Fortunately most of the states are winner take all. If they weren't, you may as well get rid of the EC and just go with popular(mob) vote except in the case of preventing a person like Hitler from being elected. Why a state would want to give up their power and divide out electors is beyond me.
Checking out the rabbit hole now... (never sure about the bias on these various websites though) _________________________ The Winner-Take-All Electoral College Isn’t In the Constitution Many who dislike the winner-take-all Electoral College argue that its bias toward small states is unfair. That’s because each state is awarded electoral votes based on the number of representatives it has in the House, which is roughly proportionate to its population, plus the number of U.S. Senators, which is the same for all states. That means of the 538 total electoral votes, 81% are awarded by population while 19% are awarded equally. Nate Cohn explains the circumstances where this modest bias can prove decisive: A near Electoral College tie, as in 2000. After falling short in Florida, Al Gore lost to George W. Bush by five electoral votes, less than the net 18 votes Mr. Bush gained from small-state bias. But for perspective, that’s the only Electoral College outcome since 1876 that was within the 20 or so electoral-vote margin for the small-state bias to matter. But this small-state bias actually had little to do with Donald Trump’s win in the 2016 election. Trump actually won seven of the 10 largest states, and Hillary Clinton won seven of the 12 smallest states. Overall, the bias towards smaller states only cost Clinton about four votes, which was not enough to change the outcome of the election. Instead, a more important bias comes from the (mostly) winner-take-all Electoral College and how states award their votes to each candidate. We Evolved to a Winner-Take-All Electoral College What most interesting about our current system for selecting a president is that it’s an unintended quirk that isn’t even mentioned in the U.S. Constitution. States determine how they select their electors. In fact, for the first 13 presidential elections, states experimented with many different electoral systems. By 1832, every state except South Carolina awarded its electors by the popular vote, although not all states followed the winner-take-all custom that emerged later. Since 1868, every state has awarded its electors in a way related to that state’s popular vote tally. Today there are two states that do not use a winner-take-all approach: Nebraska and Maine, which split some of their electoral votes by the winner of each congressional district. They assign two votes to the plurality winner of the state’s popular vote. These two votes represent the two electoral votes they are entitled to from their U.S. Senate delegations. The other electoral votes in these states are given to the plurality winner of the popular vote in each separate U.S. House of Representatives district. That shows that states could, if they wanted, create an electoral system that better reflected the popular vote. For instance, they could decide — as many states have already planned through an interstate compact — to award a state’s electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. Of course, there are strong incentives to not move away from a winner-take-all allocation for the same reason they moved to the system in the first place: It would dilute their power in the election of the president. The winner-take-all system came about because of partisan power. Once some states came to this conclusion, others had no choice but to follow to avoid hurting their side. The Electoral College Is Biased Towards Larger Battlegrounds So while the Electoral College was designed with a built-in small state bias, it isn’t nearly as big as the advantage that a winner-take-all system gives to the larger battleground states. We saw this clearly in the 2016 presidential election. Trump won the election because his political coalition was efficiently distributed among the Midwestern battlegrounds of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. He won each of those states by a narrow margin, but was able to claim all of their electoral votes. ____________________________________________________ The “winner-take-all” Electoral College system used by 48 states, including Colorado, sees court challenges BOSTON — When Donald Trump won more than 52 percent of the Texas vote during the 2016 election, he pocketed all 38 of that state’s Electoral College votes just as Hillary Clinton, who won California with 61 percent of the vote, swept up all 55 of that state’s electors. It’s a winner-take-all system used by 48 states that critics hope to have ultimately ruled unconstitutional. Advocates took their first step last month by filing federal lawsuits in four states — Massachusetts, Texas, California and South Carolina — arguing that the practice of assigning all of a state’s Electoral College votes to the popular winner, no matter how narrow, runs counter to the principle of “one person, one vote” by disenfranchising those who voted for the losing candidate. The group behind the initiative, the League of United Latin American Citizens, said the practice also violates the constitutional rights of free association, political expression and equal protection under the law. Luis Vera, an attorney for the group, pointed to the Texas election, arguing that those who backed Clinton essentially saw their votes disappear. “When that vote actually gets to the Electoral College, it’s just thrown away. It’s counted simply to be thrown away,” he said. “In California, it was the opposite.” Vera said the group deliberately chose two Democratic-leaning states and two Republican-leaning states — Clinton won about 61 percent of the vote in Massachusetts, while Trump won about 55 percent in South Carolina — to argue that the winner-take-all system harms voters of both parties. They also drafted local residents to serve as plaintiffs, including