Schadrach

As far as wanting to maintain the current electoral system, both parties are the same and they are the same in this one particular thing because they both benefit from it and any move away from it upsets the status quo that keeps the money and power flowing to them.

The only move either party wants to make away from the current electoral system is if they could find a way to reduce it to a single party system and that party was theirs.

They aren’t the same in virtually any other way, to the point of being as extremely and overly opposed on as many other things as possible, in part because presenting everything as a dichotomy of extremes reinforces that system.

I can top it - my first desktop PC was an Epson. Come to think of it, my first printer was an Epson dot matrix. Loud as fuck but it was a good little workhorse.

They are. They just aren’t the only one.

With the introduction of protected mode it became possible for programs to run in isolated memory spaces where they are unable to impact other programs running on the same CPU. These programs were said to be running “in a jail” that limited their access to the rest of the computer. A software exploit that allowed a program running inside the “jail” to gain root access / run code outside of protected mode was a “jailbreak”.

I still miss the narrow window in which you could make use of paging without technically being in protected mode. Basically there was like one revision of the 386 where you could set the paging bit but not protected mode and remain in real mode but with access to paging meaning you got access to paging without the additional processor overhead of protected mode. Not terribly useful since it was removed in short order, but neat to know about. Kinda like how there were a few instructions that had multiple opcodes and there was one commercially distributed assembler that used the alternative opcodes as a way to identify code assembled by it. Or POP CS - easily the most useless 80086 instruction, so useless that the opcode for it got repurposed in the next x86 processor.

Doesn’t end it, merely does an end run around it. Also unlikely to ever take effect, because to get to 270 electoral votes worth of states supporting it you’re going to need to get states on board with it who will directly lose influence and/or who generally don’t vote in line with California and moving to the winner being decided by national popular vote (whether directly or by using it to pledge electors) essentially makes the result largely determined by turnout in California (both times in recent history the popular vote and electoral vote were not in alignment, the margin for the national popular vote was smaller than the margin in California).

It’s a lower bar to reach than actually ending the electoral college, but it’s unlikely to succeed for essentially the same reason - you have to get multiple states that will essentially lose any influence over the executive branch if they approve it to approve it.

Probably that interstate compacts have to be approved by Congress. It would be the most obvious angle of attack.

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.

Fair enough. There’s an interstate compact that’s been joined by several states that does an end run around the electoral college (all member states agree to give their electors to the winner of the national popular vote regardless of their state’s votes once 270 electoral votes worth of states join). That’s a lower bar than the 3/4 of states needed for an amendment, but will also inevitably face a legal challenge regarding needing federal approval as an interstate compact.

It’s still…several states away from going into effect for basically the same reason an amendment on this won’t pass - it benefits California and the smallest states that expect to always side with California, which isn’t enough to get to 270 electoral votes.

rending toward moderation encourages extremism and obstructionism, because you get more leverage on the center from the edges.

No, you don’t. What you’re thinking of is a consequence of runoff elections (including instant runoff) that doesn’t apply to preference voting. Preference voting functionally works to blunt the extremes down, unless you have a sufficiently large base radicalized to be you or nothing but then if a majority is dead set on you or nothing that base was going to win regardless of the electoral system.

Have you read Project 2025? As an American, that shit is terrifying, and the idea that we should find a middle ground with Christian nationalists is abhorrent.

Except an approval vote wouldn’t be a vote to find a middle ground on every issue in Project 2025. The idea that Trump or any other Heritage Foundation stooge is a moderate candidate that’s likely to get enough votes to win in an approval vote system where they wouldn’t also win under FPTP or ranked choice or STAR is frankly absurd.

Gore won. If we had completed counting the ballots in Florida, however they were counted, Gore won.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/jan/29/uselections2000.usa

(Published 8 days after the Bush inauguration)

The problem there wasn’t popular vs. electoral college. The problem was Democrats are spineless and refuse to fight. “When they go low, we go high” and all that.

There were recounts beforehand. Didn’t change the result. The last recount, the one that got interrupted by the injunction and killed by SCOTUS was of a handful of specific counties and counted under a different standard for over- and under-votes than the rest of the state.

If it had been completed, Bush would still have won. According to some media outlets doing research on the topic, had the entire state been recounted under the standard Gore wanted to use for that handful of places, Gore might have won. Some surveys done after the fact also suggested Gore could have won but surveys aren’t votes, it’s why we don’t just let news media do a poll and decide the president that way.

