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Added alternate embed code for this video - backup requested by Boise_Lib.

Replaced video embed code with backup #4559 (supplied by member Boise_Lib) - embed replaced by member Boise_Lib.

@lucky760
Hey lucky, I put a backup embed on this one, but the video still says removed by user.
Replacement I used.
http://youtu.be/lFUb-WBnpwU

>> ^Boise_Lib:

@lucky760
Hey lucky, I put a backup embed on this one, but the video still says removed by user.
Replacement I used.
http://youtu.be/lFUb-WBnpwU


The video at YouTube also says "This video has been removed by the user. Sorry about that."

*dead

Only published or personal queue videos may be flagged dead - ignoring dead request by lucky760.

Should be fixed again... he had an issue with the original I guess.

Now that his video is fixed... hopefully... *promote

Self promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Monday, November 7th, 2011 9:20am PST - promote requested by original submitter RFlagg.

2 more comments have been lost in the ether at this killed duplicate.

Hoosiers are from Indiana, not Illinois THANK YOU VERY MUCH. Upvote anyways.

Diebold makes sure your vote doesn't count anyway.. unless your a corporation, in which case, "How would you like your nation?"

The funny thing is that the original point of the electoral college was so separate actual citizen voters from the actual decision process as much as possible. When the electoral college was first conceived and implemented voters actually voted for people who they thought would pick a good president, not the actual president. Eventually, voters were just voting for the representative that would choose the president that they wanted so the "middle man" was removed, and with a lil' hoocus povcus we have the electoral college we have today. The truth of the matter is that the "Founding Fathers" did not really trust commoners/the voters to make the best decisions; so they made things like the electoral college to try and remove voters away from the decision process. Whether or not this is actually a good idea, a moral idea, or even an effective to achieving their goals is an entirely different matter. I'm just saying the system that the United States has is miss-representative, and kind of shitty by design...

>> ^LooiXIV:

The funny thing is that the original point of the electoral college was so separate actual citizen voters from the actual decision process as much as possible. When the electoral college was first conceived and implemented voters actually voted for people who they thought would pick a good president, not the actual president. Eventually, voters were just voting for the representative that would choose the president that they wanted so the "middle man" was removed, and with a lil' hoocus povcus we have the electoral college we have today. The truth of the matter is that the "Founding Fathers" did not really trust commoners/the voters to make the best decisions; so they made things like the electoral college to try and remove voters away from the decision process. Whether or not this is actually a good idea, a moral idea, or even an effective to achieving their goals is an entirely different matter. I'm just saying the system that the United States has is miss-representative, and kind of shitty by design...


Well you got it mostly right, the fact is we're not suppose to be a democracy. We are suppose to be constitutional republic of individual sovereign states with democratic checks and balances. Democracy ≠ freedom.

I really thought that the travesty of the 2000 election would spark massive protests against the electoral college process, and, if not change it, at least kick off a serious public debate. If the appointment of George W. Bush was not enough to make people care about the issue, I can't imagine what would.

And that injustice is only compounded by the staggered primary system that keeps the majority of citizens from having any real say in who is nominated by each party. I honestly do not know why we aren't outraged by the inequity of the entire process.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Does a great job of explaining a pretty flawed system.

I can't imagine it will ever change though. The US can't even get a barebones jobs bill or minimum healthcare through a crazed redneck congress playing to Fox News - I don't see them succeeding with a constitutional amendment to abolish the electoral college.

>> ^marbles:

Well you got it mostly right, the fact is we're not suppose to be a democracy. We are suppose to be constitutional republic of individual sovereign states with democratic checks and balances. Democracy ≠ freedom.

Exactly. The premise of the video, that 5% of the time the "loser" won the election, is only true if you define "winner" as the candidate with the most popular votes. In fact that's a pretty arbitrary definition, even in a democracy. Even if you abolish the electoral college, you'll find all kinds of strains on fairness.


Continue the thought experiment: you'll probably want to start by wiping out the Senate, since it grossly overrepresents the vote of a Hawaiian relative to a New Yorker. Next, onto the Supreme Court. A whole *branch* of government unelected! Where's the democracy?

