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.”
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I think we can mostly agree that the electoral college system is not working as intended. It was designed to give people outside the cities an extra boost to their representation, But it was certainly never designed to let fascism take hold.
Unfortunately there’s no such thing as a fair and representative voting system. In all their cases you either end up underrepresenting the rural, over representing the rural, or forcing people to pick between candidates that they don’t want.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m perfectly down with what walls is calling for as it gives my intentions the best chance and at the same time will keep fascism from just popping in because they’re good at propaganda. But I’d still like to see some other way.
I always hear that excuse about the rural areas not being represented without the electoral college, but my only reaction is GOOD. Rural areas are large in land ans small in people. Why should they get an equal voice as a Metropolitan area with the majority of people? A government is supposed to reflect the will of the people. The not ALL the people, that would be impossible, but but an average of the majority of the people.
Additionally, the government at the federal level has relatively minor impact at the local level. The federal level is broad strokes, the local government is fine strokes, and the state level is somewhere in between. Rural dwellers can run their local government however they like as long as it doesn’t violate state or federal laws.
The real problem is that the size of the House of Representatives has been frozen for 100 years. The number of electoral college votes a state has is equal to the number of reps and senators they have. Since the House hasn’t grown alongside our population, the relative representation for rural areas has steadily grown more and more.
Ending the cap on the House would balance out the electoral college issues and help reduce the constant congressional deadlocks we’re seeing.
Can I persuade you to consider Approval or STAR?
RCV has some structural flaws that make it less than optimal. Flaws that exist in an Ordinal voting system but RCV puts a slightly odd twist on them, in some ways making them worse.
Approval or STAR on the other hand, are both Cardinal voting systems. They work on a different core principle and thus are immune to the flaws found in Ordinal systems.
Honestly, I’d be happy with any sort of ranked/cardinal voting system, and it looks like STAR is just a better RCV though. RCV just seems like the most likely to pick up steam in the US, tough I could be mistaken
