gbaji wrote:
Except I don't believe that's a correct comparison. People want to be treated the same regardless of race, or gender, or whatever. States, and the people who live in them, actively want to be treated differently based on what state they live in. Folks in California very much may wish to have a different set of rules and laws than people in Montana, who in turn might choose to have different rules than people in New York. That's kind of the point of moving to a different state. The state boundaries specifically denote regions where differences in law, culture, etc, will exist.
People do not want to be treated differently based on what state they live in. You might, but I certainly do not. I live in Texas because I enjoy the climate and the overwhelming majority of my family lives here. I don't choose Texas because of set of rules I'm forced to live by.
gbaji wrote:
And again, I completely and utterly disagree with that comparison. Those are two very different things. It's wrong to apply different rules to two different people based on their race or ***. It's not just wrong but desired that two different states have different rules and be thought of as different entities. It's why we have different states in the first place. So that people can choose to live in a state that has rules they like. Making them all identical is the opposite of that. Thus, lumping all voters in all states in the same big popular vote bucket is also wrong.
It is not
desired that two different states have different rules. You might desire it to be, but I do not.
It's also not why we have different states. We have different states because the U.S. was settled piece wise in different regions, at different times, by different nations.
gbaji wrote:
I'm reasonably certain that the people of Wyoming and the people of Montana don't think of themselves as interchangeable and identical. And if you asked them, you'd find that they think of themselves as two different groups of people, with two very different sets of ideas about the rules to live under, how to manage their local economies, their culture, wants, desires etc. They are not just a homogenous set of voters. There are reasons why different states exist and have boundaries, different legislatures and executives, and different rules beyond just divvying up electoral college votes. Wyoming and Montana didn't develop as separate states just so the people living there could pad their EC vote count.
I'm not asserting that they're interchangeable, I'm asserting that their vote shouldn't chased based on how imaginary lines are drawn.
If Wyoming and Montana were grouped as the same state, with all of their voters retaining their original wants and interests, their total EV would be cut in half. Alternatively, if you took Wyoming and split it into 2 separates states, again with everyone retaining their originals wants and interests, then their EV would double.
What people want hasn't changed in either of those scenarios, but how much EV they control has. That is the problem. 2 half gallons of of water shouldn't have more mass than 1 full gallon. 2 half gallons of water shouldn't have less mass than 4 quarter gallons.
Strategically, Wymoning should want to split itself into 2 separate states so that each of their residents has more influence in the federal government, even if both states function identically on the state level. The only reason other states would wish for them not to do so is specifically because Wymoing would double its EV at the expense of others.
gbaji wrote:
It's easy to say that. It's a lot harder to write down an alternative methodology that does not introduce even worse problems.
It's been done. The problem is that party in control has no motivation to implement a system that will give them less control and the parties not in control have insufficient power to implement a system that will give them more.
gbaji wrote:
I'm not seeing any justification of your unbiased opposition to the EC at all in there. Did I miss it?
I wrote what I did as a courtesy to you. Since you're asserting I have partisan motivations, then the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate as such.
Edited, Nov 19th 2016 3:23pm by Allegory