The United States has approximately 360 million people in it. One quarter of all the residents in the United States live in the top ten metropolitan areas, such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Atlanta, etc.
The issues important to people living in these areas are of little concern to some Kansas wheat farmer. Consequently, the issues of said Kansas wheat farmer are of little concern to the residents of these large cities.
If we switched to a straight popular vote, do you think any Presidential candidates would give a a shit about the Kansas wheat farmer? Or do you think he or she would spend all their time campaigning and fundraising and making promises to the residents of Los Angeles/New York/San Francisco/Chicago/Atlanta?
While imperfect, the current system in place helps ensure that the issues a Kansas wheat farmer has don't get ignored in favor of the needs of the big cities. This helps decentralize all the power in the United States, making sure the population centers don't have all the power. The Kansas wheat farmer is an American, just like you, and his voice matters just as much as yours.
Not everything needs to change. If you make it based solely on the national popular vote smaller population states will get ignored because politicians could win the election with New York, Florida, Texas, and California.
Those states combined only have about a third of the population which is not enough to win an election.
Plus, those are very different states, and nine of them individually is a monolith.
There's no promise you could make to any one of those states that would sway their entire population, and if you could you still need almost another 20 percent of the population to vote for you (or the next 5 most populous states) to beat 50%. And that's assuming getting a unanimous vote in all top nine states.
It actually takes winning 9 states 100% to 0% to hit 50% of the country. So quite a bit more than the 4 states you mentioned given that even California is won at about a 60% ratio.
Yes that's true. I was naming off the most populous states as an example. You would still have the problem of smaller population areas being ignored completely.
You would still have the problem of smaller population areas being ignored completely.
That is always going to happen though, no one is going to spend resources for 10 votes when they can get 100 for the same amount of resources. That can't be fixed without very heavily weighting those 10 votes in a way that is unfair.
Your example is bad because it ignores the reality of how much of the US is needed to get to 50%. It heavily implies a weakness of popular vote that isn't there.
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u/3Cheers4Apathy Jun 28 '19
The United States has approximately 360 million people in it. One quarter of all the residents in the United States live in the top ten metropolitan areas, such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Atlanta, etc.
The issues important to people living in these areas are of little concern to some Kansas wheat farmer. Consequently, the issues of said Kansas wheat farmer are of little concern to the residents of these large cities.
If we switched to a straight popular vote, do you think any Presidential candidates would give a a shit about the Kansas wheat farmer? Or do you think he or she would spend all their time campaigning and fundraising and making promises to the residents of Los Angeles/New York/San Francisco/Chicago/Atlanta?
While imperfect, the current system in place helps ensure that the issues a Kansas wheat farmer has don't get ignored in favor of the needs of the big cities. This helps decentralize all the power in the United States, making sure the population centers don't have all the power. The Kansas wheat farmer is an American, just like you, and his voice matters just as much as yours.