The fairness of the Electoral College and other election processes

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  • Dave W wrote: »
    Ricardus wrote: »
    Crœsos wrote: »
    Ricardus wrote: »
    Crœsos wrote: »
    I get the idea of protecting the rights of minorities, but we're not talking about the rights of minorities, we're talking about assigning power.

    In principle, that's two sides of the same coin, though, isn't it? A minority needs protection because they have less power, so you level up by giving them more power.

    That's always been the argument the very wealthy have against democracy as an institution. The poor always seem to outnumber the rich, so it's "unfair" that these more numerous poor can outvote these relatively few rich.

    You're the one who said you 'got' the concept of protecting the rights of minorities. I'm familiar with strawmen as a debating tactic against other people, but against your own posts???
    I don't think it's necessary to equate "protecting the rights of minorities" with "giving them more power" in the sense of overweighting their votes in a political process.

    True. I didn't mean to suggest that overweighting votes was the only way to give power to minorities.
    When people are protesting for "X rights!" they're not usually saying "X votes should count double!" I think they're more often saying "X people should be allowed to do what they want in sphere of activity Y without restraint by the non-X majority!" (though this is rather too prolix for a hand-carried sign.)

    I think that works if Y is something that doesn't really affect the non-X majority, such that non-X should really keep their noses out. E.g. Scots property law doesn't affect me, so it might as well be devolved to the Scottish Parliament.

    The problem is where both X and non-X have a stake in Y, but their interests are mutually antagonistic; if you want the solution to Y to balance the interests of X and non-X, then you will somehow have to give X a disproportionate voice relative to their population size.
  • KwesiKwesi Shipmate
    ISTM that minorities are very influential in democratic political systems. I'm talking about interest/pressure groups and those with privileged access to the policy-making process, respecting both domestic and foreign policy. If we want to know why, despite majority opinion, the United States lacks a credible and comprehensive healths-care system, it's because............................
  • Barnabas62Barnabas62 Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host, Epiphanies Host
    ..... a private health care system can make a lot of money for the care providers out of the often desperate needs of the sick?

    If Trump wins the ACA is toast in the Supreme Court. But if Trump loses? Then we might see just how political the Supreme Court will be in practice. A case of the king is dead long live the king? These things can get pretty nuanced.

    Plus the Biden argument, not refuted, that without alternative provision for existing conditions, the death of the ACA will be a disaster for millions of citizens. And a stupid thing to do in the middle of a pandemic. That might appear to have little to do with the law but the Supreme Court will not want its new conservative balance to be seen as blind to realities.
  • Dave WDave W Shipmate
    edited October 2020
    I don’t get this argument. Are you saying the SC will certainly be “blind to realities” and cancel health insurance for millions if Trump wins, but maybe not if he doesn’t?
  • Barnabas62Barnabas62 Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host, Epiphanies Host
    If Trump wins the 2nd Trump
    Administration will carry the can. If Biden wins the Supreme Court will carry the can.

    Not saying that such pragmatic considerations will always influence SC decisions. Strict constitutionalist would deny the possibility. But I’m suggesting the blame game could be a factor on this decision.
  • Dave WDave W Shipmate
    Sorry, I'm still not clear on exactly what you're saying. Do you think that if Trump wins the SC is certain to rule against the ACA in the upcoming court case (hearings start Nov 10), but that if he doesn't win, they may not?
  • Barnabas62Barnabas62 Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host, Epiphanies Host
    I’d say more likely and less likely. Plus there is always the possibility of a more nuanced decision which in effect passes the buck back to the legislature. I think the SC could draw a clear constitutional line which did not necessarily have an immediate effect. SCs are known to dance in this sort of way. They can be hard to pin down if they don’t want to be.
  • It's perhaps worth looking at what happened with the Supreme Court under FD Roosevelt. Put briefly ( and with the caveats that this isn't my country, and I haven't done any proper research on this point), a very conservative Court faced a liberal President and Congress, and (in the eyes of President and Congress) was obstructive. President and Congress started talking loudly about maybe expanding the size of the Supreme Court and appointing liberal justices ('court packing'). The Supreme Court buckled under. The court was not expanded, and continued with nine justices.

