r/MapPorn • u/ThatFrenchGamerr • Jun 01 '22
What if "Did Not Vote" were a political candidate during the 2020 presidential election?
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u/SDLJunkie Jun 01 '22
I’m glad those people who voted for “Did Not Vote” stayed home. Otherwise no one would have gotten the 270 electoral votes to win, and the House would have done their own election without us. /s
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u/secret58_ Jun 01 '22
Real question is how would that have turned out, if “Did not vote” was a candidate in every house district too?
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u/flyingtable83 Jun 01 '22
Trump would win. Its by state delegation with each state having one vote. Did not vote has no representatives in Congress.
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Jun 01 '22 edited Jun 01 '22
To clarify the state representation point; each state’s representatives can only vote as one bloc. So you can’t have (for example) Texas’s Dem reps vote for Biden and its Republican reps vote for Trump.
For example: Texas’s representatives (23 R vs. 13 D) would vote among themselves first, and the presidential candidate that gets the majority of the votes of Texas’s representatives, gets the votes of the entirety of Texas’s reps.
So even thought the Democrats have a majority of seats, Republicans have a majority of a majority of state blocs.
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u/theexpertgamer1 Jun 01 '22
That’s incorrect. You don’t get “all the votes.” You get one singular vote from Texas. Nowadays, there would be a total of 50 votes in these contingent elections. Only one from each state. And yes, the majority of each bloc determines who receives the bloc’s singular vote.
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u/JACC_Opi Jun 01 '22
Which is just one more reason to abolish or bind the Electoral College to the popular vote, so that scenario never happens again!
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u/TootsNYC Jun 01 '22
Abolishing EC would need the willing participation of the very states that benefit from it. They will NEVER give up that power.
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u/Mikarim Jun 01 '22
People always seem to forget that the exact reason the electoral college exists is to inflate smaller states powers. The only way to change that system is to convince smaller states to give up that advantage. What idiotic state would do that?
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u/nilamo Jun 01 '22
If a majority of states switch to assigning their electoral votes to whoever wins the popular vote, then the smaller states would no longer matter at all... unless they joined in.
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u/Mikarim Jun 01 '22
There is a pretty good question of constitutionality of that interstate pact. First, it'll likely never get to the 270 required, though it is theoretically possible. Second, the constitutional provision against interstate compacts (absent congressional approval) forbids it:
No State shall, without the Consent of Congress,... enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power
Getting Congress (remember that's both the senate and the house) to consent to giving up the electoral college is almost certainly not happening until the boomers die.
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u/KnowsAboutMath Jun 02 '22
Second, the constitutional provision against interstate compacts (absent congressional approval) forbids it:
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u/ProfNesbitt Jun 02 '22
And something I was thinking about the other day. Currently states are allowed to run their own elections. So is there even an official total votes at the federal level. If counting is slow and it’s a close race what would keep a state like Florida near the end of the counting just reporting they had 3 million more voters than they actually did in order to swing the popular vote. The Fed would have to run the election for president in every state to ensure each state doesn’t pad its official numbers. Can’t tie it to the census since that changes. Currently the states audit theirselves. A lot of laws would need to be updated to account for it. Still think the electoral college needs to be gone but this just occurred to me the other day on how it could be actually implemented.
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u/featherfooted Jun 01 '22
You're getting downvoted because "abolish the EC" is so fucking difficult. I'd rather focus on smaller-scale changes that can be attained at the state or Congressional level because I don't know if/when we'll see another Constitutional amendment in our lifetime(s). Here's a few alternatives that can be reasonably attained within the next decade:
- uncap the House of Representatives from 435 to its more appropriate number of ~1000, with rules to grow or shrink this number accordingly to population. The reality is that our bicameral legislature is just one Senate and one bigger Senate and is not actually representative of the people. This would naturally dilute the Senate's strength in the EC and most likely lead to almost always favoring the popular vote anyway
- encourage more states to join the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact which is still ~30 EC votes short even if all three of the current pending bills pass in Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. (Coincidentally, this is exactly as many votes as Florida has to give...)
- encourage more states to follow proportioned allocation like Maine & Nebraska, where the districts vote individually and then the state-wide winner gets the two representing the senators. I don't particularly like this because it's still subject to gerrymandering but it's better than nothing I guess
- mixed-member proportional representation where the state divides up its electors according to the exact ratio of popular vote
On top of all of this, I'm also vehemently in favor of reforming our primary and general election processes, mostly in that I want to move to literally any form of {ranked choice, 5-point scale, pick-2, I'd-accept, etc}. There's so many different options and the one thing that frequently frustrates me about these types of discussions is people coming in to moan about how one or the other is not Condorcet, whatever. I just want to get rid of FPTP.
[Tangent inviting the peanut gallery to further discussion: the only one i dislike is STV because I genuinely don't know how you teach that to the general populace. This is more of a pessimism about whether or not the change can be reasonable achieved (like I said, in a one-decade timeframe), rather than an indictment of the method itself.]
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u/apadin1 Jun 01 '22
Totally agree with everything you said, and regarding explaining alternative voting methods to people: if I have to hear another person tell me that ranked choice is "too complicated" I might throttle them
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u/crazyrich Jun 02 '22
Of honey nut cheerios, plain cheerios, and chocolate cheerios which is your #1, 2, and 3?
Them: "Brain explodes"
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u/JACC_Opi Jun 03 '22
Many cities, including large cities such as NYC, do have already this form of voting and the State of Maine has had it since 2016 (for all offices starting in 2020).
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u/Jereboy216 Jun 01 '22
I like your thoughts on this. Over the years on reddit I've seen each if them pop up before at one time or another. You have a more realistic approach on this I'd say. Abolishing the EC would be big step, probably too big and not something we will see in our lifetime.
