The 2026 blue wave could end up washing away the Electoral College. In addition to winning Congress, Democrats won full control of state governments in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. That means that a two-decades-in-the-making plan to switch our presidential elections to a popular vote system — a plan 18 states have already approved— […]
The electoral college was put there so the denselr populated States do not get any advantage over the less populated ones, giving each member state equal power. It didn’t work out well as they didn’t account for the possibility of such huge difference in populations. I don’t think the solution is to treat the union as a single country and count the overall votes though. Ranked choice or other even better ranked systems are the way forward in my opinion.
Why? Land doesn’t vote. People vote. And in a democratic system every vote counts equally. Having some votes count more because of where people live is deeply undemocratic.
Absolutelt true for a singular nation state, but America is a union of many states, and a popular vote would mean member states with dense urban cities will forever be the decision makers of who is sitting at the executive branch, while agricultural states will basically get no say. I am not saying the current system is fair, just that if we want to overhaul it, it’s better to go all in for an even better option that won’t cause other problems down the line.
With a popular vote system, there’s no such thing as member states. The desire of a state isn’t a factor. The will of the majority of the entire voting populace is the factor. I agree that the needs of the ag economy could be overlooked, but it would be at everyone’s peril. As it stands, we’re instead controlled by the most regressive and xenophobic people in the country who aren’t even a part of any society. I don’t think there’s such a thing as a perfect balance but I can certainly tell one of these scenarios is more fair than the other.
Something needs to change, that’s for sure. Whatever the “founding fathers” imagined is completely detached from reality on the ground, and there should perhaps be a reevaluation of what “united states” mean after being a union for so long, and what the role of the federal government is and how it has evolved and where we want it to be, then amend the constitution based on that, and move on to a fairer voting system. I still think rank choice or other similar systems would be a lot more progressive than the popular vote.
That should have happened after the civil war, but they chickened out leading to jim crow and all the fuckery of the civil rights era. The US ceased to be a republic as envisioned by the founders after the civil war and it’s now a half bastardized mishmash of a strong centralized democratic government cosplaying as a republic. It’s basically the worst aspects of all of them, and none of it is really working correctly anymore.
The modern information age brings challenges and capabilities the founding fathers never even dreamed of and it’s probably about time we stopped worshipping the set of compromises they reached centuries ago and actually thought for ourselves.
The solution is both. Having some kind of proportional voting system is mandatory in order to make 3rd parties viable (plus it provides for better representation), but once you have that there’s not really any good reason to maintain the electoral college.
I meant to say exactly this- if we’re gonna replace electoral college we need to do with the better and more equitable system that would stand the test of time.