Now that we're casting our votes for Scalia or Kagan, there's a thorny problem with the numbers. Somehow, even with the electoral college gone, we're still ignoring the will of the 24% of the population under the age of 18. Don't forget the 20 million immigrants living legally in the United States. What happened to one person, one vote? Under what definition of "fair" do only adults and citizens get to determine their own destiny democratically?

After you've rectified that "indefensible" affront to democracy, you'll still find that, because of the typical ~55% turnout, 51% of the popular vote really only wins about 28% of the population. Why should that candidate be president, they don't even represent the will of the majority! How is that democratic?

Don't assume that electing the president by popular vote is somehow more fair. It's not, it's just more direct, and a different set of arbitrary rules. What we should really be concerned about is the same thing the Founding Fathers were thinking about: coming up with the most *effective* system of government within the framework of a constitutional republic. That may not be the Electoral College, but directly electing the president doesn't necessarily make anything better, or more fair.

>> ^Hastur:
Exactly. The premise of the video, that 5% of the time the "loser" won the election, is only true if you define "winner" as the candidate with the most popular votes. In fact that's a pretty arbitrary definition, even in a democracy. Even if you abolish the electoral college, you'll find all kinds of strains on fairness.


Umm, isn't that the very definition of democracy? Getting the most votes, one person one vote.

The fact that people can elect to not show up to vote is neither here nor there, they forfeit their right to have a say. So the winner is out of 100% of people who voted. It might still be a minority of the overall population, but you'd be hard pressed to make the argument that a person who didn't vote has the right to complain about the president they get stuck with...

Good video...but am I think he screwed up with his example at 5:35 saying "you won when 78% of the people voted AGAINST you". Isn't that assuming that everyone else in all the other states not counted would have to have all unanimously voted for the other candidate?

I think this video needs coupled with his The Problems with First Past the Post Voting Explained.

I don't know if we can ever get a constitutional amendment passed to get rid of the electoral college, which is why I've long advocated just getting rid of the winner take all in every state. Whoever wins the congressional district, gets that district's electoral vote, with the two extras going to the winner of the popular vote of the state as a whole.

If we combined that with the Singe Transferable Vote type system explained in the Problems with First Past the Post video, we would have a system that better represents the people.

We still have an issue then with the large states being under represented and small states and DC being over represented, and he doesn't go into detail on why that is in these videos. We have had 435 Representatives since 1911 (save for a couple years where we had 437). The 1910 US Census said we had 76,212,168 people, so with 435 Representatives that gives us 175,200 people for each Representative, so we'll round that up to 200,000. The 2010 Census pegged us at 308,745,538, so each Representative now represents a bit over 709,750 people. If we kept with the 200,000 figure we would have 1543 Representatives now, and with modern technology there is no reason they would all need to be in the Congressional building for votes, just in their office in their home district. Heck even if we raised it to 250,000 people, a full quarter of a million, we 1234 or 1235 Representatives, which still insures people are better represented in Congress and at the electoral college if that is still in place once we fix First Past the Post and up the number or Representatives. Congress itself set the limit to 435, so it wouldn't take an amendment to fix it, unless we wanted to insure that it was fixed forever. I don't think we would need an amendment to move to the Single Transferable Vote either, just a law stating all Federal offices must use that method.

Of course to afford that many Representative they, and the Senate, probably need a pay and budget cut. So good luck on that, which may be reason enough it would never pass... that and the lobbyist trying to stop it since such a move would make their job harder and far more expensive.

We do need an amendment limiting the term of the Supreme Court, especially since they are appointed and not elected, and a term limit would be needed even if they were elected. An amendment that specifically exempts anyone who is in now and perhaps appointed within a few years of passing should be passable I would think (if they could agree on what the limit should be), then again, they haven't made a real effort to limit the Supreme Court term yet.