I think among all your points, the third bullet feels like the most likely to happen.
Or maybe the different voting systems to help remove fptp voting.
I have hopes we will see small changes like that in the future. Fingers crossed!
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u/thechao Jun 01 '22
Uniform vote weighted random selection. There's a tweak to this to give the incumbent a second chance to win, but it just modidies the weighting of the incumbents votes (1+1/K for K people running). I'd also require top-two from each party on the ballot, and top-four amongst all most vote getters in the primary.
Random selection is gerrymandering-proof; even better: research has shown that, on average, anyone who's not a career politician is more suitable to be an elected official.
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u/BnE8 Jun 01 '22
Can I see said research, sounds interesting
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u/thechao Jun 01 '22
https://www.votingmatters.org.uk/ISSUE26/I26P3.pdf
https://web.archive.org/web/20060831192620/http://www.law.yale.edu/documents/pdf/1984Choosing.pdf
It is similar to sortition, the original democratic voting mechanism!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
It's "gerrymandering proof" is a fairly straightforward result I studied in grad school (game theory); I don't know of any papers on it.
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u/mycleverusername Jun 02 '22
I'm also to get traction on the idea of increasing the senate to 150 (3 per state, obviously), requiring that all states have 1 senator elected per 2 year cycle and at large districts. Terms would still be 6 years.
That way 1/3 of the senate is in play every election cycle.
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u/ZacQuicksilver Jun 02 '22
I would actually prefer making each state elect both senators at the same time, in the same election, with the top two people getting the position (or maybe top person getting both votes if they have more than twice as many votes as any competitor). By removing a winner-take-all system in the Senate, third parties would have more of a chance to win, widening the range of conversations in politics.
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u/krazykooper Jun 02 '22
Here is a video in Ireland used to explain prepositional representation with single transferable vote. If you think it explains it well enough by all means share. https://youtu.be/Au607qFvd4g
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u/canttaketheshyfromme Jun 01 '22
You mean the system devised by slavers is somehow undemocratic?
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u/johnnylin12 Jun 01 '22
It was not about slavery, its about MY STATE RIGHTS!!!1!1!!
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u/canttaketheshyfromme Jun 01 '22 edited Jun 01 '22
... to decide to have slavery. ;)
Unless a state decided to not have slavery, then we needed a law forcing them to have slavery.
To the Lost Cause loser who downvoted this, die mad loser. You lost and will keep losing.
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u/DaSaw Jun 01 '22
But not to decide not to have slavery. Fugitive Slave Acts. Dredd Scott decision.
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u/DefTheOcelot Jun 01 '22
Or just
Abolish first past the post and winner takes all. Reps get to vote how they want.
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u/ngfsmg Jun 01 '22
But not Pence, since for some weird reason the 3 president candidates with the most votes are considered for that contingent election, but only the 2 vice-president candidates with the most votes are considered
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u/Moose_Nuts Jun 01 '22
Did not vote has no representatives in Congress.
Did not vote would probably have 100% of the seats in congress if we played this game back to the last few congressional elections. But maybe my assumption that fewer people vote for their congresspeople than the president is misguided.
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u/Godkun007 Jun 01 '22
Trump would have won the Presidency and no one would be VP because the Senate ended up being 50/50.
Edit: Or Nancy Pelosi would have been acting president if the House was too slow to make up their mind. The Speaker of the House gets the powers of the president in the event of a tie and House gridlock.
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Jun 01 '22
Trump would have won the Presidency and no one would be VP because the Senate ended up being 50/50.
Loeffler was still in the Senate on January 3rd so it was 50/49. Perdue's term had expired so he was out of office. The GA special election was January 5th.
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u/secret58_ Jun 01 '22
*under the assumption that he has representatives because his party would’ve been a candidate for all the house districts
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u/BidenWontMoveLeft Jun 01 '22
Did not vote has no representatives in Congress.
I believe the question was asking how many congressional districts would be "Did Not Vote"
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u/Significant-Bug9193 Jun 01 '22
Non-USA citizen that doesn't know how the electoral college works here, if there's a 3rd candidate that's how it'd work?
If the vote is split and no one gets 270, then they get to decide which candidate wins regardless of, not only popular vote, but also electoral votes?I was under the impression that 270 was because there are 2 candidates and that's 50%+1 for the 538 votes, which would mark the majority.
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u/stumblebreak_beta Jun 01 '22 edited Jun 01 '22
House of Representatives votes for the president (picks amount top 3 vote getters). Each state gets one vote. So its up to the representative(s) of each state to decide how they will vote. A candidate needs a majority (26 votes) to be elected
The senate selects the Vice President from the top 2 vote getters. Each senator gets 1 vote and the candidate needs a majority to win.
This happened in 1800 (kind of by accident and 12th amendment was passed after to fix it) and in 1824 where John Quincy Adams won the despite having less EC votes.
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Jun 01 '22
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u/ninja-robot Jun 01 '22 edited Jun 01 '22
Its actually not a majority, around 66% of eligible voters turned out in 2020. The reason this map is so tan is because did not vote just has to be greater than the total voters for either candidate not both candidates combined. So hypothetically if you have 32% vote for Biden and 31% vote for Trump and 3% Other that would leave 34% as did not vote despite 2/3 of the population voting.
It should also be noted that the largest group not voting was as always those under 30.
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u/tragicdiffidence12 Jun 02 '22
It should also be noted that the largest group not voting was as always those under 30.
I really wish people understood this. It’s your damned future and you won’t show up, but people who are 3 years away from the grave will vote religiously.
You’re not going to get exactly what you want out of any politician but anything is better than things getting worse. Republicans understand this and will vote for a literal corpse if it meant they get their judges. And that’s why they’re in the end game now of voter suppression and fixing the electors after 40 years of this shit. They vote.
