That is, effectively get rid of the electoral college and elect presidents by direct popular vote? Well, this is not how to do that.
Myra Adams has come up with the least rational explanation of why America should switch to direct vote presidential elections that I have ever seen. Unless this was actually subtle trolling to illustrate why the electoral college should not be abandoned.
Every four years, Americans think they are voting in a national presidential election. But pragmatically speaking, the vast majority are sideline voters, watching a battleground-state presidential election from the fringes.
This opinion is quantified by 2020 campaign data indicating that the Trump/Pence and Biden/Harris tickets spent $883 million of television ads across just six states and held in-person campaign events in only 12 states — mostly in the same six. This revealing data is antithetical to a nation that prides itself on conducting free and fair country-wide presidential elections.
How fair is our indirect presidential voting system that practically ignores voters in 38 of 50 states? The culprit is the constitutionally mandated Electoral College — an antiquated system by which electors from each state vote for the winner of their state’s popular vote.
To end the scourge of “battleground states”???
She whines that the 2020 election saw the candidates concentrating on a mere 12 “battleground states,” and left all the others as passive bystanders.
Do a little math.
If we switched to direct, winner takes all voting then candidates could save a fortune by concentrating their efforts on the TEN — not twelve — most populous states, and ignoring the other FORTY states (not to mention territories and DC) completely; those states’ — California, Texas, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan — outnumber all the other states combined.
Shoot, under the NPV Compact, those 40 unimportant states wouldn’t even need to hold elections; they could just wait and see what California and New York decide for them. That would be a money saver; and we wouldn’t have to worry about election day oddities in Maricopa County.
Since you haven’t mastered basic math, I won’t even bother with the more complex explanation of why Congress is made up of two separate houses to counter the rural/urban divide, and why the electoral college is set up the same way for the same reason.
Hat tip to David Codrea.
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