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@@A_Legal_Immigrant_1776 average angry trumpie: "REEEEEEEEE, ThIs Is PuRe LiEs AnD lEfTiSt PrOpAgAnDa!!1!11!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!" You have no proof, just your average temper tantrum
@@Snowboi1963 Oh shush Biden supporter. Don't even pretend he is a better alternative to Trump. He's ass and you know it. Quit protecting your retarded party.
"Without the electoral college the unpopular party will lose and the popular party will win, therefore we can't remove the electoral college" is the funniest argument I've ever heard.
@BarelyFunctionalTK It makes sense when you consider which political affiliation arguments like this generally come from. Just look at the popular vote winners over the past 3 election cycles. We'd be in a much different place if we didn't have the electoral college.
Too bad we've allowed our government to manouver itself into a position where there's so much division and so little good will to work in a bipartisan manner that changing the system will most likely not happen in our lifetimes. Get money out of politics, and mandate term limits for *all* elected officials (with hard upper age limits) and that would be a start, but those two things are antithetical to career politicians interests, so those types of proposals will be dead on arrival 100% of the time.
Thomas Jefferson imagined each new generation doing a full rewrite of the constitution every 20 years because he proposed it was a sort of tyranny for new generations to live under the antiquated rules of past generations, especially given democratic governments only rule legitimately by the consent of the governed. It's a shame that one party has become so stubborn in their ways that they now see the constitution as some sort of unchangeable sacrosanct biblical document, when it was designed to be changed and modified as society itself changed.
@@germanwizbang6250 Our systems can be changed, but not by a simple 50/50 popular vote. States like California have changed their Constitution's almost as often as some people change their toilet paper. The result, it makes the State's Supreme Court almost completely incapable of determing matters of Constitutionality that land in their lap.
No. It would mean that if 24% of people disliked the video from the correct geographical location then it would count as 100% dislikes. That’s why there is a problem lol
@@CtrlAltFrog That's not how the electoral college works. Even if you somehow split the Likes/Dislikes into two "states" and put every single Dislike plus only as many Likes as wouldn't swing the state, you would still end up with ~63% Dislike EVs, not 100%.
"California and New York would decide the election" More Republicans voted in California in 2020 for Trump, than Republicans voted for Trump in Texas. The argument those states would decide the election, is entirely predicated on some weird idea that California votes 100% in favor of Democrats which is only how it works with the Electoral College
Being a Kansas resident I also thought it was pretty funny hearing the argument about how votes wouldn't matter without the electoral college, yet it's because of the electoral college that my vote basically doesn't matter...
Yep, if Florida and Texas just became slightly more blue. Then Florida, Texas, New York and California literally would decide the election because 100% of their votes would go to the Democrats despite only about 60% of the people in these states supporting the Democrats!
You don't understand, the idea is that it's no longer about getting your party to turn out in Cali, it's the fact that without the electoral college, you could run a platform designed specifically around bolstering California by say, taking budget away from smaller states. And since most Californians WOULD vote in their own interest, that's effectively immediately 20% of the vote needed to win based off of a very bad platform
@grahamskippy Yes, until you realize that you could do this with the top 10 populated states, leaving you 40 other states to siphon from, and win. It becomes a contest of pleasing small amounts of large clusters, instead of having to compromise for different states that have different problems. You could probably grt even more efficient by just choosing 20 to 30 cities instead. Same number roughly population wise, and way less money than having to bolster an entire state. It becomes a mess.
I'm no statistician, but there seems to be a strong link between "supporting the electoral college" and "needing it because your candidates would never win otherwise."
That's what I say, I've also noticed there's also a strong link between "supporting being able to get penicillin" and "needing penicillin because your body will die otherwise." Like HMMMM 🤔🤔🤔 kinda sus, right fellas
Get rid of the electoral college and the Republican party will just have have to reform in order to be competitive in elections again. More fair elections plus a reformed conservative party seems like a win win to me.
THIS IS MURRICA. IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT, THEN LEAVE! Then you end up researching how convoluted the immigration process out of the U.S. is, and the fact that you still have to pay income tax unless you renounce your citizenship-- something that costs in excess of 10,000 dollars, mind you. Immigrating has never been and will not be a viable option for those in the lower and middle class for quite a long time-- at least, if you intend on going anywhere actually desirable that has cultural and lingual similarities with the U.S. It's a complete nonsense argument, and those that make it clearly don't understand the nuances and intricacies of the immigration process
@@knewledge8626 This reply is gold😂 The “world police” trying to convince everyone within and outside the country that their system of governance is superior.
That’s because you dumb leftists don’t realize that you say you’ll leave because America is a “racist country” and “capitalism is evil”, but still continue to live in said “racist country” while reaping the benefits of “evil capitalism.” 🙄
I think my most hated response to criticism of the place you live in is: "If you don't like ____, leave!" There are so many problems with that line of thinking, but it always seems to come up, like clockwork.
Depends on what the issue is. People who abandon socialist countries with tyranny, and come to the US spreading the exact same ideas should be told to leave. Why did you leave tyranny if it's so great?
@@thegoldenarm6422 lol what. socialism isn’t inherently tyrannical- if anything it’s the opposite. if someone left tyranny but still supports socialist ideas, they are not supporting tyranny in their new country
Something that gets glossed over here when talking about the founders is what they actually intended when designing the electoral college. The "popular-ish vote" system we have now is not what they had in mind. Many of the founders were wary of democracy and didn't want it at all at the federal level. So their idea(which they were admittedly pretty naive about) was that the electors would actually be the people who decide who the next president will be. And the electors wouldn't necessarily be appointed by popular vote, it was left up to the individual states to decide how they appoint their electors. So the founders' vision was that the states would all elect or appoint these electors on the basis of their wisdom and education, and the electors would then deliberate on who the prez should be. (Also worth noting is they weren't thinking of political parties when they designed this, they didn't think parties would be a thing) We ended up sort of "hacking" the system so that it turned into something like a national popular vote but not quite. Which is why it seems so poorly designed, because we're using it in a way it was never meant for.
Organized political parties broke the intended electoral system within its FIRST 10 YEARS (re: election of 1800), and the 12th Amendment (ratified to avoid repeating the 1800 debacle) just kludged it up even further. Also, which president won a majority of EVs with the lowest popular vote? *Abraham M.F. Lincoln.* I wish I was making that up, but in 1860 just less than 40% of voters supported Lincoln. Even Donald in 2016 had technically more voter support (43%).
Another thing people forget is that by the time the electoral college was founded and established most of the founding fathers were retired or dead. Many of the signatures part of the Declaration of Independence which determined many of people we deemed “founding fathers” were out of politics or only voiced in matters outside Congress.
It continues to baffle me how many people defend the Electoral College until you realize it's mostly people who depend on winning without getting the plurality opinion to ever get into office.
The problem with going by plurality is that eventually you’ll get someone with only 15 percent winning because the electorate divided among a dozen candidates The Electoral College’s solution to potential plurality problems is absolutely bizarre though, by having the decision go to the House of Representatives Edit: People seem to think I don’t know what run-offs are or that this comment was somehow a defense of the Electoral College. Now, if you scroll down about two replies, you’d see I agree that run-offs are the optimal solution. And if you think this was me defending the EC, invest in critical reading skills. Either way, my point is that any voting system that allows for someone to win theoretically with 15 percent of the vote is a flawed system. You’d be surprised how often this happens outside of our beloved two-party environment-basically every award in sports allows this, not to mention gubernatorial primaries and even that most inviolable democratic process: internet polls. Also, it is truly bizarre how the House can select the president with no regard to who was even running.
@@warlordofbritannia That is why you have run off elections.... The two candidates who get the highest percentage of votes face off against one another in a run off election, and whoever gets 50% of the vote in that election, wins So someone only getting 15% of the vote and winning is impossible
@@warlordofbritannia And there are solutions to that too Runoff, Alternative Vote, Coalitions, etc Besides, most multi-party systems usually have one party that gets more than half of the vote, or at least more than 40%
The video you cited as "one of the better responses" was so condescending and full of misplaced confidence, really says a lot that that's their strongest argument
Id argue its far from the strongest argument but that man gets picked up so much to be argued against im not surprised XD and a big issue with Electoral College Arguments is the issue is so bloody complex differing people are on different sides of the fence for entirely different reasons.
Yeah, I've seen a few videos from 'Don't Walk..." he's a condescending douche that isn't half as smart or well informed as he thinks he is and is oh so overly opinionated about it. He miss quotes things and takes things out of context right and left and his arguments, generally, are full of fallacies. Watching his videos is like listening to someone sing painfully off key, but thinks they're nailing it.
@@jgroth3906 honestly it’s the whole political system that’s like that. People just don’t take a second to look at their opinion from another perspective and it’s infuriating.
In the 2020 presidential election, more Californians voted for Trump (6,006,480) than those who voted for Trump in Texas (5,890,350). I try to tell people in Texas this and they don't believe me and I have to show them the electoral results. The distribution of electoral votes, however, skews the results making CA look very blue and TX very red. But, in reality, both states are VERY purple. The electoral college fails to represent this disparity.
@@blockhead391 That's my point. The electoral college doesn't reflect proportionallity. In most cases (Maine and Nebraska excluded), all electors go to the 50% +1 winner in each state, thus the EC skews the results.
What's your point? California is a bigger state than Texas. In 2016 the extra votes Clinton got from California alone would swayed the popular vote in her favor. Democrats didn't have a problem with the Electoral College until their candidates stated losing elections. In fact, many on the left seemed gleeful with the prospect of Al Gore potentially winning the E.C. but not the popular vote. When the opposite occurred that was when their outrage began.
@@H.G.Wells-ishWells-ish i understand and agree with you that the electoral college doesn’t reflect proportionality (that’s explicitly true), but just showing the numbers of votes from california doesn’t mean anything. yeah it’s a big number, but trump’s 6 million votes lost to biden’s 11 million. that’s not a purple state by any stretch of the imagination.
@@H.G.Wells-ishWells-ish Unfun fact: The last surviving author of the US Constitution, who witnessed the first states picking electors by winner-take-all, IMMEDIATELY recognized the danger and wanted to amend the constitution to preclude it from going national, but he was already too late, and passed away before any meaningful action could be made.
It’s weird that people would defend their vote not being treated equally as everyone else’s, which is essentially what the electoral college facilitates.
@@ChrisF_1982 The President represents the whole country, whereas Congress(wo)men only represent their states or districts within their states. As such, the compromise that created the U.S.'s bicameral legislature actually makes sense.
@@Compucles The problem is that the senate is too powerful then if 51 senators from small states can obstruct 49 senators from large states from doing anything, while also stacking the Supreme Court and hundreds of federal courts. And that's not even considering the filibuster. Almost everything runs through the senate, including presidential and Supreme Court impeachment convictions, but small states have an absurd advantage.
@@j-rey- That's why laws need to be passed by both the Senate *AND* the House of Representatives. Meanwhile, the Senate (and the House) is *much* more divided by political party than it has ever been by state population. It's also the President who first nominates Supreme Court Justices and other federal judges for the Senate to confirm. In the case of impeachment, the President first has to be brought up on charges by the majority of the House before being tried by the Senate, which then requires a strict 2/3rds vote for conviction. Once again, it's the political parties that usually dominate this process.
It was great working with you again, Mr. Beat! In all sincerity, you do a great job addressing your personal views while confronting critiques in a calm and logical manner (especially the straw-man fallacy). Best of all, though, we love that you put a warning up at the very start to acknowledge your own personal biases and opinions. More channels need to do this!
I'm trying to use the link in his description to sign up but it's not working. Same when I type it in myself to my browser. Is it new and so not working?
An appeal to authority because folks admire the ideas of the founding fathers? That is quite the stretch to a logical fallacy argument. Try again and now you have all these dim witted fools all buying into that takeaway hook, line and sinker.
@@ericrosenberg9059 it is perfectly valid to admire the ideas of the founding fathers. Claiming something is valid BECAUSE it was an idea of the founding fathers is an appeal to authority.
the electoral college helps people from completely different areas have their votes count america is as big as europe the electoral college is meant to have more votes than it currently does, but for some reason people decided the house didn't need more members anymore
Trump losing actually just strengthens my position that the electoral college works just fine and people only cry about it because they can't handle losing.
@@skoop651 people from different areas would have their vote count more without the college. Everyone's vote would be equal. With the college, people from some areas have a less valuable vote. Republicans in California would matter more, as would Democrats in Alabama.
The number of people in America who act fearful of a hypothetical “tyranny of the majority” while having no problem imposing an ACTUAL tyranny of the minority is astounding. If it was a Venn diagram, it would be a circle.
MAGAtards are a walking contradiction. We're the "silent majority" but also please do not abolish the electoral college because our side of the political do not have the numbers to ever win the popular vote because we're the minority!
@@pm5206 Recognize that the equitable will of the majority is not tyranny, while the supremacist will of the minority is. Then be a decent human and support democracy.
Feels like electoral college defenders are more interested in silencing the majority than questioning why their preferred candidate can never get majority support. I sure do wonder which party they typically vote for.
You're looking at the problem too simply. It's not just how getting rid of the electoral college would affect current politics, it's how it would change it in the future. If we ran by popular vote, you could literally run a platform that picks out the 10 most populated cities in the US, say you're going to drain the funding from other places to make those places absolutely amazing, and win. Because who wouldn't vote for their own self-interest in that way? Getting rid of the ability for minority states to have louder voices incentivizes candidates to create whatever platform easily pulls the largest flat number of voters, which would be catering to a small amount of major cities which bolster high population. Remember that the goal of politics isn't to make the world a better place, it's just to get elected. The electoral college helps the most people while that's going on, because otherwise those people won't get elected if they don't cater to a wider audience. Also helps keep political extremism down, comparatively anyways.
@FosukeLordOfError Fair enough, that was more of a hyperbolic statements. But top 10 populated states really wouldn't be very much, and still very much showcases the problem.
Agreed Mr Beat. The argument that the broad term 'democracy' is analogous to the term 'direct democracy' strikes me as being both desperate and fundamentally dishonest.
@@pdawg193 not only that but the whole argument depends on the idea that the terms are mutually exclusive when they are most definitely not. You can (and we do) have a democratic republic. 90% of arguments like this especially about political ideologies (democracy vs republic, communism vs socialism, fascism vs authoritarianism etc) are essentially just false dichotomies.