    It's not that difficult to imagine the same happening again. As I understand it, the Biden campaign are talking quite loudly about the need for a commission to examine everything about the Supreme Court. Assuming a Biden victory and the Democrats taking the Senate, the Supreme Court will have to decide whether they are facing a real threat, and if so whether to face it out or buckle under.
  • In the event of a Biden victory, my suspicion is that the Supreme Court will not be inclined to tease the tiger, and will find a way toward a set of very finessed and subtle judgements, of a nature that will not engage the Democrats by way of defiance. The Chief Justice can assign cases to justices for writing up opinions, and he is doubtless aware of the capacities and inclinations of his colleagues. A bipartisan commission, of the nature described, would not then incline to more radical conclusions, such as an expansion of the federal judiciary, the SCC possibly included.
  • Dave WDave W Shipmate
    I think Roberts only gets to assign opinions if he's in the majority, right? I can't see how it would work to have a dissenter decide who was going to write the majority opinion.
  • Kwesi wrote: »
    ISTM that minorities are very influential in democratic political systems. I'm talking about interest/pressure groups and those with privileged access to the policy-making process, respecting both domestic and foreign policy. If we want to know why, despite majority opinion, the United States lacks a credible and comprehensive healths-care system, it's because............................

    I have seen an argument (and I admit this runs somewhat counter to my previous posts) that democracy tends to favour well-organised minorities, because if you allocate resources to a minority, this benefits them proportionately more than it inconveniences the majority.

    E.g. a tax on left-handed people, to be redistributed among the right-handed, would seriously piss off the left-handed, without bringing very much benefit to any individual right-handed voter. Whereas a tax on the right-handed for the left-handed would have the opposite effect.

    This argument does assume that people are (mostly) rational economic agents though ...
  • RuthRuth Shipmate
    orfeo wrote: »
    Ruth wrote: »
    orfeo wrote: »
    mousethief wrote: »
    People have been calling for the dismantling of the Electoral College long, long before Bush v Gore. @orfeo I think you have a bit of tunnel vision here.

    I'm sure they were. But the popularity of that call increased markedly after 2016.

    Please offer some support for this claim.

    Sorry, do you want me to go through all the material from American friends on Facebook and provide you with links, or something? No. It's not a claim about hard data, and I'm not a sociological researcher. Go find your own sociological researcher.

    Sorry, was I supposed to know it was a claim based on impressions gleaned from Facebook? My impression, from living, voting, and discussing politics in the US for decades, is that people talked a lot about getting rid of the EC in the wake of the 2000 debacle, then interest subsided for a while, and then of course people started talking about it again after November 2016.

    Fortunately, the Gallup organization has easily accessible hard data. There has been enough interest in the idea for them to ask questions about eliminating the Electoral College for almost 80 years. Here are the percentages in favor:

    1944 - 65%
    1967 - 58%
    May 1968 - 66%
    November 1968 - 80% - Nixon had just won a narrow popular vote and a large EC vote
    1977 - 73%
    1980 - 67%
    1 week after 2000 election - 61%
    5 weeks after 2000 election - 59%
    with Republicans, Independents, Democrats split: 41%, 57%, 75%, respectively.
    The above information from Gallup news, January 2001

    2012 - R/I/D split largely gone: 61%, 63%, 66% - from Gallup news, January 2013

    September 2020 - R/I/D split is back: 23%, 68%, 89% - from Gallup news, September 2020

    So mousethief is correct.
  • Kwesi wrote: »
    The question arises as to whether the college system could be challenged under the 14th Amendment (Equal Protection of the Laws), though one doubts the present court would be minded to consider the issue.
    No, it could not be challenged on those grounds. The electoral college system is what is currently required by the Constitution; it can’t simultaneously be required by the Constitution and be unconstitutional. It’s well established that the Constitution must be interpreted in such a way as to give effect to every provision, even if they are in tension.

    Dave W wrote: »
    I think Roberts only gets to assign opinions if he's in the majority, right? I can't see how it would work to have a dissenter decide who was going to write the majority opinion.
    Correct. The senior justice in the majority assigns the opinion. Of course, the CJ will always be the senior justice in whichever side he’s on, majority or minority.

  • Barnabas62Barnabas62 Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host, Epiphanies Host
    Interestingly, re assignment, Bob Woodward’s book on the 1970s SC. when Burger was Chief Justice, gave several examples of Burger manipulating the rule for assignment in order to get the ‘right’ justice. Whoever Burger thought that would be of course.

