McCain wins by county

Interesting this. That’s over 40%. It’s relatively easy to find 10 or 20% more from the rest of the state. Now if NY State gets 31 electoral votes, then New York, by conservative estitmation of 40%, should represent 12.5 of those votes. But because she dominates the state, she steals the rest of that 60%, or 18.5 electoral votes to appropriate for herself the whole 31 votes practically speaking, or 6% of the national vote instead of the 2% she truly is (with a total of 538 electoral votes). And this is just one city. The same hold true for San Francisco and Los Angelos.

We already established earlier that they would be given weight by population, just as it is now.

Gold! :bravo:

So this is still going on? I mean the search for the Electoral College that would have given McCain the presidency. I don’t get it; Obama wins the popular vote, he wins the Electoral College, the Democrats control the Senate and Congress, and you’re still looking for some way to claim that McCain should be the president.

Honestly, we should just be ignoring this one.

[quote=“ScottSommers”]So this is still going on? I mean the search for the Electoral College that would have given McCain the presidency. I don’t get it; Obama wins the popular vote, he wins the Electoral College, the Democrats control the Senate and Congress, and you’re still looking for some way to claim that McCain should be the president.

Honestly, we should just be ignoring this one.[/quote]
I don’t care about McCain. I’m just looking at the electoral college, and what it was first designed for, and what the political climate of the U.S. really is. It’s hypothetical. Nonetheless, details matter, and help us look at things in perspective.

Here’s a detail for you, Obama is president-elect. How’s that for perspective?

What If…
:ponder:
If your Aunt had balls, she’d be yer Uncle.

is a hanging chad a useful detail?

[quote=“ScottSommers”]So this is still going on? I mean the search for the Electoral College that would have given McCain the presidency. I don’t get it; Obama wins the popular vote, he wins the Electoral College, the Democrats control the Senate and Congress, and you’re still looking for some way to claim that McCain should be the president.

Honestly, we should just be ignoring this one.[/quote]

Kinda like we used to have Fred Smith on ignore. :wink:
Amen.

Interesting this. That’s over 40%. It’s relatively easy to find 10 or 20% more from the rest of the state. Now if NY State gets 31 electoral votes, then New York, by conservative estitmation of 40%, should represent 12.5 of those votes. But because she dominates the state, she steals the rest of that 60%, or 18.5 electoral votes to appropriate for herself the whole 31 votes practically speaking, or 6% of the national vote instead of the 2% she truly is (with a total of 538 electoral votes). And this is just one city. The same hold true for San Francisco and Los Angelos.[/quote]

What facile logic- again. By the same logic Texas is dominated by rural, Republican voting areas. The electoral votes that should belong to Democrat leaning cities like Austin and Dallas are stolen by these Republican voting counties. The same in Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri or any other red state that has significant Democrat leaning populations and areas, and whose electoral vote is similarly stolen.
I’m afraid yet again I have no idea what point you are trying to make. Are you advocating the President be elected by popular vote? Or that state lines be gerrymandered to suit Republicans?

Well, no, that isn’t the same. In your scenario, it’s obvious that a small-area city isn’t dominating a huge-area state. The electoral system is made for the sake of the states, not cities. The voting in Texas is thus fairly representative of the wide area of Texas proper. In New York, the distortion is so huge, that dividing New York City from the rest would correct it.

I’m not sure either are possible. I just find it interesting; it’s an educational exercise at any rate. Had the Founders been aware of the megacity phenomena, I wonder if they would have designed the electoral system any differently.

You said it yourself, and the vote in New York state, is well…representative of New York state. The vote in Texas is representative of Texas. All rather obvious really.

The “area” argument is of course completely irrelevant. And what do you mean by “Texas proper”?