@@pdawg193 Well duh. It is still a legitimate debate though because one side says that the President should be directly elected like Congress is and the other side supports preserving a system that gives small states at least some say in who becomes President even though the majority still has a large advantage.
@@CStone-xn4oy The is the crux of the whole problem is thinking in the concept of states vs people/individuals. Every individual vote counts whether the EC exists or not. The EC does give regional power to certain blocks like the Deep South or North East. You are putting primacy of geography over individuals. The reason it has become an issue is because in the last 30 years one party would have only won the office once without the EC. How do you feel about folks in D.C. that have no voice in the Senate? Or Puerto Rico who have no representation at all? How do you feel about states where their state legislative bodies are the minority parties in their states in popular vote, but used a wave election in 1994 to continuously change laws and toy with maps to maintain power in those states? The 2 states I am describing are Michigan and Pennsylvania where there are slim, but definate blue leans, but the state legislatures have been red since 1994 and keep playing games to maintain power and are even willing to restructure EC to take the power away from voters and set it into the legislatures hands again like it is 1809. BTW Michigan has always had popular vote for the EC as the state came along in the 1820's long after the notion of legislatures electing the POTUS were considered archaic and out of style. EC honestly should have been done away with after the Civil War as it has had no purpose other then as an oddity or as a specific political tool.
There is a disturbing trend of people in the US being conditioned to support the status quo and being unable to make a coherent argument when asked and having to resort to either personal attacks or tropes. The same happens here in the UK with the FPTP voting system whenever you ask someone here about it.
View it from their pov. No civil war in more than 150 years and the US is a superpower. So they associate the present US with its institutions. By contrast Europe in the XX century had two massive wars. If the US suffered say a devastating war with no clear gains then maybe institutions might get questioned.
FPTP is arguably as bad as the system in the USA. Quebec's leading party got 40.98% of the popular vote yet got 72% of the seats. And on the federal level Justin Trudeau got elected twice as a minority government when the conservative party has more total vote.
Honestly the more I learn about the UK's system of government, the more I think it's bizarre that you guys have to wait so long to vote on new representation or not if the current majority decides, but like why would they call a snap election?
@@jspihlman To flex on the opponents to HMG that it is still the people's voice. Not realizing that there is a 50/50 chance the population would flip the Government the bird and change.
I love the argument of "big pop votes need to be less than small pop votes" because apperently if you live close to more people your vote should count less
"If you live close to more people your vote should count less" Yes. 100%. Otherwise rural states shouldbe allowed to leave the union but the Amerikkkan empire would never allow that now would they. Fuck America! God Bless Wyoming. If you are some coastal urbanite fuck you. If you are a rural brother, respect. And that goes the world over. Us rural people need to stick together from Namibia to Wyoming to Acre state to Chaco, Paraguay to Finnmark Norway.
I mean it makes sense. There are states predominantly made up of rural people that have no chance against larger states. It's why the senate exists. The problem is that it makes no sense why both the senate seats and representative seats are voted upon in the same election. They should really be separate elections, with the representative one deciding who's the president, and the senate having a bit less power.
@@DaDARKPass Okay. How exactly does that makes sense? Rural people would have no chance against large metropolitan populations? Why should they. There are less of them. Why should they have more voting power. Living in a rural area is not a meritable status that justifies this system. The votes of people who live in rural areas would still count if it was based on popular vote. So we don't do it because the minority would lose? That is extremely flimsy justification.
The worst part about the Electoral College is only several out of the 50 states matter in electing the president. This year we have the following categories: Most Important States: PA, MI, WI, Important States: NC, AZ, GA, NV Less Important States: FL, TX, VA, OH, MN Worthless States: The remaining 38 states not listed
uhm? North Carolina is one of the 7 most important states. how do you have nevada as one of them but not north carolina? Both voted for their party lean in 2016 and 2020.
@@NickHernandez2024 Fixed it as I didn't carefully make that list at the time. I do thi k it's on the lower end of the most important states because it leans red consistently. I also put Nevada last because it not only leans blue and is borderline most important, but it also has a pitiful amount of electoral votes compared to the other most important states.
You, Mr Beat; are one of those people that I frequently disagree with on political issues, but respect your opinion because you are informed and make good arguments. Keep doing what you do sir.
I love the irony that THEY don't fully understand what a republic is. If we got rid of the electoral college we would still live in a republic. We just have one degree removed so we are more directly voting for the representative in the republic. It's not that hard to understand.
the electoral college helps people from completely different areas have their votes count america is as big as europe the electoral college is meant to have more votes than it currently does, but for some reason people decided the house didn't need more members anymore
@@skoop651 I’d be fine with changing the size of the electoral college/house. I wasn’t really saying we should get rid of the EC. I think it’d be much easier to try to fix it. I just meant that if we did it wouldn’t change our status as a republic.
Except they do... If you get rid of the EC then it's literally a direct democracy, why would it ever be a good idea for a handful of cities to be able to determine the government of the ENTIRE country and not the individual states who already have their own individual laws and systems? Why should states which feed and supply the rest of the country but don't have as many behemoth cities get zero say in our government? There are no good educated arguments for removing the electoral college.
Continuing on with the dictionary definition of "Republic", From the Merriam-Webster dictionary:" A government having a chief of state who is not a monarch and who in modern times is usually a president (2) : a political unit (as a nation) having such a form of government". No Republican believes this but then Republicans tend to be the people who are not educated.
One time in school, we were supposed to come up with "political parties" or whatever. Mine's "platform" mentioned getting rid of the electoral college. The teacher called me a socialist... for supporting democracy. That definitely says something about that teacher, but I think it probably says something about the electoral college, and maybe even about capitalism/hyper-capitalism in general.
Teacher should be fired for that, you can discuss political issues in school but the teacher shouldn’t give their own opinion or chastise a student’s opinion. Also that doesn’t make sense lol, how does supporting changing the way we elect a president mean you also support complete public ownership of the factors of production? Talk about a straw man fallacy
As a senior in high school i wrote a paper against the electoral college. My teacher was livid and gave me an F, bringing my grade to a C. It was the only grade that was not an A.
So basically your “freedom” to challenge something ABOUT freedom was met with a borderline Authoritarian response. The irony 🙄 I wanna to kick that teacher in the _____
Fantastic video! So glad you mentioned the "repubs in blue states and dems in red states would be heard without the electoral college" point. I've telling people that for years haha
Except they wouldn't. I live in Montana. Our largest city is about 120,000 people. And I don't even live there. Our population is about 1.2 million. So, compared to just about every state surrounding us, why would any candidate for president campaign here, when either Dakota, Idaho, or Washington, Oregon, or I don't know, California is available and full of potential voters? Montana gets disregarded because few people live here. We're essentially left out for ourselves when with the Electoral College, there's some incentive (even if just a bit) to appeal to the potential voters.
@Jack Jones can you explain to me why you are in favor of allowing a candidate to win if they don’t win the majority of Americans votes? Please don’t tell me it’s because you acknowledge GOP wouldn’t win without the EC?
@Jack Jones Then Republicans should campaign for values the people actually want. Democrats usually win the popular vote because their ideals are in line with the people of this country. The popular vote and electoral vote are supposed to reflect one another.
People who defend the electoral college are the ones who feel they benefit from it. The idea that the founding fathers never intended for us to re-evaluate and improve our systems of government and elections is one of the most ridiculous notions ever.
It's not hard to Understand if you just picture the US as individual states instead of just one America.. The whole point of it is to keep every state glued to the Country.. That's why states are allowed to do things so differently.. You don't do that by telling the smaller ones to shove it, majority of people dont like you anyway.. One state could have a Volcano brewing but nobody listens to them so they explode or leave..
@@myman8336 I think we need a better system, though. It doesn't sit right with a lot of people that the president who receives 3 million less votes can still win the election. I think the only way the electoral college works is if all 50 states are more or less the same in population. Perhaps what needs to happen is for California to separate into several states and certain states need to merge (the Dakotas and Carolinas for example). Small states should not have the ability to hold the nation hostage over important legislation and the presidency.
The constitution was never meant to question the founding fathers, and that's exactly why they failed to put an amending formula in the constitution. Oh! Wait....
@@iammrbeat "Protect the minority" except any minorities within states. There is much more distinction between minority groups in Texas or California than North and South Dakota
Mr beat is one of the people I watch because I DON'T always agree with him. It's nice to challenge your own ideas and try to be as open minded as possible
@@jessicaporter7517 irrelevant to the question, the arguments he made only work for people who already like democracy, which I do but a lot of people dont
Honestly I was apprehensive about changing the system of the Electoral College but you have thoroughly convinced at least one random person on the internet to change sides. On this one.
Ask them, what if instead we make it based on ethnicity? Because the ethnic majority in the US had a way worse record of treating ethnic minorities badly than small states...
If choosing a politician by popular vote is mob rule, choosing is a politician by electoral college is just rule by a sometimes slightly smaller mob (+538 random people who could toss out the entire results if they wanted to, so in that case a really really small mob)
Its the worst when you hear a "The United states isn't a democracy its a republic" as if it cant be both or neither or just one! Its like rational thoughts are completely out the window. People make the quicketst judgements with little to no true knowledge.
The other thing about that is...by electing a president we are still a republic. A republic is people electing someone to represent them. Abolishing the electoral college takes is from a constitutional republic to a constitutional republic
Yeah like most of countries in the world are republics and they don't have electoral college. Like have those people ever heard of outside world, that there are other countries out there?
Help me with something ... We know Dems will turn everything upside down for power . But if they want....power. If they want to get elected, why cant they offer solutions? Why can't they try to help us solve are problems? Why do they sneers at our unifying symbols ( the Flag, etc), out customs and our faith? Why do they just offer techniques and tactics but nothing to help? The shitty policies they do offer are mostly found to be unconstitutional . Translation:Why should we make it easy for you to have power when that's all you want?
Our government is falling apart because of the extreme political divide and polarization across the entire nation. I hope that one day, all Americans, Democrats or Republicans, unite and stand together as a nation
@Safwaan that's true, but competition and fighting for power should be regular rivalry and not descend into downright hatred were rivals are perceived as deadly enemies.
Nah our government is falling apart because it's been invaded by a corrupt, theo-fascistic right wing who are determined to turn the USA into a full-tilt handmaid's tale prison state. This "both sides" bullshit needs to stop. Yes, democrats are still fundamentally conservative and corporate. No, I don't like their party establishment very much either. But only one side wants to imprison or kill women for having miscarriages. Only one side flies Nazi flags and Confederate battle standards at their rallies. Only one side wants to build a wall on the border with one of our closest friends and allies. Only one side has attempted to kidnap sitting governors, only one side has attempted a violent coup, and only one side swamps the offices of congresswomen with so many death threats they need their own task force to assess which ones are serious. Fuck "both sides are extreme." There are Nazis and non-Nazis. Republicans who claim not to like the Nazis but still vote for them because of party loyalty are, at best, Nazi sympathizers. Vote blue no matter who.
I'm not an American. But when I learned about the Electoral College, my first thought was like, "This is the stupidest thing ever". Glad to know it wasn't just me.
It's because this guy doesn't explain what it is really for. I am guessing you live in a city? So a question... Do you care about the needs of farmers? Small rural towns? Voting in the USA actually can matter. XD
@@garcardosotan6172 I know this comment is two weeks old, and not directed towards me specifically, but I do live in a city, to be specific the suburbs of Chicago. I do care about the needs of farmers, as they feed me. I do care about dairy workers, and meat workers, and those who live in small rural towns. I understand that they are absolutely pivotal to the United States' basic functions. I, however, do not believe that their vote should count more than anyone else's. I also understand what the electoral college was originally intended for, but its intent is outdated in our modern world. Can tyranny of the majority exist? Yes, it can, is it nearly big enough of a problem that we need to sacrifice our country's democratic processes to prevent it? No, it isn't. Honestly, I would be okay keeping the electoral college if we just reformed it slightly. If we changed how electoral votes are given out away from counting senate seats, then it would work mostly fine, as the chance of an election being unfairly won by states with more voting power than they should have would become essentially 0. I know that the first reaction you'll likely have to this proposal would be that of "Well then you're removing those rural voices." Which is a fair first thought, but that's what local, state, and Senatorial elections are for. If a group of farmers have an issue of some form, then they can bring it to their local elections, and vote for people that would best help them on that issue. Same would apply for state elections. The Senate directly gives these more rural peoples more of a voice. They have to be considered because the Senate is 1/2 of Congress, and is necessary for legislation to be passed. Preventing the true winner of a presidential election from becoming president all for the purpose over-representing one group of people is entirely redundant. We have *multiple* institutions that already over represent them, and when the president is seen as the guiding leader of foreign policy, and representing the whole, rather than a specific group, then the president should reflect what the majority believes. My point with this massive wall of text that I doubt a single person, regardless of if they'd agree with it or not, would read through is that we already have multiple institutions that give the minority vote a voice, the electoral college is entirely redundant in its purpose, and far more dangerous as people are more likely to react emotionally and violently over the result of a presidential election than that of a smaller one. Especially if their candidate loses electorally, but not by the popular vote, or if they believe that the election was not won fairly due to the electoral college. Sorry if there are any massive grammatical errors, I wrote this entire thing in all of about 10 minutes, and was just thinking as I wrote.
Mr. Beat -- We don't agree on everything politically or economically -- but I deeply respect your commitment to democracy, civil discourse, and your willingness to educate folks. Can't thank you enough.
...RANKED CHOICE VOTING kills Jerrymandering and 100 other problems. No wonder the best Problem-adressing Social-Commentary-Channel on YT, Some-More-News, and Second-Thought, both advocate for it. The Electoral College and much more has to be fixed and the Best way is to know WHAT is broken.
He still loves joe biden though. He hates trump. He's one of those no trumpers that refuses to talk about trump and just defends a lot of his parties propaganda talking points.
the scary thing about electoral votes by district, like in maine and Nebraska, is that it makes it easier to gerrymander your way to the oval office. overall though, great video!
@@iammrbeat Instead of by district, why not electoral votes per county, since a county's borders can't be shifted every ten years depending on who's in power? Heck, we could apply that to state elections as well, or even county elections with EV's by township.