The SCOTUS decision leaned on two things: Election deadlines are enforceable and using different rules to count votes depending on which district you are in violates Equal Protection. They killed the last recount because it violated equal protection and a version of it that wouldn’t could not possibly have been completed before the deadline (about 2 hours after they released the opinion).

The logic behind Bush v Gore is why Trump switched from launching lawsuit after lawsuit in 2020 to bloviating and whining and hoping for a coup starting at about mid December. He’ll do the same this year if he loses - he’ll launch any lawsuit he thinks might have a ghost of a chance until we reach election deadlines then incessantly bloviate in a vain attempt to foment rebellion.

because it would do away with swing states, red voters stuck in blue states, and blue voters stuck in red states.

…and replace it with the election being won based primarily on turnout in California. Like seriously, the last few times a candidate won the electoral college but lost the popular vote it was a case where their margin in California was larger than their margin nationally. As in across the other 49 states more people voted for the person who won the electoral college, and California by itself was responsible for the swing to the other direction. Because California is just so ridiculously big compared to the other states.

Or the interstate voting compact which just needs a couple more states.

Of course, it’s already got every state that benefits from it being passed, and a few more that signed on but only benefit so long as their preferences are always in line with California. Which collectively isn’t enough for it to go active.

Now you’ve got to convince states that will both lose power and routinely get results out of line with their preferences to sign onto the thing that will do that.

…and once it goes active it will go to the courts where the argument will be whether as an interstate compact it has to be federally approved or if the state’s right to assign their electors as they please trumps that.

how does approval voting allow for spoilers? The experts that study election systems consider it eliminated under approval voting. It’s literally impossible to be a spoiler, because there’s nothing to spoil.

I suspect he’s thinking of it’s tendency to trend towards moderates. Like say 60% strongly prefer A, 30% strongly prefer C, but many supporters for either would also be OK with B. Under a lot of ranked choice and similar systems, B has no chance and A definitely wins but under approval if enough A and C voters also tick the box for B then B will win, even if B was only the top choice for a tiny minority because they were “good enough” for enough people.

The goal of approval voting isn’t to pick the candidate the thinnest plurality are the most ecstatic about, but rather to pick the candidate the largest majority consider acceptable. It trends towards moderates by design.

You’re not going to like the people campaigning on it, though.

Spoilers: It’s the Spoiler Candidates

…because the Dems and GOP benefit from the current system. Any move away from FPTP harms them, so they aren’t going to support it and any other party is a “spoiler candidate” because of how FPTP works.

Approval voting, not ranked choice. Easier to explain, solves the same problems at least as well and most voting machines already support it.

Combine it with every state assigning their electors in the same fashion as Maine and you’re most of the way to what people want without needing to get 38 states and 2/3 of Congress to agree to an amendment. Just simple majorities in individual state legislatures that can be done piecemeal.

This is because California just blows the curve. If California either didn’t exist or was chopped into a few pieces the numbers would look dramatically better. Likewise for merging the Dakotas or Montana and Wyoming on the other end.

The method used to apportion the House is designed to minimize the average difference in Representatives/capita between states.

But yeah, any system in which California exists and states like Alaska or Wyoming have any meaningful power at all is going to result in California being under represented per capita.

This is functionally the same as someone in the EU complaining that Germany doesn’t have remotely enough power and Luxembourg and Malta have far too much, except that the EU parliament doesn’t have as broad power as Congress and you can leave the EU.

Doesn’t matter. Ending the electoral college would require an amendment, and amendments require 3/4 of states to approve them. Abolishing the electoral college benefits California and the smallest states that expect to always side with California no matter what, which doesn’t get you to the 38 states required.

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.

And also don’t forget the very light-skinned black woman who couldn’t play Cleopatra because Cleopatra wasn’t black. (How do we know? We don’t? Cool. Cool cool cool.)

What’s known of her ancestry is mostly Macedonia Greek with some Persian and Sogdian Iranian descent. What’s left would probably either have been more of the same or north African, which still isn’t black. Her coinage (which she would have approved her depiction on) and her busts that are considered most likely to be accurate (because they agree with the coinage) depict her as Greek, so she at least primarily thought of herself as a Greek.

A very light skinned black woman is about the darkest she hypothetically might have been based on what we know of her lineage. Something closer to half Greek and half Arab is probably closer.