Just to preface first, I’ve done this debate twice already on this site, so I’m just going to use the same opening statement each time I make this debate.
Why the Electoral College Sucks (IMO)
1. It’s Unrepresentative
My argument is pretty obvious starting out, so I won’t drag on too long.
The electoral college is unrepresentative. A candidate can, and has won with a minority of the vote. This has happened 5 times in history, with the most recent being 2016, but we all remember that.
Clinton won the popular vote, yet lost the electoral college, so Trump ended up as president. While this is a core part of my argument, it’s also important to recognize the margin by which Trump won.
Trump won on 304 electoral votes to Clinton’s 227. Sometimes it seems like the electoral college is only a little unfair because it has only elected an unpopular candidate 5 times, but if someone can have that big margin of victory while having a small loss in the popular vote, then the system is clearly very unfair. The system is swayed so that smaller states get more representation than bigger states, so naturally republicans have the advantage. Why should my vote, (as someone in a big state) count for less than someone’s in a small state?
Bonus Fun fact: it is possible to win the electoral college with just under 22% of the popular vote. Sure, it is unlikely to happen, but we shouldn't have a system that allows it to happen anyways!
2. Politicians only pander to swing states.
Now, some people justify this unfairness by saying that the system makes it so that politicians have to focus on small states. The thought is that without the EC presidential candidates could jet from NYC to Chicago to LA and be good. But that is just not the statistical reality.
For starters, that’s not how population distribution works. Those three cities alone only make up 0.04% of the population. In fact, if you took the 100 biggest cities in America (right down to Spokane Washington) you would only get to a little under 20%. So you clearly cannot just focus on the big states already. You need to win the smaller ones too.
However, even if small states needed protection from the big ones, the EC would still fail at that job. Why? Swing states. Because of the EC politicians don’t end up caring about small states equal to big ones, they only care about the swing states. To prove it, here is a graph showing political ad spending and visits in the 2020 campaign by state.
You will see that the two states with the most visits are Florida and Pennsylvania (47&31 visits), hardly small states. Next up are North Carolina, Michigan, and Wisconsin with 25, 21, and 18 respectively. Noticing a pattern? They’re all swing states. This data is the same when you look at the ad dollars spent.
Clearly politicians only need the votes of people in swing states to win, not the votes of people in small states. So your vote doesn’t matter if you live in 40 to 45 of the states. 15% of the country ends up deciding a president who should represent 100% of us. This is not fair.
To conclude this segment, the electoral college is a system that can elect a president with a minority of the vote. It was established like this anyways because it had the purpose of making everyone’s vote count more equally. However, it fails at that by giving political power only to people in swing states, not small states as it suggests. It is a system that is founded under misguided ideas and then fails to achieve even that small bar.
Why RCV is better
The last time I did this kind of debate, my opponents main argument was that a First past the post election would suck, and to be honest, I agree. I don’t think it’s as bad as the EC, but I digress. This is why I included RCV in this debate.
I briefly explained what ranked choice voting was in the description, but I’ll elaborate here. (BTW this is all covered in that video I linked if you want to skip this part). Say there were five candidates running for president. I really like candidate 5, I’m good with 4, I wouldn’t mind 3, but I really don’t like 1 or 2. Naturally, in a FPTP voting system I would just vote once for candidate 5 and be done. But what if the next election role around, and it turns out that candidate 5 only got 4% of the vote. I really like them, but I know they can’t win, so I strategically change my vote to candidate 4. Eventually, Candidate 5 drops out of future races because no one ends up voting for a candidate that can’t win. This is why so many democracies end up in two party system, and neither candidate represent you very well. This is called the “spoiler affect” and it’s why third party candidates always either fail, or become part of the new two party system in America. However, RCV solves this.
In an RCV election, I would put candidate 5 as my first choice, 4 as my second choice, and 3 as my third choice, and leave the rest of the ballot blank. When Election Day comes around, let’s say 5 still gets only 4% of the vote. Being the candidate with the lowest votes, 5 is dropped out of the race automatically. But here’s the key part.
Since I put 4 as my second choice, my vote goes to 4 instead. The process repeats with candidate 1 being dropped out of the race and his votes being redistributed. This repeats until somebody reaches a majority.
