65% of U.S. adults say the way the president is elected should be changed so that the winner of the popular vote nationwide wins the presidency.

cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/news@lemmy.world/t/488620

65% of U.S. adults say the way the president is elected should be changed so that the winner of the popular vote nationwide wins the presidency.

    • PizzaMan@lemmy.worldOP
      6·
      1 year ago

      Doesn’t sound like you’re a conservative

      I’m not.

      or believe in a republic.

      I do. But ours is in need of reform to make it a better republic that more accurately reflects the will of the people.

      A popular vote would mean the costal areas would have the largest vote and rural areas would get ignored.

      That’s already what happens under the electoral college.

      And every single other electected position in government goes by what is essentially a popular vote, if this was such a problem, all other positions would also be electoral college.

      It would quickly lead to a breakup up of the union.

      The U.S. is the only country that uses an electoral college. All other countries that exist, and are democratic republics use a popular vote and they’re just fine.

      If a popular vote for presidency would cause the destruction of this country, why hasn’t popular vote for all other positions done so already? It’s because this is just fearmongering based on zero evidence. Actually it’s worse, because there is plenty of evidence it wouldn’t do this because of the aforementioned other countries that use popular vote.

        • PizzaMan@lemmy.worldOP
          4·
          1 year ago

          What other position is elected nationally?

          The level at which the election runs is not what I am getting at.

          We only do popular votes at the state level.

          And they don’t destroy our country despite our states having a rural/urban divide. So our federal elections should be no different.

            • PizzaMan@lemmy.worldOP
              5·
              1 year ago

              The level makes a difference.

              No it doesn’t. If a popular vote would destroy this country because of the imbalance between rural/urban areas, then it would have already done so on a state level.

                • PizzaMan@lemmy.worldOP
                  3·
                  1 year ago

                  You’ve yet to make compelling argument

                  I’ve said it in several other places in this thread.

                  All votes should be counted equally.

                  as to why we would change a system that works perfectly.

                  It doesn’t work perfectly.

                  It makes it so that if you don’t live in a swing state, your vote is effectively meaningless. If you’re a democrat in a heavy republican state, then your vote will never go towards supporting your candidate of choice. If you’re a republican in a heavy republican state, the same applies. If you’re a republican in a heavy republican state, your vote also doesn’t do shit, because your state was going to vote republican anyway. Unless you’re in a swing state, the current system basically ignores you.

                  It also makes it so presidential candidates only ever cater towards swing states, and the cities within those swing states. All the rest of the states are basically ignored.

                  The electoral collage prevents third party candidates from ever having a chance because it is inherently a FPTP system, which inherently biases a two party system, which is a huge part of why our country is so fucked right now.

                  And on top of all of that, there have been several elections in which the candidate with the most votes has lost. That is a broken system.