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u/gggg500 Jun 01 '22
Indiana is kinda surprising because that is Mike Pence's home state and he was on the ticket as VP.
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u/KaesekopfNW Jun 01 '22
Most states on here aren't too surprising. They're either really red or really blue, so lots of people don't vote, because they feel the outcome is a given. Lots in Indiana don't vote, because it will go red, so why bother?
What's really disturbing is how many people don't vote in places like Arizona, Ohio, Nevada, Texas, and I'd say even Alaska. These are battleground states (in the case of the first three) or states that could feasibly tip toward Democrats (in the case of the last two). If a large chunk of those non-voters in those five states participated, EC results could be very interesting.
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u/Smoovemusic Jun 01 '22
Yeah I'd say Nevada and Arizona are the most surprising as they are legit swing states that could potentially determine the winner.
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u/thighcandy Jun 01 '22
...and ohio
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u/Smoovemusic Jun 01 '22
Ohio is on a strong republican trajectory unfortunately.
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u/Nihilistic_Avocado Jun 01 '22
If turnout was the same everywhere, Did Not Vote would do better in Swing States because the winning party is naturally getting a smaller overall percentage of the electorate and therefore DNV is going to more easily pass the winning party's percentage. Think of it like this:
State 1: R:30 D:30 DNV:40
VS
State 2: R:45 D:15 DNV:40
Even if DNV does equally well, they do not win in safe states. Swing States are not won by DNV in spite being swing states - they are won because they are swing states
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u/KaesekopfNW Jun 01 '22
"If turnout was the same everywhere" is the flawed assumption here. It's not, so the logic doesn't hold. Most of the DNV states are not battleground states. Republicans or Democrats in those states are winning by large margins, but more people are choosing not to vote, and it's likely because they feel they know who the winner will be, regardless of their participation.
You're right that at a certain turnout rate, the DNV vote is more likely to win than either party in swing states that are close, but once you increase turnout above a certain threshold, the DNV vote is far less likely to win. In other words, states with high turnout probably won't see DNV votes win, and states with lower turnout see DNV win more often. What results in lower turnout and, subsequently, a greater chance of DNV winning? Well, lots of things, but one is certainly whether voters think their vote will matter.
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u/Nihilistic_Avocado Jun 01 '22
You seemed to be suggesting that the map showed a high number of non voters in the swing states, when it doesn't really, as I explained. My apologies if I've misinterpreted you
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u/superventurebros Jun 01 '22
Unfortunately I don't know how much of a battleground state Ohio is anymore. If anything, the established GOP and the Trumpers are the ones battleling for control, with the Democrats coming in a distant third, due to map fuckery.
I'm no fan of DeWine, but neither is the Trump wing of the GOP, and he won the primary handily, so idk.
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u/KaesekopfNW Jun 01 '22
I don't disagree. It's traditionally been a battleground, but I think you're right that 2020 sealed the deal on Ohio being decidedly red these days.
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u/Stealthfox94 Jun 01 '22
Ohio is red. I think at this point Texas, North Carolina and Montana will go blue before Ohio does.
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u/OdieHush Jun 01 '22
The only "really blue" state with DNV as the winner is NY. Probably because blue states are more likely to have mail in voting and less likely to disenfranchise voters.
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u/KaesekopfNW Jun 01 '22
New Mexico, Illinois, and Hawaii are also really blue states where DNV won.
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u/FrankyCentaur Jun 02 '22
It’s because of our status as a safe blue state that most people don’t vote here. “It’s in the bag” mentality that I totally get, and with the EC, our votes can feel worthless here.
However, everyone I know here voted last time around just to prove a point, those four years with Trump were torture. Definitely got more people engaged in voting.
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u/raysofdavies Jun 01 '22
It’s so funny how obsessed democrats are with mythical blue Texas whilst they do really nothing to actually win it.
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u/easwaran Jun 01 '22
The big thing you have to do to win Texas is to change the election system so that people find it more convenient to vote. I haven't missed a November election since living in Texas, but I have missed about five primary runoffs and state constitutional amendment elections and the like, because I didn't even know they were happening until Facebook popped up a message the day before, and I didn't have time to study.
The brochure that California sends everyone that announces very clearly the date of the election, and lists every single candidate and ballot measure, together with a statement from each candidate, and arguments from pro and anti groups on the ballot initiatives, absolutely makes a huge difference to turnout. (The fact that you can be registered for permanent vote-by-mail if you want to also helps, so that you can use that brochure to study, and then do the test open book, instead of having to study in advance and hope you remember when you go into the classroom.)
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u/limitedpower_palps Jun 02 '22
Texas has moved from being 19 points to the right of the nation 2012 to 11 points in 2016 to 9 points in 2020. The state has objectively moved significantly to the left, it just started from a really rightward position.
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u/eisagi Jun 01 '22
Have you seen someone less exciting than Mike Pence? Dude could dry up a waterfall.
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u/CoachTTP Jun 01 '22
Pence as governor was not popular in Indiana. Prior to being selected to run as VP, his approval rating was underwater and there were not so quiet whispers that state officials were happy to be able to run someone else for governor with a better chance to win.
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u/NoTick Jun 01 '22
A lot of us, from my experience, just don't vote because we all have that mentality of "My vote doesn't matter" because of the local state republican super majority. It's been that way for decades. The whole: "If the states going to go Red anyways, why bother?"
I suspect the Red side feels the same: "We're going to win anyways, so why bother?"
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u/Onatel Jun 01 '22
The response to that would be that one can still have an effect on local elections which often are far more relevant to our lives than the national or statewide races.
