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Esquire wrote:

Borgholio wrote:

Esquire wrote:Why is it a better idea to have a purely popular vote?

The president should represent the majority of the entire nation, not a handful of battleground states.

The majority of the nation doesn't vote, I'll remind you.

This would give them an incentive to start voting, yes?

Did Romney concede? A few minutes ago Fox News was reporting that "Romney campaign doesn't concede yet" - but now they're just straight out saying Obama has won.

Did Virginia go red again?

At this point it doesn't matter. Who cares about Virginia.

Channel72 wrote:Did Romney concede? A few minutes ago Fox News was reporting that "Romney campaign doesn't concede yet" - but now they're just straight out saying Obama has won.

Yeah, Fox is already dissecting why he lost.

But presumably Romney needs to concede soon, before he looks like a dick.

Channel72 wrote:Did Romney concede? A few minutes ago Fox News was reporting that "Romney campaign doesn't concede yet" - but now they're just straight out saying Obama has won.

Oh he won allright, but Romney is still refusing to admit it.

Borgholio wrote:

Esquire wrote:Why is it a better idea to have a purely popular vote?

The president should represent the majority of the entire nation, not a handful of battleground states.

Once the West Coast votes are counted Obama will win the popular vote anyways.

NPR's called VA for Obama, at the least.

Channel72 wrote:At this point it doesn't matter. Who cares about Virginia.

I'm simply curious.

Esquire wrote:

Borgholio wrote:

Esquire wrote:Why is it a better idea to have a purely popular vote?

The president should represent the majority of the entire nation, not a handful of battleground states.

The majority of the nation doesn't vote, I'll remind you.

Um, I wonder why? I wonder what would fix it, maybe making their vote count?

Borgholio wrote:

Esquire wrote:Why is it a better idea to have a purely popular vote?

The president should represent the majority of the entire nation, not a handful of battleground states.

Should having 70% support in Texas matter more than having 60% support in some diverse combination of states like, say... Vermont, Hawaii, West Virginia, Iowa, Oregon, Colorado, and Maryland?

I don't think we should assume "he who has the most votes, wins everything" is the best way to run a democracy. The alternatives at least deserve some study.

Think about how parliamentary systems run it: the executive leader of the nation isn't even voted on. They're chosen by the dominant party in the legislature, and appointed from among the legislators. That's been a very successful system in most of the free world- and it's no more 'democratic' a way of choosing a leader than the electoral college is. Arguably less democratic.

Fox News is endlessly hilarious: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/11/ ... vor-obama/

Obama just took the lead in the popular vote.

The idea that two people who live next to each other should have less say in our government than two people who live 500 miles apart seems rather unfounded and a bit terrible to me. Nor should they have more say than the two who live far apart, as the neighbors do with the EC if they live in a swing state.

And Obama just took the popular vote. I'm grinning here.

Dominus Atheos wrote:

Mr Bean wrote:We still have nine states that hold over 50% of the total American population and that's going to get worse over the next ten years. If we switched to a popular vote only method only ten states would be payed attention to, if we keep our current system only ten states will be payed attention to. Take your pick, either way forty states do not matter.

That's not how it would work. The whole point of a popular vote is that it erases state lines. When even one vote can actually make a difference, candidates will spend time in places that have the most people within driving distance and run ads in the largest media markets.

Yes, and it also allows simple concentrations of people to distort a result which respects the entire nation and the interests of intensely different interests across thousands of leagues of incredibly variable ecoregions. The electoral college is one of the few defences we have against a total cultural homogenization that would crush regionalism and localism and pave the way for more suburbanization and more anti-environmentalism, as well as open the way for yet more cultural extremism and for regions literally ruled by hate (like the deep south) to massively distort an election by weighing in with a huge lock-step by race for a particular candidate.

^^^Cool I was a little anxious there.

Obama is up 50k now in Ohio.

Dominus Atheos wrote:
That's not how it would work. The whole point of a popular vote is that it erases state lines. When even one vote can actually make a difference, candidates will spend time in places that have the most people within driving distance and run ads in the largest media markets.

What? My point Dominus is that ten states hold half the population and ten states share media markets meaning again potential presidents only have to run adds and spend time in ten states. Popular vote or no, no one give a shit about Alaska, Hawaii, Montana and thirty six other states. People will stop caring about states like Missouri or Colorado because they don't have at least six million residents and thus would not even be worth visiting under a pure popular vote. I'd say under pure popular vote rules unless you have eight million residents you would not be worth a shit because under pure popular voting rules you already have 64% of the total US population in 12 states, and 51% in seven total states.

Fox has more electoral votes for Obama than MSNBC... I think that has to be pretty telling.

Bean, are you forgetting that if you do go with popular vote, states don't give 100% of their vote to whomever gets a slight lead? If you campaign in states with 55% of the vote and get 60% of the vote landslides there, while saying screw you to the rest, congrats, you still probably lost.

Man, what's Romney waiting for? Is he not man enough to admit defeat?

The Duchess of Zeon wrote:

Dominus Atheos wrote:

Mr Bean wrote:We still have nine states that hold over 50% of the total American population and that's going to get worse over the next ten years. If we switched to a popular vote only method only ten states would be payed attention to, if we keep our current system only ten states will be payed attention to. Take your pick, either way forty states do not matter.

That's not how it would work. The whole point of a popular vote is that it erases state lines. When even one vote can actually make a difference, candidates will spend time in places that have the most people within driving distance and run ads in the largest media markets.

Yes, and it also allows simple concentrations of people to distort a result which respects the entire nation and the interests of intensely different interests across thousands of leagues of incredibly variable ecoregions. The electoral college is one of the few defences we have against a total cultural homogenization that would crush regionalism and localism and pave the way for more suburbanization and more anti-environmentalism, as well as open the way for yet more cultural extremism and for regions literally ruled by hate (like the deep south) to massively distort an election by weighing in with a huge lock-step by race for a particular candidate.

But so many other countries with a popular vote system do not have these issues, this reasoning seems very dubious in the face of two important US trends; the deterioration of the eminent sovereignty of the states and of the commonly touted 'melting pot' of the US cultural animus. Regionalism in Canada for instance is frequently criticized as polarizing (see transfer payments) and hindering governance.

Secondly supposing its true it would crush "regionalism" how is this a bad thing? Otherwise I entirely disagree it will result in more suburbanizing, that is actually a reversing trend in the United States due to demographics and economic trends (more expensive car travel means higher incentive for public transit and living closer to work and friends, etc).

That and we're talking about elections for President whose actual powers in the United States in the executive branch are not so widespread, Congress should be perfectly capable of protecting niche local interests above and beyond what is at best a possibly pleasant side effect of the Electoral College and not its intended purpose.

If that is what you wish then we should construct a system that does so as its intended purpose, and not defend a broken and anachronistic system purely on its side benefits (arguable as they are).

Chris Jansing has confirmed that Romney has called Obama to concede the race.

Finally, it was about to get ridiculous.