@@SignificantNumberOfBeavers Obviously larger counties would be worth more EV's than small ones. And only two counties have under 100 people, one in Texas and a former leper colony in Hawaii.
@@iammrbeat The problem is there's no objective standard of what a fair non-gerrymandered map looks like - it's fundamentally a political question. Witness all the maps that get escalated to federal courts, and get thrown out for creating specific majority coalitions or thrown out for _not_ creating them in other circumstances. There's no algorithm that you could teach to a computer, or to a truly politically-neutral person (if such a thing existed).
I really cannot get over the fact of how thoroughly I was able to be persuaded from a strong-held belief, just from a single video. Holy shit. You got backlash and really decided to shut it all down with straight facts. I commend you sir.
One thing i think is always worth remembering about those who defend the electoral college like Crowder does, is that they're not doing it out of principles and a genuine belief in it as an institution, but rather they do it simply because it's advantageous to them politically. None of the people in the right wing space online would have defended the electoral college if 2016 was reversed, with hillary receiving more Electoral votes but trump receiving more popular votes.
Nearly nobody would care about it at all if there hadn't been (recent) times when popular vote and electoral vote didn't match and that both recent times favored one party does make it hard for evaluations to not be pretty partisan. But, not exactly about electoral college but similar, conservatives do tend to generally like the having two Senators per state, more than liberals (a lot more would be fine with or prefer just having the one House of Representatives), even though that doesn't particularly help them and the Senate tends to frustrate both parties.
A non-partisan argument for the electoral college is that it's good, better than candidates focus more on swing states, than some other kind of category of states/areas, as which states are swing states can and does change over time.
Funny your Electoral College video is actually my favorite video on the channel, had no clue it had the most dislikes. If it were up to me to come up with a compromise, I’d keep the electoral college but switch to ranked choice voting. At the very least, you’ll break the two party system that way. And quite frankly I think the two party system is a big reason this conversation among others is so polarizing
Long time electoral college supporter, constitutionalist, and new listener. I think you bring up some good points, and I like the idea of ranked voting. Something like that could erode away at the 2 party system I think many are getting tired of.
The electoral college was fucking brilliant at the time, because presidential candidates would have ignored small states, and never gone their to campaign. This would have left voter with no knowledge about what was going on. Now, information travels. You’re average rural voter knows exactly what is going on in DC. I’ll give you Illinois for example. Outside of Chicago, Illinois is very conservative. The reason Illinois is a blue state is because those conservatives are overwhelmed by the interests of Chicago. This leaves those rural voters in southern Illinois, with no real say in presidential elections, because there votes are always going to be overwhelmed by the votes in Chicago. I want those rural voters to have a say. I want the minority political party in every state to have a say. That is why the electoral college at the very least needs to be altered, if not completely gotten rid of.
@@bencarter8423How does an electoral college defend the voice of the minority on the state level? It does the exact opposite by completely eliminating the vote of the 49%
@@bencarter8423i like this. I don't know if I like the idea many people have about abolishing it, because it has a purpose, but I don't think there's any question that it's absolutely flawed. I think, by the sounds of everything, that the issue is not the idea that the electoral college is a bad thing, but that OUR electoral college has flaws. Either this is misunderstood by Mr Beats and others, or they're miscommunicating this. Not sure which.
I remember back in high school we had an assignment where we had to discuss the benefits and drawbacks of the electoral college. I wrote about one or two sentences explaining the benefits, and about four or five paragraphs explaining the drawbacks.
@@Prolute The Constitution wouldn't have been ratified without the EC. But the union surviving? Well, it didn't survive... the EC didn't save it. A little thing called the Civil War happened. The Union is way more integrated economically and.socially these days. We'd be fine without the EC. Hell, we'd probably be better off. We'd definitely be better off with the voting system changes he mentioned at the end of the video.
@@travcollier The civil war is not a point in your favor, it's a point in mine. It shows how precarious the union really is. We wouldn't be better off without the EC because that would mean significant weakening the constitution. Instead, we should just give the federal government less power so that federal elections are less consequential.
Anyone that says "Big blue cities would control our rural way of life" is coded language for saying "I'm a conservative and I know my candidate can't win the popular vote, so I like the Electoral College because it gives my unpopular candidate a chance to cheat the people and win anyway, I don't believe in majority rule." If you really want your conservative/Republican candidate to win an election, get a better candidate. Get better policies, appeal to the wants & needs of Americans. Your rural way of life does NOT appeal to the majority of Americans. You have to accept that reality. Without the Electoral College and with high voter turnout, we would see Democratic victories in what are currently Republican leaning states. That would be a good thing because that's what the majority of Americans prefer.
Also, instead of big blue cities controlling the election, we have 5-6 battleground states controlling the election in our current system. It’s the same problem.
@@authenticallysuperficial9874one wolf overriding two sheep to decide what's for dinner. Also why are we acting like wolves (carnivores) eating other animals is so immoral when humans (omnivores who could be vegans) eat other animals. I imagine you're not a vegan, and regardless, most people who make this argument aren't vegans so the analogy sucks
@@ThunderTheBlackShadowKitty Also, most republicans are just middle to upper income people from outer ring suburbs. They’re not the poor farmers that republicans pretend to make up the party. And even in those conservative, rural states, most of the population is still centered in and around cities, albeit comparatively smaller ones. Then there’s the fact that rural folks themselves aren’t a conservative hivemind. They exist across the political spectrum like anyone else. Or the fact that blue states still have rural areas in them.
What's funny to me is that this was an issue people in both parties used to agree on. Even in 2004 with the 2000 election still fresh in people's minds a poll found 50% of Republicans supported abolishing the electoral college. And you can go back and check quotes from Republican politicians in 2012-2014 (including Gingrich and Trump) advocating a national popular vote. I wonder what could've happened since then that made so many Republicans suddenly change their minds?
@@MylesKillis Ah yes, because the people amend the constitution, not the ineffective Congress that argues all day and hasn't amended something since 1992..
Way late to the party here.. just discovered the channel. However, my favorite viewer comment from the appeal to authority fallacy section is "He thinks he's smarter than the founding fathers." No, he doesn't, but it is 100% plausible that he, or any currently living person for that matter, *could* be smarter or at least better educated than the founders. I get tired of the founders being talked about as if they had magical powers. Sure, a few were truly great thinkers (for their time.) But an awful lot of great thinking has been done since then. (I mean, Doctors used to think leeching was a good idea, but eventually thought better of it.) I am strongly in favor of ranked choice voting, in no small part because it might help break us out of the two-party model that is responsible for so much gridlock at the federal level. I would like to see ranked choice implemented at all levels of government.
FYI our founding fathers said that there should be no party system. The people in charge changed the laws and made it that way, not our founding fathers. They actually prevented that and some hacks ratified the constitution. Just like how lawyers were never supposed to be allowed to be politicians. Ratified. Lobbying was illegal because it's literal bribery. Ratified. Etc.
Open primaries: Oh, what a great idea. Let's allow non party members to sabotage a party's primary; force them to run a candidate you think you can defeat. Do you want another Trump? Because that's how you risk getting a Trump.
Yeah...as a fellow Kansan, the recent redistricting was really scary, cause it felt very directly targeted at me and people like me. The two State Constitutional Amendments being voted on also feel targeted at particular current events in politics, rather than actual issues that our state deals with...so frustrating.
Closed primaries seem so blatantly undemocratic to me. Let me vote in both primaries, for each canidate from either side I like the most, so I can have two decent choices.
@@JohnDoe-ex1qn Counterpoint: Primaries are absurd, and we are the only democracy in the world to have them, and we really ought to abolish them entirely. It is generally useful to let parties have control over who they nominate, and if voters don't like who a party chooses as their candidate they don't have to vote for that party. The issue with opening up primaries too much is it invites any demagogue to enter a race and completely redefine the image of a party. This is exactly what happened with Trump. the majority of third parties in the US nominate by convention instead of primaries, out of fear that primaries would allow people to hijack and effectively take control of small parties through running in the primary, which has happened before.
Yes, but our political system has become so dependent on the two parties that the people have to end up choosing the lesser of two evils nearly every election, which leads to no change. Which is exactly what the oligarchy wants.
@@jrousselle7828 A compromise could be each state gets divided into small districts (much smaller than our current House districts and actually proportional to each state's population) and the people elect one elector by ranked choice voting. That elector then votes for president. This way recounts may need to be done in some individual districts, but nationwide or even statewide would not be necessary, and you'd get an outcome that lines up with what the people want.
@@jrousselle7828 I’m not sure if you watched the video, but votes are counted on a precinct level(so small sections of a single town). If you abolish the electoral college votes would still be counted on a precinct level like they are now. Like they count the popular vote in order to assign the electoral victors. We’re just removing a needless step.
All I gotta say is, THANK YOU MR.BEAT!! I’ve been looking for something like ground for the longest time and it’s already working it’s magic. You’re the best, keep doing what you’re doing
The Electoral College s-cks! RANKED CHOICE VOTING kills Jerrymandering and 100 other problems. No wonder the best Problem-adressing Social-Commentary-Channel on YT, Some-More-News, and Second-Thought, both advocate for it. The Electoral College and much more has to be fixed and the Best way is to know WHAT is broken.
It isn't fair to minority voters in their states. Republicans in blue states and dems in red states. I hate that my vote doesn't matter because I live in a red state. It feels like I have no say and my vote rarely counts.
i like your way of pointing out the logical fallacies in opposing arguments and sticking to the facts while also being willing to admit fault and concede when a good point is made
Once again the guy who has to resort to making funny voices in an attempt to belittle his opposition because he can't argue on the merit of the debate loses.
So glad you brought this up again! I live in a constitutional monarchy, and we elect through a democratic proces; a representative democracy. We used to have something similar to an electoral college, but we got rid of it within the first hundred years of our first constitution. Claiming that things should never change is ridiculous! If we had followed that mentality we would still be run by an absolute monarch or live under feudalism. Changes are necessary for a country to remain for more than a thousand years
@@CStone-xn4oy I don’t understand your comment… what is the antecedent of “this” in the sentence “This is the essence of liberalism vs conservatism.” Your prior sentence says “Change is fine as long as it makes sense.” and that clearly doesn’t fit the following sentence… are you trying to say that liberals can accept change and conservatives can’t? I was taught (and I’ve seen nothing to contradict what I was taught) that liberalism believes in the significance of liberty and equal rights, and conservatism believes in promoting and maintaining traditional institutions. I guess that could be interpreted to be about change…
@@jpe1 To clarify, liberals and conservatives balance each other out. Liberals call for changes in society. Conservatives are reluctant to change unless absolutely necessary. The result is that change in a society usually occurs in a slow, steady, and stable way (with the occasional period of rapid change thrown in every now and then). Yes I am using liberalism and conservatism more as the ideologies behind liberal and conservative thought. I am aware that the terms liberalism and conservatism can mean other things depending on the context.
All ex-british colony who still use their system also have districts and plurality vote. Quebec, Canada just had an election with this system, the leading party got 90 out of 125 seats so 72% of them when they got 40.98% of the total votes. The fifth biggest party got 12.91% of the total vote yet got 0 seats because they didn't have a plurality in any of the districts.
@@stephj9378 he does understand this country and he laughs at the people who don't actually understand (and defend) how "our most important governmental foundations" is actually unfair for the people of this country and needs to be fixed so we can have everybodies votes get heard. You people love to ignore every thing other than what pleases you.
People like Marjorie "Red States and Blue States!" Taylor Greene want you to think each state is a monolith even though each state is actually very purple
Not really. Go look at the electoral map. Most counties are red. The only blue counties where they get all their votes are the liberal cities and also women for that matter. Hell if you removed women alone all the sudden the dems stop winning just from that alone.
I find it shocking how many people continue to vote for the types of governments that ruin states (California, New York), then run to states that have actually not been ruined (Texas economically, Georgia), and continue to vote for the same governments that ruin states.
@@tyler1783 did you know that california has the most republicans of any state not named texas. Why should those 5 million+ citizens have no voice on the national scale.
These discussions always remind me of a time about 20 years ago. I was visiting my the girlfriend, now wife, in her home country in Central America. The government was looking into changing this they were organized and were discussing a variety of options. A government spokesperson was presenting some of the ideas to a group of business people, including my girlfriend, and she invited me to attend. During the discussion one gentleman spoke up and asked why they just didn’t do it like we do it in the US. I suggested to my girlfriend that she point out that the US wouldn’t do it like the US if we had to start over again. Many of our quirks, like the Electoral College, are beloved by many because we see it as a symbol of who we are as a country. The real question should be “does it make sense in the modern world?” There are many pros and cons to these legacy aspects of our Republic. I think that discussions like these are healthy so that we can say we have this quirks for more than mere “tradition”.
A reason for having/keeping the electoral college is that it is still the case that without it small states would still be pretty ignored and increasingly grow alienated and disaffected from national politicians/politics.
@@suarezguythey’re already ignored. Candidates spend more of their time trying to flip crucial swing states; small states are either reliably Republican or don’t matter enough to sway an election. Battleground states, like Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan on the other hand, can play a decisive role in an election. The electoral college only encourages candidates to pay attention to states that are evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, and ignores states that reliably vote one way or another.
@@imawaffle148 I think that focus on swing states, though a bias, is a pretty good focus/bias to have-which states are swing states can and does change over time (a lot more and faster than other state factors like their populations).
Mr. Beat, for most of my adult life, I was a staunch supporter of the Electoral College. I held by my belief that it was a check on large cities and states from having too much sway in electing our president. Over the last several years, it has become abundantly clear to me how wrong I was. In the last 20 years, two of our last four presidents have been elected without a plurality of the electorate. There's something inherently wrong with that. And for those who say that Bush and Trump carried the majority of counties in the United States, I would simply add "tracts of land do not elect presidents. People do." Thank you for making some very strong points, including the idea of keeping the Electoral College but breaking it up by congressional districts rather than our "winner take all" system we presently have.
as much as i hated Hillary Clinton she legitmatly won the election in 2016and should have been president and trump only won becase some electors just switched there vote to him.
popular vote would create the unbalance that the electoral collage prevents if we switched with campaigning harder in more heavily populated states creating the blue and red states people think exist
The main issue is that the USA is missing something that is absolutely necessary for a functioning Democracy: a well informed and educated populace. Put simply the USA no longer deserves its Democracy and is likely to lose it subtly over the next century.