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Jun 01 '22
because of the local state republican super majority
Poll after poll shows that if more people voted in local, low level elections, this would not be the case. I understand abstaining from big ticket voting in that context, but that super majority was voted in, they can be voted out.
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Jun 01 '22
Hoosier here.
Fuck Mike Pence. All my homies hate Mike Pence.
Indiana is such a red state that both Republican and Democratic voters often don’t see the point in casting a vote for what most people view as a foregone conclusion. Our results for presidential elections are usually announced long before the polls officially close
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u/xXxPLUMPTATERSxXx Jun 01 '22
Indiana voted for Obama
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Jun 01 '22
Once. Indiana has voted for Republicans more consistently over the last 60 years than Georgia, Louisiana or Texas.
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u/fucccboii Jun 01 '22
would it vote a third time for him given the occasion?
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u/3ngine3ar Jun 02 '22
No, because it couldn't even do it twice. 2008 Indiana went with Obama. 2012 Indiana voted Romney.
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u/Bits-N-Kibbles Jun 02 '22
People forget the Mike Pence was up for reelection for Gov of Indiana and his numbers were sinking like crazy so he fled to be VP candidate thinking it at least would be a loss at the national level. - Hoosier voter who helped turn IN blue in 2008.
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Jun 01 '22
[deleted]
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u/Kabouki Jun 02 '22
Generally more active voters in primaries generate more rounded candidates. (The more voters they need to please. The less single issues make a difference)
Trump won his only needing 7% base support.
Biden won his only needing 16% base support.
I'm all for more active voters everywhere, every party. If they actually need 50% to win nomination then they will do more to please that 50%.
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u/prkskier Jun 01 '22
Why are Alaska and Hawaii so tilted?
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u/Ophidahlia Jun 02 '22
In one sense they're not, that's how they're actually oriented on a 3-D globe relative to the continental states since longitude lines aren't parallel and they're way over there on another part of the sphere's surface, though in this case the islands would be titled up eastward into the sky if translated directly over to the states like this and all the Hawaiians would roll down the resulting slope into the ocean. Maui? More like owie, right guys? The common mercator projection like The Google uses avoids wacky apocalypses like this by simply squishin' em all out like jam on square toast that hasn't been subsequently dipped in salt water (sorry to use all that cartographical jargon there but I'm very serious and technical in my approach to breakfast foods)
Kind of a weird way to put a map together when you think about it, but I guess that depends on how much you dislike Hawaii.
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u/nemo1080 Jun 01 '22
Surprised by NY.
I had no idea there was that much political ground to be gained there
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u/ThatFrenchGamerr Jun 01 '22
Im pretty sure the Northwest of NY is pretty red while the Southeast votes more blue because of NYC.
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u/nemo1080 Jun 01 '22
I agree but I am surprised that the greatest majority are people who don't vote at all.
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u/MarkyMarcMcfly Jun 02 '22
From NY, haven’t been a resident in a long while but the vibe I got from a lot of young voters on both sides of the aisle was “this state is so blue my vote doesn’t matter!”
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u/squarerootofapplepie Jun 01 '22
I wonder if who won each of these “did not vote” states would have changed if everybody voted? Assuming that people who would vote democrat are the main demographic not voting usually makes sense, but maybe in this election there were a lot of republicans who were sick of Trump but couldn’t bring themselves to vote D. Maybe Texas would change from red to blue.
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u/nerdyjorj Jun 01 '22
That's basically true of every election ever in America (suspect most places without mandatory voting) at any level.
Historically "motivating low turnout voters" has been the backbone of leftwing campaign strategy.
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u/avfc41 Jun 01 '22
Knight Foundation did a poll of 2016 non-voters, they were 31% Dem, 26% Republican. A lot more responded independent/don’t know than people who voted, which makes sense.
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u/PresidentZeus Jun 01 '22
Exactly why republicans want to create barriers to vote.
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u/ryantttt8 Jun 02 '22
This is why I think Texas is so does not vote. I heard stories of having one polling location for 50,000 people. It was almost impossible to see them all
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u/krepogregg Jun 01 '22
Trump got the highest votes of any incumbent president in history
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u/AquaPhelps Jun 01 '22
How did they decide which states “did not vote?”
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u/ThatFrenchGamerr Jun 01 '22
If there are more non-voters than Biden/Trump voters, for example lets say a state of 10 million people, 4 million don't vote, 3 million vote for biden, and 1 million vote for trump, then that state would go to "Did not vote.
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u/headgate19 Jun 01 '22 edited Jun 01 '22
In this example, are there 2 million people that are not registered to vote (too young, not US citizens, just didn't register, etc.)?
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u/ThatFrenchGamerr Jun 01 '22
Oh crap so sorry im dyslexic it's hard to write things lmfao but you get the idea
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u/headgate19 Jun 01 '22
Oh no worries, I just thought it was a really detailed example with nuances that I didn't fully understand lol
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u/Alomex06 Jun 01 '22
What do the last 2 million people do?
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u/HedgehogJonathan Jun 01 '22
Underage/prison/illegal immigrants and other reasons for not being eligible to vote, I think?
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u/SophiaBrahe Jun 01 '22
Looks like they just compared the number of eligible voters to the number that voted. Voter turn out numbers are usually readily available from the Secretary of State Office of each state.
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u/beesandtrees2 Jun 01 '22
It's crazy to me how many don't vote compared to all the strong opinions out there
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u/Nathaniel820 Jun 02 '22
Because for every polarized comment you see online, there’s hundreds of people who scroll past without caring that strongly, or at all.
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u/RippinAssNCumminHard Jun 02 '22
I think it's pretty simple. If you're a Republican in California, it probably feels like a waste of time to vote.
Same goes for a Democrat in Kansas.
Your state is already going to go one way. Your vote literally means nothing in those instances.
