I Can't Get No Satisfaction

[billroper]

It is being a very frustrating day for a variety of reasons. With luck, some of these will improve.

In the meantime, a brief rant:

There are only two states in the Union that allocate electoral votes on the basis of Congressional district: Maine and Nebraska. All of the other states are "winner take all". Thus, with the exception of Maine and Nebraska, there is no way that gerrymandering can directly affect the Electoral College.

Having watched two separate people today try to explain why we need to change the Electoral College because it is subject to gerrymandering, I am acutely frustrated. There might be reasons that we would want to change the Electoral College system (I do not agree with those who do, if for no other reason than I believe it to be a useful firewall against vote fraud -- said the man who lives next door to the city where vote fraud is a national joke), but gerrymandering is not one of them.

*thud* *thud* *thud*

Comments

[patoadam]

I agree. Sounds like two separate people don't understand what gerrymandering is.

How might the Electoral College be a useful firewall against vote fraud? It seems to me that under the present system, vote fraud in a single close state could swing a Presidential election, but that could not occur if the national popular vote determined the winner.

I don't know anything about vote fraud in Chicago these days, but here is an article about alleged vote fraud in Chicago in 1960:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/08/08/heres-a-voter-fraud-myth-richard-daley-stole-illinois-for-john-kennedy-in-the-1960-election/

[billroper]

Running up the vote totals in, say, Chicago doesn't help you in the current system once you have enough to win the state, but with national popular vote, every dead voter counts! :)

[tigertoy]

Just because I sometimes like to play with thinking about how someone who has a wrong idea might have come up with it, I thought of this: the Electoral College has the effect of concentrating Democratic voters in a few heavily Democratic states. This is sort of like gerrymandering, if you don't understand gerrymandering but vaguely heard some things about it.

But on the whole, I have to agree, some people are dumb.

I think the Electoral College should be abolished today, because while I understand the reasons it was invented and how they made sense 230 years ago, I think the country has changed and it doesn't make sense today. But because of gerrymandering? No. Just no.

[patoadam]

Tigertoy, I agree completely.