Have you ever played around with one of those "calculate your own electoral college map" websites? There's one called 270 to Win which is fairly good. Real Clear Politics has one as well. But instead of using it to figure out if Biden or Trump will win, have you tried seeing just how disproportionate the map can get? Give it a try, sometime. If you do, you'll see that, given our current electoral structure, it is entirely possible, mathematically, for a candidate to receive less than 30% of the vote and yet still win the presidency!
Take a look at the spreadsheet below:
As you can see, if one wins only 51% in the 11 states with the largest population, it is possible to win 270 electoral votes with only 29.19% of the overall vote total!
That's INSANE!
Yet that's the system we have right now.
Okay, that's just a mathematical exercise. It is quite impossible to lose 100% of the vote in 39 states while winning 51% in the 11 largest ones. But still, to know that such a lopsided outcome is even remotely possible should be quite sobering!
Now, this could easily be fixable. If a 51% win in a particular state only meant getting the majority plus one in the electoral college, that would be fine. Such systems are already in place in Maine and Nebraska. For example, winning a 51% majority in California would net the victor 28 electoral college votes, and the loser would get 27. That's fair. It gets more interesting in states like Wisconsin, where only 10 electoral college votes would get split 6 to 4, but that's still fairer than giving the whole shebang to only one winner in a near-tie! If such a system were in place, then 51% of the vote in the 11 states shown above would only total 144 Electoral College votes, and that's fair with only 29% of the vote total!
But nah, that would make too much sense!
The system is lopsided, and right now it leans clearly in favor of Trump. According to Nate Silver's website, fivethirtyeight.com, Joe Biden could lose the election if he wins by less than 53%.
Think of that. A candidate could win a clear and decisive victory, and still lose!
There's only one word for that: bullshit!
And yet Trump keeps saying, "The only way the Democrats could win is if they cheat!" Because, of course, in Trumpland, everything is backwards, inside out, and upside down.
Just consider how fucked up this is. The Republicans, with their thumbs clearly and unambiguously with their thumbs on the scale, calling the Democrats the cheaters.
It's time for a change. The system we have in place must be updated. It was fine when the only thing that connected us was a railway system and maybe a telegraph line or two, but those days are gone! We need a system that represents all of us, and now!
But to get that change, we must first win using the existing fucked-up structure. GO VOTE!
Eric
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