You said it yourself, and the vote in New York state, is well…representative of New York state.[/quote]
I said no such thing. In fact, I was making the case that the voting in New York State is quite unfair to the state, since one city, like a huge black hole, forces all the rest to bow down and integrate with her. As such, the electoral system isn’t quite representing New York State fairly. It’s unfair that a whole state, a pretty big state, has to identify with only one of its cities. New York City has taken on state proportions, and should probably be treated as one to make the electoral system work more efficiently, as originally designed. I mean “proper” to talk about the state as its own entity as opposed to a dominating city cum state.

You said it yourself, and the vote in New York state, is well…representative of New York state.[/quote]
I said no such thing. In fact, I was making the case that the voting in New York State is quite unfair to the state, since one city, like a huge black hole, forces all the rest to bow down and integrate with her. As such, the electoral system isn’t quite representing New York State fairly. It’s unfair that a whole state, a pretty big state, has to identify with only one of its cities. New York City has taken on state proportions, and should probably be treated as one to make the electoral system work more efficiently, as originally designed. I mean “proper” to talk about the state as its own entity as opposed to a dominating city cum state.[/quote]

Logically, it is no more unfair to make upstate New York “bow down and integrate” with New York city, as it is to force Austin to do the same with Texas.
How is the distribution of population within the state of any relevance? Why is it acceptable for rural areas to dominate some states politically, but an issue if urban areas dominate other states? Could this have anything to do with your ideological bias towards the “real” (rural, Republican voting) areas of America? Did you get this talking point from Rush Limbaugh?

Only if you think the city is more important than the state. Remember I said that the electoral system is for the sake of the states. If a city dominates said state, then the state ceases to have a vote of its own. Or rather the state concedes its vote to only one of its cities.

Rural or urban has nothing to do with it. If New York City were truly as big as New York State, then that would be that. If Texas were filled with numerous big cities like Austin spread out all over the state to influence that state, neither would that be a problem.
This is a principle, so it would also be a concern for Democrats as well if a Republican city dominated an otherwise Democrat state.
I was aware of the map from Rush, but I have my own take on it. When a caller suggested that conservatives build Republican megacities, Rush theorized that such wouldn’t be workable, and that the reason why megacities are Democrat and not Republican is because of the cliquish nature of liberals, which I’ve also noticed:

 "Conservatives don't Balkanize themselves. They live their lives; they want to be happy and so forth. 

Liberals are the ones that organize in little communes and cliques and cities and so forth and only want to hang around with each other and themselves. We’re not that way in many regards."

[quote=“jotham”]
Only if you think the city is more important than the state.[/quote]

The city simply dominates the state electorally because that is where most of the people live. If most of the people lived in rural areas then the rural areas dominate. The state is the most important unit electorally, and that is why the distribution of people within the state is irrelevant.

How is the size (in area) important? Cities tend to dominate (even though they cover a smaller area) because most people live in urban areas. Lots of people live in New York so it has big political influence. The fact that it covers a (relatively) small area is utterly irrelevant, the number or geographical distribution of cities within a state is also similarly irrelevant.

Right now, that is impossible.

:roflmao:
I wonder if Rush has been to Oklahoma or Idaho recently.

Liberals organise "in little communes and cliques and cities ", megacities are Democrat because of the “nature of liberals”. What the hell is this man on?

Theoretically speaking there is a certain truth to what Jotham is saying - the effect of large cities on states could distort the outcome of an election.

Imagine a Union where the two parties were the Urban Party and the Rural Party and all voters voted in their interests. In this union 60% of all voters are urbanites and 40% rural. And all cities are spread evenly over all states. In such an election the urban party would win 100% of the electoral college votes with only 60% of the votes.

Now imagine the union has 100 states with one electoral college vote for each seat. Each state has the same number of voters. 60 of the states are, as just like the example above, made up of 60% urbanites and 40% rural. The other 40 states have NO cities. All voters in those 40 states are rural voters. In this election, the Rural Party wins 64% of the popular vote, but the Urban Party takes the election with 60% of the electoral vote.

