Needed Reforms

[jayem]

It also helps to make voter fraud more difficult.

You could stuff all the ballot boxes you want, in, say, Chicago, but, it won't effect anything more than Illinois' electoral votes.

Why do liberals want to repeal something that makes voter fraud harder?

Your example argues for the opposite. If fraudulent votes for Candidate X in Chicago swings Illinois' total, then ALL of its Electoral Votes go to that candidate. The votes for Candidate Y essentially count for nothing. But if only the popular votes mattered, then it only swings Chicago's total. All of Illinois' votes for Candidate Y will still add to his ledger. Don't you see that the EC magnifies the influence of large population centers? If anything, it increases the likelihood of fraud in every state where a populous urban area can swing that state's total votes.

 

[Panzerkamfwagen]

Your example argues for the opposite. If fraudulent votes for Candidate X in Chicago swings Illinois' total, then ALL of its Electoral Votes go to that candidate. The votes for Candidate Y essentially count for nothing. But if only the popular votes mattered, then it only swings Chicago's total. All of Illinois' votes for Candidate Y will still add to his ledger. Don't you see that the EC magnifies the influence of large population centers? If anything, it increases the likelihood of fraud in every state where a populous urban area can swing that state's total votes.

As far as the presidential election goes, the only thing that Chicago's corruption can affect are the electoral votes of Illinois. Perhaps it magnifies the effect of large population centers on the way that the state turns, but, it diminishes their effect on a national level, because no matter how many votes that Barack Obama gets in Illinois, he is never going to get more than about 4% of the electoral vote. Whereas, a candidate who gets Wyoming's electoral votes gets .6 percent of the electoral votes, and Wyoming has about .2 percent of the US population.

If the Republicans truly wanted to rob the blue states of political power, they would start breaking up the solid red states into smaller solid red states. Each state gets three electors, and the number of US representatives is fixed at 435, so, each of those new states would add two senators and take a representative away from a larger and more populous state.

 

[jayem]

Perhaps it magnifies the effect of large population centers on the way that the state turns, but, it diminishes their effect on a national level, because no matter how many votes that Barack Obama gets in Illinois, he is never going to get more than about 4% of the electoral vote. Whereas, a candidate who gets Wyoming's electoral votes gets .6 percent of the electoral votes, and Wyoming has about .2 percent of the US population.

But it's those large population centers that determine the election. Really, who cares about Wyoming's 3 EVs? The candidates only care about Florida's 29, and Penn.'s 20, and Ohio's 18, and Michigan's 16. A big one-sided vote in Dade and Broward counties can swing FL. Just like what happens in Philly and Pittsburgh can do in PA, and how Detroit's vote can affect MI. And what happens then to the votes for the opposing candidate? They count for nothing. Those voters are effectively disenfranchised. A candidate can win the Presidency with bare popular vote majorities in only 11 states, while he loses the rest of the country by a landslide. That's insanity. In a banana republic dictatorship, I might expect that a candidate who gets the most votes can still lose an election. It should never happen here.