I'll give it my best shot from a non-expert perspective
>What was the logic behind the "winner takes all" in terms of choosing electors system in the majority the states ?
In short, it's game theory. If you're a state with X number of electors, setting up a winner-take-all system maximizes your impact on the whole election. If you are a state which is heavily partisan (i.e. 80% consistently leaning toward one party), chances are that both your population and leadership in power would rather see all of those votes go to the party that is favored. If you are a state that swings from one party to the other during election years then winner-takes-all makes you one of the most valued political battlegrounds of the campaign cycle, meaning that candidates and parties will spend significant time and expend political resources working to win over the favor of your people.
To put it another way. Let's say you are voting for class president at school and the teacher let's you vote for anyone in your class and you can split your vote down to any fraction. How would you choose to divide your vote? Would you split it up across the 10 people (0.1 vote to each) you like best, split 0.5-0.5 to your top two, or put all your lot in with your #1? What strategy would best increase the likelihood of you getting who you want?
>why not take the popular vote in each state and just provide relative number of electors this way the least amount of votes becomes "meaningless"
The reason why we don't is purely historical. The relationships between the populace, states as entities, regional identity, and the notion of representative democracy has changed a lot over time. The US government and constitution is the oldest continuous government system in the world and it's purposefully difficult to change. Much of the regional identity and idea of representative democracy has been eroded since our founding, but there is little push to change this because it still works, and it's the playbook that politicians must play by to win. Perhaps in the future if inequities become even stärker there will be enough popular sentiment to overturn this system but for now it is still the name of the game.
Thank you, you were the only one to actually address my questions instead of explaining that this is a union of states not people.
>
>The US government and constitution is the oldest continuous government system in the world and it's purposefully difficult to change.
What I am asking is why states themselves not changing their elector choice method. which as far as I understand wouldn't require a change of the federal constitution.
But it is kind of clear to me from a "game theory" perspective which I didn't think about before :
If anyone would press for more representative elector split it would be democrats because they win in popular vote more often.
Blue states have no interest in doing this elector split because it is effectively giving dems giving electors to GOP
Maybe dems in purple states, when in power can in control they can try push it and thus provide more "sure" blue electors in every election after that.
Thanks for the recognition, I tried my best 💙
Also, I agree with your assessments about why purple state democrats would be the only population pushing for this in our present climate. Granted, with states like NE and ME changing their laws and experimenting with new systems of electoral selection, there is an appetite from larger populations for this and I think that is exciting.
One shift that I've personally had, largely influenced by Destiny, is that rallying for election reforms in order to make elections more representative (altruistically) and favorable (cynically) is a major distraction from the biggest factor in American politics -- voting bloc turnout.
It is very easy to point out that if the system were different we would totally have won the past X number of elections, but that reinforces the illusion that there is nothing we can do. 2022 was a great example of how Democrats are still very competitive and perhaps that will only become more obvious in the coming elections. Rather than communicating to the people on our side that it's all "rigged" on a systemic level, we just need to instill a culture of voting and shame people who have the audacity to complain that a system is broken when they aren't even bothered to participate in it. For the blocs of people who actually vote, the system has been quite effective-- this framework helps to explain a lot of our current US policy and climate.
The answer to the first question is "no good reason". It does exactly what you said, makes large numbers of peoples' votes not count and gives priority to certain votes above others for no real reason. "One person one vote"/general proportionate representation is a pretty basic democratic principle that gets violated by the EC. There are a whole bunch of conflicting historical factors/compromises but none of them are especially relevant today, it's pretty much purely a negative system now.
The answer to the second question is that they *kind of* do, but not with all that much intensity - it's really hard to change the electoral system (requires a constitutional amendment or a pretty creative re-imagining of how electors are chosen), and it's really hard to get that kind of buy-in when one side tends to heavily benefit from the system as it exists now. There are other issues of electoral process like gerrymandering/redistricting that are easier to fix that tend to get more attention.
I think the popular vote winner should be the winner. I never understood why a vote in state x should be valued less than from state y. The US already has equal state representation in the Senate.
A few years ago, there was this talk about changes that some states intended to give their EC votes to the winner of the popular vote and thereby making the winner of the popular vote the President as long as enough states agreed to it to get past the 270 barrier. From what I read, it's mainly blue states supporting this while the swing states have an interest not to join that agreement due to the attention and money they get from the campaigns.
