Not a single person answered the question, which is WHERE they should eat, not what.
You’re assuming that there isn’t a pizza store called “Pizza!” and a restaurant called this old shoe that serves shoes.
The electoral college is a weird vestige of an earlier time. Each state gets apportioned a vote equal to the number of senators and congressmen they get; so the least populous states get an outsized voice in appointing a President.
When the law to cap the size of the US house to 435 representatives was passed in the very early 1900s - the US population was only ~90m. If instead the size of the elected body was allowed to grow in line with population, the US would have something closer to ~1,600 representatives currently, and as a result the electoral college would be much more equitable.
This would only make since as an example of the Electoral College if you adding something to adjust for everyone’s theoretical impact on the meal.
If every voted but Liz was also paying a larger percentage of the bill than everyone else then it would make sense that her opinion outweighs everyone else.
This makes the most sense as a “who to vote for” in the [private] primary systems we use to determine who to vote for in our very openly rigged two party system. We/the “two parties” purposely drag the parties to extremes by having their primaries in certain states and candidates are driven to court extremes and we pretend that’s good as many valid candidates are “weeded out” that way. (Again, it’s a private system, So even non-centrist candidates, famously Bernie, can just be ignored as the party chooses who they want)
Please tell me votes from certain states aren’t worth more than votes from other states in America…
Well the senate is composed of 2 legislators from each state, so technically and in practice smaller states can band together effectively and distort policy that a majority of the people would be for. Theres a strong argument that my vote in Maine carries more political weight than a vote in california when it comes to the senate. This has allowed the southern states to drag their feet on policy over the years, and caused a lot of questions about representation in the country. So moving down the line, our presidential elections use an electoral college where house seats (which are restricted and tied to the population + senate seats = EC votes) So when it comes to electing presidents a state like maine with 1M people is punching way above its representation weight compared to california. Most of the EC votes are winner takes all which is the reason why california votes blue and alabama votes red for the president. Its also the reason why Nebraska and maine split their votes to offer people fair represenation in their districts.
TLDR: Yes and its mathematically supported
Rhode Island
Even i forget they are a state sometime.
Not in a straightforward manner, no. One vote is just one vote. Most states are winner takes all, so the simple majority winner of, say, California takes all the electoral votes in California. It just so happens that California has less electoral votes per capita than states like Wyoming.
votes from certain states aren’t worth more than votes from other states in America
There you go. Though, for the record: votes from certain states are worth more than votes from other states in America.
We need the electoral college because without it the ignorant masses might elect an dangerously unqualified reactionary demagogue they saw on a reality TV show.
I almost missed the sarcasm lol. Woooosh
Thank goodness that will never happen
Well maybe it’d happen once. but certainly not twice. Right?
That sounds like the plot of Idiocracy.
That’d be insane if it actually happened. Could you imagine!?
Don’t worry, there are more than sufficient checks and balances in place to make sure that kind of situation could never occur!
Stop. This was one comment too far. . . we aren’t currently living idiocracy /s. I have chicken thighs from may. I’m safe
🤣
Could a voting bloc of Democrats move to Wyoming pretending to be Republican and then swing the vote before the RNC has any idea what happened. If they are so sparsely populated it can’t be that hard to outvoted them.
Sure but who the fuck wants to move to Wyoming?
Well almost 200k people would need to move there. Making Puerto Rico a state would probably be easier.
Land doesn’t vote. People do. End the Electoral College now.
Landowners vote though. Giving the plebs the right to vote was a mistake.
You forgot the ‘/s’
I thought it was obvious enough to not need it, ahh well.
Ah! In these times? There are people who ACTUALLY think weird things…
Let’s let the class decide what type of pizza to get.
Counting the votes, pepperoni wins.
Counting the votes at each table, then each counting the winner per table, pepperoni wins.
Arbitrarily dividing each table into “groups” of students, then adding those groups up to determine which choice won the table, then counting the tables… anchovies wins!