I think it also needs more representation of indigenous people and ethnic minorities. For example I'd love to see Native American reservations to be officially shown on maps as administrative divisions distinct from US states. Like Republics in Russia for example.
I also love the arguments that try using the founding fathers to support the electoral college, when the founders themselves in lager years despised the electoral college and considered it their biggest mistake at the constitutional convention. Hell, James Madison in his later years proposed an endment that would've eliminated thr EC and replaced it with ranked choice voting (Madison letter to George Genry. 1824).
@stevvvvveperry It would already be miles better if they didn't have winner take all system. If state has 5 votes and result is 20/80 then in current system winner gets 5 votes and 20% get silenced. If winner got only 4 votes and other 1 then the 20% at least would have some voice and there would be more reason for candidates to campaign in that state because you can maybe get one vote there while in current system you will never be able to equalize 30% difference and campaigning there is pointless.
Good Stuff. Keep fighting the good fight. Getting elected officials on board for changing the electoral system will be difficult, since they largely benefit from it as is. Informing people about some of the possible the problems with the systems as is, along with some possible ways to improve them is so important.
Mr. Beat you are a class act as always. There are many such as Crowder that will move the goalposts forever, and it’s nice to see a REAL educator collide with their nonsense. Much love.
Winning the electoral vote requires 270 votes. Biden won California, New York and Illinois, a combined 95 electoral votes. Those three states put Biden 35.2% of the way to victory. 158 million people voted in the 2020 election. This means to win the popular vote, you would need 79 million votes. In the three states mentioned, Biden won approximately 19.8 million votes. This is approximately 25% of the votes he would have needed. How does popular vote give big states more power?
Great vid Mr Beat! Honestly, I really liked your last Electoral College video too. In my view, it was setup during a different era and most people would like to see a majority wins system. (or me who'd like to see a multiple party system and majority wins).
You are 100% correct Mr. Beat!!!! The electoral college sucks and should go!!! If we must keep the electoral college, I agree that it should be changed so each states divides up their electoral votes by district. An EVEN BETTER idea would be to have states divide up their electoral votes PROPORTIONALLY based on the PERCENTAGE OF VOTES cast for a candidate in each state.
I agree! I prefer just going with the popular vote with some sort of runoff system. Proportional results would be a fair compromise. The rules for calculating proportionally has to be uniform for each state and be reasonably fair though to prevent a state gaming their results for one candidate.
This comment is actually perfect. Ross Perot won no states yet he got around 19% of the popular vote. He was rather popular for an independent yet he still didn’t stand a chance. I wonder how 1992 would have gone if Ranked Choice was a thing
I think that's more so about the party divide than the electoral college though. Even with a national popular vote, he still wasn't rivaling Clinton or HW. Maybe ranked choice voting?
I wonder how the 1992 race would have ended had Perot not withdrawn from the race in July. He re-entered the race in October, but by then most people had made their decision.
I live in Finland. Finland is a Republic. We had our type of "electoral college" but it was ruled as undemocratic and now we only have the popular vote. I'd still believe that Finland is quite a well working Republic and democratic at that. Btw: Having only a popular vote actually made Finland more democratic and now everyone's voices can be heard.
Dear lord, it’s so nice to just hear someone speak common sense about how our elections should go. And that’s such a good point that LITERALLY EVERYTHING ELSE is voted on by a majority vote, the president should be as well
There are some people on the right who want to implement electoral colleges on State Elections too (like RazorFist) because they seems to care more about the location that votes come from rather than the actual amount of votes.
I just want to say I appreciate you for thoughtfully considering the comments on your video and not 'rage responding' to comments like I have seen others do. It's not that I've seen other RUclipsrs post angry response-to-comments videos, it's that they don't concede any points the comments made at all. You took the time to thoughtfully respond to a wide spectrum of negative comments and conceded when you were wrong. I liked you a lot already, but now I like you more. I feel like I can generally trust your perspective. Even when I disagree with you (which I rarely do, I'll admit I'm stuck in an echo chamber that favors your opinions), I know your perspective is trustworthy. It's a much-needed voice in a time when media in general has become very untrustworthy. I also feel your perspectives generally provide space for disagreement. I feel that if I wrote a thoughtful comment in favor of the electoral college, you wouldn't lash out at me.
Agreed. I know a lot of people that just don't vote because they believe, and rightly so, that their vote won't count. Everyone should have their vote count, EVERY SINGLE VOTE SHOULD COUNT!
Why should every single vote count? I am asking from a philosophical standpoint. If you researched the candidates and weighed the pros and cons of each and made decision on who to vote from based on that, and then I come in after you and vote for people who I think have cool last names should my vote count just as yours does?
@@CStone-xn4oy proof by contradiction: let’s assume that some votes _should_ count more than others, then there will need to be a metric by which one can quantify how “important” (or “valuable”) any particular vote is,and that metric will either be subjective (like the one you propose, based on how much research effort went into any particular vote), in which case, how are the criteria chosen and evaluated so as to be fair; or, the metric will be objective, for example, based on sex, age, wealth, party affiliation, or skin color, and such objective criteria can always be demonstrated to be inherently _unfair._ Having established that any “some votes count more than others” scheme will be unfair, we can therefore conclude that the only fair system will have to count all votes equally.
the problem with people defending the electoral college by saying it protects the minority from the oppression of the majority is that the electoral college only protects the specific minorities it is aggregated for, people who live in small states, while suppressing any minority it isn't aggregated for since minorities of a winner takes all state are rounded out of being represented entirely. And instead of being aggregated alongside any minority you are purposefully trying to protect it is aggregated along arbitrarily set geographical lines by the happenstance of history which use to be right leaning racist nationalists who oppose federal government influence so they can run a slave empire, but now we're so connected it only aggregates alongside a vague trend of that. If you took all African Americans and made them a state that state would have the same impact on American politics as California or Texas, but instead they are a minority in every state they are found in. If you want to give minorities more say in at least making sure that the candidate that they like the least doesn't take power and do a holocaust or something, the best way to do so is with some version of ranked choice voting that prioritizes not making common least favorite candidates win. The second best way is to have a constitution that says the law must be applied indiscriminately If pure winner take all majority democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on where to go for dinner, the electoral college is 50 groups of 2 wolves and a sheep voting on dinner, and ranked choice or star voting without the electoral college is 2 wolves and a sheep giving 5 dinner options each and taking turns throwing away their least favorite one until they agree on a place with a good menu, that the wolves like more yes, but at least the sheep can make sure that the wolves are eating pig or something
I love the consistency of Mr. Beat's views on this topic. The people who treat the electoral college as some holy doctrine inscribed by the guardian angels of the US on a stone tablet are deeply weird.
There are many aspects of our constitution that are weird, and we just keep the structure of the Constitution just because we fetishize the founders. They were a bunch of 20-something political nerds. Many of them were very flawed, very elitist, and very narrow-minded relative, and the system they created was new in 1790, but is very out-of-date today. A Bicameral Legislature is not normal today. Pardon power is not normal either. The way we view rights and responsibilities of government are very odd. We have very few rights and they are very absolute rights. In other countries they have many more rights like the right to education, healthcare, safe working conditions, living wage, privacy, democratic government, life, etc and they have so many that their laws have to balance all of those rights when they conflict with each other.
@@stevencaruso825 Damn, why do you have to list all of the elements the Founders put into the Constitution that were actually pretty epic? Of all the things the Founders got most wrong, slavery and having a power Executive separated from Parliament, you didn't mention either.
@@stevencaruso825 It’s not bicameralism itself that’s unusual, it’s the fact that the Senate still has real power instead of being more-or-less just a formality
It certainly not a holy decree. Its a creative and clever solution to one of the fundamental flaws with Democracy. It helps to prevent small states from being completely ignored while at the same time preserving the power of the majority.
@@CStone-xn4oy it was a solution for getting slave states to join a very tenuous union. Plenty of more democratic countries with proportional representation like Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and Finland do fine. Lol
Mr. Beat, this is still your best take. I am glad that there are other people who are willing to stand up to the electoral college in order benefit democracy. Additionally, I still don't fully understand why anybody is in support of the electoral college. Why be against having more say in YOUR government?
Because, at this point, the electoral college is basically a crutch for the GOP that allows them win with only a minority of votes. The reality of the situation is that the EC has become an increasingly partisan issue in recent years due to the fact that two Republican presidents would've lost elections in the last couple decades without it.
I am so glad we have well made transparent informational videos like this that can be real and tell it like it is while giving educated, well constructed rhetoric and solutions towards the topics discussed. Well done.
What a fantastic and good-faith appraisal of arguments defending the electoral college. Great work. Defenders of the EC are the victims of historical inertia and trying to find good reasons for what exists, but sometimes those reasons are a bit of a stretch and on the whole unconvincing.
And a lot of them are just playing politics to keep their favorite party in power. They know the EC benefits them. It takes the power away from the rightful majority and gives it to a bunch of farmers (exaggerating, but still)
Not really our primary systems are FAR worse as those literally give a handful of people power to elect whoever they want and use absurd systems that are far more complex than what needs to be. No EC has a reason to exist but its due to be updated in a way that more reflects the splits in states as winner take all doesnt reflect the voter maps. The problem is that if the electoral college was to just vanish and was replaced by pure population it would swing the power to much into the hands of major cities and population centers when it come to canidates campaigns. The college was created to curb "tyranny of the majority" basically a system where major cities get to vote for the president and therefore his/her platform and campaign will be tailored to only cities and large urban areas, meanwhile small rural areas that produce very vital resources like food and cash crops, and manufactured goods dont get any thought. 2016 honestly showed really why we need the a system like the EC as Clinton didnt even campaign in the rust belt meaning the area where most of America's food is grown and its exports are manufactured, meaning had she won their needs would have been disregarded for the costal areas that have larger populations. Now fast forward to 2020 where Clinton begins imposing COVID mandates on these same areas where people arent crammed together like in cities but becasue she never bothered to even give them a thought of even campaigning there are suddenly being forced to wear masks in sweltering 100F weather dispite the nearest person not being within 2 miles of you. Im absolutely for a better system that more reflects the wants of the country, but not if it comes at the expense of groups of people. We would have to create major campaign reforms (which im also very much for) to help prevent certain areas from getting special treatment.
The only demographic group who majority support the electoral college are white Donald Trump voters. The electoral college has no majority support from any other demographic group!
@@TheSilverPhoenix100 50% of Americans are not pro-Donald Trump because if they were Donald Trump would not have lost the national popular vote twice. And everytime Donald Trump loses the national popular vote he always loses it by a landslide and not by a hair. He loses it by the millions and not by the thousands let alone the hundreds. And also during Donald Trump's entire four years in office no poll has ever put his approval rating at 50%!
I completely agree. The arguments for the Electoral College are not compelling. For me, the electoral college discourages me from even bothering to want to vote in presidential elections when I know that my state will swing one direction or the other.
If you live in Oklahoma, and you were the deciding vote for your elector for the past 40 years, the only year you'd effect the results of the election is 2000.
OMG, that dude in the other video is crazy annoying. Does he have to be so condescending? That smile on his face looks like it hurts. I don't think I could watch a video from him. The snippets you showed was difficult enough.
I agree with you. The Electoral College is antiquated. Giving states electoral weight based upon population seems rather unfair now since its original intent really does meet the need anymore. I have a preference for Ranked-Choice voting, but when I try to explain it to people, they look at me like I am speaking a foreign language.
RCV (specifically IRV) is just plurality voting with more steps. Maybe it's slightly better, but there are so many better single-winner methods available that "a little better than plurality" isn't a compelling reason to choose it.
@@galiantus1354 no, it isn't. there is an inherent difference in outcome, as voters are more encouraged to select their preferred candidate. in the current political climate, things are more polarized than ever, but most people would be willing to vote for an appealing third party. they don't because it is a terrible political strategy. a ranked system removes the bullshit political strategies aimed soley at party cohesion.
@@bobbirdsong6825 There are many ranked methods that actually deliver on what you are saying. IRV specifically is a bad method because of its method of counting. It's a math problem that not only creates vote-splitting, but obscures from the voter how to deal with that vote-splitting. So being honest can hurt you, especially in a competitive race (and don't we want competitive races?). Case-in-point: Alaska used IRV recently, and if 5,200 Palin voters had just not shown up to vote, Nick Begich - preferred by the majority of Palin voters over Peltola - would have won. It is a bad system. If you want a good ranked system, look at STAR, Ranked Robin, or even Single Transferrable Vote (multiwinner RCV). These systems do not punish voters for participating and being honest, and remove the benefit of party cohesion.
The problem with the United States is how difficult it is to update any of our antiquated institutions, despite their obvious inadequacies at meeting the challenges of today In voting/elections, that includes our stubborn 2-party system, gerrymandering, FTPT, etc Call me crazy, but this country has changed a lot since 1776
The nature of the current political system in the United States makes any efforts to reach mutual understanding seemingly impossible. Be they consumed by a conspiracy theory, indifference to our electoral process or a need to "one up the other guy," we are almost as politically divided as we were during the Civil War. The only difference may simply be the general lack of interest in dying for the cause, which is generally a good thing.
I don’t agree with you on many topics, but I do like that you care about speaking the truth. Most of the media is all about stretching the truth or straight up lying to try to persuade people. Thank you for what you do.
RANKED CHOICE VOTING kills Jerrymandering and 100 other problems. No wonder the best Problem-adressing Social-Commentary-Channel on YT, Some-More-News, and Second-Thought, both advocate for it. The Electoral College and much more has to be fixed and the Best way is to know WHAT is broken.
what, he littlerly attacked his GOP part of his Audience, he read out all the Comments he dissagreed with in SOUTHERN Accents to show the viewrs that those comments are from poor uneducated People who are most likley livin in red states...Southern accent=Poor and stupid for most people who Vote Democrat or live in Northan states. This video he makes it clear he has utter contempt for red state voters
No you don't understand, the Founders got it right the very first time and created a perfect document from the start. Please don't look up the Articles of Confederation or any amendment after the first 10. They got it right the first time and we can never ever change it.