Of course these examples are extreme, but they do show that a system based on winner- takes-all votes in constituencies (also known as first past the post) can be quite unfair. They do have their good points in elections voting for parliaments, houses of representatives, councils etc, but I really can’t see the point of them in presidential elections.

The best system for US presidential elections would certainly be a straight election - one voter, one vote - the one with the most votes wins. Of course Obama would have won that too.

But then, there’s variations even on that system. Transferable votes or second rounds of elections can be fairer in some ways, but can have quite different results (for example transferable votes, or a second round of elections, in Taiwan 2000 would almost certainly have led to a Soong win rather than Chen). And there’s even other variations. In close-ish elections you could always find a fair-seeming electoral system that would have let the other candidate win.

As an aside:

[quote]“Conservatives don’t Balkanize themselves. They live their lives; they want to be happy and so forth.
Liberals are the ones that organize in little communes and cliques and cities and so forth and only want to hang around with each other and themselves. We’re not that way in many regards.”[/quote]

Is this a pathetically clumsy piece of attempted deception, or just plain stupidity!?! Rural voters are more conservative. City-dwellers more liberal.

 Well, I suppose if New York City domminates New York State, then that's for the state to worry about and not the nation really.  But the national-interest reason for the electoral college is to make sure the President enjoys a broad coalition of different regions in the county and indeed to give rural areas a vote.  That way, candidates won't spend all their time in all the big metropolitan areas.  When Gore lost the electoral vote, it's because he didn't have a broad coalition of support across the nation, but only in a region.  He didn't win many mid-Western or any Southern states, after losing Florida.  So Gore flunked the electoral college, as intended.  I'm just thinking from a national-interest perspective, when a city like New York City becomes big enough to dominate a state, the original purpose of the electoral college somehow gets subverted, to the point that regional and metropolitan interests loom larger than the whole country, like having a popular vote again.

I found these articles interesting about the electoral system:

Electoral College or popular vote best?

[quote]The Electoral College’s winner-take-all system forces candidates to conduct state-by-state campaigns, to pay special attention to “battleground states.” Candidates have to respect states. Sitting presidents eyeing re-election listen to governors and state leaders because they need those states’ electoral votes.

Under a popular vote system, state boundaries and individual state priorities would become irrelevant, getting no attention except for a little lip service. Rather than deploy state-by-state strategies, where states matter and have a voice, candidates would ignore states and instead target national demographic segments in the gigantic population centers like New York City and Los Angeles. It would dramatically change the dynamics of presidential campaigns.[/quote]
How can Gore win the popular and lose the electoral vote?

The brilliance of the Electoral College

[quote]The Electoral College’s winner-take-all system forces candidates to conduct state-by-state campaigns, to pay special attention to “battleground states.” Candidates have to respect states. Sitting presidents eyeing re-election listen to governors and state leaders because they need those states’ electoral votes.

Under a popular vote system, state boundaries and individual state priorities would become irrelevant, getting no attention except for a little lip service. Rather than deploy state-by-state strategies, where states matter and have a voice, candidates would ignore states and instead target national demographic segments in the gigantic population centers like New York City and Los Angeles. It would dramatically change the dynamics of presidential campaigns.[/quote]

I disagree. An electoral college system means you can just target the swing states, and pay little attention to the safe or impossible ones. There may be some benefits too an electoral college system - I’m not really familiar enough with the American system to know for sure - but I’m still fairly certain that, on balance, a popular vote is fairer.

Smacks of hogwash to me. The state’s vote is still dependent on the votes of its population, regardless of whether that population is concentrated in rural areas or a particular city. Why would we term the results of that concentration ‘ceasing to have a vote’? :loco: Sounds like sour grapes.

[quote] Or rather the state concedes its vote to only one of its cities.
[/quote]

No, the state’s vote is based on what the majority of its population decides. I really don’t get why you’re going on and on about this.

Ok, now you’re just posting stupidity.

BYE!