actor and comedian Paul Rodriguez, a Republican, in California. In Massachusetts, the group tapped former Republican Gov. William Weld, who made a cameo appearance in the 2016 election as vice presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party. Their goal is to get the question eventually before the U.S. Supreme Court — a long, uncertain road with no guarantee that the high court would even agree to hear the case, let alone rule in their favor. The group is hoping to pressure states to adopt a more proportional distribution of Electoral College votes. Under that system, for instance, Trump would get 52 percent of the 38 electors in Texas, while Clinton, who garnered about 44 percent of the Texas vote, would get about 44 percent of the electors. The remainder would go to third-party candidates who reached a threshold or be divvied up among the major-party candidates, again based on the percentage of their vote. If the proportional system of naming electors to the Electoral College had been in place during the 2016 election, Vera said, Clinton — who won the national popular vote by nearly 2.9 million votes — would have been elected president. But he was quick to add that the goal of the initiative is not to benefit one party over another. The group is already getting pushback, including from William Galvin, who as the Massachusetts secretary of the commonwealth oversees state elections. Galvin, a Democrat, said he suspected the push might be an effort by Republicans to help rig the Electoral College in 2020 for Trump. “This should be the subject of a national discussion, not a lawsuit,” said Galvin, who is named in the lawsuit filed in Massachusetts. “No one has thought through the implications. No one’s done a statistical study.” Galvin also said that while there is a predictability to the winner-take-all method, there is less clarity in trying to dole out electoral votes based on the margin of each candidate’s vote total in each state. “When you start talking about what percentage did you win Ohio by, then you’re raising questions,” he said. “This is clearly a mathematical game.” A spokesman for the secretary of state’s office in Texas said it couldn’t comment on pending litigation. An official with the secretary of state’s office in South Carolina said that it is preparing a response to the lawsuit and that the office is required to follow state laws. The lawsuit isn’t the first to try to work around the Electoral College. The National Popular Vote initiative is hoping to persuade enough states to pass laws assigning all of their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. The strategy would kick in when states with enough electoral college votes to put a candidate in the White House join. Ten Democratic-leaning states and the District of Columbia have joined so far, representing 165 electoral votes. States representing another 105 electoral votes are needed to secure the 270 electoral votes required to win the presidency. Eliminating the Electoral College directly is far more daunting, requiring a constitutional amendment. Backers of both efforts say they want to ensure presidential candidates see opportunities to pick up votes in every state. That could mean that residents of Massachusetts, which hasn’t voted for a Republican president since Ronald Reagan and is largely ignored on the campaign trail, could see more campaign rallies at home instead of having to travel over the state line into New Hampshire, site of the first-in-the-nation primary. ___________________________________________________ How the Electoral College Became Winner-Take-All Devin Mccarthy August 21, 2012 The election of 1824 is most famous for the "corrupt bargain," a deal in the House of Representatives that gave John Quincy Adams the presidency despite his winning fewer popular and electoral votes than Andrew Jackson. But 1824 was also significant for another reason: it was the first election in which the majority of states used a statewide winner-take-all voting method for choosing their presidential electors. It is a system that now seems like a fundamental part of the American democracy. Presidential candidates compete to win states, which is how they get votes in the Electoral College. The U.S. Constitution does not mandate that system, however. Instead, it is left up to the states to determine how they select their representatives in the Electoral College. For the first 13 presidential elections, spanning the first four decades of the history of the United States, states experimented with many different electoral systems. The shift to statewide winner-take-all was not done for idealistic reasons. Rather, it was the product of partisan pragmatism, as state leaders wanted to maximize support for their preferred candidate. Once some states made this calculation, others had to follow, to avoid hurting their side. James Madison's 1823 letter to George Hay, described in my earlier post, explains that few of the constitutional framers anticipated electors being chosen based on winner-take-all rules. The graph below charts the use of each major method of choosing presidential electors during this formative period. An explanation of each system and a timeline of important developments in presidential elections follows. At first, state legislatures dominated as the electoral method of choice. Between 1804 and 1820, both statewide and state legislature systems were commonly used, with a small but steady number of states using district-based methods. After 1824, states quickly began conforming to the norm of statewide selection of electors. (Data from pg. 18 of of Delaware's 1966 lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the "state unit-vote" system.) Methods of Choosing Electors: State Legislature: The legislature of each state chose the presidential electors of the state, giving the people at large no direct vote in presidential elections. Districts: States were divided into districts, either using pre-existing congressional