    Just one of the potential power games within the SC. Woodward’s book paints a pretty complex picture of the pragmatism and internal politics of the SC. The formal processes may have been purely judicial but that was never all that was going on. I’d be surprised if that has changed.
  • Nick Tamen wrote: »
    No, it could not be challenged on those grounds. The electoral college system is what is currently required by the Constitution; it can’t simultaneously be required by the Constitution and be unconstitutional. It’s well established that the Constitution must be interpreted in such a way as to give effect to every provision, even if they are in tension.

    Not entirely true. Sometimes bits of the Constitution are superseded by other bits of the Constitution. For example, Art. II, § 1, cl. 3 (the original electoral college) has been entirely replaced by the Twelfth Amendment (the revised electoral college), Art. IV, § 2, cl. 3 (the fugitive slave clause) does not have to "be interpreted in such a way as to give [ it ] effect" in light of the Thirteenth Amendment, and most obviously you don't need to find a way to reconcile the Eighteenth Amendment (establishing Prohibition) with the Twenty-First Amendment (repealing Prohibition).

    The general rule is that the later-adopted parts of the Constitution have precedence over the earlier versions, where there is an explicit conflict. As to the specific question of the electoral college and the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, I'd say they're in tension but not explicit conflict. The Supreme Court has held that the equal protection clause does require state-level and U.S. House electoral districts to be roughly equal in population, but held that the U.S. Senate, being explicitly detailed in the Constitution, was immune from this requirement.
  • Crœsos wrote: »
    Nick Tamen wrote: »
    No, it could not be challenged on those grounds. The electoral college system is what is currently required by the Constitution; it can’t simultaneously be required by the Constitution and be unconstitutional. It’s well established that the Constitution must be interpreted in such a way as to give effect to every provision, even if they are in tension.

    Not entirely true. Sometimes bits of the Constitution are superseded by other bits of the Constitution.
    True, and fair enough. I was speaking of bits of the Constitution that haven’t been superseded by amendment. In those instances where a provision has not been superseded and there is tension, the general rule is that the more specific applies in the specific instance to which it is applicable, while the more general applies otherwise.

  • Crœsos wrote: »
    The other option to achieve the same end, which would not require a Constitutional amendment, would involve expanding the House of Representatives. The size of the House is set by statute, so a simple piece of legislation would do the trick. Bumping it up to 835 members would give every state at least two representatives. The only question is whether a body of that size could function.

    Just making it so every district was the same size as the least-populous state (Wyoming) would only require expansion to about 580. The House of Commons is 650 seats for a national population of 68,000,000. That seems manageable.

    In 1787 the EC was nobody’s first choice for how to choose the president (even an elitist like Madison favored the popular vote). Ideas ranged from popular vote to having the governors elect the president, and everything in between. The EC was the particularly gristle-laden bit of political sausage they came up with just to get on with things. There seems to have been an assumption that once they got the country up and running they’d work out something better...
  • Crœsos wrote: »
    The other option to achieve the same end, which would not require a Constitutional amendment, would involve expanding the House of Representatives. The size of the House is set by statute, so a simple piece of legislation would do the trick. Bumping it up to 835 members would give every state at least two representatives. The only question is whether a body of that size could function.

    Just making it so every district was the same size as the least-populous state (Wyoming) would only require expansion to about 580. The House of Commons is 650 seats for a national population of 68,000,000. That seems manageable.

    I deliberately set it higher because the demographic shift against the states in the upper midwest seems likely to continue for quite some time. The last time the size of the House of Representatives was adjusted was 1929, so a number with some durability seems sensible.
    In 1787 the EC was nobody’s first choice for how to choose the president (even an elitist like Madison favored the popular vote). Ideas ranged from popular vote to having the governors elect the president, and everything in between. The EC was the particularly gristle-laden bit of political sausage they came up with just to get on with things. There seems to have been an assumption that once they got the country up and running they’d work out something better...

    George Mason, who was at the Constitutional Convention but refused to sign the Constitution because it contained no bill of rights, estimated that after George Washington the president would be chosen by the House of Representatives 19 times out of 20. Which is a good illustration of how the actual performance of the Constitution is at variance with the expectations of the Framers.
  • I am one of the few who feels that Westminster, both in Lords and Commons, cannot reasonably be reduced in size. A PM needs to assemble a ministry of about 120 and needs a pool from which to draw enough more-or-less competent men and women.