The primary system needs fixed as well, but I think that would be harder to fix. Even with a Single Transferable Vote in place, if it isn't party locked, you have people from the other party purposely voting for the person who would most likely lose against their candidate. Even party locked, you still have people saying they are one, voting for the person you best guess will lose, and then voting for your real candidate during the actual election (which should never be party locked). However, a single Transferable Vote does make "fringe" candidates that don't get the mainstream press coverage, like Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich and the like, to raise higher, which is probably why the parties themselves would fight any real primary system reform.

>> ^Asmo:


Umm, isn't that the very definition of democracy? Getting the most votes, one person one vote.
So is the UK not a democracy? Canada? Australia? Germany? France? All have a head of government who is not elected by one person, one vote. In any of those cases, it's quite possible to choose a prime minister not favored by a majority. There are different flavors of democracy, some of them pre-dating the US, many of which do not directly elect their executives by one-person, one-vote.

The philosophical point of democracy is to best represent the will of the majority. In the US, we have the additional task of doing so while protecting the rights of the minority. The best way to do that is not always one-person, one-vote.

And like I said: even if you abolish the electoral college you still don't get the will of the majority, since there are many people who cannot legally vote and many others who choose not to.

In my Politics class in College, we spent quite a bit of time talking about the Electoral College. One thing that wasn't mentioned in this video blew my mind:

The people that make up the Electoral College are called the "Electors". The basic idea of the system is that all of the Electors in a given state will cast their Electoral vote for the candidate that won their state's popular vote. However, there is no Federal law that says that Electors actually must follow through on that.

Some states have such a law, and can punish "faithless Electors" (people who cast an Electoral vote against the state's popular vote) with fines or by replacing them with another Elector. But that isn't universal, and there have actually been (rare) instances where Electors failed to follow the rule/suggestion and actually went against the popular vote.

That pretty much blew my mind and seems even worse than the other failings of the system to me, although I don't think it has ever changed the outcome of an election in the way that the "winner take all" system has. For more info check here.

Anyone that thinks the popular vote is a better system than the electoral college needs to have a serious re-think. Did you like the 2000 election? Hope so, because if you nuke the EC then that's what you'll have EVERY election. There is so much fraud, inaccuracy, abuse, and shenanigans that happen with the popular vote that it is quite impossible - just from simple logistics - to have a clean popular vote. Unless you set up a voter ID system that require photo ID and several other methods to ensure there isn't ballot shenanigans, then it would be a complete fiasco.

The brass tacks are that the federal government has become too powerful. It was never meant to be as big, as expensive, and as influential as it currently is. The primary governance was supposed to be at the state and local level. The electoral college is only important now because the federal government has exploded into a monster that the FFs never envisioned. If you want to fix all this, then cut the federal government across the board by 50%. Butcher it like a hog and return power to the states. Then you can vote in your state and local elections and make a difference, and just elect some pathetic loser to the federal office and ignore them because they have little or no power to do anything.

Shenanigans are certainly a problem when they crop up. In 2000 it seemed all of it had to do with attempts to not count ballots by valid voters, and none of it to do with people voting under false names, so voter ID wouldn't protect us from that.

But I don't understand your claim that the electoral college lessens the problem of shenanigans, it actually amplifies it. Because a truly massive scale of fraud is required to sway an election by popular vote when there are 100 million voters, but a much smaller scale is needed when it comes down to a few counties in a single swing state.

Honestly, the absolute biggest problem with the electoral college is the fact that entire states are forced to vote as a block. Even if we were to keep the electoral college in place, complete with enhanced voting power for small states, we could still improve it tremendously by just having each state distribute it's electoral votes by the proportion that went to each candidate. Then you still wouldn't see legal battles that could sway entire states, but you would see third party candidates like Ron Paul or Ralph Nader actually pick up some votes.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

Anyone that thinks the popular vote is a better system than the electoral college needs to have a serious re-think. Did you like the 2000 election? Hope so, because if you nuke the EC then that's what you'll have EVERY election. There is so much fraud, inaccuracy, abuse, and shenanigans that happen with the popular vote that it is quite impossible - just from simple logistics - to have a clean popular vote. Unless you set up a voter ID system that require photo ID and several other methods to ensure there isn't ballot shenanigans, then it would be a complete fiasco.
The brass tacks are that the federal government has become too powerful. It was never meant to be as big, as expensive, and as influential as it currently is. The primary governance was supposed to be at the state and local level. The electoral college is only important now because the federal government has exploded into a monster that the FFs never envisioned. If you want to fix all this, then cut the federal government across the board by 50%. Butcher it like a hog and return power to the states. Then you can vote in your state and local elections and make a difference, and just elect some pathetic loser to the federal office and ignore them because they have little or no power to do anything.