My second grade teacher did the Jane Elliot experiment in our class. I was in tears because I couldn’t talk to my best friend anymore.
Like, I don’t think I’ve ever been that upset in my life. This was like 35 years ago.
A shitty thing for a teacher to do to a second grader…but damn if it didn’t stick with me.
So, too, would something like this.
…same teacher, during the Great American Smokeout, called down to the office and told them we were going to do an “experiment” in the class. She lit up a cigarette in front of all of us, took a few deep drags, then put the cigarette on some plastic + foam model of the lungs, to show them getting soaked with tar.
The 90s were a wild time. Teachers smoking cigarettes and in class in front of 7yo’s and performing social experiments on casual racism. And people wonder why millennials need so much more mental healthcare than previous generations. We’re the last ones who sat on the rug, Indian Style.
A better analogy
Counting the votes- pepperoni wins.
There’s a lot of vegetarians but they don’t make up an absolute majority so their needs are ignored.Counting the votes at each table- cheese wins, because even the two huge tables want pepperoni, many of the smaller tables are mostly vegetarians who don’t eat pepperoni.
This is why the electoral college is still relevant- to ensure that urban voters don’t bowl over suburban or rural voters who deserve to have a say in government too.Dividing each table into groups then adding them together- that’s a scam by a pepperoni fan because they will ensure every group has 5 known pepperoni lovers and 2 others.
Okay, but cheese does not win in this system because pepperoni lovers can tolerate it while vegetarians cannot eat pepperoni. Nor does it win because minorities are getting more representation in general. Cheese wins here purely because you’ve arranged the voting system to give more power to the ones you wanted to win.
Dividing each table into groups then adding them together- that’s a scam by a pepperoni fan because they will ensure every group has 5 known pepperoni lovers and 2 others.
If it’s possible to ensure such majority of pepperoni lovers in every single group, then pepperoni lovers have an overall majority. They don’t need scams to win. In fact - you’d need scams to prevent them from winning.
Vegetarians need more campaign skills. Really gotta convince the pepperoni people that their meat is played out.
Like, really, what’s so great about meat on a pizza? Especially pepperoni. Pepperoni is so played out. I could see like, maybe Buffalo chicken, or barbecue chicken, or sausage + peppers…but pepperoni? We gonna go to Starbucks after and get a PSL?
Not to mention, we had pepperoni last time and we all got sick, remember? We were stuck at home for like a whole year.
Anyways as a vegetarian, my vote would be for the Mediterranean pizza anyways. With the feta, spinach, kamalata olives…this place even puts on a balsamic drizzle. Way more interesting and flavorful.
That’s a good pizza. Variety of flavors. Pretends to be healthy and exotic. Not available at Chuck E. Cheese.
See, this way, not only did I pitch the preferred pizza, I also introduced additional contenders on the other side of the aisle. This will hopefully serve to split the vote enough to force a run-off. It’d probably still be between Pepperoni and Mediterranean, but now, hopefully enough of the Never-Peppers will realize that Pepperoni is the basic-bitch of meats, and if they can’t have buffalo then why even have meat?
Unfortunately, the vegan is like “Fuck all ya’ll, all of these options are supporting animal genocide, how could I vote for any of these?” and abstains, and manages to convince another Never-Pepper stand alone choosing salads for everyone. And then the rest of us all end up with Pepperoni. Again. And everyone gets heartburn, while me and the vegan starve. And the pigs still get slaughtered, and the cows still get raped, and we end up supporting the animal genocide even more. And the following year, the salad has cyclospora.
Happens all the damn time.
There are better ways to achieve local representation while still respecting the nationwide percentages. See Germany’s federal voting system for example.
Isn’t the House and the Senate already skewed in rural areas favor? Do urban voters really need to be kneecapped all across government?
That’s the whole point of the House-Senate split- that the more populous urban areas get more representation in the House, but proportionately less in the Senate.