    There is not the same requirement in the congressional system. Even so, the suggestion of increasing the size of the House to 580 seems reasonable, especially given that the US population has increased greatly since the 1920s, and that the role of the House is to be more immediately representative of the people which, as districts have increased in size so much since then, is getting to be a bit cumbersome with half-million-plus per district.
  • I am one of the few who feels that Westminster, both in Lords and Commons, cannot reasonably be reduced in size. A PM needs to assemble a ministry of about 120 and needs a pool from which to draw enough more-or-less competent men and women.

    Whether there need to be 120 ministers or whether the existence of so many junior ministers, parliamentary undersecretaries and what have you is there to ensure loyalty is a matter for debate. The government from 1940-45 managed a global war with around 100 ministers. Admittedly these days you might need a few extra to counteract the presence of Chris Grayling but it's highly unlikely that all 120 are doing essential work that couldn't be done by the secretary of state assisted by civil servants.
  • I am one of the few who feels that Westminster, both in Lords and Commons, cannot reasonably be reduced in size. A PM needs to assemble a ministry of about 120 and needs a pool from which to draw enough more-or-less competent men and women.

    Whether there need to be 120 ministers or whether the existence of so many junior ministers, parliamentary undersecretaries and what have you is there to ensure loyalty is a matter for debate. The government from 1940-45 managed a global war with around 100 ministers. Admittedly these days you might need a few extra to counteract the presence of Chris Grayling but it's highly unlikely that all 120 are doing essential work that couldn't be done by the secretary of state assisted by civil servants.

    This is far from the Electoral College, but one needs to remember that as constituted, the central government in the UK fulfills the function of provincial governments as well. If the UK maintains its Brexit stance outside the European Union, then it might be useful to have a global look at what is needed for the most effective ministerial structure. I just used current numbers.

    For the US House of Repreesntatives, I would support the expansion partly as a means of improving the equality of numbers in the Electoral College, but also because in many places the size of districts is getting to be too large for effective representation. But, perhaps like the example I just mentioned, an external look at what works best might be a good idea.
  • I am one of the few who feels that Westminster, both in Lords and Commons, cannot reasonably be reduced in size. A PM needs to assemble a ministry of about 120

    Do they?

    Is there a fundamental reason why that work has to be performed by 120 elected officials, rather than 30 or 60 elected officials, with a greater number of civil servants? From the outside, it seems as though there's some flexibility as to where you put the dividing line between political direction and civil servants.

    Although perhaps with fewer MPs in government, what you'd get is more special advisers...
  • I am one of the few who feels that Westminster, both in Lords and Commons, cannot reasonably be reduced in size. A PM needs to assemble a ministry of about 120

    Do they?

    Is there a fundamental reason why that work has to be performed by 120 elected officials, rather than 30 or 60 elected officials, with a greater number of civil servants? From the outside, it seems as though there's some flexibility as to where you put the dividing line between political direction and civil servants.

    Although perhaps with fewer MPs in government, what you'd get is more special advisers...

    Exactly. You would get a larger number of political staff-- I have seen two major attempts in Canada at reducing the size of cabinet only to see the numbers of special assistants gyrate and increase incredibly. I would rather ministers I could challenge at the front door, than freshly-appointed graduates from the party apparatus who are largely unaccountable, and unfirable by voters. Parliamentarians are to be preferred over apparatchiki.

    And, as I noted above, ministers in the UK system are also doing the work of provincial ministers in federal states.

    As far as electors go, I once heard it suggested that they proceed to Washington after their election rather than to their state capitols, and convene there for their (currently largely ritual) process. This would give the process a dignity and visibility it lacks.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    And after all, as they are electing a president of the United States it is more than a mere show for them to gather in Washington. Symbolic perhaps, but symbols of unity amongst States.
  • Gee D wrote: »
    And after all, as they are electing a president of the United States it is more than a mere show for them to gather in Washington. Symbolic perhaps, but symbols of unity amongst States.
    They don’t gather in Washington. Each state’s electors gather in their state’s capital to cast their votes, voting separately for president and vice president. The votes are then certified and sent to Congress, where they are formally counted when the new Congress convenes in early January.

  • Nick Tamen wrote: »
    Gee D wrote: »
    And after all, as they are electing a president of the United States it is more than a mere show for them to gather in Washington. Symbolic perhaps, but symbols of unity amongst States.
    They don’t gather in Washington. Each state’s electors gather in their state’s capital to cast their votes, voting separately for president and vice president. The votes are then certified and sent to Congress, where they are formally counted when the new Congress convenes in early January.

