I’m with higgmond. Bchad I disagree with your argument. I really don’t care that much about the local congressman or senator andt I don’t know much about them anyway. But when it comes to the President of the United States it is a very high profile event with debates and news. I would show up just to vote for the president if that was the case
So, Itera, do you vote for President because it’s a high profile election, or do you not vote for President because of the Electoral College, as you said earlier?
Or is it that the President is important enough that you would vote for President, if it just weren’t for the electoral college?
This is a real question, I’m just not clear where you stand on this.
IMO it’s an illusion of control, rather than an actual ability.
if it was popular vote determined, i would vote for the president regardless of where i lived
given the electoral process, and the 0 chance my state would change parties, i don’t vote at all.
I couldn’t see the correlation coefficient you’d worked out
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country
Jamaica has the highest gun deaths per capita, but is mid-pack (74 of 178) in per capita gun ownership
Honduras is next in gun deaths and again mid-pack (88 out of 178) in gun ownership
Japan is 164 out of 178 in gun ownership but last in gun deaths
South Africa has the 7th highest death rate but is 50th out of 178 in gun ownership
and so on
If there were negative votes the hedge funds would probably bring the political process to the brink of collapse and then we’d need a bailout.
…which presumably would involve the issuance of preferred stock to said hedge funds paying 10%… 
I may be an idiot but at least I don’t argue with reality. Among developed countries gun deaths and homicides increase PER CAPITA with gun ownership. See http://www.businessinsider.com/shooting-gun-laws-2012-12, PLEASE.
Newtown shootings really made me think about gun ownership and the sanctity of the Second Amendment. I think it’s clear that Americans can’t handle guns safely.
The impact of gun ownership on murders isn’t as clear cut - check gun ownership relative to the total murder rate:
If we have low relative total homicides but a few relatively more gun-related homocides - I’m ok with that.
According to USA Today, voter turnout in the 2012 election was 64.2% in “swing states” and 56.8% in non-swing states. Did the people in the non-swing states stay home and say: “Due to the structure of the EC, I’m not going to vote.”? No, of course they didn’t, but a lot of them probably said: “My vote won’t really affect the election anyway, so why bother?”.
Why not make more people feel like their vote can actually affect the outcome?
Ha - warren to the rescue.
This lies contrary to most studies I’ve seen. Frankly I’m too lazy to figure out the data difference today. Sort out the difference between the datasets others used that showed the opposite and this one.
Finally, we can agree on something.
First of all, when the election has upwards of 100 million votes (more if not having the EC actually does unleash a flood of participation), no one’s vote actually matters much at the margin. So I have a 1/100,000,000th of an effect on the outcome without the EC; with the ECI have perhaps 1/20,000,000th * (% of total electors) of an effect on the outcome in a swing state, and perhaps a 1/200,000,000th of an effect in a non-swing state. The effects of your single vote changing anything relevant are going to be on par with your chances of hitting the lotto, EC or not.
ironically, your vote’s effect on state and local government and on your congressmen and senators is going to be substantially more influential than those on the President, so it is irrational not to use it. Of course, lots of us get into the Presidential race because the costs of feeling informed (different from actually being informed) are substantially lower, since the news media feeds the horse race to us nonstop for a year. That’s why many of us like to vote in Presidential elections. It’s a big party going on and we don’t want to feel left out, and we haven’t actually had to go dig much for information on what’s happening: it’s being provided to us (with some spin, of course). But actually trying to exercise power through a vote? Most people don’t decide what to vote for based on how effective their vote is. Otherwise, those people would come out for midterm and local elections, where their vote is not nearly so diluted and federalism protects many local powers.
As for swing states having an 8% higher participation rate (hat tip to you Higgs for the data point), it’s hard to know how much of that rate has to do with people feeling that their vote matters, and how much has to do with the fact that the campaigners are hyper mobilized in those states. If you lived in a swing state, you were being constantly bombarded by campaigners, if you we’re in a “safe state” you may hardly have noticed campaigning at all. The whole point was to get your side out to vote, through bribes, intimidation, shaming, cupcakes, whatever, so it’s no surprise that participation is higher in those places. If anything it is surprising that it wasn’t even higher.
Removing the EC will change the way campaigns are run, to be sure, and a number of those changes are likely to be beneficial. I’m neutral on the EC. It’s probably not appropriate for the way communications media works today and so all the strategizing that goes around how to play it is probably not useful, but its silly to think its going to have a huge effect on the direct effectiveness of your vote, which is infinitessimal no matter how you slice it. If you vote against the majority, you lose. That’s how elections work, and people are going to feel just as frustrated about it, EC or not, because if the majority is against you, the only choices are 1) accept it, 2) emigrate, 3) try to redraw the boundaries (making things more local or more global or just weirdly shaped, depending on what helps you the most) to a place where you are no longer at as much of a numbers disadvantage.
^I think there’s three camps, 1) EC is fine how it is, 2) reform EC, 3) eliminate EC. I’m more in the second camp. When you say you’re neutral, do you really mean you’re in camp 1 or camp 2? Would you oppose simple reforms that would increase the incentives of more people to vote?
^^ based on the above, no one should bother voting in presidential elections under any structure because they are just 1 vote in 200,000,000 and they don’t matter (the actual number of votes in 2012 was closer to 125,000,000, but doesn’t really change the argument). I have no objection to the EC, I just object to the vast majority of the states being winner-takes-all and think a structure that is either based on congressional district or proportion of the state’s popular vote will make more people feel like their vote matters. I believe each congressional district is supposed to have around 600,000 registered voters (I could be wrong), so I would rather be 1 in 600,000 than 1 in 100MM or 200MM. Does that make my vote “matter” any more? Maybe, maybe not, but at worst it might encourage more people to vote. Isn’t that a desirable outcome?
I would fall into camp 2. I would like the EC votes to be awarded based on congressional district, although I would also be okay with the EC votes being distributed proportionally to the popular vote in that state, maybe with a “bonus” vote for winning the state.
I don’t think either change would cause a massive surge in turnout, but I think it is more fair. Even if it only increases turnout by a little bit, I would still see that as a good thing.
I agree with this too.
I found this interesting and tangentially related to this thread.
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/PPP_Release_Hipsters_051313.pdf
Glad I could help you feel better about yourselves. I like spreading happiness.