The way he explains it sounds just great and everything, but i feel like there's a high potential for a cartoon moment of "whoops, we didn't think of that" on implementation of this guy's system.

I imagine him building a gigantic computer capable of taking in everyone's votes from futuristic television sets which you interactively write your vote on the screen. And then some joker will draw a huge cock on it and within a year we'll all be building statues to the almighty giant dick. But it'll be alright because we'll all laugh at the irony of changing our voting system only to replace a bunch of dicks with one giant dick.

>> ^Hastur:

>> ^Asmo:

Umm, isn't that the very definition of democracy? Getting the most votes, one person one vote.
So is the UK not a democracy? Canada? Australia? Germany? France? All have a head of government who is not elected by one person, one vote. In any of those cases, it's quite possible to choose a prime minister not favored by a majority. There are different flavors of democracy, some of them pre-dating the US, many of which do not directly elect their executives by one-person, one-vote.
The philosophical point of democracy is to best represent the will of the majority. In the US, we have the additional task of doing so while protecting the rights of the minority. The best way to do that is not always one-person, one-vote.
And like I said: even if you abolish the electoral college you still don't get the will of the majority, since there are many people who cannot legally vote and many others who choose not to.


Yes, they are democratic systems built on the principle of democracy. However, "equality and freedom have both been identified as important characteristics of democracy since ancient times" (from the Wiki). Most modern democratic systems are not equal.

Btw, a person who chooses not to vote does in fact cast a vote, a vote to abstain. Because they choose to exclude themselves from the process does not mean they weren't given their democratic right to have their say.

As an Australian, I'd prefer a Prime Minister voted in by popular vote. During the last term, the sitting PM Kevin Rudd was deposed and replaced by Julia Gillard in an internal coup due to his poor polling results (ie. it was looking like Rudd was riding the Labor party in to the ground). They replaced him as party leader which also meant he was no longer PM. That was not democratic in the slightest. At the following election, Julia Gillard won government by securing the votes of independents/crossbenchers, but achieved less of the popular vote than Tony Abbott from the Liberal party. Incidentally, voting in Australia is compulsory and you're fined if you don't show up (so much for that 'freedom' principle)

Our system is built on democratic principles, and is a form of democracy, but it's far removed from the method used by the Greeks who coined the term (Demos = "people", kratos "people"). The US electoral college is in the same boat. Someone said it earlier, the founding fathers didn't trust the average moron to get it right and put in a system to leave the true voting to 'wiser' minds.

When you can achieve 50+% of the EC votes for less than 20% of the popular vote, the system is broken, end of story. Keeping the EC seems more a matter of convenience (eg. "there will be too much rorting", it'll be too hard, waaah etc) than a matter of fairness.

I've been saying this for such a long time... its my opinion that in addition to the points made in this video, the electoral college in the reason why a 3rd party will never get a foothold in this country for serious consideration for presidential candidacy. And, IMO, the worst part of the American political system is partisan politics, and its grown to a level of extremism that it could only hope to be challenged by a well established and respectable 3rd party (perhaps a party of the 99%... food for thought?).

Also, some of his numbers are way off. According to the US Census (see #29), 79% of the population was urban in 2000, not ~20% as he claims.

For a breakdown of metro areas by population, look at #21 at the US Census link, "Metropolitan Statistical Areas--Population by Age". There were 131 million votes cast for president in 2008. If you want to arbitrarily define urban as 1 million people or more, there are 126.4 million voting-age people living in metropolitan areas.