That said- gerrymandering has fucked that up hardcore. The solution though is to stop gerrymandering, not to give urban areas universal control over the Presidency.
If you make the Presidency a popular vote only, then candidates will campaign in every major city and won’t give a fuck what rural areas want.
If you make the Presidency a popular vote only, then candidates will campaign in every major city and won’t give a fuck what rural areas want.
You may not be wrong but with the current system candidates pretty much only campaign in swing states. If you’re in a reliably red or blue state you likely arent getting a visit from a candidate.
The senate sure is. The house get reapportioned after every census to stay more or less proportional to population differences.
Now do the US Senate.
Ed: Where should we eat? I say pizza.
Ann: Pizza!
Ty: Pizza!
Liz: Pizza!
Ed: Alright, pizza it is! Oh, right, I forgot we have to figure out what the voters will eat. I guess they can have this old shoe. Now, back to pizza!
Bravo!
The Senate was never designed to be proportionate to a state’s population. The House was.
It’s fine to be against the idea of the Senate, but you should at least make sure you understand why it was created in the first place. That is, to create a union of states where each one has a certain level of autonomy.
The Senate is meant to represent each state’s individual interests in a national legislature.
Sometimes the interests of a local municipality don’t perfectly align with the interests of a state writ large. Which is why we have two houses: one to represent each state, and one that’s proportionate to population and represents the districts within a state.
The real issue, in my opinion, is the Reapportionment Act of 1929 that put a hard cap on the number of members of the House of Representatives at 435 seats.
It was created because the founders didn’t trust democracy. Shay’s Rebellion had them nervous about too much democracy taking wealth from the ruling class.
To be fair if you had stolen a bunch of land you’d also be worried someone would eventually steal it back.
Thanks for saving me the trouble of bringing this up.
you should at least make sure you understand why it was created in the first place. That is, to create a union of states where each one has a certain level of autonomy.
The Senate is meant to represent each state’s individual interests in a national legislature.
…
The real issue, in my opinion, is the Reapportionment Act of 1929 that put a hard cap on the number of members of the House of Representatives at 435 seats.
IMO the real reason the Senate is broken is the 17th Amendment (having Senators be directly elected by popular vote instead of chosen by state legislatures). That’s the point when it ceased to be fit for its original purpose (representing the State as its own entity in a way materially different from the House, maximising separation of powers) and should’ve just been abolished entirely instead.
I agree with you that the House is broken by the Reapportionment Act because there are just too damn many constituents per legislator, but that issue is separate from what’s wrong with the Senate.
but that issue is separate from what’s wrong with the Senate.
I’m not sure that it is. We have a bicameral legislature, you can’t really separate them completely. Together they are “Congress”.
I think the Senate would be fine as it is if we actually had a proportionate House of Reps.
And maybe the Senate shouldn’t be the “upper house” as I think “The People’s House” (in this scenario, actually proportionate) should be considered more important.
But I think calling for the abolishment of the Senate entirely is misguided. I like the idea of a federation of states, each with a degree of autonomy. And given the nature of the US being a nation of immigrants (and it’s sheer size), I think it fits our culture very well.
The senate has too much veto power, see the entire Biden presidency
Dont forget 8 years of Obama. Thats when this trend really got started.
The senate was designed to represent capital over people.
If you want to see the US without the Senate, watch The Hunger Games. It’s called “Panem”.
12 numbered districts whose collective population is a minority of the total, controlled from afar by a single district comprising the majority. Whatever that distant, popular majority wants, it commands the minority districts to provide.
The solution to the inequities in Panem is a Senate with the power to veto the whims of the Capitol district.
Instead you let a minority control the majority
Veto powers should be limited to that which directly impacts each state materially, not simply everything including things happening afar
Instead you let a minority control the majority
Myth. The House vetos the minority from controlling the majority. That’s the purpose of the House.
