Red Mosquito

stip wrote:For those of you who are still potentially interested in this topic, the electoral college's primary influence at this point is that it dramatically over-inflates the value of small states while simultaneously guaranteeing that only a handful of large states receive any electoral pandering within a general election. It's basically why it took so long to start to normalize relationships with cuba, for instance. It is also the most effective mechanism we have for negating the value for as many votes as possible. It's really a pretty remarkable piece of work.

stip wrote:For those of you who are still potentially interested in this topic, the electoral college's primary influence at this point is that it dramatically over-inflates the value of small states while simultaneously guaranteeing that only a handful of large states receive any electoral pandering within a general election. It's basically why it took so long to start to normalize relationships with cuba, for instance. It is also the most effective mechanism we have for negating the value for as many votes as possible. It's really a pretty remarkable piece of work.

Green Habit wrote:

stip wrote:For those of you who are still potentially interested in this topic, the electoral college's primary influence at this point is that it dramatically over-inflates the value of small states while simultaneously guaranteeing that only a handful of large states receive any electoral pandering within a general election. It's basically why it took so long to start to normalize relationships with cuba, for instance. It is also the most effective mechanism we have for negating the value for as many votes as possible. It's really a pretty remarkable piece of work.

On this metric, the Senate's probably worse than the Electoral College.

cutuphalfdead wrote: conversion

cutuphalfdead wrote:Well one chamber is represented by each state equally and the other is by population. Isn't a purpose of that so small states can't claim marginalization and large states can't claim their populations aren't fairly represented?

Green Habit wrote:

cutuphalfdead wrote:Well one chamber is represented by each state equally and the other is by population. Isn't a purpose of that so small states can't claim marginalization and large states can't claim their populations aren't fairly represented?

This presupposes that a small group of people should have equal representation to a large group of people just because they happen to live in an arbitrary geographic area. It was probably necessary to make the Constitution work with all 13 colonies, but it's wreaked unintentional consequences.