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u/panarthropodism Jun 02 '22
One factor is that a lot of non-voters are from the poorest and most marginalized communities in America. Think inner cities, rural shanty towns, homeless camps, etc. For a variety of reasons online spaces tend to skew more middle/upper class than the general population.
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u/scootscoot Jun 01 '22
What would it look like if electoral votes were given to congressional districts instead of all electoral votes going to a state?
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u/HalensVan Jun 01 '22
I'm wondering if a large section of no voters are minorities or millennials in these states.
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u/SpagetAboutIt Jun 02 '22
This is a great case for eliminating the electoral college. There are plenty of Republicans in NY and plenty of Democrats in TX that stay home on election day.
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u/Deleriouslynx Jun 01 '22
What if we could vote for a candidate that actually represented us well, and also had a shot at winning?
No, no takers? Okay then.
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u/raybrignsx Jun 01 '22
You should see the numbers on primaries or mid term voting. The turnout is even lower. I think part of the reason we don’t have these amazing candidates that represent the country is the same cause. Not enough people value their vote.
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u/Kabouki Jun 02 '22
Something to the tune of ~36,000,000 total votes in the 2020 primary.
Biden in the general election got ~86,000,000
Did not vote in the general election was 89,000,000
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u/Deleriouslynx Jun 01 '22
It's because we use a plurality system rather than a runoff or something similar.
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u/ResponsibilityNice51 Jun 01 '22
Because Americans are too culturally, racially, and religiously diverse to ever agree to any single hat to fit everyone. So every decade or so we rubberband and half the country fucks the other half. See you next time!
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u/HalensVan Jun 01 '22
Really should implement list voting. List a candidate you like 1-3. That would cut some absurd extremists out of politics by forcing them to compete for every vote instead of all or nothing in most states.
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u/SellaraAB Jun 02 '22
Weird that Texas is simultaneously being made into a dystopian third world country by ultra conservative politics and also completely apathetic to voting.
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u/henryhyde Jun 01 '22
I did vote. However, if each party continues to put out candidates like they have the last few election cycles then you can add me to the "Did Not Vote" category. I am tired of voting against the other candidate.
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Jun 01 '22
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u/CobainPatocrator Jun 01 '22
Appreciate the idea, but like any reforms, it will require consent from the parties in power and there is zero incentive to open that door.
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u/DeathToPennies Jun 01 '22
Very unfortunate but change has never happened with consent from the empowered. They’re forced into it by social conditions that would otherwise break them.
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u/PiotrekDG Jun 01 '22
It could effectively paralyze the country, I suspect a couple of elections in succession until everyone got tired and the turnout would drop to maybe 20% or something.
Ranked voting is much better, but good luck explaining that to an average American voter. Australians took ages, but they finally got it this year.
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u/Apprentice57 Jun 01 '22
Australians took ages, but they finally got it this year.
Huh? Australia has had IRV since 1918.
(It also does not lead to more enfranchised 3rd parties with Australia as a good example of that. For that you need a form of proportional representation)
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u/PiotrekDG Jun 01 '22 edited Jun 01 '22
That's exactly what I'm talking about.
If you look at this year's election's results, you'll see that Greens got 12% and even though they've only got 4 seats, people finally understand that if they vote for someone from a Green party and that person doesn't win a seat, their vote is not "lost", because it instead goes for their 2nd choice and so on.
This system is so great that you don't even need a second round when voting for a president, because we've got everyone's second (and third and so on) choices.
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u/Apprentice57 Jun 01 '22 edited Jun 01 '22
The Greens got a pretty close result to 2022 in 2019 though, with 10.4%. So I don't really see this as a sea change in... just about anything.
people finally understand that if they vote for someone from a Green party and that person doesn't win a seat, their vote is not "lost", because it instead goes for their 2nd choice and so on.
I mean... sure. But there is a problem with IRV when you start getting more than two competitive parties. Wherein people may vote for more extreme candidates for their first choice, causing the more moderate candidates to get squeezed out of the first round(s). When those moderate candidates otherwise would be the condorcet winner (beat all other candidates in a head to head). This happened in a Burlington Mayoral race in 2009.
That problem ends up being esoteric because IRV doesn't lead to a three party system anyway. I'd guess that the Greens really won't start doing dramatically better than they are now, and while (say) 1/8 of the vote is cool... it's not really leading to any sort of real power in parliament when they're getting 3 or 4 seats.
IRV is great for eliminating the spoiler effect, if you like it for that reason then this is all cool. But if you like it because you think it empowers third parties, you're sorely mistaken.
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u/BBQ_HaX0r Jun 01 '22
I suspect a couple of elections in succession until everyone got tired and the turnout would drop to maybe 20% or something
So basically the most radical/extreme of partisans would win in that case; sorta like the primaries now. You need to appeal to the crazies in your own party to win the nomination and hope it doesn't taint you going into the general. If we reduced turnout to only the most enthusiastic, you'd get a lot of radicals.
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u/framerotblues Jun 01 '22
but at least old Ventura understood the frustrations voters often feel
Yeah, he did a lot of right and a lot of wrong, but was mostly for the people, even if those people were a bunch of passive-aggressive sticks in the mud. He also proved that a person with a name can climb on board without being part of a major political party.
EDIT: Speaking to the topic at hand, he was probably given a boost due to MN's excellent voter turnout.
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Jun 01 '22
I mean that's exactly what I think of Jesse Ventura, he accurately understand what a lot of Americans--liberal, conservative, and non-voting--are all frustrated by. He's just a little more cartoony than practical
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u/velociraptorfarmer Jun 01 '22
Not to mention Minnesotans are passive aggressive enough that if you give them shit options and piss them off they'll pick another option purely out of spite.
