Kamala Harris’s running mate urges popular vote system but campaign says issue is not part of Democrats’ agenda
Tim Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, has called for the electoral college system of electing US presidents to be abolished and replaced with a popular vote principle, as operates in most democracies.
His comments – to an audience of party fundraisers – chime with the sentiments of a majority of American voters but risk destabilising the campaign of Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, who has not adopted a position on the matter, despite having previously voiced similar views.
“I think all of us know, the electoral college needs to go,” Walz told donors at a gathering at the home of the California governor, Gavin Newsom. “We need a national popular vote. We need to be able to go into York, Pennsylvania, and win. We need to be in western Wisconsin and win. We need to be in Reno, Nevada, and win.”
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It is the single most logical and devastating blow that the democratic party could work on to stop fascism.
Disallow corporate entities from owning residential property.
Increase minimum wage.
Break up monopolies and oligopolies to reintroduce competition. Get off this “stop price gouging greedflation” horse shit. Break up monopolies and oligopolies, lower the bar to competition.
End forced arbitration outright.
Set a maximum document length limit to stop frivolous lawsuits, “drowning in paperwork”.
Set term limits for all govt positions, especially SCOTUS.
Harsher punishments to corporations. No more of these fines that are simply the cost of doing business. C suite execs should do time on behalf of law breaking ‘corpirate citizens.’
Tax the fuck of our anything making over $100M in profit. I mean, the fuck out of it.
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I’m not american but this is pretty basic within the US political system. And it’s pretty relevant news.
!news@lemmy.world has always been US centered.
That’s why I recommend you also follow !world@lemmy.world and whatever there is for more local news for you. For example for me (Francophone) !actualite@lemmy.world
Nah, /news just filled my /all feed. Seeing that /world is better for me, i could finally block the depressing stuff.
but campaign says issue is not part of Democrats’ agenda
Fucking hell! Every time either of them says something truly based, some DNC lackey comes and spoils it by saying that! 🤬
I can understand the strategy this time
One of the big motivators for the left is that Trump has made credible threats about undermining votes and folks have signed up for it. A fear of having your voice forever silenced in the political system is a strong motivator. You can see because pundits for Trump keep trying to turn it around and say “nuh uh, the Democrats are the ones that will take away your voice”, which generally rings hollow because there’s zero history or rhetoric in the Democratic party to even suggest that.
This could be the sort of rhetoric those Republicans have been wanting. A Democrat proposing a fundamental change to the biggest election that everyone knows would usually prevent a Republican win for that office. We wouldn’t have had either Republican president in the last 30 years. This could energize scared Republicans or feed the “but both sides” distraction.
It may make tons of sense, but it’s a huge risk of scaring people to vote against Democrats that might have otherwise sat it out.
And all interest in this statement was lost in record time. Even though it would help Democrats win every time, as swing states would stop being a thing, and the Democrat voters in Wyoming and Texas and every other sold-red state is now something to seriously count.
I think at this point pretty much everyone I’ve ever talked to thinks the electoral college is bullshit. Even my dad and he’s a trumper.
Well one doesn’t necessary need to get rid of electoral college, if the electors were appointed by proportional vote and representation. At that point it would be just a smudging filter. National popular vote with extra steps and some added in accuracy due to one being able to do so much proportionality given how many electors there is.
So the main problem is not electoral college, but the voting method. Just as note since also getting rid of electoral college isn’t a fix, if the direct popular election uses bad voting method. Like say nationwide plurality vote would be horrible replacement for electoral college.
Though I would assume anyone suggesting popular vote would mean nationwide majority win popular vote. Though that will demand a “fail to reach majority” resolver. Be it a two round system (second round with top two candidates, thus guaranteed majority result) or some form of instant run-off with guaranteed majority win after elimination rounds.
TLDR: main problem I winner take all plurality, first past the post more than the technicality of there existing such bureaucratic element as electors and electoral votes.
It makes sense to exist… In the 40’s.
But with modern day society and how small the world has become, it makes no sense to me to still exist tbh…1840s. It existed to preserve slavery
I was taught something different growing up and had to check myself with a quick read. Holy shit. You’re right. Thanks for sharing.
Probably not the popular opinion, but I think EC is important to America being what it is & as large as it is. From Wikipedia:
The electoral college is fundamental to American federalism, in that it requires candidates to appeal to voters outside large cities, and increases the political influence of more rural states. Whether by design or accident, one of its effects is to help prevent a tyranny of the majority that would ignore the less densely populated heartland and rural states in favor of the mega-cities
Imo without the EC, the Democrats would just roll the elections and the entire Republican party would have to pivot. Serving the rural / conservative view would be a losing strategy. Then resentment would grow that a big cultural force in America no longer has any say
Rural states have a large advantage in the house, huge advantage in the senate, and of course significant skew in the electoral college. And much of it comes from compromises with slave owners.
Abolishing the EC would not mean rural regions get completely ignored, not only would they have reps and senators still courting their votes (and campaign donations), civilized countries with functional democracies have multiple parties. A rural party would show up, which could court voters in all rural areas, instead of only in swing states.And to expand on what you said, they wouldn’t be spending all their time in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, and Georgia. They would likely visit every state to hoover up as many votes as they could. It would also give a voice to those who live in heavy red or blue places who don’t vote because they feel their vote is meaningless (it’s not. Get out and vote anyway).
Democratic presidential candidates only ever come here to Indiana during the primaries. They know there’s no point in the general.
