[fsckboy]

the electoral college was a compromise made a long time ago that has two facets: the indirect nature of voting for representatives who vote for us (that was necessitated by preindustrial communication and transportation systems) and some extra weight given to smaller states to get them to agree to come into the union. That was the deal, no takesy-backsies.

It is not going to change because those states that are disadvantaged by the change will not agree to it, so we are discussing it here for fun, not for profit. And if you think the advantage those states have is so overwhelmingly good, you are free to move to one of them, they are not exclusive clubs or oligarchies, they are open democracies themselves.

A major side benefit we get from the electoral college is, our elections get fought out in a small number of places which is an economically efficient way to do it. It is not the case that we are ignoring the voters of the other places, we are simply precounting them into their respective columns. If those places swung to more left-right balance, they could add themselves to the list of places fought over, and I guarantee that would make none of those people happy because elections, like making sausage, is ugly business.

Remember, if enough people move from California to Rhode Island, it is Rhode Island that will be complaining that California is getting a free ride in the electoral college...

[exabrial]

Wow I was pro-electoral college before reading your comment, but now I'm cemented in my view.

What you're essentially saying is that the electoral college favors areas with more open minds willing to vote either direction, rather than hard core voting by party, and that is probably the greatest reason to keep it. Political parties _sometimes_ have the people or country's best interest in mind, but ultimately they are seeking power.

[tzs]

> What you're essentially saying is that the electoral college favors areas with more open minds willing to vote either direction

How did you draw that conclusion rather than concluding that it favors areas with the people most easily swayed by massive advertising campaigns?

[fsckboy]

people who are not in the middle can have perfectly open minds, they just agree with more of their perfectly open minded neighbors. I said left-right because it was convenient, but voting does not really work that way, it's an n-dimensional space of little tugs of war.

but, since you are disappointed by what I wrote, I won't go on to cover the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics, they are far and away more disappointing, but in a like manner, the electoral college of physics shows no signs of being open to change, the small quantum states won't go along.

[xnx]

> our elections get fought out in a small number of places which is an economically efficient way to do it.

In theory shouldn't money spent go right up to the limit of expected return, whether there is one "swing state" or 50?

[fsckboy]

when i say economics, i'm not referring to money, i'm referring to human endeavor, human effort and human rewards (which, in terms of economics, are exactly what money represents) So, I meant that it's it economically beneficial that most people in the country don't need to care about elections because the system is taking their preferences into account already. There is little to be gained on margin from engaging many more people for only the slightest difference in outcome once in awhile. Since the forces of negative feedback actually move the centerlines wrt to the system we have, it's not clear that the long term results would even be different with a different system.