Mr. Beat, I just started watching your videos, and can I say I love your videos. Ignore the haters because those people are the ones who eat what the news spoon feeds them. I'm not big into politics but I love learning history about Presidents and learning cool new facts about them. You're super cool! Please don't change!
I just watched both your videos back to back and you have swayed me. With people thinking their vote will matter more it should cause more people to vote. For example someone inclined to vote for the Republican in California may not vote because it’s futile but in a populate election may be more compelled to vote.
The Electoral college was made for that very reason. To prevent major population centers from strong-arming the election every time with mass numbers of votes. Not having the college would mean rural voters need not bother to vote because the absolute majority of Americans live in the city, and if the absolute majority wins the election, then the rural vote doesn’t matter. The same thing applies along party lines since party lines typically divide us into urban and rural categories as well. Republicans tend to be more suburban/rural, democrats are more often than not city dwellers. Other commenter here was absolutely right. People just don’t understand the overall purpose of the EC and that’s a problem that can only be fixed in our schools (which have been co-opted by democrats who desperately want the EC gone so they can win every future election). Anyway😅.
@@lsemaldokhar4154 this is cope because you're acting like every city is a monolith that'll vote democratic every time, when you're just thinking of ones like detroit, chicago, new york, sacremento and los angeles which do NOT control an absolute majority of the population. even if we took literally every person in all of those states, allowed them all to vote and they ALL voted for one party (california+new york+michigan+illinois) you'd have 24% of the population.. less than a quarter
@@lsemaldokhar4154 So you're saying the votes of people in population centers should count less as opposed to rural voters just by virtue of them living in urbanised areas?
I always think it's surprising that people can argue so strongly against a "tyranny of the majority" while defending a system in which ALL of a state's EC votes go to the candidate who wins a simple majority. What about the communities and voters in that state who hold a minority position? They don't matter? It's completely contrary to what they claim to stand for. Your proposal to allocate them by district is so much better.
I think one reason the electoral college was implemented is the flow of information. Back in 1787, it would've been a huge pain to individually count the nation's votes for the president. However, technological innovations in transportation and communication make it incredibly easy. I think it's time to shine some popular sovereignty onto the presidential election.
If technology and innovation have made it so incredibly easy to count the individual votes for President, why have a number of States now continued to count votes beyond Election Day?
@@davedthomson for several reasons, but among them is those states not accepting to use that newer technology-we still have paper ballots in a lot of places. It’d be nice if you were more informed on this topic before speaking, but lo, here we are
@@davedthomson That is neither a contradiction nor a counterargument to their point (even if it was a contradiction in their argument). In fact you also misrepresent their point. Your comment makes no sense
@@davedthomson For as far back as I'm aware, states have *ALWAYS* taken multiple days to count votes. If you want all the votes counted on election day, there needs to be more resources put into elections.
I know u probably won't see this, but I had for a long time been a fan of an electoral college (albeit with some need for reform), but that older video, quite honestly, I went in skeptical and came out reconsidering its importance. So regardless of the dislikes, u actually changed my mind. You, sir, are the first. I have listened to arguments, but yours were the most persuasive. The only thing I had a problem with was the puppet, but that's just your own personal creative choice. I think more would be persuaded without it, because the puppet did indeed voice my own thoughts at the time. I did have the patience with it, but I can see where others wouldn't.
As a right leaning Libertarian from Texas, I very much appreciate your videos giving it their all to be as non biased as possible and doing a great job at acknowledging when you do have a bias as well as pointing out what it is and where it stems from. I hate how divided we become and I enjoy someone taking on the challenge of defending their views with reasoned evidence and counter argument.
"We can't let California and New York control the country and ignore everyone else! We need to let a DIFFERENT couple of states control the country and ignore everyone else!!!"
Exactly! Proponents of keeping the EC don't want a handful of big states deciding the election, but with the EC it's a handful of medium-population swing states deciding the election. That's worse! At least with the bigger states represent more people!
![100 Days - [Minecraft SWAMP]](/img/1.gif)
Face the facts, Anti-Federalists. We're all Federalists now.
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Sad but true
Why does it suck? because you dems can't seem to get around it? .. it's fair as hell and it gives the smaller guys a fair treatment/ representation.
@@A_Legal_Immigrant_1776 average angry trumpie:
"REEEEEEEEE, ThIs Is PuRe LiEs AnD lEfTiSt PrOpAgAnDa!!1!11!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!"
You have no proof, just your average temper tantrum
No, we're not all big government. 1984 jerk circle here?
@@Snowboi1963 Oh shush Biden supporter. Don't even pretend he is a better alternative to Trump. He's ass and you know it. Quit protecting your retarded party.
"Without the electoral college the unpopular party will lose and the popular party will win, therefore we can't remove the electoral college" is the funniest argument I've ever heard.
@BarelyFunctionalTK It makes sense when you consider which political affiliation arguments like this generally come from. Just look at the popular vote winners over the past 3 election cycles. We'd be in a much different place if we didn't have the electoral college.
@@TheSilentCheetah I like, to protect from a tyranny of the majority we will have a tyranny of the minority, what.
@@TheSilentCheetah you say that like we are in a good one rn lol
You have no clue what your talking about. Without the electoral college 3 cities would control the country.
@@OkayOlivia402 care to explain why, or am I forgetting something here?
The smartest thing the founding fathers did when making the constitution was to purposefully make it so it can be changed when needed.
Too bad we've allowed our government to manouver itself into a position where there's so much division and so little good will to work in a bipartisan manner that changing the system will most likely not happen in our lifetimes. Get money out of politics, and mandate term limits for *all* elected officials (with hard upper age limits) and that would be a start, but those two things are antithetical to career politicians interests, so those types of proposals will be dead on arrival 100% of the time.
If only we could agree on anything lol 2/3rds of the states is going to be a tall order.
Thomas Jefferson imagined each new generation doing a full rewrite of the constitution every 20 years because he proposed it was a sort of tyranny for new generations to live under the antiquated rules of past generations, especially given democratic governments only rule legitimately by the consent of the governed. It's a shame that one party has become so stubborn in their ways that they now see the constitution as some sort of unchangeable sacrosanct biblical document, when it was designed to be changed and modified as society itself changed.
@@germanwizbang6250 Our systems can be changed, but not by a simple 50/50 popular vote. States like California have changed their Constitution's almost as often as some people change their toilet paper. The result, it makes the State's Supreme Court almost completely incapable of determing matters of Constitutionality that land in their lap.
@@Sir_Slytherin As it is intended to be!
The irony is that 68% of people liking the video would mean 100% liked the video under the electoral college
Like voting GOP in Massachusetts
No. It would mean that if 24% of people disliked the video from the correct geographical location then it would count as 100% dislikes. That’s why there is a problem lol
Well no, because if it was an electoral college system that 68% could have anywhere between probably 40-100% of the vote not an automatic victory
@@CtrlAltFrog That's not how the electoral college works. Even if you somehow split the Likes/Dislikes into two "states" and put every single Dislike plus only as many Likes as wouldn't swing the state, you would still end up with ~63% Dislike EVs, not 100%.
@@RickJaeger I think he's comparing this video to one state. If 68% of the people in one state vote one way, they are counted as 100% of the vote
"California and New York would decide the election"
More Republicans voted in California in 2020 for Trump, than Republicans voted for Trump in Texas.
The argument those states would decide the election, is entirely predicated on some weird idea that California votes 100% in favor of Democrats which is only how it works with the Electoral College
Being a Kansas resident I also thought it was pretty funny hearing the argument about how votes wouldn't matter without the electoral college, yet it's because of the electoral college that my vote basically doesn't matter...
Yep, if Florida and Texas just became slightly more blue. Then Florida, Texas, New York and California literally would decide the election because 100% of their votes would go to the Democrats despite only about 60% of the people in these states supporting the Democrats!
You don't understand, the idea is that it's no longer about getting your party to turn out in Cali, it's the fact that without the electoral college, you could run a platform designed specifically around bolstering California by say, taking budget away from smaller states. And since most Californians WOULD vote in their own interest, that's effectively immediately 20% of the vote needed to win based off of a very bad platform
@@samuelmerkel2888 yeah but that biased of a platform would instantly alienate everyone else, and last I checked 80% > 20%
@grahamskippy Yes, until you realize that you could do this with the top 10 populated states, leaving you 40 other states to siphon from, and win.
It becomes a contest of pleasing small amounts of large clusters, instead of having to compromise for different states that have different problems.
You could probably grt even more efficient by just choosing 20 to 30 cities instead. Same number roughly population wise, and way less money than having to bolster an entire state.
It becomes a mess.
I'm no statistician, but there seems to be a strong link between "supporting the electoral college" and "needing it because your candidates would never win otherwise."
That's what I say, I've also noticed there's also a strong link between "supporting being able to get penicillin" and "needing penicillin because your body will die otherwise." Like HMMMM 🤔🤔🤔 kinda sus, right fellas
Mr. Beat also mentioned this in his original video.
Exactly
Mos def
Get rid of the electoral college and the Republican party will just have have to reform in order to be competitive in elections again. More fair elections plus a reformed conservative party seems like a win win to me.
I always find it funny when they say to leave the country, like they never complained about the countrys problems.
THIS IS MURRICA. IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT, THEN LEAVE!
Then you end up researching how convoluted the immigration process out of the U.S. is, and the fact that you still have to pay income tax unless you renounce your citizenship-- something that costs in excess of 10,000 dollars, mind you.
Immigrating has never been and will not be a viable option for those in the lower and middle class for quite a long time-- at least, if you intend on going anywhere actually desirable that has cultural and lingual similarities with the U.S.
It's a complete nonsense argument, and those that make it clearly don't understand the nuances and intricacies of the immigration process
yet they're the same complaining in the same fashion about anything the democrats do.
I liked the guy who said he would never leave the country because he didn't want to be a victim of American foreign policy. 😁
@@knewledge8626 This reply is gold😂 The “world police” trying to convince everyone within and outside the country that their system of governance is superior.
That’s because you dumb leftists don’t realize that you say you’ll leave because America is a “racist country” and “capitalism is evil”, but still continue to live in said “racist country” while reaping the benefits of “evil capitalism.” 🙄
I think my most hated response to criticism of the place you live in is: "If you don't like ____, leave!" There are so many problems with that line of thinking, but it always seems to come up, like clockwork.
Rather a tyrannical response isn't it?
Our very constitution was set up so, if you don't like it, amend it!
It really does. And then when people actually *do* leave, they pivot to "well they never gave us a fair chance"
Depends on what the issue is.
People who abandon socialist countries with tyranny, and come to the US spreading the exact same ideas should be told to leave. Why did you leave tyranny if it's so great?
@@thegoldenarm6422 lol what. socialism isn’t inherently tyrannical- if anything it’s the opposite. if someone left tyranny but still supports socialist ideas, they are not supporting tyranny in their new country
Something that gets glossed over here when talking about the founders is what they actually intended when designing the electoral college. The "popular-ish vote" system we have now is not what they had in mind. Many of the founders were wary of democracy and didn't want it at all at the federal level. So their idea(which they were admittedly pretty naive about) was that the electors would actually be the people who decide who the next president will be. And the electors wouldn't necessarily be appointed by popular vote, it was left up to the individual states to decide how they appoint their electors. So the founders' vision was that the states would all elect or appoint these electors on the basis of their wisdom and education, and the electors would then deliberate on who the prez should be. (Also worth noting is they weren't thinking of political parties when they designed this, they didn't think parties would be a thing) We ended up sort of "hacking" the system so that it turned into something like a national popular vote but not quite. Which is why it seems so poorly designed, because we're using it in a way it was never meant for.
Organized political parties broke the intended electoral system within its FIRST 10 YEARS (re: election of 1800), and the 12th Amendment (ratified to avoid repeating the 1800 debacle) just kludged it up even further.
Also, which president won a majority of EVs with the lowest popular vote?
*Abraham M.F. Lincoln.*
I wish I was making that up, but in 1860 just less than 40% of voters supported Lincoln. Even Donald in 2016 had technically more voter support (43%).
Under rated point.
Exactly, and we should be using it properly l
How do we use it properly? @@authenticallysuperficial9874
Another thing people forget is that by the time the electoral college was founded and established most of the founding fathers were retired or dead. Many of the signatures part of the Declaration of Independence which determined many of people we deemed “founding fathers” were out of politics or only voiced in matters outside Congress.
It continues to baffle me how many people defend the Electoral College until you realize it's mostly people who depend on winning without getting the plurality opinion to ever get into office.
Bingo. They can't win with policy, so they take a disproportionate voting power...
The problem with going by plurality is that eventually you’ll get someone with only 15 percent winning because the electorate divided among a dozen candidates
The Electoral College’s solution to potential plurality problems is absolutely bizarre though, by having the decision go to the House of Representatives
Edit: People seem to think I don’t know what run-offs are or that this comment was somehow a defense of the Electoral College. Now, if you scroll down about two replies, you’d see I agree that run-offs are the optimal solution. And if you think this was me defending the EC, invest in critical reading skills.
Either way, my point is that any voting system that allows for someone to win theoretically with 15 percent of the vote is a flawed system. You’d be surprised how often this happens outside of our beloved two-party environment-basically every award in sports allows this, not to mention gubernatorial primaries and even that most inviolable democratic process: internet polls.
Also, it is truly bizarre how the House can select the president with no regard to who was even running.
@@warlordofbritannia
That is why you have run off elections....
The two candidates who get the highest percentage of votes face off against one another in a run off election, and whoever gets 50% of the vote in that election, wins
So someone only getting 15% of the vote and winning is impossible
@@warlordofbritannia And there are solutions to that too
Runoff, Alternative Vote, Coalitions, etc
Besides, most multi-party systems usually have one party that gets more than half of the vote, or at least more than 40%
@@person3070
Run-offs are good. That’s definitely the primary solution to a straight plurality system
The video you cited as "one of the better responses" was so condescending and full of misplaced confidence, really says a lot that that's their strongest argument
Id argue its far from the strongest argument but that man gets picked up so much to be argued against im not surprised XD and a big issue with Electoral College Arguments is the issue is so bloody complex differing people are on different sides of the fence for entirely different reasons.
