• Kcap@lemmy.world
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    15 hours ago

    I remember being in 3rd grade and learning about the electoral college and thinking, “that’s the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard of”. Still true to this day.

    • werefreeatlast@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      Okay guys stop up voting this! Simply let me assure you that I will upvote for you!

      If you upvote this comment to 100, I will upvote the way you want me to upvote.

      Actually I’ll do you better! Look. I know these guys who can upvote. If you upvote my comment past 100, I’ll have them vote for you just the way you telepathically have told me to upvote by up voting for me…what? Why would you even need to know me or my friend who hasn’t even talked to you directly? That’s crazy talk! I’m an upvoter, I upvote. They. My friends who can upvote are true upvoters too. Soon you won’t even need to upvote at all! You can just go read all the shit we Upvoted for you! Yey! We call our selves the “Upvotlectoral” college. We learn algebra in this college too, but we never graduate…at least you don’t know if we have graduated or not.

      • Kcap@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        Sounds like this clown lives in that one blip in Nebraska or whatever that can impact shit, you know what to do bois. Electoral vote this mofo out the comments section! /s (chill)

        • werefreeatlast@lemmy.world
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          6 hours ago

          I’ve Upvoted you! See? Pretty simple right? Oh. Ah, you can’t drive your car anymore. You’re driving a Japanese car and they are destroying our jobs. Please see a ford dealership. And you’ll need farmer’s or the gecko. Anyway, details! Thanks for voting up!

    • SirEDCaLot@lemmy.today
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      12 hours ago

      Then how do you stop urban concerns from completely trouncing rural concerns? Voters from rural areas have valid concerns which are largely opposite of urban voters. If you get rid of electoral college, candidates will campaign in major cities and that’s it. Nobody else will matter.

      • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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        59 minutes ago

        The cities is where all the people are. What are these “concerns” that rural areas have that should override most of the concerns of the majority of people?

      • jjjalljs
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        4 hours ago

        Cities matter more. Sorry, but that’s the reality.

        Cities are where people live. People matter.

        Cities are where culture happens. Culture matters. You’re not going to have a big art/music/anything scene in bumbleweed, NE because there aren’t enough people there to constitute a scene.

        Cities are where economy happens. Money moving around matters. There are more transactions per day in the corner shop by me than a whole week in some country town with 700 residents.

        Rural people still have the Senate and local government. Their rep in the house (which should be expanded) also should speak up for their region.

        Everyone deserves some minimum respect, but the idea that nowhere-utah is just as important as Queens is insane. A minority holding the majority garbage is not good. Especially when that minority seems fixated on terrible ideas like climate change denial and xenophobia.

        • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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          55 minutes ago

          I say it all the time - places like California and New York are strategically more important, too. Most of the game development, the movie/tv industry, software, even a lot of our food, happens in CA. And then a great deal of finance happens in NYC. Lots of defense industry stuff is clustered around DC as well.

          It’s called “flyover country” for a reason. If you want to partake in what is happening, then move to those locations. Unfortunately, our backwards slave-era system gives wayyyy too much power to regions that just don’t matter as much.

      • GeneralVincent@lemmy.world
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        8 hours ago

        So the people in cities should just be worth less when they vote? It’s a federal vote for a federal office, everyone in the country should count the same.

        The individual states already have their own powers which make sure the federal government doesn’t make decisions that are bad for those states. And each county and town have their own governments that pass local laws.

        I’ve also heard this argument so many times but I haven’t heard any actual examples.

      • Forbo@lemmy.ml
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        7 hours ago

        That’s what the Senate is for. Two senators per state regardless of population. Wyoming has as much of a say as California does.

        • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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          54 minutes ago

          In all honesty, that should change as well. I don’t think that’s doing any good, either. It gives people with completely backward and insane ideas the impression that their positions should be on equal footing with normal people’s ideas.

      • Passerby6497@lemmy.world
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        8 hours ago

        Sure, then we can have another republican get elected against the will of the people. Clearly rural concerns are more important than preventing authoritarian idiots like trump from being able to undemocratically take power.

      • BlackPenguins@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        Even if the 10 largest cities all voted Democrat that would only account for 8% of the vote. And not everyone votes the same way in a city either. There are plenty of republicans voting in major cities but their vote doesn’t matter because of the college. Long Island went to Trump. NYC still got 400,000 votes for Trump. All this means is more people get a voice.

      • MouseKeyboard
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        10 hours ago

        How do you stop a majority of the electoral college from completely trouncing the concerns of the other states?

        • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org
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          8 hours ago

          Which would be replaced with “Can the Democrat win California by a large enough margin?”

          Which was literally the case when people complain about Clinton winning the popular vote in 2016 - across the 49 states that aren’t California more people voted for Trump, but she won California by such a large margin that she won the popular vote because of California alone. Same thing in 2000, where Gore’s popular vote lead was smaller than his margin in CA.

          • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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            50 minutes ago

            Okay, that’s just fine with me. California is arguably our most important state and has a huge population. So of course winning there should matter. This is not hard.

          • Stern@lemmy.world
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            1 hour ago

            Which would be replaced with “Can the Democrat win California by a large enough margin?”

            If it’s going to be fucked either way I’d rather at least have it be fucked in a way where every vote counts the same rather then a Wyoming vote being worth like 4 times a California vote owing to the house of representatives population being limited which means Californians aren’t being properly represented in the house.

          • Passerby6497@lemmy.world
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            7 hours ago

            Oh jeeeeez, maybe republicans would have to have real policies that appeal to a majority of Americans, instead of dipshit authoritarian policies that only enrich the already rich and take rights away while mainly pandering to racists in the population at large.

            The electoral college is the major reason why the republicans have gone absolutely bugfuck, because they can win with a minority of votes, allowing them to be as undemocratic as they want to be, knowing they have a barely large enough base to squeak through in all the right spots.

            And considering the results of the bush and trump presidencies, you’re making the argument against the electoral college, because their two picks objectively made the country worse.

            • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org
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              5 hours ago

              FYI Hillary did not win the popular vote just because of California

              Yes, she did. That there are other combinations of states that she won that combine to have a similar total margin doesn’t change that her national margin was smaller than her margin in California. And that’s the crux of the argument Snopes makes - she won the national popular vote by 2,833,220 and sure she won California by 4,269,978 votes but there are other states she won that if added together had a combined margin in her favor of more than 2,833,220 votes and also just her California votes alone wouldn’t be enough to exceed Trump’s vote count nationwide so it doesn’t count.

              Which is…kinda ridiculous? It’s a big stretch for a frankly kinda dumb claim.

              • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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                47 minutes ago

                Also, what is wrong with only winning California, anyway? California represents the broad spectrum of a modern America and it has its rural areas as well. It is easy to argue that it is our most important state, too.

                What people in California want should matter even if it overrides smaller red states - since they will likely only hold us back anyway.

      • orrk@lemmy.world
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        11 hours ago

        and what has that gotten us? rural communities are subsidized out the wazoo as the urban centers across America are strangled and starved. as the more powerful minority of people is catered too

        • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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          4 hours ago

          Not the previous commenter, but I’m pretty certain that the, apparently fictional book, that Leave Burton showed on either The Daily Show, or Last Week Tonight, entitled It’s all Because of Racism, would cover what the EC’s actual purpose is. Though in this particular case it may be fairer to say classism.

          • JamesFire@lemmy.world
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            2 hours ago

            I think it was less overt racism, but still pretty racist.

            But mostly because Classism and Racism were pretty intertwined back in the day, what with non-white people essentially being entirely disallowed from actually being a higher class.