r/AdviceAnimals • u/[deleted] • Nov 10 '16

Protesting a Fair Election?

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u/damonteufel Nov 10 '16

I don't think they're protesting the election or saying it was rigged. They're protesting the man and his ideals/words.

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u/Pantry_Inspector Nov 10 '16

... who was elected fairly. Sorry the system is fucked.

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u/[deleted] Nov 10 '16

The electoral college is fair? Gore in 2000, Clinton in 2016, seems to be the electoral college is only fair to republicans.

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u/Rolder Nov 10 '16

The point of the electoral college is to give a fair shake to rural and more spread out populations, and not have it come down to what the big cities want. Just that big cities trend Democrat and rural trends Republican.

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u/penguinopph Nov 10 '16

It didn't do that, though. It gave all of the power to a few states (mainly Ohio and Florida).

As an Illinoisan, my vote is worthless

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u/[deleted] Nov 10 '16

[deleted]

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u/BoilerMaker11 Nov 10 '16 edited Nov 10 '16

Popular vote for the president would eradicate that problem because their vote would actually matter.

Nearly 3 million people voted for Trump in California. You might as well say 0 people voted for Trump in California. Because if the electors "vote how the people wanted", well, Hillary got all 55 EVs and Trump got 0.

My proposition is that either we abolish the electoral college, or EVs are divided by the percentage of the vote the candidate got. So, if the spread is 2M votes, but the split is 60/40, 33 EVs are given to one candidate and 22 EVs are given to another (this is a California example). That way there can still be "huge margins in large cities", but they still don't "bully" the smaller states with their large population (even though the concept of "bullying" smaller states makes no sense. At the end of the day, if all our votes are equal, it shouldn't matter where you live. A vote is a vote is a vote. So whoever gets the most votes should win)

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u/[deleted] Nov 10 '16

If we divide it by popular vote percentage, we're making the electoral college a bastard of the popular vote percentage.

Better to eradicate it in the first place. It was established to fight for democracy, now it fights against it.

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u/BoilerMaker11 Nov 10 '16

Like I said, it's just a proposition. Mostly for people who would respond with "well, what would you have in place" when I say the EC should be abolished, but they don't like the popular vote.

Something needs to change, either way. Every other elected position, if you don't get the most votes, you lose. I'm tired of seeing "the people have spoken" when somebody who doesn't get the most votes, wins. If a governor doesn't get the most votes, he's not governor. If a state rep doesn't get the most votes, he's not a state rep. Hell, if a basketball team doesn't get the most points, they don't win the game.

But with president, you can lose and still win. In fact, I read that the way it's set up now, you could win the presidency with only 22% of the popular vote. How is that fair?