,
10 tweets,
2 min read
Read on Twitter
The electoral college is not doing what it was designed to do, because it wasn't "designed" in any meaningful sense of the term. The extant electoral college is a kludge of different elements that existed for different purposes in the early republic.
For my part, I honestly don't give a fuck if the EC favors either rural or urban voters; I prefer a majoritarian Presidential election in any case. But even if your purpose is to maximize the impact of rural voters, the EC is a *horrible* way to go about it.
In service of maximizing the influence of the good people of Wyoming, the EC effectively "disenfranchised" (if we're going to bother using that term) *many* Wyoming-sized chunks of the GOP electorate in California.
Many of these California GOP came from regions just as conservative and just as rural as Wyoming, and under the EC they effectively have no voice.
"I support the EC because the Rurals!" means you care a lot more about the rurals from Wyoming than the rurals from California, even though the latter outnumber the former 10-1.
Back in 2000, before the Unpleasantness, it felt like there was a general consensus that the next time the Electoral College did something stupid and went against the popular vote, we'd get rid of it because everyone understood it was dumb.
Evidently we were stupid to think that.
Maybe if 120000 votes in Ohio had gone the other direction in 2004 we would be spared this nonsense from Republicans about how the EC is good and necessary and intended by the founders and whatever other nonsense they decide they need to spout.
I suspect, tho, that things are going to get worse before they get better. As media audiences get more fragmented and it becomes easier to target very narrow constituencies, Presidential campaigns are going to be increasingly tempted to game the system and go for EC wins.
Because after all the Founders intended for Presidential candidates to ignore the three largest states in the Union in order to pursue marginal votes on the OH/PA border.
