2024-03-19

sigh I guess I'm going to have to talk about the 2024 US presidential
election in this post. Don't worry though, I'm not going to dive
deep into the candidates or even the left/right politics or even
my own opinion on various controversial political subjects.

We have an international user group here on SDF and it struck me
as I was explaining to my family members overseas that there is
one really big quirk or irony about the US presidential election
that not a lot of people really understand...even a lot of Americans
don't understand it. So I figured i'd write about it.

That quirk is that for hundreds of millions of Americans, the vote
they cast for the president in November is simultaneously the most
consequential vote for a single person in the free world while also
one where their individual vote almost always doesn't matter.

I won't bore anyone with our "unique" and "interesting" electoral
college system and how it all works but one of the big consequences
of the system we have for electing the president is that there are
28 states that have voted for the SAME party's candidate since
1992.

So whether you vote for the Democrat candidate or the Republican
candidate in those 28 states, your vote will not change the electoral
college votes that your state gives to the presidential candidate.
And it is the electoral college votes that matter...not yours! This
is why we have this weird phenomenon of a candidate "winning" the
popular vote while not winning the presidency.

in my home state of Texas, the electoral college votes will go to
the republican candidate as it has since 1988. California's electoral
college votes will go to the democratic candidate as it has since
1992. And this will be true for 28 states!

This is why you hear so much about "swing states" or "battleground
states." Those swing states have extremely competitive presidential
elections where your individual vote really could affect the outcome
of how the electoral college votes for that state. In a way, the
people living in those states have a much more consequential impact
on the presidency than anyone living in Texas or California or New
York or 20+ other states.

Does this mean that anyone living in California and Texas shouldn't
bother voting? No of course not. The elections cover more than just
the presidency. You can choose your senator and congressman as well
as a whole bunch of other politicians.

However, it does mean that the presidential vote for me in Texas
or my family in California is just an exercise in civics as opposed
to actually being consequential.

Now of course over periods of time, swing states can change. We 
hear this most about a state turning "purple" where the demographics
have changed enough that there is now an equal  mix between democrat
and republican and these states become very competitive. But these
changes are generational. They literally turn purple because of
demographic changes like immigrants, urbanization, and generational
age shifts of the population. Not things that politicians and their
marketers can actually control.

So what is the real solution to this problem? The only real solution
is to abolish the winner takes all electors system we have in all
of the states. This would mean that the electoral college votes
would be assigned proportionally to the actual votes for each
candidate in each state. This would instantly make each state more
competitive because instead of just giving all of the electoral
college votes to the majority winner in each state, every electoral
vote could potentially be competitive. We have 1 or 2 states that
do this right now.

Will that ever happen? Nope! Both Democrats and Republicans have
a lot invested in the current system. They all have stronghold
states and they would be loathe to give them up and have to compete
in every federal voting district.

heh, politicians...am i right?