Its failure to what, though, exactly? Go by the popular vote?
There are definitely problems with our democracy, but I don’t think an electoral college automatically disqualifies it. I’d love to see it gone, because I don’t think it’s representative, but the argument behind it is one of broader representation rather than narrow representation.
The idea is that life in the population centers of the US and life in rural areas is very different. We’ve got a fair chunk of our population living in the middle of nowhere, but they’re dwarfed by the population of our cities. By dividing votes by state, it keeps the most populous states from constantly determining the course of the less populous states on a federal level.
The alleged intent is to give those less populous states an opportunity to be involved in the discussion of our federal government. As you’ve probably noticed, laws vary wildly from state to state in the US. Instead of one consensus on law in general, we have 50 mini-consensuses. There are states that literally will refuse to enforce certain federal laws, or that will refuse to honor the laws of other states.
So our presidential electoral process looks very similar. It’s not one consensus, it’s 50 mini-consensuses. Because the votes happen at the state level, you can win a popular vote and still lose the state-by-state vote. That’s not it being broken, that’s it functioning as intended.
This model of state and federal government honestly works pretty well for us in a lot of cases. It allows states like Massachusetts, California, or Washington to go ahead and try some new stuff that other states are hesitant about. It’s why we’ve got things like ACA, marriage equality and other protections for queer folks in some states, and it’s why marijuana has been legalized in a lot of places. Unfortunately it’s also why Texas and Florida are dystopian hellscapes, but it does insulate the people in these more progressive states from a bit of their nonsense.
Unfortunately we also have a lot of jerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement going on that makes the situation worse. But even in a really bad situation, you’re going to have states that protect people from some of the worst of it.
It’s democracy, it’s just not direct democracy at a federal level. It’s representative democracy that focuses on an alliance of 50 states rather than running it like one big thing.
Why would you want people to stop talking about disenfranchisement? States deciding to take the vote away from their citizens after they’ve been convicted is something we should absolutely be highlighting. You’ll even notice there’s a significant correlation between which states are consistently redder and which have greater rates of voter disenfranchisement.
Maybe what we need is clarification about what disenfranchisement is, because it’s not just people deciding not to vote. It’s people having their ability to vote taken away.
Considering its abject failure twice in recent memory, I’d say it is quite evident that it precludes qualifying as a democracy.
But, originally, our founding fathers only intended for rich, landowning men to vote, so the US was never intended to be a democracy anyway.
Its failure to what, though, exactly? Go by the popular vote?
There are definitely problems with our democracy, but I don’t think an electoral college automatically disqualifies it. I’d love to see it gone, because I don’t think it’s representative, but the argument behind it is one of broader representation rather than narrow representation.
The idea is that life in the population centers of the US and life in rural areas is very different. We’ve got a fair chunk of our population living in the middle of nowhere, but they’re dwarfed by the population of our cities. By dividing votes by state, it keeps the most populous states from constantly determining the course of the less populous states on a federal level.
The alleged intent is to give those less populous states an opportunity to be involved in the discussion of our federal government. As you’ve probably noticed, laws vary wildly from state to state in the US. Instead of one consensus on law in general, we have 50 mini-consensuses. There are states that literally will refuse to enforce certain federal laws, or that will refuse to honor the laws of other states.
So our presidential electoral process looks very similar. It’s not one consensus, it’s 50 mini-consensuses. Because the votes happen at the state level, you can win a popular vote and still lose the state-by-state vote. That’s not it being broken, that’s it functioning as intended.
This model of state and federal government honestly works pretty well for us in a lot of cases. It allows states like Massachusetts, California, or Washington to go ahead and try some new stuff that other states are hesitant about. It’s why we’ve got things like ACA, marriage equality and other protections for queer folks in some states, and it’s why marijuana has been legalized in a lot of places. Unfortunately it’s also why Texas and Florida are dystopian hellscapes, but it does insulate the people in these more progressive states from a bit of their nonsense.
Unfortunately we also have a lot of jerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement going on that makes the situation worse. But even in a really bad situation, you’re going to have states that protect people from some of the worst of it.
It’s democracy, it’s just not direct democracy at a federal level. It’s representative democracy that focuses on an alliance of 50 states rather than running it like one big thing.
It is unfortunate. People need to stop using the D word here.
Why would you want people to stop talking about disenfranchisement? States deciding to take the vote away from their citizens after they’ve been convicted is something we should absolutely be highlighting. You’ll even notice there’s a significant correlation between which states are consistently redder and which have greater rates of voter disenfranchisement.
Maybe what we need is clarification about what disenfranchisement is, because it’s not just people deciding not to vote. It’s people having their ability to vote taken away.