Bernie didn’t even announce his schedule when he was here in 2016. He did one public event and then it turned out later he did a couple of other things of note (like visit the Eugene V. Debs museum here in Terre Haute).
Say it ain’t so… the Republican party would need to become more attractive to moderate conservatives and be less alienating? What a travesty that would be.
Conservativism, as it exists in modern America, is simply a fringe belief that only survives because of our broken ass election system that forces us into two parties.
Don’t conservatives resent democrats either way? They have so much of an advantage through the EC that the democrats have to go liberal+progressive big tent, but still they complain/fear the amount of non-whites and atheists in big cities.
Also don’t black americans + lgbt also resent their underrepresentation? Why should rural white populations get to speak over them? Just because historically that’s been the case and we don’t want to hurt their feelings?
While I agree with him, it’s also a stupid thing to say out loud during the election when they’re CLEARLY trying to sway moderate and uneasy right leaning voters.
I think the electoral college has become pretty unpopular with pretty much everyone except committed republicans in recent years
It’s become unpopular with everyone except the people who originally demanded it so they could count their slaves as 3/5 of a vote.
I think it was progressive who demanded it to be 3/5 if then conservative had their way they would happily count slaves as two people. It’s was in their favour to do so. Slaves could vote and it inflated their population count which will grant more seat. I’m neither American nor have I been there.
Nope, but not bad. The free states wanted them to not count for representative purposes, since they couldn’t vote.
From Wikipedia:
Slave holding states wanted their entire population to be counted to determine the number of Representatives those states could elect and send to Congress. Free states wanted to exclude the counting of slave populations in slave states, since those slaves had no voting rights. A compromise was struck to resolve this impasse. The compromise counted three-fifths of each state’s slave population toward that state’s total population for the purpose of apportioning the House of Representatives, effectively giving the Southern states more power in the House relative to the Northern states.
Small suggestion to use “enslaved people’s” rather than “slaves”
Why though? We call baking people bakers, why shouldn’t we call enlaved people slaves?
It’s not as if their circumstances become more human that way.
It helps humanize them
It’s just good to reinforce the idea that enslaved people’s were people who were enslaved. Not a profession, slave was not their job, it was their status.
Plus studies have shown that by using these people first language, especially while teaching the subject, results in higher empathy for enslaved people and reminds that their status as a slave was one forced upon them and continually so rather than the simple status they were born with.
It’s not a huge problem or anything, but it isn’t hard to toss in every now and then and only does good.
I think there’s a difference between the two. The term “salve” says nothing about what happened. It just tells you how things are. However, the term “enslaved” clearly indicates that the person used to be free, but was later forced into slavery by someone.
Words have a definition, slave is the appropriate word to talk about enslaved people and them being enslaved is what makes them slaves therefore it’s implied that they are enslaved if they are slaves. Now stop with the PC bullshit to derail the discussion.
Imo it’s more that “enslaved people” emphasizes their humanity, something that slavery itself typically removes from a person. Therefore “enslaved person” can be seen as radical phrasing that works against the goals of slavery
Exactly, the result is decided but free starts and for example Republicans in California and New York feel their vote doesn’t matter at all.
not the undecided swing state voters.
with the amount of money being spent to woo swing state voters I feel like being an “undecided voter” is some kind of career at this point
Maybe they’re finally realizing that instead of chasing right wing voters they should try to tap into the much larger pool of left-wing voters. Or at least one can hope.
I very much doubt that. Their metric is fundraising, and the money/rich people is/are on the right.
Lol
The programs that Walz champions speak for themselves.
His comments – to an audience of party fundraisers – chime with the sentiments of a majority of American voters
I guess you missed this bit
And they’ve been loosing the left this whole time.
But if we take the high road once more, surely the voters will see the light!
Just vote blue no matter who.
It’s that simple, do that and you’ll uh somehow magically become a lefter country?
The electoral college is good for one thing and one thing only: boosting confidence that election fraud in one place won’t impact the result of the election.
Winner takes all was always stupid and needs to be replaced with proportional allocation, preferably with a more direct ratio to the actual population of votes. Basically, everyone doing what Nebraska and Maine do.
It’s also really good for making sure that whoever wins the most acres of land gets a huge electoral boost. Because that’s important.
what if we make a compromise on the land area, say 3/5?
It’s also really good for making sure that whoever wins the most acres of land gets a huge electoral boost. Because that’s important.
Is it? The most disproportionate representation in the EC belongs to the people of Delaware, last time I ran the numbers of EC votes per capita.
State population is all that matters. Very small populations still get an EC vote for each Senator, which is the root of the problem.
Finally!
I wish Walz was at the top of the ticket.
I’d eagerly vote for him, as opposed to skeptically voting for Harris.I don’t get the downvotes, I’m in a similar position and I’m sure so mang others are as well.
My hope is that she chose him, so she likes him, maybe for the same reasons we do.
When she was in the senate she was statistically the closest to Bernie in voting.
Cool. Not going to happen, but…. Cool.
Yeah, it’s a hopeless quest. Truly eliminating the EC would require 3/4 of state legislatures, an almost impossible task when the majority of states would be effectively voting against their self-interest.
Effectively neutering the EC only requires that the states with 50% of the EC votes agree to follow the national popular vote. But, it would be a fragile detente, since any state legislature could back out and break it.
It still sends a message. Which in and of itself is good.
Watch Trump win the electoral college again and Democrats not use that as a rallying point to abolish it.
Don’t worry. As soon as Waltz said an overwhelmingly positive thing, Kamala distanced herself from it.
Yawn……