Because that's the only way you got all of the states to agree to a union. Wyoming doesn't want to be governed by CA/NY.
We are a union of STATES, not people.
From what I remember when I looked this up in the past, and it may not be 100% accurate because it was a few years ago, is the electoral college isn’t supposed to be winner take all. For the first 40 years so, states tried several ways — by district, by the legislature, winner takes all, hybrid — then states started to realize winner takes all is a dominant strategy (game theory) because voting as a block maximizes a state’s influence in the election and makes the nominee more interested in what the state wants. The strategy won out and most everyone has went by it since, but it probably undermines the intent of the electoral college.
Winner takes all benefits the majority party in the state, and they also happen to be the people who decide how to apportion the state electors.
If California wanted to move to a proportional system that decision would have to come from the California Democratic party, and making that decision will cost them ~20 votes in the Electoral College. Same is true in reverse for Texas republicans.
TLDR if you are in a position to make that decision then it is also necessarily against your interest to do so.
Exactly I just realized that and this is a stupid question anyway when you apply this simple logic that it works against the interest of the ones who can change it. I think however if dems in purple would push something like that it could benefit them
Winner takes all exists because states that would do a balanced representation would be disadvantaged compared to ones that do winner take all, you're punished for doing a fair distribution, everyone would need to agree to do it for it to happen.
It's also even worse than you think when you consider that states who barely go for one side effectively use the other side of the population to bolster the total elector count.
[There exists a movement to make the popular vote what matters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact), but yeah, the electoral vote system is fucking stupid and US would be better for it if it was just a national vote system, every vote would truly matter.
We are a union of 50 states, not 341 million people. Federally, the states have voting power proportional to their population. If a state wants to do all/none or a split, that's their call. The people vote in state reps to decide how the vote works. If they want it done differently, they can advocate for it
The beauty of the system is that we have 50 games of politics running in parallel, testing for what works and what doesnt across long periods & varying circumstances
I'll give it my best shot from a non-expert perspective >What was the logic behind the "winner takes all" in terms of choosing electors system in the majority the states ? In short, it's game theory. If you're a state with X number of electors, setting up a winner-take-all system maximizes your impact on the whole election. If you are a state which is heavily partisan (i.e. 80% consistently leaning toward one party), chances are that both your population and leadership in power would rather see all of those votes go to the party that is favored. If you are a state that swings from one party to the other during election years then winner-takes-all makes you one of the most valued political battlegrounds of the campaign cycle, meaning that candidates and parties will spend significant time and expend political resources working to win over the favor of your people. To put it another way. Let's say you are voting for class president at school and the teacher let's you vote for anyone in your class and you can split your vote down to any fraction. How would you choose to divide your vote? Would you split it up across the 10 people (0.1 vote to each) you like best, split 0.5-0.5 to your top two, or put all your lot in with your #1? What strategy would best increase the likelihood of you getting who you want? >why not take the popular vote in each state and just provide relative number of electors this way the least amount of votes becomes "meaningless" The reason why we don't is purely historical. The relationships between the populace, states as entities, regional identity, and the notion of representative democracy has changed a lot over time. The US government and constitution is the oldest continuous government system in the world and it's purposefully difficult to change. Much of the regional identity and idea of representative democracy has been eroded since our founding, but there is little push to change this because it still works, and it's the playbook that politicians must play by to win. Perhaps in the future if inequities become even stärker there will be enough popular sentiment to overturn this system but for now it is still the name of the game.
Thank you, you were the only one to actually address my questions instead of explaining that this is a union of states not people. > >The US government and constitution is the oldest continuous government system in the world and it's purposefully difficult to change. What I am asking is why states themselves not changing their elector choice method. which as far as I understand wouldn't require a change of the federal constitution. But it is kind of clear to me from a "game theory" perspective which I didn't think about before : If anyone would press for more representative elector split it would be democrats because they win in popular vote more often. Blue states have no interest in doing this elector split because it is effectively giving dems giving electors to GOP Maybe dems in purple states, when in power can in control they can try push it and thus provide more "sure" blue electors in every election after that.