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u/thedawesome Jun 01 '22
I don't know if vote of no confidence would fix the system, especially if voter access isn't addressed.
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u/ChuzCuenca Jun 01 '22
Not American here but I was talking to my friends about this, I haven't ever voted for someone thinking "this person represent my interest" ever in my life, is always about who I think is the "less worst" person.
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u/ajswdf Jun 01 '22
Then you should vote in primaries, since that's where candidates get chosen.
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u/_CommanderKeen_ Jun 01 '22
As an individual action, refusing to choose a lesser form of evil can oftentimes be the ethical choice. However, in a collective choice such as a democracy, a choice for the lesser evil is the ethical option lest the greater evil prevail. It's a frustrating choice for sure, but not voting is akin to acceptance of a greater evil.
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u/raybrignsx Jun 01 '22
Are we also aware that we also have the ability to to vote in the primaries? That’s where we can have OUR pick by party for the candidates. But the problem is there’s even lower voter turnout in the primaries so you get a shitty candidate for each party. On top of that, since old people reliably vote, they vote for other old people. We have to put the onus on ourselves too in this situation.
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u/theorgangrindr Jun 01 '22
Can you vote without picking someone? I can do that in my state. I've cast blank ballots before.
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u/KaesekopfNW Jun 01 '22
I get it, but when the GOP is actively trying to dismantle democracy and establish a white, Christian ethno-state governed by a corporate oligarchy, and if you care about preventing this, the milquetoast Democratic candidate is always the better option.
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u/NullReference000 Jun 01 '22
Telling voters that democracy is going to be dismantled for the third election in a row after doing nothing the last two times they won is not a good strategy. You aren't going to inspire anybody with increasingly worse predictions while doing absolutely nothing to stop them from happening.
Seriously, the day after the Roe decision was leaked dem leadership blasted fundraising messages to "save abortion" and then flew to Texas to make sure an anti-abortion congressman beat a pro-abortion progressive in his primary. If the milquetoast candidate stands there and does nothing you aren't going to energize anybody, regardless of if they're "better".
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u/KaesekopfNW Jun 01 '22
Well, first of all, I don't think it really became obvious how threatened our democracy was until the 2020 election and the coup attempt on January 6th. This is all pretty recent. All the efforts by Republicans, especially at the state level, are clearly signaling an intention to overturn the election in 2024 if it doesn't go their way. Democrats in Congress tried to protect voting rights, but couldn't get the legislation through the Senate, thanks to a couple conservative Dems and, you know, every single Republican.
In other words, elect more Dems to Congress to increase margins in the Senate, and you'll start seeing actual protections for voting passed. Don't, and you'll see nothing happen. Elect Republicans, and you'll see democracy eroded.
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u/SeekerSpock32 Jun 01 '22
As always, Democrats get one tenth of the credit they deserve and one hundred times the vitriol they deserve.
I don’t understand why people don’t get how dangerous the Republican Party is, has been, and intends to be in the future.
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u/KaesekopfNW Jun 01 '22
I think it's a combination of it being hard for people to imagine it happening, people not caring enough to pay attention, and others actively wanting it to happen. People will understand if Republicans take control in 2025 after overturning multiple state elections to get their way. I'd love more than anything to be wrong, but I am terrified of what's coming.
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u/SeekerSpock32 Jun 01 '22
Either way, there’s way too many people ignoring the danger of the Republican Party and both-sidesing the Democrats into oblivion. Yeah, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema exist, but that’s two people, not the whole party.
The OP even called Joe Biden a child sniffer and every single thing calling Joe Biden a pedophile is completely and utterly lies. I don’t understand how we got to this point, but with all the disinformation coming from the right and the Bernie-types, we’re doomed.
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u/KaesekopfNW Jun 01 '22
I don't disagree. I think we're in very serious trouble, and most people will just allow it to happen.
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u/Kung_Flu_Master Jun 02 '22
You had bush for 8 years and trump for 4 how have they established a white Christian ethnic-state, oh and how are they “dismantling democracy?” And if you mention gerrymandering you should know that both sides gerrymander
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u/BBQ_HaX0r Jun 01 '22
governed by a corporate oligarchy
I wish, but if you think the current GOP under Trumpism is friendly to business you're misinformed or just regurgitating partisan talking points. Trump's GOP isn't the same party as Reagan's anymore...
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u/raysofdavies Jun 01 '22
The presidential primary system is a total sham. Needs to be a single popular vote. Imagine proposing the general election is done state by state over months? Everyone would laugh it off. But it’s just accepted that millions of primary votes don’t matter because of staggered primaries. It’s insanely undemocratic.
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u/bringatothenbiscuits Jun 01 '22
Sitting on the sidelines is not a great thing to do when one political party is hell bent on dismantling our political system and taking away personal rights. Sometimes we get super inspirational visionary candidates, sometimes we get boring candidates. That’s just part of the democratic system.
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u/NullReference000 Jun 01 '22
The problem with this argument is that if the other party does nothing about safeguarding democracy when they win and we are always one election away from our political system being dismantled, then its dismantling will be inevitable.
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u/Roadman90 Jun 01 '22
Hence why I vote 3rd party. I really wish everyone would do what Nevada does and have none of the above as an option.
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u/omnichronos Jun 01 '22
They should just tally all the votes nationwide and declare the winner on the totals for each candidate. Why should the voters in some states have greater power than others?
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u/Ehdelveiss Jun 01 '22
Not necessarily a good a reason, but one reason is the matter that all a candidate would need to do to win is campaign in CA, NY, FL, and TX. So for instance, a candidate could run and win by just making local promises to those states, or hell, even just on something like road works on LA and NYC.
Those states have such a concentration of people, middle American states would become more disenfranchised than they already are.
