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Tim Walz calls for scrapping of electoral college to decide US presidential race (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 3 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

233 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Kamala Harris’s running mate urges popular vote system but campaign says issue is not part of Democrats’ agenda

Tim Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, has called for the electoral college system of electing US presidents to be abolished and replaced with a popular vote principle, as operates in most democracies.

His comments – to an audience of party fundraisers – chime with the sentiments of a majority of American voters but risk destabilising the campaign of Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, who has not adopted a position on the matter, despite having previously voiced similar views.

"I think all of us know, the electoral college needs to go," Walz told donors at a gathering at the home of the California governor, Gavin Newsom. "We need a national popular vote. We need to be able to go into York, Pennsylvania, and win. We need to be in western Wisconsin and win. We need to be in Reno, Nevada, and win."

🗳️ Register to vote: https://vote.gov/

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

The electoral college is good for one thing and one thing only: boosting confidence that election fraud in one place won't impact the result of the election.

Winner takes all was always stupid and needs to be replaced with proportional allocation, preferably with a more direct ratio to the actual population of votes. Basically, everyone doing what Nebraska and Maine do.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

It's also really good for making sure that whoever wins the most acres of land gets a huge electoral boost. Because that's important.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 weeks ago

what if we make a compromise on the land area, say 3/5?

[+] [email protected] -6 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

It’s also really good for making sure that whoever wins the most acres of land gets a huge electoral boost. Because that’s important.

Is it? The most disproportionate representation in the EC belongs to the people of Delaware, last time I ran the numbers of EC votes per capita.

State population is all that matters. Very small populations still get an EC vote for each Senator, which is the root of the problem.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

Delaware has 3 electoral votes and a population of 1.018 million.

Wyoming has 3 electoral votes and a population of 584,000.

Wyoming is almost twice as over-represented as Delaware in the electoral college.

California currently has 54 electoral votes. If CA was as represented in the electoral college as Wyoming is, it would have 200 votes.

So you could argue that both Wyoming and California can claim to be more disproportionately represented by the EC than Delaware.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Ah, Wikipedia makes it really easy to list by per capita representation.

The top 10 in "lowest population per electoral vote":

 Wyoming
 Vermont
 District of Columbia
 Alaska
 North Dakota
 Montana
 Rhode Island
 South Dakota
 Delaware
 Maine

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

Lol, wrong. Delaware's surpassed by like 6 other states. Wyoming is the most disproportionally represented per voter.