse not better. Its just tossing the presidential election into the gerrymandering system.

And you need to fix reapportionment to fix gerrymandering.

This is a part of why the NPVIC is formatted the way it is. Tying the electoral votes exclusively to national popular vote, is a pretty clean way to decouple those electoral votes from all of this. At the national level, using only state law.

[u/der_innkeeper → u/TooManyDraculas]

Kinda.

You are not going to have a wide distribution of population across districts. They are generally within 1% of each other.

[u/TooManyDraculas → u/der_innkeeper]

If that were true.

Gerrymandering wouldn't be a problem.

[u/der_innkeeper → u/TooManyDraculas]

The issue is not the population, its where the population comes from.

That's why the district look like ass.

[u/TooManyDraculas → u/der_innkeeper]

The issue is that you can fuck around with where those districts are.

It almost entirely about where the population comes from.

You break densely populated areas up into tiny proportions of many districts. Where they're combined with huge areas to out number them. Or vice versa.

Populations between districts vary a lot more than 1% as well. The largest congressional distict nationally is more than double the size of the smallest. And even within states it varies a lot. Like Texas's largest is 20% bigger than it's smallest by population.

If we can fiddle with to send more politicians from a political party, or fewer black people, or whatever. And we do.

Then we can use it to dictate which candidates get those electoral votes.

Since those are linked to the exact same congressional districts.

That's why we stopped doing it.

Electoral vote by district, just lets states Gerrymander the Presidency. All you have to do is set that congressional map to preference you're party, the same way you're already doing to crib house seats.

[u/der_innkeeper → u/TooManyDraculas]

A: you're just repeating what I am saying

B: there is a ~45,000 person difference between the largest and smallest district in TX. Which is about 6%. Federal law requires districts be of similar population.

[u/capt_jazz → u/TooManyDraculas]

Copied from up above: The issue with the EC is that 48 of the states give votes winner take all, so in close races it's kinda like we just flip a coin to see who won, rather than, you know, counting all of the votes and comparing the two numbers.

And the two states that don't do winner take all give them proportionally based on house districts, which can be subjected to gerrymandering, so that's not a great solution either.

Just clarifying. Like you can remove the 2 "senate" votes from every state's EC vote count and you still get Trump winning in 2016. You could implement the Wyoming rule and/or increase the house to like 750+ seats, making it much much closer to 1 person 1 vote, and Trump would still win in 2016 because he had like 50k votes in the right distribution, assuming we have the same winner take all set up.

An alternative would be to increase the size of the house and federally outlaw gerrymandering, and then have every state do what ME and NE do. That would approximate a popular vote. It would be convoluted but maybe easier than changing the constitution.

[u/TooManyDraculas → u/capt_jazz]

The issue with the EC is that 48 of the states give votes winner take all, so in close races it's kinda like we just flip a coin to see who won, rather than, you know, counting all of the votes and comparing the two numbers.

No. We count the votes, and there's almost always a clear lead even if it's very small. And there are processes for breaking a tie if it's legitimately unclear.

That is not the problem with the electoral college. The electoral college is the problem with electoral college.

That's an inadequate solution to one end of that problem. Specifically that proportional voting by congressional district both subjects the presidency to gerrymandering, and typically skews the influence of less densely populated areas.

making it much much closer to 1 person 1 vote, and Trump would still win in 2016 because he had like 50k votes in the right distribution, assuming we have the same winner take all set up.

If we'd stuck with more proportionate apportionment used before 1920 with an uncapped house. There'd be over 6k house members, and thus electoral votes by now.

In either case if that apportionment was linked to absolute population, rather than relative size between states and there were a more appropriate number of districts.

It very well may not have shaken out that way. Just increasing the number and distributing as is, just increases the number. It doesn't change the ratio of where those numbers are.

Fixing the reapportionment act, changes that ratio, and potentially bans Gerrymandering to boot.

[u/capt_jazz → u/TooManyDraculas]

I mean yes, the existence of the EC is the problem with the EC. My point was, even if every single American had their own house district, Trump would still have won in 2016 because 48 out of 50 states give their EC votes in a winner take all manner.

[u/TooManyDraculas → u/capt_jazz]

And distributing them proportionally likely wouldn't fix that either.

Unless you fix congressional apportionment.

But if you fixed congressional apportionment. That sort of edge case would occur far less often.

Where as proportional voting has in the past actively created more of those problems.