All that means is that we don't have a one-person one-vote system. Some people's votes matter more than others. What we have is a case of civil inequality.
If we build a system where everyone's votes count the same (radical and extreme idea, I know), then each person will have the same fundamental incentive to vote.
Direct election of the US president would be an improvement. Expanding the House of Representatives as originally formulated, or similarly, would help. Making the Senate reflect the population better by dividing populous states, and/or a statehood option for Puerto Rico and DC would help. Striking down gerrymanders would help.
More contested down-ballot races would help. No excuse for the parties to not have strong organization and candidate recruitment at that level. No changes to laws needed for this.
Correct, and that’s a good thing! Intelligence is not evenly distributed among individuals, and susceptibility to psyops and propaganda is a huge issue. The plain truth of the matter is that a majority of people simply aren’t qualified to weigh in on national issues. True democracy works when you’ve got a small group of like-minded individuals of roughly equal stature (13 original colonies) but not when you’ve got an entire empire (Roman republic)
No, devolving powers to the states is what makes it a federation. Having a state-representative legislative chamber makes it a federation. Electing a federal president via popular vote does not indicate defederation any more than the existence of the House of Representatives does.
The states negotiated terms before they agreed to join. Not having a popular vote is part of the reason why we have a federal system in the first place. People can argue pros and cons, but it's fairly meaningless since we're already in an established deal, and it's very unlikely that the many states will agree to undo that deal.
Electing a president via popular vote would give populous states disproportionate influence over the country compared to other states. That is important because the president could do obnoxious things against the best interest of any particular state, especially ones with less influence. The stuff happening to your home state is way more relevant to your life than your political party or special interests.
> Electing a president via popular vote would give populous states disproportionate influence over the country compared to other states.
It would give every human, who has the right to representation, exactly proportionate influence. The weird fashy retired cops in Idaho will have to settle for having the same number of senators as Californians have.
That is not a good argument. People have a right to self-determination. The same logic of populism can be applied on a trans-national scale, even. There is no limit because under your logic, any person's vote is as good as any other's. The fact is we have states to provide a level of autonomy and independence to geographically separate groups of people, so they can live with more freedom. I don't care if the entire state of California is against how I live, because they are thousands of miles away and deserve less say in how I live than my neighbors. The federal system we have strikes a balance between the two.
A president of a federation such as the US must represent the individual states equally, because there can only be one president and that seat has disproportionate power. I really think people flip flop on the popular vote issue based on whether they think it helps their particular party or not, which is unbelievably short-sighted.
The lines on maps are not arbitrary. People decided them by choice and in some cases by force. You might feel no particular attachment to your state, but if another state decided that your state should be exploited in some way, your primary source of support would be your neighbors within those so-called arbitrary lines.
I sense some sarcasm. But you ought to know that the founders, along with Aristotle and other Greeks (basically, the inventors of democracy), were afraid of mobs and sought to temper the whims of the people.
States are given representation proportional to their populations, and also equal representation (in the Senate). The EC and House seats aren't just based on voter turnout, voter population, or even the actual number of citizens in the state (which is rather problematic). So this whole push for direct democracy in the presidential election is stupid. Yes, swing states are a thing, but only because the other states vote consistently in a particular way.
Another problem with using the popular vote to decide the presidential election is that it inventivizes fraud. If someone managed to corrupt a few populous states, they could generate extremely high numbers of fake votes to drown out every other state.
The formula is this: YOU learn all by yourself what all electable candidates say they want to do. YOU figure out all by yourself which ones LIE. One lie is enough, if they do it they keep doing it.
And then YOU chose which election program you want to vote for.
Ideally you chose what is best for the country but this is rather challenging for people. We can forgive them for being stuck thinking only of themselves.
Why would it be perfectly obvious if one is ordering food but not for elections???
Food might taste bad and you might get food poisoning. A bad choice doesn't mean years of suffering.
Does one not look at the menu card? Or do you ask your mum what to order? Do you roam around the restaurant looking what other people are eating? Do you order what CNN is screaming at you?
If people scream at you from all directions that you should order the snails in garlic butter, does that mean you will never have to look at the menu the rest of your life? You can just eat snails every day, everyone else is eating snails every day???? Why are you not eating snails?? It is the nr 1 most sold food! Don't you want snails to be the nr 1 food?
Then the restaurant switches to the cheapest worse possible snails because people will order it anyway because other people will order it.
Is this a display of good taste?
I hate apple but I buy iphone because they are good enough for what I need. I might get an android phone some day. They are good enough too.
I did actually look.
With elections no one is looking. People have no idea. Non of them! There is not one journalist who knows anything.
For each million voters one or two have watched a single video from a candidate other than the top 2. A video by a 5 year old on tiktok gets more attention online than the entire list of election programs.
I could see logic in getting advice from an expert on something or from your mum but if they know absolutely nothing about the topic?!?!
The voter is therefore brainwashed into irrelevance, she won't influence elections in any way.
This seems like a brazenly false statement. Also genuinely worrying, as you're discrediting all journalists based on... your feelings? Something that has been pushed for over the last 8 years by one party under the guise of labels such as "fake news" and "mainstream media".
Maybe you meant to say "everything", but parroting anti-news propaganda is only making everyone less informed and only benefits the side that isn't campaigning in good faith.
i go over the lengthy list of registered candidates then try to find the article about them.
If the article exists it doesn't really get into their program.
You can see how many facebook likes and youtube views they have.
Jill Stein has 10k views on her most popular video. The nr 1 video in google about afroman running has 1k views. He is a famous person. There are countless other candidates.
The presidency is not the only election on the ballot.
And if you ask people who don't vote why not, very few of them are going to mention the electoral college. I would wager most people who don't vote couldn't even explain what the electoral college is.
In many districts, your vote for US House and Senate seats largely doesn't matter, either. For many people, those are the only elections they are thinking about when it comes to November.
Senate seats are elected state-wide, so they largely go the same way as the presidential vote. If you're in a deep-red or deep-blue state (i.e., nearly all of them), your individual vote isn't going to make a difference.
House seats are district-specific, but:
a) the re-election rate of incumbents is over 90%
b) districts are often drawn to lock-in control for a specific party
State senate and house seats are often no better.
However, much to the credit of the sibling response, there are all kinds of local and regional races as well as ballot initiatives that are important.
Setting aside gerrymandering (which is a huge issue), the reelection rate doesn't tell the whole story. By what margin are House candidates typically winning? I'm sure there are plenty of landslides, but also lots of districts that were decided by a few percent -- and those who don't vote could be a deciding factor in those races if they chose to vote.
Or if we analyze this from an opportunity cost perspective, IMO voting is always the right choice. Maybe there's an 80% chance your vote "doesn't matter", but the cost is only 15 minutes of your time every 2 years. Isn't the 20% worth the risk? (OK, I am lucky enough to live in a state where voting lines are short. I understand it takes more than 15 mins for some people.)
Bottom line: Turnout reflects the odds that an individual vote will impact the outcome.
In most races, there is little doubt (more than 80% odds) as to who will win. And this extends all the way down to the local level. And voters, candidates and political parties all know this.
Probably they couldn't explain it, but many of them will have taken to heart the idea that "my vote doesn't matter". Which is especially sad, since like you say there are potentially all kinds of local and regional races and ballot measures their vote could in fact have impacted.
It's interesting how Occupy Wall Street was ridiculed by the press. I think they were onto something even though I don't agree with almost everything else they also believed in.
If we build a system where everyone's votes count the same (radical and extreme idea, I know), then each person will have the same fundamental incentive to vote.