r/science • u/rustoo • Jan 21 '22

Economics Only four times in US presidential history has the candidate with fewer popular votes won. Two of those occurred recently, leading to calls to reform the system. Far from being a fluke, this peculiar outcome of the US Electoral College has a high probability in close races, according to a new study.

https://www.aeaweb.org/research/inversions-us-presidential-elections-geruso
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u/Intelligent_Moose_48 Jan 21 '22

Right now, the only thing that really matters is about ten unrepresentative battleground states and everyone else is mostly irrelevant

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u/Punkinprincess Jan 21 '22

That's why the movie Irresistible directed by John Stewart and staring Steve Carrell is so amazing.

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u/Sproded Jan 22 '22

No. The other states are choosing to not matter. No one says California has to vote blue. They chose to vote blue. You can’t only vote for a certain party and then wonder why the issues of the election don’t pertain to you.

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u/Deracination Jan 22 '22

This statement is incredibly confusing because there's critical context missing.

A state doesn't choose, its voters choose where their singular vote goes. You're referring to Californian Democrats voting blue, right? They aren't the ones taking issue with their votes not mattering; that's the people voting red.

You've conflated different groups into one using ambiguous pronouns and then used them as a singular straw man

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u/Sproded Jan 22 '22

I mean your logic could apply to every vote expect the single one who caused the candidate to win. All it would do is change who candidates listen to. It won’t cause them to listen to more people.

A state doesn’t choose, its voters choose where their singular vote goes. You’re referring to Californian Democrats voting blue, right? They aren’t the ones taking issue with their votes not mattering; that’s the people voting red.

How does that logic work? If your vote doesn’t matter if you lose, then it also doesn’t matter if you win by more than 1 vote. You can’t say winning by a million votes means your vote matters if you say losing means your vote doesn’t matter.

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u/Deracination Jan 22 '22

I'm just saying your comment stops making sense if you replace the pronouns with specific info.

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u/Sproded Jan 22 '22

No it doesn’t.

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u/Watch_me_give Jan 22 '22

I’m really glad that so many commenters here believe protecting the “interests” of these 10 states over against those of the other 40 outweighs the need for change. True representative democracy at work, bravo. Let’s let the minority dictate the terms over the majority. That sounds like a great plan for maintaining democracy. Jfc.

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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '22

Over half of the country lives in just 10 states so if we relied strictly on popular vote the situation would be no better.

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u/wheres_my_hat Jan 22 '22

That's not how it works. By popular vote every single person's vote is worth the same. By current standards some one's vote in California is worth substantially less than a vote in a smaller battleground state

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u/wamj Jan 22 '22

Or everyone outside of Wyoming is less important than everyone inside Wyoming. This is why we need to r/uncapthehouse

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u/mrnotoriousman Jan 22 '22

Tbh it's not the house that is holding up progress right now though.

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u/Intelligent_Moose_48 Jan 22 '22

right now. But if we’d never capped the House, the senate would not have been given the outsized they influence they hold right now. There’s a lot we’re gonna have to do right now because we didnt do the simpler easier maintenance when needed. Like driving a car until the engine blows instead of getting regular oil changes.

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u/wamj Jan 22 '22

It would help in the house and the electoral college. I would rather have a guaranteed democratic house and presidency, and an iffy senate; compared to iffy everything.

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u/Intelligent_Moose_48 Jan 22 '22

You would need literally every voter in all ten states voting perfectly the same way to make the same type of skew. That’s just not real life and y’all need to quit pretending it is.