65% of U.S. adults say the way the president is elected should be changed so that the winner of the popular vote nationwide wins the presidency.

  • danielton
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    1 year ago

    They told me in high school that the electoral college was still necessary because counting the popular vote was too hard…

    • 15liam20@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Every other country in the world manages it but the Americans fuck it up. Like healthcare.

      • aidan@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Every other country in the world?

        Did you forget places outside Western Europe, Canada, and Australia exist?

          • aidan@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I live in a Central European capital with worse healthcare than the US. (I have lived in both countries and have elderly relatives living under state funded healthcare in both systems.)

            • Syrc@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              First, there’s a big difference between cities in both places. I could believe that if you compare California to Bratislav, but Oklahoma to Vienna would already be a different matter.

              And in any case, it depends how much worse it was. In the US, even if it’s “state funded”, you have to pay for it, and quite a lot. Chances are if you went to a private clinic in Central Europe paying that same amount of money you could’ve gotten the same, if not better treatment.

              • aidan@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                I might as well just say it, I’m mostly comparing Louisville, KY and Los Angeles to Prague, Czech Republic and a midsized city in Poland. I have relatives who travel to the US for treatment because at least in CZ the elder care in hospitals is abusive/negligent.

                Edit: To clarify I’ve lived in Kentucky and Czech Republic, but spend a lot of time in Poland and Los Angeles because of family/personal ties.

                • Syrc@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  I mean, I can believe public hospitals in Prague not being top-notch, but flying to America to get treatment seems surreal. Like, that’s a lot of money and I can’t believe for that amount they couldn’t find a private to do it better in CZ or at least in Germany.

                  I haven’t personally been in America so you’re probably more knowledgeable than me under that aspect, but from all the shit I’ve read online I don’t get why should anyone from Europe go get treatment there instead of a Scandinavian country.

                  • aidan@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    There probably are people that could treat her well in Europe, but I think the issue would be getting her treated in a country she’s not a resident of, and doesn’t have insurance in. She has a condition that the Czech state insurance refuses to treat because of her age. It’s possible other European systems would be the same but I can’t speak to them.

    • AssPennies@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Did your teachers perhaps get their college diplomas in the 1870s? Because that predates the first tabulating machines being invented. Add that invention to the telegraph machine (ca 1837), and you’ve got a stew going.

      • danielton
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        1 year ago

        I wish I was kidding! My school district wasn’t too bright.

      • danielton
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        1 year ago

        Oh I know it was a lie. My school district sucked.

    • Tb0n3@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      No. It’s because states that have huge populations would choose the president with basically zero say from most others. Technically a non representative government.

      • AmberPrince@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Except using the popular vote means that States wouldn’t decide who was president like they do now, the people would.

        Under the current system if I vote Red in Chicago I just completely wasted my time. Cook County is so blue that I don’t have a voice. Get rid of the Electoral College, however, and now my vote worth just as much as everyone elses.

        People seem to think that if we moved away from the College that the population of a blue state will 100% vote blue or a red state will only have red votes. It’s just not true. The northern half of California or the southern half Illinois votes way different than their counterparts.

        The Electoral College is an outdated system designed for a time when the US had relatively low Literacy and the public couldn’t be reliably counted on to be informed. There is no excuse for it nowadays.

      • You solve the ‘problem’ of ‘tyranny of the majority’ by having a strong constitution and good rights and protections for minorities, not by switching to the indisputably worse option of ‘tyranny of the minority’. Because that causes the exact same problem, but for even more people instead.

        • The version of the tyranny of the majority that he’s warning against is already solved in the American system. The ward against it is the Senate. Every state has exactly 2 votes in the Senate and no legislation can be passed and enacted into law without passing a vote in the Senate.

        • aidan@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          The issue is while a strong constitution is nice, it’s necessary to have at least some people in office who would respect the constitution to be effective, including at least a partially originality supreme court.

          • Alternatively, more clearly written constitutional laws. It’s wild that you have judges who cannot agree on what an article of the constitution really means, and the language should have been amended years ago.

            In the Netherlands, we have a clearly written constitution, but no real ‘supreme court’ in the American sense. And that setup seems to work quite well.

            • aidan@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Agreed some should be clarified, but a lot are pretty clear but are denied as unclear for political reasons. One obvious example is the 2nd amendment of the bill of rights. Also, keep in the mind the US constitution is the oldest constitution still in use, so language does evolve somewhat.

      • stopthatgirl7@kbin.socialOP
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        1 year ago

        So instead, states with populations smaller than some cities get to completely override the will of the majority of the country.

        • aidan@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          What do you mean? They do matter? A democrat doesn’t campaign in California not because it doesn’t matter but because they know most Californians will already vote for them, same with Republicans in Texas

          • Cornelius_Wangenheim@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            They don’t matter because most states use winner take all for their EC votes. Every additional vote past 50% is absolutely worthless, as is any vote cast in a state where there’s no chance to hit 50%.

            With a popular vote system, every vote would still be worth something. It would be worth a politician’s while to campaign in California because even if they’d normally get 60%, as it’s still worth it to drive higher turnout or try to increase that to 65%. It’d be worth going to a hostile state because a vote is a vote. It doesn’t matter where it comes from; they’d all have equal worth.

            • aidan@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Every vote past 50% just then wouldn’t matter at a national level. Yes it would increase the total number of votes that voted for the winning candidate, but it would also centralize power more into cities.

        • nxfsi@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          States with more diversity of opinion have more say. Seems reasonable to me.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Why should states have more say? We elect the president nationally. It’s not a state election, or it shouldn’t be.

            • Tb0n3@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              Because we have 50 of them and not 350 million. It’s a simple and effective way to get a weighted average.

                • Tb0n3@sh.itjust.works
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                  1 year ago

                  Because there’s a lot of people that don’t live in cities and they need different things from the people that live in cities.

        • Buelldozer@lemmy.today
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          1 year ago

          Rather, it’s representative of land, not voters.

          Horse feathers. There are 535 total EC votes and only 100 of those come from the Senate. The other 435 are come from the House whichis based on population.

          The solution to this mess is to upsize the HoR and tilt the ratio back to where it was prior to 1929 when we fucked it up.