Sliced a different way, according to the US Census, a presidential candidate can get to 50% of that if they take the voting age populations of just the top 12 metropolitan areas:

New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA
Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA
Chicago-Joliet-Naperville, IL-IN-WI
Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX
Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD
Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX
Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV
Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL
Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA
Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH
San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA
Detroit-Warren-Livonia, MI

I don't know where he gets his numbers--maybe by using strict city limits?--but they're not even close to reality. According to the facts, in a pure popularity vote, a presidential candidate can safely ignore the rural areas and still win an election.

The electoral college is imperfect, but whatever you want to replace it with should do a better job of representing a diversity of interests--geographic, demographic, and politic--than a direct popular vote.

>> ^Asmo:
Btw, a person who chooses not to vote does in fact cast a vote, a vote to abstain. Because they choose to exclude themselves from the process does not mean they weren't given their democratic right to have their say.
I'm sorry to be pedantic here, but I don't see why you get to decide what an abstainer thinks. I think they don't like any of the candidates, so I say they're casting a vote for "none of the above". However you want to count them, the 69 million popular votes cast for Obama in 2008 represents about 23% of the 300 million residents. It's simply not the will of the majority. It's not even the will of a representative sample, being that it excludes everyone under 18 and everyone not a citizen.

In a country where people seem reasonably satisfied with two senators per state, unelected judges, and all kinds of other "transgressions" against one-person-one-vote that occur in a republic, I just think it's misguided to believe that the electoral college is some huge injustice. The US is called the United States for a reason; it's not conceived to work purely as a direct democracy on the federal level, and there's no prior reason to believe that's a more effective form of governance at that scale.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

*quality discussing here.

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by dag.

>> ^Hastur:


I'm sorry to be pedantic here, but I don't see why you get to decide what an abstainer thinks. I think they don't like any of the candidates, so I say they're casting a vote for "none of the above". However you want to count them, the 69 million popular votes cast for Obama in 2008 represents about 23% of the 300 million residents. It's simply not the will of the majority. It's not even the will of a representative sample, being that it excludes everyone under 18 and everyone not a citizen.
In a country where people seem reasonably satisfied with two senators per state, unelected judges, and all kinds of other "transgressions" against one-person-one-vote that occur in a republic, I just think it's misguided to believe that the electoral college is some huge injustice. The US is called the United States for a reason; it's not conceived to work purely as a direct democracy on the federal level, and there's no prior reason to believe that's a more effective form of governance at that scale.


I don't decide, the abstainer decides... Whether it's apathy (my vote doesn't make a difference), indifference (don't care either way) or a genuine protest about a paucity of good candidates, the abstainer chooses (democratically) not to participate. They lose the right to complain (although most will still do so) about who they wind up with, but it's not like they were disqualified against their wishes...

With that in mind, if Obama wins with 69 million votes in a popular election, it is still a majority of people who voted... EC's basically say that even once you take out the abstainers, a person with less than 50% of the actual voters can win office. Abstainers drop out of both systems, the important metric is total votes accrued per candidate vs total number of people who placed votes.

re: the second paragraph, just because problems aren't getting solved doesn't make them not problems. Essentially the apathy to change a flawed system is a democratic expression in itself, that does not make the system fair. And a popular vote for the president (ie. the executive) has little to do with the day to day running of towns/cities/states. A president might be hamstrung by a hostile congress and/or senate and achieve little during his term/s (see Obama and his great plans which were mostly stymied by the legislative branch of the Fed).

A direct popular vote means that instead of appealing to a few niche states, the candidates have to make a broader appeal to the electorate, and are less prone to pork barrel the power brokers of the electorate. It might not ever change but that doesn't mean we can't point out the inequalities in the current system.

>> ^Asmo:

I don't decide, the abstainer decides... Whether it's apathy (my vote doesn't make a difference), indifference (don't care either way) or a genuine protest about a paucity of good candidates, the abstainer chooses (democratically) not to participate. They lose the right to complain (although most will still do so) about who they wind up with, but it's not like they were disqualified against their wishes...