Yeah, I've seen a few videos from 'Don't Walk..." he's a condescending douche that isn't half as smart or well informed as he thinks he is and is oh so overly opinionated about it. He miss quotes things and takes things out of context right and left and his arguments, generally, are full of fallacies. Watching his videos is like listening to someone sing painfully off key, but thinks they're nailing it.
"Condescending and full of misplaced confidence" describes most American conservatives.
That's because there is no legitimate argument to defend the electoral college.
@@jgroth3906 honestly it’s the whole political system that’s like that. People just don’t take a second to look at their opinion from another perspective and it’s infuriating.
In the 2020 presidential election, more Californians voted for Trump (6,006,480) than those who voted for Trump in Texas (5,890,350). I try to tell people in Texas this and they don't believe me and I have to show them the electoral results. The distribution of electoral votes, however, skews the results making CA look very blue and TX very red. But, in reality, both states are VERY purple. The electoral college fails to represent this disparity.
...right, but PROPORTIONALLY wayyy less people voted for trump in california
@@blockhead391 That's my point. The electoral college doesn't reflect proportionallity. In most cases (Maine and Nebraska excluded), all electors go to the 50% +1 winner in each state, thus the EC skews the results.
What's your point? California is a bigger state than Texas. In 2016 the extra votes Clinton got from California alone would swayed the popular vote in her favor.
Democrats didn't have a problem with the Electoral College until their candidates stated losing elections. In fact, many on the left seemed gleeful with the prospect of Al Gore potentially winning the E.C. but not the popular vote. When the opposite occurred that was when their outrage began.
@@H.G.Wells-ishWells-ish i understand and agree with you that the electoral college doesn’t reflect proportionality (that’s explicitly true), but just showing the numbers of votes from california doesn’t mean anything. yeah it’s a big number, but trump’s 6 million votes lost to biden’s 11 million. that’s not a purple state by any stretch of the imagination.
@@H.G.Wells-ishWells-ish Unfun fact: The last surviving author of the US Constitution, who witnessed the first states picking electors by winner-take-all, IMMEDIATELY recognized the danger and wanted to amend the constitution to preclude it from going national, but he was already too late, and passed away before any meaningful action could be made.
It’s weird that people would defend their vote not being treated equally as everyone else’s, which is essentially what the electoral college facilitates.
Well, that and the Senate. More populated states should have more Senators.
@@ChrisF_1982 The President represents the whole country, whereas Congress(wo)men only represent their states or districts within their states. As such, the compromise that created the U.S.'s bicameral legislature actually makes sense.
Love your videos.
@@Compucles The problem is that the senate is too powerful then if 51 senators from small states can obstruct 49 senators from large states from doing anything, while also stacking the Supreme Court and hundreds of federal courts. And that's not even considering the filibuster.
Almost everything runs through the senate, including presidential and Supreme Court impeachment convictions, but small states have an absurd advantage.
@@j-rey- That's why laws need to be passed by both the Senate *AND* the House of Representatives.
Meanwhile, the Senate (and the House) is *much* more divided by political party than it has ever been by state population. It's also the President who first nominates Supreme Court Justices and other federal judges for the Senate to confirm.
In the case of impeachment, the President first has to be brought up on charges by the majority of the House before being tried by the Senate, which then requires a strict 2/3rds vote for conviction. Once again, it's the political parties that usually dominate this process.
It was great working with you again, Mr. Beat! In all sincerity, you do a great job addressing your personal views while confronting critiques in a calm and logical manner (especially the straw-man fallacy). Best of all, though, we love that you put a warning up at the very start to acknowledge your own personal biases and opinions. More channels need to do this!
I'm trying to use the link in his description to sign up but it's not working. Same when I type it in myself to my browser. Is it new and so not working?
It was great working with you again! You are by far one of my favorite sponsors. Thanks for the kind words. :)
An appeal to authority because folks admire the ideas of the founding fathers? That is quite the stretch to a logical fallacy argument. Try again and now you have all these dim witted fools all buying into that takeaway hook, line and sinker.
@@ericrosenberg9059 it is perfectly valid to admire the ideas of the founding fathers. Claiming something is valid BECAUSE it was an idea of the founding fathers is an appeal to authority.
@@katseanesandrew253 no one makes that argument. That is the opposition framing their opponents argument.
I bet the, "Don't be mad because you didn't get the results you wanted" crowd are real quiet right now lmao
trump was close to winning
the electoral college helps people from completely different areas have their votes count
america is as big as europe
the electoral college is meant to have more votes than it currently does, but for some reason people decided the house didn't need more members anymore
Trump losing actually just strengthens my position that the electoral college works just fine and people only cry about it because they can't handle losing.
@@skoop651winning when? He list the popular vote by 3 million in 2016 and by 7 million in 2020. Neither one is close.
@@skoop651 people from different areas would have their vote count more without the college. Everyone's vote would be equal. With the college, people from some areas have a less valuable vote.
Republicans in California would matter more, as would Democrats in Alabama.
The number of people in America who act fearful of a hypothetical “tyranny of the majority” while having no problem imposing an ACTUAL tyranny of the minority is astounding. If it was a Venn diagram, it would be a circle.
They are fully aware of their hypocrisy. They just don't care because they don't value democracy.
@@Asemodeous They want an auto.cracy with a dem.agogue like Tr.ump in the oval office.
MAGAtards are a walking contradiction. We're the "silent majority" but also please do not abolish the electoral college because our side of the political do not have the numbers to ever win the popular vote because we're the minority!
Then everything is a tyranny if you oppose it. What to do?
@@pm5206 Recognize that the equitable will of the majority is not tyranny, while the supremacist will of the minority is. Then be a decent human and support democracy.
Feels like electoral college defenders are more interested in silencing the majority than questioning why their preferred candidate can never get majority support. I sure do wonder which party they typically vote for.
Majority of Americans live in big cities and we see how what they vote for aka every big city is a shit hole becuase what they vote
You're looking at the problem too simply. It's not just how getting rid of the electoral college would affect current politics, it's how it would change it in the future.
If we ran by popular vote, you could literally run a platform that picks out the 10 most populated cities in the US, say you're going to drain the funding from other places to make those places absolutely amazing, and win. Because who wouldn't vote for their own self-interest in that way?
Getting rid of the ability for minority states to have louder voices incentivizes candidates to create whatever platform easily pulls the largest flat number of voters, which would be catering to a small amount of major cities which bolster high population.
Remember that the goal of politics isn't to make the world a better place, it's just to get elected. The electoral college helps the most people while that's going on, because otherwise those people won't get elected if they don't cater to a wider audience.
Also helps keep political extremism down, comparatively anyways.
@@samuelmerkel2888 less then 15% of voters live in the top ten populated cities
@FosukeLordOfError Fair enough, that was more of a hyperbolic statements. But top 10 populated states really wouldn't be very much, and still very much showcases the problem.
@@samuelmerkel2888 isn’t that what happens with electrical college just swing states instead?
Agreed Mr Beat. The argument that the broad term 'democracy' is analogous to the term 'direct democracy' strikes me as being both desperate and fundamentally dishonest.
Mr. Beat shouldn't have to apologize because 'Republic, not a Democracy' is SO dishonest.
That's because the "republic vs democracy" debate is fundamentally just two sides arguing over the definitions of words.
@@pdawg193 not only that but the whole argument depends on the idea that the terms are mutually exclusive when they are most definitely not. You can (and we do) have a democratic republic.
90% of arguments like this especially about political ideologies (democracy vs republic, communism vs socialism, fascism vs authoritarianism etc) are essentially just false dichotomies.
@@pdawg193 Well duh. It is still a legitimate debate though because one side says that the President should be directly elected like Congress is and the other side supports preserving a system that gives small states at least some say in who becomes President even though the majority still has a large advantage.
@@CStone-xn4oy The is the crux of the whole problem is thinking in the concept of states vs people/individuals. Every individual vote counts whether the EC exists or not. The EC does give regional power to certain blocks like the Deep South or North East. You are putting primacy of geography over individuals. The reason it has become an issue is because in the last 30 years one party would have only won the office once without the EC. How do you feel about folks in D.C. that have no voice in the Senate? Or Puerto Rico who have no representation at all? How do you feel about states where their state legislative bodies are the minority parties in their states in popular vote, but used a wave election in 1994 to continuously change laws and toy with maps to maintain power in those states? The 2 states I am describing are Michigan and Pennsylvania where there are slim, but definate blue leans, but the state legislatures have been red since 1994 and keep playing games to maintain power and are even willing to restructure EC to take the power away from voters and set it into the legislatures hands again like it is 1809. BTW Michigan has always had popular vote for the EC as the state came along in the 1820's long after the notion of legislatures electing the POTUS were considered archaic and out of style. EC honestly should have been done away with after the Civil War as it has had no purpose other then as an oddity or as a specific political tool.
There is a disturbing trend of people in the US being conditioned to support the status quo and being unable to make a coherent argument when asked and having to resort to either personal attacks or tropes. The same happens here in the UK with the FPTP voting system whenever you ask someone here about it.
View it from their pov. No civil war in more than 150 years and the US is a superpower. So they associate the present US with its institutions. By contrast Europe in the XX century had two massive wars. If the US suffered say a devastating war with no clear gains then maybe institutions might get questioned.
FPTP is arguably as bad as the system in the USA. Quebec's leading party got 40.98% of the popular vote yet got 72% of the seats. And on the federal level Justin Trudeau got elected twice as a minority government when the conservative party has more total vote.
Honestly the more I learn about the UK's system of government, the more I think it's bizarre that you guys have to wait so long to vote on new representation or not if the current majority decides, but like why would they call a snap election?
its straight up fascism taking over our country
@@jspihlman To flex on the opponents to HMG that it is still the people's voice. Not realizing that there is a 50/50 chance the population would flip the Government the bird and change.
I love the argument of "big pop votes need to be less than small pop votes" because apperently if you live close to more people your vote should count less
"If you live close to more people your vote should count less" Yes. 100%. Otherwise rural states shouldbe allowed to leave the union but the Amerikkkan empire would never allow that now would they. Fuck America! God Bless Wyoming. If you are some coastal urbanite fuck you. If you are a rural brother, respect. And that goes the world over. Us rural people need to stick together from Namibia to Wyoming to Acre state to Chaco, Paraguay to Finnmark Norway.
I must say that it bothers me that 2,400 sheep in Wyoming have the same voice as I do. Baah.
I mean it makes sense. There are states predominantly made up of rural people that have no chance against larger states. It's why the senate exists. The problem is that it makes no sense why both the senate seats and representative seats are voted upon in the same election. They should really be separate elections, with the representative one deciding who's the president, and the senate having a bit less power.
People are terrible as a general rule, so if there are more of them, it must be a worse place.
@@DaDARKPass Okay. How exactly does that makes sense? Rural people would have no chance against large metropolitan populations? Why should they. There are less of them. Why should they have more voting power. Living in a rural area is not a meritable status that justifies this system. The votes of people who live in rural areas would still count if it was based on popular vote. So we don't do it because the minority would lose? That is extremely flimsy justification.
The worst part about the Electoral College is only several out of the 50 states matter in electing the president.
This year we have the following categories:
Most Important States: PA, MI, WI,
Important States: NC, AZ, GA, NV
Less Important States: FL, TX, VA, OH, MN
Worthless States: The remaining 38 states not listed
And right now PA is the #1 most important state.
@@Golladan That's why I listed it first. Whoever wins it almost certainly wins the whole thing.
I don’t know about VA being on here it’s gotten pretty solid blue like CO. Same thing with NH
uhm? North Carolina is one of the 7 most important states. how do you have nevada as one of them but not north carolina? Both voted for their party lean in 2016 and 2020.
@@NickHernandez2024 Fixed it as I didn't carefully make that list at the time. I do thi k it's on the lower end of the most important states because it leans red consistently. I also put Nevada last because it not only leans blue and is borderline most important, but it also has a pitiful amount of electoral votes compared to the other most important states.
You, Mr Beat; are one of those people that I frequently disagree with on political issues, but respect your opinion because you are informed and make good arguments. Keep doing what you do sir.
Thanks, Richard!
Honestly, he's one of the most apolitical Americans I ever listened to
@@diobrando1882 apolitical = aligns with your politics?
@@fatninjacatmatt bruh
@@fatninjacatmatt 💀sorry bout those others, apolitical just means not political. guessing dio may have meant nonpartisan instead
I love the irony that THEY don't fully understand what a republic is. If we got rid of the electoral college we would still live in a republic. We just have one degree removed so we are more directly voting for the representative in the republic. It's not that hard to understand.
This 'America is a republic not a democracy' is intentional conservative propaganda. They don't want people to associate democracy = democrats.
the electoral college helps people from completely different areas have their votes count
america is as big as europe
the electoral college is meant to have more votes than it currently does, but for some reason people decided the house didn't need more members anymore
@@skoop651 I’d be fine with changing the size of the electoral college/house. I wasn’t really saying we should get rid of the EC. I think it’d be much easier to try to fix it. I just meant that if we did it wouldn’t change our status as a republic.
Except they do... If you get rid of the EC then it's literally a direct democracy, why would it ever be a good idea for a handful of cities to be able to determine the government of the ENTIRE country and not the individual states who already have their own individual laws and systems? Why should states which feed and supply the rest of the country but don't have as many behemoth cities get zero say in our government? There are no good educated arguments for removing the electoral college.
Continuing on with the dictionary definition of "Republic", From the Merriam-Webster dictionary:" A government having a chief of state who is not a monarch and who in modern times is usually a president (2) : a political unit (as a nation) having such a form of government". No Republican believes this but then Republicans tend to be the people who are not educated.
Fun fact: Only three presidents lost the popular vote twice
1. John Quincy Adams
2. Benjamin Harrison
3. Donald Trump
That’s three too many
You forgot to add 3.
I forgot about Benjamin Harrison. We always forget about poor Ben.
At least Quincy Adams was based af
80 million dead voters for Biden?
One time in school, we were supposed to come up with "political parties" or whatever. Mine's "platform" mentioned getting rid of the electoral college.
The teacher called me a socialist... for supporting democracy. That definitely says something about that teacher, but I think it probably says something about the electoral college, and maybe even about capitalism/hyper-capitalism in general.
