[phantasmish]

Both of these two contests were really weird. Trump is an extremely unusual Republican. Hillary was someone Republican mouthpieces had been priming the electorate to vote against for the prior 20+ years. Kamala moved to the top of the ticket late in the race, in an odd move, replacing a candidate whose approval ratings had been in (historically speaking) “you will definitely lose” territory for months already.

Both races were pretty close despite this.

Also, I can tell you first hand that heartland, salt of the earth, common clay of the new west Republicans, the worst of the worst from democrats’ perspectives, loved Palin. Looooved her. She’d have done better among them than McCain. That’s among hardcore republicans. How the shit am I supposed to believe Hillary and Kamala being women is the reason they lost, given that?

I think the “lesson” of “well a woman just can’t win yet” is simply ignorant. It doesn’t fit what we’ve actually seen.

[Loughla]

You're correct. That woman (Clinton) had no chance in winning, because Republicans had spent years hammering her in anticipation of her inevitable run, and many Democrats felt she was chosen before the primary, leading to much apathy. Had Harris had more time, she could've taken it.

Or, as you said, had the Republicans put up Palin, I think the world would look veery different today. I don't think there would've been as much of an appetite for the populist trump nonsense today.

But it's all essentially naval gazing.

[FireBeyond]

> and many Democrats felt she was chosen before the primary, leading to much apathy

Well, they would have a good reason to feel that, because Debbie Wasserman Schulz basically engineered it that way as head of the DNC, and what do you know, less than 24 hours after leaving that position was the head of Clinton's campaign.

There was no way the DNC leadership was going with Bernie, and leaked emails later confirmed that - they just said fuck you to their membership's preferences.

> Had Harris had more time

Not coincidentally, number one Google search on Election Day?

"Did Biden drop out?"

Very informed electorate...

[ChrisMarshallNY]

> NAVAL gazing

I see what you did, there…

[throw0101c]

> Both races were pretty close despite this.

And Hillary Clinton did get more of the popular vote—not that it actually matters in America's cockamamie system: not enough votes were in the "correct" places.

[rogerrogerr]

My gut feel has always been that removing the electoral college would hurt the blue team and help the red team. Logic:

The popular vote is basically split evenly today (the usual talking point, 2016, was 62,984,828 Trump, 65,853,514 Clinton). 2020 and 2024 had similarly small-ish margins.

So take 2016: if we’d had a normal election cycle, and then the day after voting said “hey guys let’s do this based on the popular vote!”, Clinton would have won. But that’s not how it would be; both sides would know of this change for at least the full election cycle.

So now you start with a roughly 50/50 split voting base, with many Democrat votes coming from big cities and many Republican votes from Middle Of Nowhere, Kansas.

You win the upcoming election by gaining votes.

Republicans go energize the voters in New York, LA, SF, Seattle, Austin, etc, who are not voting today because they (correctly) know their vote doesn’t matter. They maybe change some bit of their platform to appeal more the big city voters. They can pick up millions of votes in relatively few places.

Democrats have to go win votes from Middle Of Nowhere, Kansas. Or more accurately, 500 small towns in Kansas, to pick up a few hundred thousand votes. There isn’t nearly as much of a depressed Dem vote in red states, simply because red states have small populations (see “land doesn’t vote!”). It’s an exponentially harder problem. While Democrats are trying to convince Uncle Rupert that FOX is lying to him, Republicans are filling Madison Square Garden in NYC with closeted Republicans and telling them their vote will count for the first time ever.

I just don’t see how abolishing the electoral college doesn’t backfire on Democrats. How wrong am I?

[3eb7988a1663]

Today, people probably stay home in safe states - if you vote Democrat or Republican in California - you already know how the state is going to be called. Same can be said for Alabama. Why waste your time for a sure thing?

Some 65% of the population voted last time. Last cycle, there were some jokes about how only votes in the handful of battleground states mattered. A popular vote policy could activate a lot of non-voters who suddenly felt like their voice could have an impact on the result. How that would shake up, I am not sure. I have heard that most republican voters are already participating, there are significantly more democrats who stay home.

[elevation]

The Electoral College strengthens democracy by enabling local-election-observation to be a highly effective safeguard against fraud and voter demoralization.

At my neighborhood polling place, poll watchers (including local professors, blue collar neighbors, and even occasional UN election observers) volunteer to quietly monitor the election process, verifying that no registered voter is rejected or harassed. With a day off work, any citizen can audit their precinct to verify that end-of-day machine totals match the state's certified results, and could alert the news of any discrepancy. Any motivated citizen can trace their vote's impact up to the state level.

This matters because the Electoral College locks in your vote at the state level by using it to secure electoral college votes. Should fraud occur in some far away state, the Electoral College prevents it from numerically overturning the electoral college votes your state has secured. This federated system is more resilient against local failures.

By contrast, adopting a nationwide popular vote means that votes don't count until they're tallied at the national level. At the national level, a firmware flaw in a poll machine in Hawaii, or a lazy Secretary of State in Arkansas can cause the system to accept fraudulent votes that numerically overwhelm the national tally without ever presenting itself in a way I could observe or report. Without the Electoral College, Democracy loses a lot of its "go see for yourself" and becomes too much "just trust us."

[dragonwriter]

> The Electoral College strengthens democracy by enabling local-election-observation to be a highly effective safeguard against fraud and voter demoralization.

The Electoral College is a bigger source of voter demoralization than anything that exists in any modern representative democracy which doesn't have the Electoral College. (FPTP by itself is bad, but even other systems have FPTP, don't have nearly the degree and persistence of voter demoralization seen in the US.)

Like, I can see how one might utter this sentence in an alternate universe where the US was the only approximation of representative democracy that ever existed and where every commentary was purely theoretical with no concrete comparisons to make, but in the actual world we live in, where there are plenty of concrete alternatives and whole bodies of comparative study, it is beyond ridiculous.

[15155]

You are correct, because the current implementation of the electoral college is currently synonymous with "winner takes all" in all but two states - ensuring no opposing party turnout in states that are a foregone conclusion. If the winner-takes-all system were removed but the electoral college were still intact, Democrats would never win another election.

[AnimalMuppet]

I don't think that can be right. The Democrats have recently won both the House and the Senate. In such an election, if "winner take all" is abolished, how would they not win the presidency?

[15155]

Because in states like California, Colorado, etc., vast swathes of Republicans do not bother to vote because their vote is overridden. The numbers don't work in reverse.

Just look at the county maps within blue states: these elections you speak of relied on those folks being entirely disenfranchised.

[3eb7988a1663]

Of course it works in reverse. Plenty of Democrats are not going to bother to waste their time in California when the current electoral outcome is a foregone conclusion. Similar with Republicans in Mississippi.

If the rules changed to a popular vote where even "safe" states were up for grabs, I think there would be lots of previously uncounted "dark matter" voters who would activate and would significantly impact the outcome.