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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • That was why the conversation was Congress, the People’s will indirectly, or a popular vote directly.

    Source?

    The people who wrote the document knew an appointment system could not and would not stand.

    But they also knew some states would prefer it and may be reluctant to ratify if a popular vote were required.

    Throwing it to the state legislatures to officially decide was the compromise.

    How is that a compromise? Unless you mean because it gave the states the authority, which yk, is what I said.

    I’m not even sure why you’re arguing this? Are you trying to argue that we should appoint electors now?

    You said “At no point did the founders want the state interests to vote for president. It was either the people directly or the people indirectly.”

    Which is untrue. And again, the electoral college was intentionally designed to be a middle ground between “popular interest” and “state interest”- you falsely said “You’re thinking of the 3/5ths and the large state / small state compromises.”- which is not what I was thinking of.

    The number of electors states were given was guaranteed to be 4 + population. The 4 constant was for the same reason as the senate 2 constant, to fairly represent all states, + population was for the same reason as the house- to represent the population of the country as a whole.




  • Heres my example from another comment:

    Ie, splitting a city(with a rural area in a crescent shape around it) into two equal districts down the middle each with a sizable urban and rural population(say this gave 45% rural, 55% urban in each of these districts which is pretty reasonable), vs giving the city its own district and the rural area its own district. The first option may be more “compact” but in my opinion would lead to unfair under representation of the rural voters- same as if the demographics were swapped. Districts are supposed to “represent a community” not just be compact.







  • My understanding is that’s just finding how “compact” a shape the districts are. There’s still plenty of gerrymandering to be done in the positioning and the shapes themselves. Furthermore, why does that necessarily make the most sense?

    Ie, splitting a city(with a rural area in a crescent shape around it) into two equal districts down the middle each with a sizable urban and rural population(say this gave 45% rural, 55% urban in each of these districts which is pretty reasonable), vs giving the city its own district and the rural area its own district. The first option may be more “compact” but in my opinion would lead to unfair under representation of the rural voters- same as if the demographics were swapped. Districts are supposed to “represent a community” not just be compact.

    And urban/rural divide is just an easy example.