Teacher should be fired for that, you can discuss political issues in school but the teacher shouldn’t give their own opinion or chastise a student’s opinion.
Also that doesn’t make sense lol, how does supporting changing the way we elect a president mean you also support complete public ownership of the factors of production? Talk about a straw man fallacy
Lmao you should report that teacher, they probably are Republican anyway.
As a senior in high school i wrote a paper against the electoral college. My teacher was livid and gave me an F, bringing my grade to a C. It was the only grade that was not an A.
Suuuure. You probably just made a bad argument
So basically your “freedom” to challenge something ABOUT freedom was met with a borderline Authoritarian response. The irony 🙄 I wanna to kick that teacher in the _____
What a shitty teacher.
Did you complain to the school administration? teachers should not let bias get in the way of grading.
Lmao well yeah, abolishing the EC is one step to totalitarianism, based teacher did the right thing
Fantastic video! So glad you mentioned the "repubs in blue states and dems in red states would be heard without the electoral college" point. I've telling people that for years haha
Except they wouldn't. I live in Montana. Our largest city is about 120,000 people. And I don't even live there. Our population is about 1.2 million. So, compared to just about every state surrounding us, why would any candidate for president campaign here, when either Dakota, Idaho, or Washington, Oregon, or I don't know, California is available and full of potential voters? Montana gets disregarded because few people live here. We're essentially left out for ourselves when with the Electoral College, there's some incentive (even if just a bit) to appeal to the potential voters.
@Jack Jones can you explain to me why you are in favor of allowing a candidate to win if they don’t win the majority of Americans votes?
Please don’t tell me it’s because you acknowledge GOP wouldn’t win without the EC?
@Jack Jones There are republicans in cities too.
@Jack Jones Then Republicans should campaign for values the people actually want. Democrats usually win the popular vote because their ideals are in line with the people of this country. The popular vote and electoral vote are supposed to reflect one another.
@Jack Jones I’d rather have them be disadvantaged than have them not be equal. Everyone should have a voice.
People who defend the electoral college are the ones who feel they benefit from it. The idea that the founding fathers never intended for us to re-evaluate and improve our systems of government and elections is one of the most ridiculous notions ever.
It's not hard to Understand if you just picture the US as individual states instead of just one America..
The whole point of it is to keep every state glued to the Country.. That's why states are allowed to do things so differently..
You don't do that by telling the smaller ones to shove it, majority of people dont like you anyway..
One state could have a Volcano brewing but nobody listens to them so they explode or leave..
@@myman8336 I think we need a better system, though. It doesn't sit right with a lot of people that the president who receives 3 million less votes can still win the election.
I think the only way the electoral college works is if all 50 states are more or less the same in population.
Perhaps what needs to happen is for California to separate into several states and certain states need to merge (the Dakotas and Carolinas for example). Small states should not have the ability to hold the nation hostage over important legislation and the presidency.
@@valdavis7461 Then you might as well just get rid of the state system and merge them all into one giant state
The constitution was never meant to question the founding fathers, and that's exactly why they failed to put an amending formula in the constitution.
Oh! Wait....
@@valdavis7461 What about 1992? Clinton only had 43 percent of the votes.
5:00 "democracy is tyrrany by majority" well than electoral college in no exeption, because there is tyrrany in each state where is winner takes all.
Exactly
@@iammrbeat "Protect the minority" except any minorities within states. There is much more distinction between minority groups in Texas or California than North and South Dakota
@@drfit3719 This is why they want to get rid of the filibuster "who cares about the minority"
Mr beat is one of the people I watch because I DON'T always agree with him. It's nice to challenge your own ideas and try to be as open minded as possible
Thank you for trying to be open minded!
Agreed, people have the right to be wrong and even if you disagree with someone it is important to understand where they come from.
@@iammrbeat What would you say to someone who doesn't believe that the majority should call the shots?
@@annonymous6827 I'd ask who do you believe should call the shots?
@@jessicaporter7517 irrelevant to the question, the arguments he made only work for people who already like democracy, which I do but a lot of people dont
Honestly I was apprehensive about changing the system of the Electoral College but you have thoroughly convinced at least one random person on the internet to change sides. On this one.
I love when people complain about “rule by the majority” as if the current system, that is essentially “rule by the minority” is soooo much better
Can you explain how the “minority” is ruling America right now?
Ask them, what if instead we make it based on ethnicity? Because the ethnic majority in the US had a way worse record of treating ethnic minorities badly than small states...
All rule is by a minority. That's what "rule" is.
If choosing a politician by popular vote is mob rule, choosing is a politician by electoral college is just rule by a sometimes slightly smaller mob (+538 random people who could toss out the entire results if they wanted to, so in that case a really really small mob)
They're not random, though.
Its the worst when you hear a "The United states isn't a democracy its a republic" as if it cant be both or neither or just one! Its like rational thoughts are completely out the window. People make the quicketst judgements with little to no true knowledge.
Two types of republians :
1- fac*sts
2- stup*d
The other thing about that is...by electing a president we are still a republic. A republic is people electing someone to represent them. Abolishing the electoral college takes is from a constitutional republic to a constitutional republic
Yeah like most of countries in the world are republics and they don't have electoral college. Like have those people ever heard of outside world, that there are other countries out there?
"According to the mob of electoral-college defenders, they are the best mob!" is a really good quote
Help me with something ...
We know Dems will turn everything upside down for power .
But if they want....power.
If they want to get elected, why cant they offer solutions?
Why can't they try to help us solve are problems?
Why do they sneers at our unifying symbols ( the Flag, etc), out customs and our faith?
Why do they just offer techniques and tactics but nothing to help?
The shitty policies they do offer are mostly found to be unconstitutional .
Translation:Why should we make it easy for you to have power when that's all you want?
Mr Beat's skills as a presenter have improved a lot since I first started watching him. Keep up the good work, sir!
Our government is falling apart because of the extreme political divide and polarization across the entire nation. I hope that one day, all Americans, Democrats or Republicans, unite and stand together as a nation
I couldn't agree more
Why though? If Democrats and Rupublicans wanted to or even could get along, they would! Vote for progressives like Sanders and Howie Hawkins!
@Safwaan that's true, but competition and fighting for power should be regular rivalry and not descend into downright hatred were rivals are perceived as deadly enemies.
Nah our government is falling apart because it's been invaded by a corrupt, theo-fascistic right wing who are determined to turn the USA into a full-tilt handmaid's tale prison state.
This "both sides" bullshit needs to stop. Yes, democrats are still fundamentally conservative and corporate. No, I don't like their party establishment very much either.
But only one side wants to imprison or kill women for having miscarriages. Only one side flies Nazi flags and Confederate battle standards at their rallies. Only one side wants to build a wall on the border with one of our closest friends and allies. Only one side has attempted to kidnap sitting governors, only one side has attempted a violent coup, and only one side swamps the offices of congresswomen with so many death threats they need their own task force to assess which ones are serious.
Fuck "both sides are extreme." There are Nazis and non-Nazis. Republicans who claim not to like the Nazis but still vote for them because of party loyalty are, at best, Nazi sympathizers.
Vote blue no matter who.
Pfffft. Good luck.
I'm not an American. But when I learned about the Electoral College, my first thought was like, "This is the stupidest thing ever". Glad to know it wasn't just me.
The obvious minority power play.
Good job at confirming you have common sense!
It's because this guy doesn't explain what it is really for. I am guessing you live in a city? So a question... Do you care about the needs of farmers? Small rural towns? Voting in the USA actually can matter. XD
@@garcardosotan6172 I know this comment is two weeks old, and not directed towards me specifically, but I do live in a city, to be specific the suburbs of Chicago. I do care about the needs of farmers, as they feed me. I do care about dairy workers, and meat workers, and those who live in small rural towns. I understand that they are absolutely pivotal to the United States' basic functions. I, however, do not believe that their vote should count more than anyone else's.
I also understand what the electoral college was originally intended for, but its intent is outdated in our modern world. Can tyranny of the majority exist? Yes, it can, is it nearly big enough of a problem that we need to sacrifice our country's democratic processes to prevent it? No, it isn't. Honestly, I would be okay keeping the electoral college if we just reformed it slightly. If we changed how electoral votes are given out away from counting senate seats, then it would work mostly fine, as the chance of an election being unfairly won by states with more voting power than they should have would become essentially 0. I know that the first reaction you'll likely have to this proposal would be that of "Well then you're removing those rural voices." Which is a fair first thought, but that's what local, state, and Senatorial elections are for. If a group of farmers have an issue of some form, then they can bring it to their local elections, and vote for people that would best help them on that issue. Same would apply for state elections. The Senate directly gives these more rural peoples more of a voice. They have to be considered because the Senate is 1/2 of Congress, and is necessary for legislation to be passed. Preventing the true winner of a presidential election from becoming president all for the purpose over-representing one group of people is entirely redundant. We have *multiple* institutions that already over represent them, and when the president is seen as the guiding leader of foreign policy, and representing the whole, rather than a specific group, then the president should reflect what the majority believes.
My point with this massive wall of text that I doubt a single person, regardless of if they'd agree with it or not, would read through is that we already have multiple institutions that give the minority vote a voice, the electoral college is entirely redundant in its purpose, and far more dangerous as people are more likely to react emotionally and violently over the result of a presidential election than that of a smaller one. Especially if their candidate loses electorally, but not by the popular vote, or if they believe that the election was not won fairly due to the electoral college.
Sorry if there are any massive grammatical errors, I wrote this entire thing in all of about 10 minutes, and was just thinking as I wrote.
@@floppy4everyone913 Look at an election map and tell me that is accurate.
Mr. Beat -- We don't agree on everything politically or economically -- but I deeply respect your commitment to democracy, civil discourse, and your willingness to educate folks. Can't thank you enough.
...RANKED CHOICE VOTING kills Jerrymandering and 100 other problems. No wonder the
best Problem-adressing Social-Commentary-Channel on YT, Some-More-News, and Second-Thought, both advocate for it. The Electoral College and much more has to be fixed and the Best way is to know WHAT is broken.
Mr. Beat is a left-wing hack masquerading as a moderate.
Dude's pretty cool and genuine.
Pandering will get you nowhere
He still loves joe biden though. He hates trump. He's one of those no trumpers that refuses to talk about trump and just defends a lot of his parties propaganda talking points.
the scary thing about electoral votes by district, like in maine and Nebraska, is that it makes it easier to gerrymander your way to the oval office. overall though, great video!
Yep, we'd have to simultaneously get rid of gerrymandering
@@iammrbeat Instead of by district, why not electoral votes per county, since a county's borders can't be shifted every ten years depending on who's in power? Heck, we could apply that to state elections as well, or even county elections with EV's by township.
@@seannolan9857 yes, but some counties have like 5 people in them
@@SignificantNumberOfBeavers Obviously larger counties would be worth more EV's than small ones. And only two counties have under 100 people, one in Texas and a former leper colony in Hawaii.
@@iammrbeat The problem is there's no objective standard of what a fair non-gerrymandered map looks like - it's fundamentally a political question. Witness all the maps that get escalated to federal courts, and get thrown out for creating specific majority coalitions or thrown out for _not_ creating them in other circumstances. There's no algorithm that you could teach to a computer, or to a truly politically-neutral person (if such a thing existed).
I really cannot get over the fact of how thoroughly I was able to be persuaded from a strong-held belief, just from a single video. Holy shit. You got backlash and really decided to shut it all down with straight facts. I commend you sir.
Mr. Beat speaks the truth. Electoral college sucks and everyone knows it deep down.
He knows his stuff 😉
Then people who actually do threaten to get up and leave and move to Canada get made fun of
@@YoFool.1506 Because it's just smoke they're blowing.
@@bobhabib750 its a fact that those in smaller sates have a larger voice than those in bigger states
One thing i think is always worth remembering about those who defend the electoral college like Crowder does, is that they're not doing it out of principles and a genuine belief in it as an institution, but rather they do it simply because it's advantageous to them politically. None of the people in the right wing space online would have defended the electoral college if 2016 was reversed, with hillary receiving more Electoral votes but trump receiving more popular votes.
Nearly nobody would care about it at all if there hadn't been (recent) times when popular vote and electoral vote didn't match and that both recent times favored one party does make it hard for evaluations to not be pretty partisan. But, not exactly about electoral college but similar, conservatives do tend to generally like the having two Senators per state, more than liberals (a lot more would be fine with or prefer just having the one House of Representatives), even though that doesn't particularly help them and the Senate tends to frustrate both parties.
A non-partisan argument for the electoral college is that it's good, better than candidates focus more on swing states, than some other kind of category of states/areas, as which states are swing states can and does change over time.
Funny your Electoral College video is actually my favorite video on the channel, had no clue it had the most dislikes. If it were up to me to come up with a compromise, I’d keep the electoral college but switch to ranked choice voting. At the very least, you’ll break the two party system that way. And quite frankly I think the two party system is a big reason this conversation among others is so polarizing
Long time electoral college supporter, constitutionalist, and new listener.
I think you bring up some good points, and I like the idea of ranked voting. Something like that could erode away at the 2 party system I think many are getting tired of.
The electoral college was fucking brilliant at the time, because presidential candidates would have ignored small states, and never gone their to campaign. This would have left voter with no knowledge about what was going on. Now, information travels. You’re average rural voter knows exactly what is going on in DC. I’ll give you Illinois for example. Outside of Chicago, Illinois is very conservative. The reason Illinois is a blue state is because those conservatives are overwhelmed by the interests of Chicago. This leaves those rural voters in southern Illinois, with no real say in presidential elections, because there votes are always going to be overwhelmed by the votes in Chicago. I want those rural voters to have a say. I want the minority political party in every state to have a say. That is why the electoral college at the very least needs to be altered, if not completely gotten rid of.
@@bencarter8423 at the time
The 2 party system is horrible
@@bencarter8423How does an electoral college defend the voice of the minority on the state level? It does the exact opposite by completely eliminating the vote of the 49%
@@bencarter8423i like this. I don't know if I like the idea many people have about abolishing it, because it has a purpose, but I don't think there's any question that it's absolutely flawed. I think, by the sounds of everything, that the issue is not the idea that the electoral college is a bad thing, but that OUR electoral college has flaws. Either this is misunderstood by Mr Beats and others, or they're miscommunicating this. Not sure which.