districts or creating new districts specifically for the presidential election. Voters elected one or multiple electors from their district. Statewide: The current most common system--voters in a state vote for candidates, and all of that state's electoral votes are cast by electors nominated by the candidate with the most statewide votes. Hybrid: Some states used a combination of these methods, allocating some electors through the state legislature, some from districts, and/or some from a statewide general ticket. Nebraska and Maine currently use a hybrid of the district and statewide methods. Other: Various alternate systems were experimented with, including electors from each county choosing the state's electors and runoff elections. Timeline: 1789: George Washington is the overwhelmingly popular choice to become the first president; just three states allocate electors based on the winner of the statewide popular vote. 1792: State legislatures emerge as the preferred method of selecting presidential electors. George Mason of Virginia defended this method at the Constitutional Convention by arguing that "It would be as unnatural to refer the choice of a proper character for a chief Magistrate to the people, as it would to refer a trial of colors to a blind man." 1800: Virginia, the state with the most electoral votes, switches to a statewide popular vote system. Winning candidate Thomas Jefferson said of the switch in his home state: "All agree that an election by districts would be best, if it could be general; but while 10 states choose either by their legislatures or by a general ticket, it is folly & worse than folly for the other 6 not to do it." Indeed, Jefferson would have won the 1796 election if two of his strongholds had used winner-take-all. Not wanting to lose an advantage to Virginia, Massachusetts switches to a state legislature system in response, to ensure that all its electoral votes would go to John Adams. 1804: The 12th amendment is ratified, requiring electors to cast a single vote for a presidential ticket rather than casting two votes for their two preferred candidates, with the top finisher becoming president and the runner-up becoming vice-president. The number of states using statewide and state legislature systems is equal for the first time. 1812: The number of states using statewide models decreases and the number using state legislature systems increases, suggesting that the latter might ultimately win out. A substantial number of states continue to use a district-based model. 1820: An equal number of states use statewide and state legislature methods for the second time. This is the last election in which state legislatures played a dominant role. By this point, political parties have become entrenched and the electors of the Electoral College can no longer realistically claim to be independent. After the election, James Madison proposes a constitutional amendment that would require states to use the district method, writing that "The district mode was mostly, if not exclusively in view when the Constitution was framed and adopted; & was exchanged for the general ticket & the legislative election, as the only expedient for baffling the policy of the particular States which had set the example." 1824: The tipping point election for presidential electoral systems, as twice as many states used the winner-take-all statewide method as used the state legislature method. The defeated Andrew Jackson joined James Madison's pleas for a constitutional amendment requiring a uniform district election system, but to no avail. In every U.S. presidential election since, the statewide method has been predominant. 1836: All but one state, South Carolina, uses the winner-take-all method based on the statewide popular vote to choose its electors. South Carolina continues to have its legislature choose electors until after the Civil War. 1872: For the first time, every state holds a popular vote election for president, and all use the statewide winner-take-all rule. In 1876, Colorado is the last state to have its legislature choose its electors.
What is overwhelmingly to you? Overall, a Pew Research Center survey conducted late last year found that about one-in-five Americans (18%) has participated in the food stamp program, formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. About a quarter (26%) lives in a household with a current or former food stamp recipient. Of these, about one-in-five (22%) of Democrats say they had received food stamps compared with 10% of Republicans. About 17% of political independents say they have received food stamps. But when the political lens shifts from partisanship to ideology, the participation gap vanishes. Self-described political conservatives were no more likely than liberals or moderates to have received food stamps (17% for each group), according to the survey.
No. As of right now, you will not see a Republican or Democrat nominee for president campaign in any of the following states: Vermont Massachusetts NY RI CT NJ DE MD DC SC AL MS LA AK TN KY IN MO OK KS (maybe though) NE SD ND MT ID WY UT OR WA AK or HI Because of the electoral college the vast majority of states are ignored.
folks see the people in the loser camp do not know how to have fun... actually Tony is not that bad lol... but most people over there are just stiff and angry. and sore losers.
James Madison argued against "an interested and overbearing majority" and the "mischiefs of faction" in an electoral system. He defined a faction as "a number of citizens whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community." What was then called republican government (i.e., representative democracy, as opposed to direct democracy) combined with the principles of federalism (with distribution of voter rights and separation of government powers) would countervail against factions.
Yet here we are with interests, majorities and factions. Factions were inevitable but you can thank Thomas Jefferson for the nationalizing of them.