    I was referring to a proposal that electors meet in Washington to underline the national significance of their act, rather than the current activity, which is well-known and is as @Nick Tamen describes.

    I have always been a bit perplexed that more is not made of the state-capital assembly of delegates to fulfill their role. I am aware that in a number of states, the nomination of electors is a haphazard backroom operations activity and have come to conclude that it is a body devoid of function or even an educationally useful ritual role. A maniple does better.
  • Nick Tamen wrote: »
    Gee D wrote: »
    And after all, as they are electing a president of the United States it is more than a mere show for them to gather in Washington. Symbolic perhaps, but symbols of unity amongst States.
    They don’t gather in Washington. Each state’s electors gather in their state’s capital to cast their votes, voting separately for president and vice president. The votes are then certified and sent to Congress, where they are formally counted when the new Congress convenes in early January.

    I was referring to a proposal that electors meet in Washington to underline the national significance of their act, rather than the current activity, which is well-known and is as @Nick Tamen describes.
    Ah, sorry. I missed that somehow.

  • Before the jet plane, it was much easier to get to the state capital than it was to get to DC. It also goes to my point that it is the state that elects the president, not the people.

    In truth, the EC was a ploy by the constitutional delegates from the South to make sure their interests would have more say than the more populous Northern States.

    Myself, I would be leary of assembling all the Electoral Collegians in a central location because they could be subject to undue pressures. Take, for instance, Trump losses the election, all the Collegians meet in Washington DC to do their thing, a militia group that supports Trump surrounds the building where they are meeting and won't let them go until they vote him back into office--this is a hypothetical.
  • Gramps49 wrote: »
    In truth, the EC was a ploy by the constitutional delegates from the South to make sure their interests would have more say than the more populous Northern States.

    Whether northern states were more populous depend on how you define "populous" (or "populace", for that matter). For example, here is a ranking of American states in order of descending total population according to the 1790 census:
    1. Virginia
    2. Massachusetts*
    3. Pennsylvania
    4. North Carolina
    5. New York
    6. Maryland
    7. South Carolina
    8. Connecticut
    9. New Jersey
    10. New Hampshire
    11. Georgia
    12. Rhode Island
    13. Delaware

    And here's the same list ranked in order of free population:
    1. Massachusetts*
    2. Virginia
    3. Pennsylvania
    4. New York
    5. North Carolina
    6. Connecticut
    7. Maryland
    8. New Jersey
    9. South Carolina
    10. New Hamshire
    11. Rhode Island
    12. Georgia
    13. Delaware

    In short, it wasn't that the northern states had more people, it's just that the north had more people who weren't considered property and were thus eligible to vote. If we take the Mason-Dixon line as the dividing line between North and South, the North had ~1.88 million inhabitants in 1790 (plus an additional 85,000 in what would become the state of Vermont in 1791) while the South had ~1.85 million inhabitants (plus about 74,000 in what would become Kentucky). The electoral college was a convenient way to get electoral influence, through the three-fifths compromise, from the enslaved non-voting population of a state.


    *In 1790 Massachusetts included the territory that now makes up the state of Maine.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Nick Tamen wrote: »
    Gee D wrote: »
    And after all, as they are electing a president of the United States it is more than a mere show for them to gather in Washington. Symbolic perhaps, but symbols of unity amongst States.
    They don’t gather in Washington. Each state’s electors gather in their state’s capital to cast their votes, voting separately for president and vice president. The votes are then certified and sent to Congress, where they are formally counted when the new Congress convenes in early January.

    I was referring to a proposal that electors meet in Washington to underline the national significance of their act, rather than the current activity, which is well-known and is as @Nick Tamen describes.

    As was I - the "is" in my post should be understood as "would be".
  • CrœsosCrœsos Shipmate
    edited November 2020
    Since this thread was last active the U.S. presidential election has happened. Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. received, as of the current counting, about 5.5 million more votes than Donald John Trump, prevailing by about 3.6 percentage points. These numbers will probably continue to shift in Biden's favor as most of the ballots still to be counted are from New York state. (Why so slow, New York?) Under any other electoral system this would be a pretty decisive victory, but since the votes got processed through the meat grinder of the electoral college it's perceived as a close election. Indeed, the defeated incumbent* still regards this result as close enough to overturn by getting courts to throw out enough ballots.