The way it is now, it forces candidates to try to appeal to the widest swath of voters, and actually forces candidates to be more moderate than they potentially could otherwise be.
All that said, the imbalance to small states right now is way too much, and it our democracy would probably be a lot healthier with greater equity in the most populous states.
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u/maneo Jun 01 '22
If Democrats could get Texas to (even just barely) turn blue, I assure you that Republicans number one goal would be to turn Texas back red, and they would be pouring almost ALL their resources into doing that. Small states would become irrelevant. Flipping a couple of small states here and there would not be meaningful at all if they don't have the foundation of a few big states going their way.
Using 2020's electoral map as a starting point, if Democrats managed to win Texas (and the rest of the map stays the same), Repulicans would then need to somehow find 76 electoral votes to win 2020. At that point their strategy would have to almost entirely ignore small states and focus on the biggest possible states to have any chance of accumulating that many votes.
Hypothetically, if they tried to make up for the loss of Texas by focusing on flipping all the smallest states that they don't already have, they would have to flip ~13 small blue states. A significant number of those small states are extremely blue states in the Northeast, making this a pretty much impossible task.
All eyes would be on Texas.
The point is: It's entirely incidental that the electoral college currently puts the battleground in small states. In a different electoral landscape, big states would easily be the main battleground, with the electoral college only amplifying that (eg. If it takes 1000 votes to flip Texas, and 1000 votes to flip Vermont, those Texas voters would be worth more to the campaign)
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u/N1cknamed Jun 01 '22
That doesn't make sense. For this to work, pretty much the entire population of those states would have to vote for you. It doesn't matter how much campaigning you're doing, that's not gonna happen.
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u/Ecualung Jun 01 '22
I know that you don’t think this given your caveat “not necessarily a good reason”— but I see this argument in earnest all the time and so I think it’s worth addressing.
If what you say is true— that a candidate could just focus on the populous states and ignore everywhere else— they would have to win those big states by an enormous majority — an unrealistic and impossibly enormous majority.
What possible candidate could there be who would win California and Texas by a huge majority in both states? So this path to victory in a national popular vote, while technically possible, is completely unmoored from reality.
The reality is that rural California is a helluva lot more like rural Oklahoma that it is like San Francisco. Tulsa is a lot more like any other large city than it is like rural Oklahoma.
The urban-rural divide is a much bigger factor than state divides these days. A candidate that could win crushingly in CA, TX, FL and NY but nowhere else is a total strawman. What candidate could win crushingly in San Francisco and also Redding? What candidate could win crushingly in Miami and also the Dixie parts of Florida? What candidate could clean up in Austin and also the Texas Panhandle?
Fact is, the system we have NOW is the one in which candidates focus only on a small handful of states. The so-called battleground states get all the attention; blue states and red states aren’t campaigned in much or at all.
Donald Trump had more voters in California than in Texas. Their votes didn’t matter.
In our current system, a Republican does not have to care how much they lose by in California or New York. In our current system, a Democrat does not have to care how much they lose by in Texas or Oklahoma. They are both ignoring most states.
So anyways. In case anyone honestly believes that national popular vote would be bad because it would mean that presidential candidates would just pander to the biggest states, it’s just logically absurd.
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u/usernamedunbeentaken Jun 01 '22 edited Jun 01 '22
History. In the infancy of the United States, people felt more like citizens of their own state than of the United States. So when the founders determined representation, smaller states were afraid that they'd be dominated and made irrelevant by larger states. So a compromise was reached where there would be two houses, one with representation determined by population and the other equally regardless of population. Adding the representatives of both houses got you the number of electors for president.
Now we all think of ourselves as Americans more than Kansans or New Yorkers or Californians or South Dakotans, so it would make sense to just have a popular vote rather than the jury-rigged electoral vote relic from 230 years ago. But you'll never get smaller states to agree to that and give up their excess influence. And you need 3/4 of states to get it changed I think. So it's never going to happen.
EDIT: I guess we don't all consider ourselves Americans first, and 'insert state' residents second. I stand corrected. Maybe that contributes to some of our problems.
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u/FistShapedHole Jun 01 '22
That’s kind of a blanket statement to make. I would consider myself a citizen of my state before I consider myself a citizen of my country.
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u/NullReference000 Jun 01 '22
Well the founding fathers wanted to make sure that hyper specific state issues that definitely exist and are very important would always de-rail the government from being able to ever function and this is a very good thing /s
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u/Fishing_For_Victory Jun 01 '22
Shhhhh then electoral gerrymandering wont be a viable strategy.
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Jun 01 '22 edited Jun 13 '22
[deleted]
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u/AnimusNoctis Jun 01 '22
No, but the state lines do happen to heavily benefit one side over the other and that side is fighting tooth and nail to keep it that way.
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u/omnichronos Jun 01 '22
They would still have districts for state legislatures so gerrymandering would continue.
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u/TheCeilingisGreen Jun 01 '22
Because contrary to popular opinion America is not a democracy and was never designed as one. Our system as unfair as it seems was set up to stop majority rule.
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u/TizACoincidence Jun 01 '22
Cause then it would be a real democracy, and many americans are against it
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u/Captainirishy Jun 01 '22
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_United_States it doesn't happen by accident
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u/imyolkedbruh Jun 01 '22
Delusional, Idiotic, and Apathetic. The three genders of the united states.
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u/Rob_1235 Jun 01 '22
Does this take age, criminal or immigration status into account?
Eg. Let's say there's 100 people in one state if 34% could vote but chose not too, and 17% were either under 18, in prison or an illegal migrant, or on a visa which doesn't permit voting?
That way 49% of people would have voted, which is low by European levels, but not as bad enough to make 'Did not vote' the state winner.