Here's our disagreement in a nutshell:

You claim the most pure form of democracy represents the majority of voters. I claim the most pure form of democracy represents the majority of people. If your aim is a more pure democracy, which is more desirable?

And your last paragraph simply isn't supported. In a direct election, a candidate must appeal to exactly 50.1% of the electorate, and there is no compulsion to distribute that appeal either demographically or geographically. The college at least forces the candidates to broaden their reach. Look at some of the swing states fought over in the past election: Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Missouri, Nevada. There's a lot of diversity represented there, both geographically and demographically. IMO that's the way it should be in a union of states.

And, IMO, the worst part of the American political system is partisan politics, and its grown to a level of extremism that it could only hope to be challenged by a well established and respectable 3rd party (perhaps a party of the 99%... food for thought?).

The addition of a third, 4th, 5th, or 10th party would do nothing to resolve partisan politics. A lot of people think the 2 party system is poison, and multiple party systems are some sort of nirvanah. A 1 second analysis of parlimentarian political entities dispells that illusion. Systems with more parties - if anything - become even more contentous, fragmented, and full of partisanship than ever. The amount of skullduggery is amazing. The common man becomes even more distant from the political system, because the dizzying level of alliances, promises made/broken, and other shenanigans that take place to engineer a 'majority' on a vote essentially render any one party non-existent.

This is a bubble that really needs to be popped. I'm not saying the 2 party system is good. Quite often I feel very disenfranchised by the 2 party system because my perspective as a fiscally conservative, socially liberal, libertarian leaning, constitutional constructionist are rarely represented to my tastes. But the opinion that the addition of a 3rd party would in any way address the rancorous nature of US politics is simply incorrect.

California and New York are Democrat states, Texas is a Republican one. So there is little reason for the presidential candidates to visit them when they are basically locked up. I don't think it has to do with the electoral college so much as that...

>> ^Hastur:

>> ^Asmo:
I don't decide, the abstainer decides... Whether it's apathy (my vote doesn't make a difference), indifference (don't care either way) or a genuine protest about a paucity of good candidates, the abstainer chooses (democratically) not to participate. They lose the right to complain (although most will still do so) about who they wind up with, but it's not like they were disqualified against their wishes...
Here's our disagreement in a nutshell:
You claim the most pure form of democracy represents the majority of voters. I claim the most pure form of democracy represents the majority of people. If your aim is a more pure democracy, which is more desirable?
And your last paragraph simply isn't supported. In a direct election, a candidate must appeal to exactly 50.1% of the electorate, and there is no compulsion to distribute that appeal either demographically or geographically. The college at least forces the candidates to broaden their reach. Look at some of the swing states fought over in the past election: Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Missouri, Nevada. There's a lot of diversity represented there, both geographically and demographically. IMO that's the way it should be in a union of states.


Incorrect, I agree with the assertion that the purest form of democracy represents the majority of the people. But how do you resolve an election where the majority refuses to vote? Either you poll again and again and again, or make the vote compulsory (there goes freedom), or just don't have a head of state.

But your point re: majority of the people undermines EC voting as much as it does direct elections. A state doesn't lose EC votes because people abstain, each state get's it's full quota no matter how many people stay at home.

And how does your statement not support my assertion in the second paragraph? Appealing to swing states with an uneven balance of EC votes is not diversifying, it's focusing their efforts (as demonstrated in the video). Candidates wouldn't waste time on safe seats typically. They certainly wouldn't waste time on safe seats (or alternately seats that are locked down by the opposition) that are severely underrepresented in the EC. The college forces candidates to narrow their focus, not broaden it, in the demographic that actually counts. EC votes to be gained. Demographic and geographic broadening is accidental. If those states were all jammed together in one corner of the country and had similar demographics, would you complain that candidates were narrowing their focus, or just admit they are chasing states that will yield the greatest electoral advantage to them?

The "way it should be" in a union of states is that all men (and women) are equal, not that some states get special attention because of a flawed system set up by people who didn't trust the every day person to make the 'right' choice.

edit: rephrased a sentence for clarity.