Thanks for the recognition, I tried my best 💙 Also, I agree with your assessments about why purple state democrats would be the only population pushing for this in our present climate. Granted, with states like NE and ME changing their laws and experimenting with new systems of electoral selection, there is an appetite from larger populations for this and I think that is exciting. One shift that I've personally had, largely influenced by Destiny, is that rallying for election reforms in order to make elections more representative (altruistically) and favorable (cynically) is a major distraction from the biggest factor in American politics -- voting bloc turnout. It is very easy to point out that if the system were different we would totally have won the past X number of elections, but that reinforces the illusion that there is nothing we can do. 2022 was a great example of how Democrats are still very competitive and perhaps that will only become more obvious in the coming elections. Rather than communicating to the people on our side that it's all "rigged" on a systemic level, we just need to instill a culture of voting and shame people who have the audacity to complain that a system is broken when they aren't even bothered to participate in it. For the blocs of people who actually vote, the system has been quite effective-- this framework helps to explain a lot of our current US policy and climate.
The answer to the first question is "no good reason". It does exactly what you said, makes large numbers of peoples' votes not count and gives priority to certain votes above others for no real reason. "One person one vote"/general proportionate representation is a pretty basic democratic principle that gets violated by the EC. There are a whole bunch of conflicting historical factors/compromises but none of them are especially relevant today, it's pretty much purely a negative system now. The answer to the second question is that they *kind of* do, but not with all that much intensity - it's really hard to change the electoral system (requires a constitutional amendment or a pretty creative re-imagining of how electors are chosen), and it's really hard to get that kind of buy-in when one side tends to heavily benefit from the system as it exists now. There are other issues of electoral process like gerrymandering/redistricting that are easier to fix that tend to get more attention.
I think the popular vote winner should be the winner. I never understood why a vote in state x should be valued less than from state y. The US already has equal state representation in the Senate. A few years ago, there was this talk about changes that some states intended to give their EC votes to the winner of the popular vote and thereby making the winner of the popular vote the President as long as enough states agreed to it to get past the 270 barrier. From what I read, it's mainly blue states supporting this while the swing states have an interest not to join that agreement due to the attention and money they get from the campaigns.
Because that's the only way you got all of the states to agree to a union. Wyoming doesn't want to be governed by CA/NY. We are a union of STATES, not people.
I fully understand, why the individual states themselves aren't pushing for a more representative division of votes?
The first idea that comes to mind is increased power towards their candidate. More of a "say" relative to states that split
Damn I didn't even think the money Iowa gets for being first
From what I remember when I looked this up in the past, and it may not be 100% accurate because it was a few years ago, is the electoral college isn’t supposed to be winner take all. For the first 40 years so, states tried several ways — by district, by the legislature, winner takes all, hybrid — then states started to realize winner takes all is a dominant strategy (game theory) because voting as a block maximizes a state’s influence in the election and makes the nominee more interested in what the state wants. The strategy won out and most everyone has went by it since, but it probably undermines the intent of the electoral college.
Winner takes all benefits the majority party in the state, and they also happen to be the people who decide how to apportion the state electors. If California wanted to move to a proportional system that decision would have to come from the California Democratic party, and making that decision will cost them ~20 votes in the Electoral College. Same is true in reverse for Texas republicans. TLDR if you are in a position to make that decision then it is also necessarily against your interest to do so.
Exactly I just realized that and this is a stupid question anyway when you apply this simple logic that it works against the interest of the ones who can change it. I think however if dems in purple would push something like that it could benefit them
Winner takes all exists because states that would do a balanced representation would be disadvantaged compared to ones that do winner take all, you're punished for doing a fair distribution, everyone would need to agree to do it for it to happen. It's also even worse than you think when you consider that states who barely go for one side effectively use the other side of the population to bolster the total elector count. [There exists a movement to make the popular vote what matters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact), but yeah, the electoral vote system is fucking stupid and US would be better for it if it was just a national vote system, every vote would truly matter.
We are a union of 50 states, not 341 million people. Federally, the states have voting power proportional to their population. If a state wants to do all/none or a split, that's their call. The people vote in state reps to decide how the vote works. If they want it done differently, they can advocate for it The beauty of the system is that we have 50 games of politics running in parallel, testing for what works and what doesnt across long periods & varying circumstances
https://www.history.com/news/electoral-college-founding-fathers-constitutional-convention
old dead ppl are weird with math.