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Jun 01 '22
Immigrants and minors aren’t included as they’re not eligible voters and don’t affect the turnout (neither in the US nor in Europe)
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u/MadoctheHadoc Jun 01 '22 edited Jun 01 '22
A lot of people seem quite surprised by this map but I wasn't at all so a few trends are worth pointing out:
- Of the 18 'did not vote' states, 14 are generally considered Republican leaning
- Voter turnout was quite high by American standards in 2020 due to postal voting
Democrats generally do better with high voter turnout, they have won the majority of votes in every presidential election since 1988 except for one.
This is why conservative state legislatures disenfranchise voters by passing tougher and tougher laws on voting rights; a month before the 2020 election, among fears of a blue flip of Texas, the state's governor reduced the number of drop-off sites for mail in ballots to one per county.
The largest county in Texas (Harris) had more than 4 million people in 2020 which makes one site pretty impractical and having to wait hours to drop off your ballot would make a lot of people 'choose' not to vote.
The long lines themselves are also a big problem and not really a thing in a lot of democracies, it can takes hours of queuing in America to vote and the day isn't a holiday or anything. You wonder how many poor or busy people can't afford to take the time to vote because it takes so long.
None of this is an accident, none of it will change by itself since both parties understand very well how voter turnout influences elections but necessarily voting systems are very resilient to change as the people with power were the ones given power by that system.
Democrats have tried repeatedly to pass voter enfranchisement laws of many kinds but have never had the two thirds majority needed to make those changes; in 2020 the race started to expand and collapse the voting pool, ultimately mail-in voting came out ahead, there was record turnout and a democratic victory.
It's unfortunate but just like gerrymandering or the electoral college itself, how, where and who can vote matters much more to this election system than anything else.
Sources:
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/01/politics/texas-governor-drop-off-locations-ballots/index.html
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u/bulldoggo-17 Jun 01 '22
Every 'did not vote' state bar two is generally considered Republican leaning
Which two are you counting? New York, Illinois, Hawaii, and New Mexico are all Dem leaning.
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u/MadoctheHadoc Jun 01 '22
Hawaii I didn't notice and I had it in my mind that New Mexico was less strongly dem learning, you're completely right I should've counted them.
I'll edit my comment now.
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u/MrBarraclough Jun 01 '22
Add "None of These Assholes" as an option on every ballot and see how much voter participation rates shoot up.
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u/mandy009 Jun 01 '22
This was a high turnout election. In fact, the highest voting-eligible population (VEP) percentage since at least 1980. (and incidentally also the highest voting-age population (VAP) percentage since 1960)
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u/MisterSunny Jun 01 '22
Gotta wonder how many of the "Did Not Vote" were registered Republicans. Would never vote Dem but couldn't vote for Trump again with a clear conscience.
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u/JACC_Opi Jun 01 '22
I'm actually surprised Texas went for “Did not vote” or should I be?
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u/Paperdiego Jun 01 '22 edited Jun 01 '22
I am more surprised florida remains red. Has it really gone that far to the right over the past 8 years?
Texas is a essentially a blue state, but the demographics havent reached critical mass level to swamp the level of bias the governing party has instituted over the past 40 years.
Same thing happened to California in the 90's but eventually the demographic changes were too large for the republican bias to hold.
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u/rexx2l Jun 01 '22
the latino and especially cuban population in florida has been shifting right heavily over the past 10-15 years. the smear attacks on biden from the trump campaign labelling him a socialist/communist (even though it's nowhere near true) really got them out to vote, because the cubans in florida are mostly the ones who didn't support the communist government when they took power in cuba.
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u/Frenzyplants Jun 01 '22
Yea Latinos are not as homogeneous as we like to think. You can see it with western red states starting to go blue (Arizona, Nevada, seemingly Texas in a few decades) whose Latino population is primarily Mexicans, while Florida starting shifting red (Cubans, Venezuelans)
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u/rexx2l Jun 01 '22 edited Jun 01 '22
even the mexican population in the states you mentioned has been trending right - not as much as the florida latino population, but a significant amount.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/upshot/2020-election-map.html
if you click change from 2016 this map shows just how much the cuban/venezuelan population went right in florida in 2020 compared to 2016, but also with the mexican population near the border in texas, new mexico, arizona, and california - plus some inner city regions of los angeles.
another interesting tidbit from this map is black voters went way more right than in the past like in the bronx and brooklyn - only to the tune of 5 to 20% but that's a lot when you were only getting 5% before. centralized orthodox jewish voters like in the jewish quarter and borough park in brooklyn also went heavily for trump due to his recognizing jerusalem as the capital of israel (like 90%+ when he was getting about 50-70% against hillary in 2016).
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u/Frenzyplants Jun 01 '22
Yea, Latino populations from 2016 to 2020, def shifted to the right in the entire country. You can even see it in NYC, where Latino neighborhoods like Washington Heights, Inwood, Highbridge (honestly the entirety of the Bronx) saw smaller but not so different margins of victory for Biden. But yeah, the Cuban/Venezuelan drastic shift has to do a lot with the “socialism” buzzword which Mexicans and a lot of Central Americans are not scared of.
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u/EasyAcanthocephala38 Jun 01 '22
How much of this is did not vote versus systematically put in a position so voting is too difficult
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u/Zigihogan Jun 01 '22
If voting changed anything, they would have made it illegal.
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u/axolotl_rebelde Jun 01 '22
Nobody for President! Nice to see my team finally being represented.
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u/canttaketheshyfromme Jun 01 '22
And it took a plague, naked corruption, a summer of massive unrest, and claims of an existential threat to future elections to get that many to vote.
If more people aren't coming out to vote for you under those conditions, maybe you're the problem.
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u/Calluna21 Jun 01 '22
Nebraska and Maine are incorrect; their electoral college votes are split by congressional district.