[ExI] Electoral College

[Stuart LaForge]

Adrian Tymes wrote:

> When it comes to Trump, and the amount of damage he is doing daily, no
> such response is over-wrought, it seems.

I am genuinely worried that Trump might be Putin's proxy as evidenced by
Trump's treatment of NATO and the evidence of collusion with the Russian
government prior to the election. And no, I don't want the USA run by
Putin, Israel, or any other foreign interests really.

That being said, the streets are not exactly running red with the blood of
the non-believers just yet either. So the damage is not at all obvious, at
least not to me.

> That said, there are more rational reasons.  Start off with:
> presidential campaigns tend to ignore those states which are likely to
> swing one way or another, and their issues, because under the Electoral
> College now there is no reason to pay attention to them.

It is not a failure of the constitution that the individual states have
become so entrenched by one political party or the other as to make their
elections completely predictable. Being predictable is poor strategy in
general because being predictable leads to one being taken for granted by
ones friends and out maneuvered by ones enemies.

> Losing a state's electors by 55% of the vote is the same result as
> losing them by 5% of the vote.  Those states which claim to be swinging one
> way or the other get all the attention - and their issues addressed, to
> the exclusion of anyone else's (save for overlapping or common issues).

Being ignored by candidates is the price states pay for being unwavering
blue or red. It is the purple states that get the most attention. So you
should try to make your state purple. I don't see what the advantage is
for the average voter to be a party shill anyhow.

Why should voters be any more loyal to their political parties than the
candidates that they vote for ultimately prove to be? Feel good
ideological talking points that somehow never get translated into policy?
Both political parties give rise to moderate nepotistic presidents that
kowtow to wall street bankers and wealthy campaign contributors for the
most part.

So the problem is with how voters present themselves to political
candidates and not the Electoral College. If you joined a particular
political party because it's the one your neighbors belong to, then you
are part of the problem.

Furthermore, if we were to elect presidents by popular vote, the dozen
most populous states would get all the attention by candidates. Which
doesn't solve the problem of only a few states getting their concerns
addressed, it simply shifts those states to the ones with big cities.

Stuart LaForge