The reason this system works so well is that it doesn’t allow the spoiler affect. Take the 2000 election in Florida for example. Bush won in that state without a majority, so even though most people voted for someone other than bush, all the electoral votes of Florida went to him, and gave him the victory. This happened because of the Green Party candidate, Ralph Nader. Many Al Gore supporters voted for Nader instead, and unwittingly handed the presidency to Bush.
So now if a third party does get enough support to have a fighting chance, all they will end up doing is splitting the vote on one side. This way, everyone is too scared to vote 3rd party because they know their vote will go to waste, or end up hurting them. RCV solves this. Nader supporters Could have put Gore as their second choice, so when Nader ended up with the lowest total, their votes would go to Al Gore and he would have won. What end up happening is we elect a candidate that more of us are okay with, rather than somebody who has only a small amount of people who really like them.
The same thing works for our current election. I know RFK has dropped out, but when he was still in the running, many people preferred him to the primary candidates, and yet they couldn’t vote for him because they knew their vote would end up amounting to nothing.
Conclusion
The electoral college was established to protect small states, but it fails by only giving power to swing states. Because of this, 80% of the country doesn’t have their voice heard i government.
Ranked choice voting is much preferable to this system because it prevents the spoiler effect and make it so everyone’s voice is heard equally. People are free to vote for whichever candidate they want without being stuck in the two-party system.
Glancing at an introduction to the Federalist Papers,
It claims the Federalists and Anti Federalists had different ideas of Responsibility of elected officials, which a scene from 1776 seems to fit rather well.
"[During the vote to debate the resolution on independence]
Dr. Lyman Hall : Mr. President, Georgia seems to be split right down the middle on this issue - the people are against it, and I'm for it.
[laughter]
Dr. Lyman Hall : However, I'm afraid I'm not quite certain whether representing the people means relying on their judgment or on my own. In all fairness, until I can figure that out, I'd better lean a little on their side. Georgia says nay."
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068156/characters/nm0601409
Also here's a comic I find funny,,
https://existentialcomics.com/comic/564
I'm not planning on voting on this one, no.
As someone already did, in a way I'd agree with.
I just don't want to spend the time analyzing the arguments closely, which would take me some time, though probably be quick for others, even in a debate like this, I'd be a bit slow, and don't want to change my methods or spend the time voting.
I'll take a look at the other debate.
Also, If you want to see this debate against an opponent who actually tried, I've done it once before under the same title, and before that against WyIted.
Are you planning to vote on this? Because if not I'd like to respond to some of your comments, but If you are going to I probably shouldn't.
I don't really know much about the Electoral College.
Round 1 Moozer325, I found the more interesting part of debate.
Point 1.
Doesn't it represent each 'state?
Should the United Nations vote based on population size?
Course United Nations among themselves vote on different stuff than American States among themselves, not so intrusive perhaps,
Not really in the interest of Nations/States with less people,
Course, it also seems a bit silly to let some nation 1000th the size of another have an equal vote,
But there 'are the veto countries, pretty powerful at the time and founders, course the world has changed since then, some.
Could also vote based on 'power I suppose, population size, territory size, military size, economy, amount of gold?
Point 2,
I'm not sure it's that one's vote doesn't 'matter, just because a few states waffle towards the end of a vote, doesn't mean staying true to what one values and voting according to early, 'doesn't matter.
Point 3
So RCV is kind of like voting for your favorite, and voting for your least favorite, so that it ends up in the middle?
Since the other side would have voted your favorite as their least, but would have lost their own favorite?
Conclusion Part,
Not that you're wrong, I'm just going to have to think about your argument a bit.
"it can’t be too hard for you to do this."
What I do is very hard, which is why almost no one else is able to do it.
It takes decades of research to get to the level where you can write endless amount of bullshit, because you gathered many sources to create bullshit from.
In that case, all your efforts are in vain, seeing as it can’t be too hard for you to do this.
The day people have true, direct democracy is when they will realize why it doesnt work.
Dang, that sucks.
No we're not here
Is anyone still on this site?
Electoral college isnt even democracy lol
Finally, somebody else who watches him!
I’ve had this debate twice already on this site, so there are people who would do it.
I could never even consider debating against the ideas of CGP Grey, it would be like debating physics with Einstein!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3jE3B8HsE