[bobthepanda]

The electoral college was not originally winners take all.

The problem is that going proportional only works out for the states if everyone is doing it, otherwise a massive winner takes all state is that much more important to swing.

[amscanne]

> The problem is that going proportional only works out for the states if everyone is doing it, otherwise a massive winner takes all state is that much more important to swing.

It completely depends on what your goal is. If your goal is to enfranchise all of your citizens, then going proportional is great. If your goal is for your state to pick the winner, then it doesn't. But the first one seems more important to me, so I think going proportional is beneficial even if not all states are doing it (and some states do it already).

[bobthepanda]

The problem is not that the state doesn't pick the winner, the problem is that it disadvantages the winner of that state immensely.

If in some hypothetical election state A goes 15/10 for candidates X and Y but state B goes a full 20 for Y, then it the majority opinion of state A got screwed over and B hands the election to Y.

[amscanne]

You are using strange logic there.

"The majority opinion of state A got screwed over" => the state didn't disenfranchise the minority in favor of the majority? It's funny to say that you "got screwed" by having your vote count for only your vote. The reality is that the minority in large states are the ones getting completely screwed today, and that a proportional system would result in a more fair outcome. That only "screws over" the majority voters in the sense that it takes away their privilege that they enjoy today.

Yes, other states would continue to "screw over" the minority, but that's hardly an argument in favor of you doing so given that the whole argument against the electoral college is a moral one (one citizen, one vote). The ol' "everyone should be moral, but I will only do so if it doesn't disadvantage my majority" isn't a great look.

If we all agree that a national popular vote is the ideal because every single vote counts, then surely a proportional electoral vote is an improvement over winner-take-all per state. The only reason to say otherwise would be that it doesn't produce the outcome that you want. (Which is why I find the electoral college arguments somewhat cynical -- they seem to be interested only in that aspect.)

[bobthepanda]

well, not really. people would like EC vote outcomes that come as close as possible to the popular vote as possible. In that regard for the past 250~ years a EC winner who didn't win the popular vote only happened 5 times, and it didn't happen at all for 112 years.

A weird halfway proportional reform, if anything, would probably take elections farther away from representing the popular vote outcome. And ultimately, that's what matters, because the entire point of voting is that more votes are supposed to result in greater say.

[amscanne]

I think we’ll just have to agree to agree. I don’t think the outcome of such a change is really knowable, especially since it can change voting behavior. In any case, the argument that the current apportionment typically produces a matching result, and that’s it’s possible a proportional allocation by some states could produce a worse result in some cases (and a better result in others) isn’t a compelling reason for me to ignore the moral argument, if indeed the moral conviction is genuinely held. (But I don’t think it often is, which is my original point.)