    I recently came across two articles about the long-range effects of electoral college system (and other anti-democratic features of the American political system). The first comes from the Washington Post*:
    Now, according to data released by an international team of political scientists just before the Nov. 3 election, it’s possible to quantify the extent to which the Republican Party no longer adheres to such principles as the commitment to free and fair elections with multiple parties, the respectful treatment of political opponents and the avoidance of violent rhetoric.

    The Republican Party in the U.S. has retreated from upholding democratic norms in recent years,” said Anna Lührmann, a political scientist at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and a former member of the German parliament. “Its rhetoric is closer to authoritarian parties, such as AKP in Turkey and Fidesz in Hungary.

    <snip>

    The Democratic Party, by contrast, hasn’t changed much. This is a prime example of what political scientists call asymmetric polarization — a growing partisan gap driven almost entirely by the actions of the Republican Party.

    While V-Dem’s data only runs through 2018, that asymmetry has only become more apparent in the aftermath of this election, Lührmann said: “It is disturbing that most leading Republicans are still not objecting to President Trump’s baseless claims of electoral fraud and attempts to declare himself the winner.”

    As a result, she says, GOP scores are likely to sink further when 2020 data is released.

    Okay, so that's the effect. But why attribute this to the electoral college? Ezra Klein has an explanation over at Vox. I'm not sure he was aware of the Washington Post article when he wrote it, but it seems like they're telling two halves of the same story.
    Over the past few decades, our politics has become sharply divided by density, with Democrats dominating cities and Republicans dominating rural areas. That’s given Republicans an electoral advantage, which they’ve in turn used to stack electoral rules in their favor through aggressive gerrymandering, favorable Supreme Court decisions, and more. As a result, Democrats and Republicans are operating in what are, functionally, different electoral systems, with very different incentives.

    To reliably win the Electoral College, Democrats need to win the popular vote by 3 or 4 percentage points. To reliably win the Senate, they need to run 6 to 7 points ahead of Republicans. To reliably win the House, they need to win the vote by 3 or 4 points.
    As such, Democrats need to consciously strategize to appeal to voters who do not naturally agree with them. That’s how they ended up with Joe Biden as their nominee. Biden was not the choice of the party’s more ideological base. He was not the choice of those who wanted to see Democrats reflect the young, multiethnic, majority-female voters driving their electoral victories.

    Biden was the choice of Democrats who favored electability above all. Electability is a weird idea: It asks not that you vote for who you find most electable, but for who you think a voter who is not like you would find most electable.

    <snip>

    For Republicans, the incentives are exactly the reverse. They can win the presidency despite getting fewer votes. They can win the Senate despite getting fewer votes. They can win the House despite getting fewer votes. They can control the balance of state legislatures despite getting fewer votes.

    And so they do. Their base, like the Democratic base, would prefer to run more uncompromising candidates, and their donors would prefer a more uncompromising agenda. A party that needed to win a majority of the popular vote couldn’t indulge itself by nominating Trump and backing his erratic, outrageous, and incompetent style of governance to the hilt. A party that needed a majority of the popular vote to win the Senate and the House couldn’t keep trying to rip health care away from tens of millions of people while cutting taxes on the richest Americans.

    Republicans are not irrational for spending down their electoral advantage on more temperamentally extreme candidates and ideologically pure policies. The process of disappointing your own base is brutally hard — just look at the endless fights between moderates and leftists on the Democratic side. What motivates parties to change, compromise, and adapt is the pain of loss, and the fear of future losses. If a party is protected from that pain, the incentive to listen to the public and moderate its candidates or alter its agenda wanes.

    Klein's whole article is worth the read, but the short version is that under a system that effectively "handicaps" the votes of certain members of the electorate a minority faction can rule and the fact that they can rule without broadly popular appeal means they can pursue more extremist policies. In other words, the asymmetric polarization that's turning the Republican party authoritarian is a predictable and obvious result of the electoral system giving them enough of a "boost" that they can win without appealing to a majority.


    *The Washington Post has a paywall which allows non-subscribers access to a limited number of articles. If you're not a Post subscriber only click through if you're sure you want to use one of your clicks on this article.
  • Barnabas62Barnabas62 Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host, Epiphanies Host
    Thoughtful and thought-provoking stuff. I think you and I agree that the EC is an insane system. And unlikely to be changed.

    I did know about the built in GOP advantages. The consequences, the move towards authoritarianism, plus what I see as an increased feeling of GOP entitlement, strike me as distinctly worrying for democracy. And I suppose what is going on right now underlines those concerns.
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