Veto powers should be limited to that which directly impacts each state materially, not simply everything including things happening afar
If the majority wants to enact something without the consent of the Senate, they are free to enact it at the state level: For themselves, rather than imposed against a minority populace that would reject it for themselves.
If that is not a viable option, then the federal government has too much power and needs to be reined in.
The purpose is not what it is doing anymore.
if the majority wants to enact something without the consent of the Senate, they are free to enact it at the state level
Then the veto should not apply to (more than a representative percent of) federal budgets. A shared project which states want to coordinate should not be vetoable by non-participants.
If that can still be vetoed then the vetoing states have too much power and must be reined in
A shared project which states want to coordinate should not be vetoable by non-participants.
Rejected. Individual states are free to establish contractual arrangements with eachother. They can create and fund joint commissions for such shared projects.
Where these “shared projects” are conducted and controlled by the federal government, there are no “non-participant” states. As participants in the federal government, these states have an interest in the budget of that government.
Lmao you do know there are many other forms of democratic government in the world that aren’t the USA right? You don’t have to resort to ham-fisted YA fantasy.
Also I need to confirm with you: you know the hunger games is fiction and not real life, right?
Fiction widens the contrast, bringing the problem into stark relief. It makes the pattern easily recognizable, so more subtle intrusions don’t go overlooked.
There are, indeed, many other forms of democratic government in the world that aren’t the USA. Some better. Many far, far worse. The best have strong factors differentiating them from simplistic, populist governance.
Many are worse? My guy, we’ve literally devolved into a fascist dictatorship. How much worse can it get?
The Senate made more sense when the US was less centralized and different states were like different countries and there weren’t a bunch of states populated by 100 cows for every person.
In the modern era, it’s a simple tyranny of the minority. Wyoming has like 500,000 people, but those 500,000 have the exact same power in the more important chamber of Congress than do the 40,000,000 of California or the 30,000,000 of Texas.
If we take it to an extreme, imagine if there were only two states in the Union. Hawaii and the entire Continental US. Would we share equal power with Hawaii? Of course not.
If we’re really married to the idea, there should be a requirement for roughly equal population by state, and let’s be honest, we have that with House districts and they gerrymander it. (We should also move to proportional representation to fix that.)
We should also move to proportional representation to fix that.
Nailed it. Gerrymandering is impossible to fix so long as we rely on geographical districts. In a state with 20 districts, 45% voting Democrat, 45% voting Republican, 5% voting Pirate, and 5% voting Ninja, we should have a congressional delegation of 1 Ninja, 1 Pirate, 9 Democrats, and 9 Republicans. Instead, we get 12 Republicans, 8 Democrats, no ninjas, and no pirates.
Nah, the senate represents the state. That’s the problem, always has been.
I bet Liz from Wyoming votes to eat the shoe at like 90% of meals, but argues that she’s totally different from all the other shoe eaters.
Hold on now, Liz only wants everyone else to eat shoes - she still wants pizza for herself! That’s what she’s gonna get, right? …Right?
She already has pizza before they even asked the question.
Where
pizza
shoe
Me, off-camera: these people are idiots
“I’m so tired, I could eat a horse”
This has been the electoral college
as a senator she would have alot more voting power in congress.
TIL pizza is a where.
Implies the restaurant names were Pizza, and This Old Shoe.
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Is Liz supposed to be a voter from Wyoming or the State of Wyoming itself? If the former, there should be like a dozen more people whose votes are worth less than her’s while still outweighing her total voting power.
Except several republicans have lost the popular vote and been elected president anyway, so clearly it’s entirely possible for Liz’s old shoe meal to outvote everyone else, if she’s in the minority.
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Yes it does. It correlates with the unpopular vote winning, because votes aren’t evenly weighted across people.
It’s not that deep. It’s a joke satirising something that literally actually happens, it being over the top and not exactly like in reality is the point, because this is supposed to be, hold on to your hat, a joke and not a politcal science lecture.