I remember back in high school we had an assignment where we had to discuss the benefits and drawbacks of the electoral college. I wrote about one or two sentences explaining the benefits, and about four or five paragraphs explaining the drawbacks.
Thankfully only one sentence is needed to defend the electoral college: the union would not survive without it.
@@Prolute
That’s a Right-wing propaganda talking point, not a fact…
@@coyotelong4349 Go ahead and get rid of it then and find out.
@@Prolute The Constitution wouldn't have been ratified without the EC. But the union surviving? Well, it didn't survive... the EC didn't save it. A little thing called the Civil War happened.
The Union is way more integrated economically and.socially these days. We'd be fine without the EC. Hell, we'd probably be better off. We'd definitely be better off with the voting system changes he mentioned at the end of the video.
@@travcollier The civil war is not a point in your favor, it's a point in mine. It shows how precarious the union really is. We wouldn't be better off without the EC because that would mean significant weakening the constitution. Instead, we should just give the federal government less power so that federal elections are less consequential.
Anyone that says "Big blue cities would control our rural way of life" is coded language for saying "I'm a conservative and I know my candidate can't win the popular vote, so I like the Electoral College because it gives my unpopular candidate a chance to cheat the people and win anyway, I don't believe in majority rule." If you really want your conservative/Republican candidate to win an election, get a better candidate. Get better policies, appeal to the wants & needs of Americans. Your rural way of life does NOT appeal to the majority of Americans. You have to accept that reality. Without the Electoral College and with high voter turnout, we would see Democratic victories in what are currently Republican leaning states. That would be a good thing because that's what the majority of Americans prefer.
Also, instead of big blue cities controlling the election, we have 5-6 battleground states controlling the election in our current system. It’s the same problem.
Again, two wolves and a sheep vpting on what's for dinner.
@@authenticallysuperficial9874 That's simply not true at all. The two major parties are not the same. Listen to what Mr. Beat says in the video.
@@authenticallysuperficial9874one wolf overriding two sheep to decide what's for dinner. Also why are we acting like wolves (carnivores) eating other animals is so immoral when humans (omnivores who could be vegans) eat other animals. I imagine you're not a vegan, and regardless, most people who make this argument aren't vegans so the analogy sucks
@@ThunderTheBlackShadowKitty Also, most republicans are just middle to upper income people from outer ring suburbs. They’re not the poor farmers that republicans pretend to make up the party. And even in those conservative, rural states, most of the population is still centered in and around cities, albeit comparatively smaller ones. Then there’s the fact that rural folks themselves aren’t a conservative hivemind. They exist across the political spectrum like anyone else. Or the fact that blue states still have rural areas in them.
My biggest issue with the Electoral College is with faithless electors.
Yeah it's amazing that faithless electors are still a thing.
@@iammrbeat Agreed.
Shadow Electors are even more of a threat.
My issue with the EC is there are not enough faithless electors.
Could you imagine if Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin had faithless electors in 2016 to enforce 'majority rule'. What a change that would be.
What's funny to me is that this was an issue people in both parties used to agree on. Even in 2004 with the 2000 election still fresh in people's minds a poll found 50% of Republicans supported abolishing the electoral college. And you can go back and check quotes from Republican politicians in 2012-2014 (including Gingrich and Trump) advocating a national popular vote. I wonder what could've happened since then that made so many Republicans suddenly change their minds?
Lol the realization that they’d never win a federal election again seems to have done the trick
It’s pretty clear that Republicans have become a minority governing party and couldn’t win the popular vote in their current revolting incarnation.
If that were true it would have been amended
@@MylesKillis Ah yes, because the people amend the constitution, not the ineffective Congress that argues all day and hasn't amended something since 1992..
Way late to the party here.. just discovered the channel. However, my favorite viewer comment from the appeal to authority fallacy section is "He thinks he's smarter than the founding fathers." No, he doesn't, but it is 100% plausible that he, or any currently living person for that matter, *could* be smarter or at least better educated than the founders. I get tired of the founders being talked about as if they had magical powers. Sure, a few were truly great thinkers (for their time.) But an awful lot of great thinking has been done since then. (I mean, Doctors used to think leeching was a good idea, but eventually thought better of it.) I am strongly in favor of ranked choice voting, in no small part because it might help break us out of the two-party model that is responsible for so much gridlock at the federal level. I would like to see ranked choice implemented at all levels of government.
FYI our founding fathers said that there should be no party system. The people in charge changed the laws and made it that way, not our founding fathers. They actually prevented that and some hacks ratified the constitution. Just like how lawyers were never supposed to be allowed to be politicians. Ratified. Lobbying was illegal because it's literal bribery. Ratified. Etc.
Fellow Kansan here, i too know what it feels like to not have my voice heard. We desperately need ranked choice voting and also open primaries.
Open primaries: Oh, what a great idea. Let's allow non party members to sabotage a party's primary; force them to run a candidate you think you can defeat. Do you want another Trump? Because that's how you risk getting a Trump.
Yeah...as a fellow Kansan, the recent redistricting was really scary, cause it felt very directly targeted at me and people like me.
The two State Constitutional Amendments being voted on also feel targeted at particular current events in politics, rather than actual issues that our state deals with...so frustrating.
Closed primaries seem so blatantly undemocratic to me. Let me vote in both primaries, for each canidate from either side I like the most, so I can have two decent choices.
@@JohnDoe-ex1qn Counterpoint: Primaries are absurd, and we are the only democracy in the world to have them, and we really ought to abolish them entirely. It is generally useful to let parties have control over who they nominate, and if voters don't like who a party chooses as their candidate they don't have to vote for that party. The issue with opening up primaries too much is it invites any demagogue to enter a race and completely redefine the image of a party. This is exactly what happened with Trump. the majority of third parties in the US nominate by convention instead of primaries, out of fear that primaries would allow people to hijack and effectively take control of small parties through running in the primary, which has happened before.
Yes, but our political system has become so dependent on the two parties that the people have to end up choosing the lesser of two evils nearly every election, which leads to no change. Which is exactly what the oligarchy wants.
Love your videos Mr Beat! The Electoral College is horrible. One vote should be equal to every other vote! Anything else is just crazy talk!
I disagree. Just imagine a nation-wide recount scenario...
@@jrousselle7828 A compromise could be each state gets divided into small districts (much smaller than our current House districts and actually proportional to each state's population) and the people elect one elector by ranked choice voting. That elector then votes for president. This way recounts may need to be done in some individual districts, but nationwide or even statewide would not be necessary, and you'd get an outcome that lines up with what the people want.
@@jrousselle7828Equal votes come first
@@jrousselle7828 I’m not sure if you watched the video, but votes are counted on a precinct level(so small sections of a single town). If you abolish the electoral college votes would still be counted on a precinct level like they are now. Like they count the popular vote in order to assign the electoral victors. We’re just removing a needless step.
All I gotta say is, THANK YOU MR.BEAT!! I’ve been looking for something like ground for the longest time and it’s already working it’s magic. You’re the best, keep doing what you’re doing
The Electoral College s-cks!
RANKED CHOICE VOTING kills Jerrymandering and 100 other problems. No wonder the
best Problem-adressing Social-Commentary-Channel on YT, Some-More-News, and Second-Thought, both advocate for it. The Electoral College and much more has to be fixed and the Best way is to know WHAT is broken.
It isn't fair to minority voters in their states. Republicans in blue states and dems in red states.
I hate that my vote doesn't matter because I live in a red state. It feels like I have no say and my vote rarely counts.
i like your way of pointing out the logical fallacies in opposing arguments and sticking to the facts while also being willing to admit fault and concede when a good point is made
Wtf are you talking about? Mr. Beat has never admitted any fault in leftist "logic."
Can't wait for him to do that
Once again the guy who has to resort to making funny voices in an attempt to belittle his opposition because he can't argue on the merit of the debate loses.
So glad you brought this up again! I live in a constitutional monarchy, and we elect through a democratic proces; a representative democracy. We used to have something similar to an electoral college, but we got rid of it within the first hundred years of our first constitution. Claiming that things should never change is ridiculous! If we had followed that mentality we would still be run by an absolute monarch or live under feudalism. Changes are necessary for a country to remain for more than a thousand years
Change is fine as long as it makes sense. This is the essence of liberalism vs. conservatism.
@@CStone-xn4oy I don’t understand your comment… what is the antecedent of “this” in the sentence “This is the essence of liberalism vs conservatism.” Your prior sentence says “Change is fine as long as it makes sense.” and that clearly doesn’t fit the following sentence… are you trying to say that liberals can accept change and conservatives can’t? I was taught (and I’ve seen nothing to contradict what I was taught) that liberalism believes in the significance of liberty and equal rights, and conservatism believes in promoting and maintaining traditional institutions. I guess that could be interpreted to be about change…
@@jpe1 To clarify, liberals and conservatives balance each other out. Liberals call for changes in society. Conservatives are reluctant to change unless absolutely necessary. The result is that change in a society usually occurs in a slow, steady, and stable way (with the occasional period of rapid change thrown in every now and then).
Yes I am using liberalism and conservatism more as the ideologies behind liberal and conservative thought. I am aware that the terms liberalism and conservatism can mean other things depending on the context.
uh...but not in this case.
The USA is very different from Canada.
Thank God.
All ex-british colony who still use their system also have districts and plurality vote. Quebec, Canada just had an election with this system, the leading party got 90 out of 125 seats so 72% of them when they got 40.98% of the total votes. The fifth biggest party got 12.91% of the total vote yet got 0 seats because they didn't have a plurality in any of the districts.
Wow I'm so proud of you Mr. Beat. That you stand up for yourself and respond with factual arguments against people who use fallacies.
Mr. Beat is using fallacies himself. He appealed to authority by referring to Supreme Court.
@@popbasketball1696 is the SCOTUS not the one who directly interprets the constitution though.
@@popbasketball1696 when?
His analysis is very poor.
He doesn't understand the country.
He sneers at our most important governmental foundations.
@@stephj9378 he does understand this country and he laughs at the people who don't actually understand (and defend) how "our most important governmental foundations" is actually unfair for the people of this country and needs to be fixed so we can have everybodies votes get heard. You people love to ignore every thing other than what pleases you.
People like Marjorie "Red States and Blue States!" Taylor Greene want you to think each state is a monolith even though each state is actually very purple
Not really. Go look at the electoral map. Most counties are red. The only blue counties where they get all their votes are the liberal cities and also women for that matter. Hell if you removed women alone all the sudden the dems stop winning just from that alone.
In a presidential election with RCV or STAR voting and 95% turnout, all the swing states would flip Democratic overnight.
I’ve always found it kind of shocking how many people actually like the electoral college. Great video.
Thank you!
I’m sorry that I don’t want the cesspool state of California deciding the election? No not one bit lmao.
I find it shocking how many people continue to vote for the types of governments that ruin states (California, New York), then run to states that have actually not been ruined (Texas economically, Georgia), and continue to vote for the same governments that ruin states.
@@tyler1783 did you know that california has the most republicans of any state not named texas. Why should those 5 million+ citizens have no voice on the national scale.
@@jasonhoffarth They have way more Democrats then Republicans.
These discussions always remind me of a time about 20 years ago. I was visiting my the girlfriend, now wife, in her home country in Central America. The government was looking into changing this they were organized and were discussing a variety of options.
A government spokesperson was presenting some of the ideas to a group of business people, including my girlfriend, and she invited me to attend. During the discussion one gentleman spoke up and asked why they just didn’t do it like we do it in the US. I suggested to my girlfriend that she point out that the US wouldn’t do it like the US if we had to start over again.
Many of our quirks, like the Electoral College, are beloved by many because we see it as a symbol of who we are as a country. The real question should be “does it make sense in the modern world?” There are many pros and cons to these legacy aspects of our Republic. I think that discussions like these are healthy so that we can say we have this quirks for more than mere “tradition”.
A reason for having/keeping the electoral college is that it is still the case that without it small states would still be pretty ignored and increasingly grow alienated and disaffected from national politicians/politics.
@@suarezguythey’re already ignored. Candidates spend more of their time trying to flip crucial swing states; small states are either reliably Republican or don’t matter enough to sway an election. Battleground states, like Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan on the other hand, can play a decisive role in an election. The electoral college only encourages candidates to pay attention to states that are evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, and ignores states that reliably vote one way or another.
@@imawaffle148 I think that focus on swing states, though a bias, is a pretty good focus/bias to have-which states are swing states can and does change over time (a lot more and faster than other state factors like their populations).
Mr. Beat, for most of my adult life, I was a staunch supporter of the Electoral College. I held by my belief that it was a check on large cities and states from having too much sway in electing our president. Over the last several years, it has become abundantly clear to me how wrong I was. In the last 20 years, two of our last four presidents have been elected without a plurality of the electorate. There's something inherently wrong with that. And for those who say that Bush and Trump carried the majority of counties in the United States, I would simply add "tracts of land do not elect presidents. People do." Thank you for making some very strong points, including the idea of keeping the Electoral College but breaking it up by congressional districts rather than our "winner take all" system we presently have.
Those “Tracts of lands” aren’t completely responsible for picking the president but they are a part of it, remember there are people there
as much as i hated Hillary Clinton she legitmatly won the election in 2016and should have been president and trump only won becase some electors just switched there vote to him.
popular vote would create the unbalance that the electoral collage prevents if we switched with campaigning harder in more heavily populated states creating the blue and red states people think exist
As a conservative, this is one of the only matters where I disagree with my party. The eleqtoral college is unfair
The US political and electoral system in general just seems terribly outdated and insufficient for the needs of a modern democracy.
The main issue is that the USA is missing something that is absolutely necessary for a functioning Democracy: a well informed and educated populace. Put simply the USA no longer deserves its Democracy and is likely to lose it subtly over the next century.
I think it also needs more representation of indigenous people and ethnic minorities. For example I'd love to see Native American reservations to be officially shown on maps as administrative divisions distinct from US states. Like Republics in Russia for example.
The “you don’t know what you’re talking about” argument has become as useful and true as people want it to be.
I also love the arguments that try using the founding fathers to support the electoral college, when the founders themselves in lager years despised the electoral college and considered it their biggest mistake at the constitutional convention. Hell, James Madison in his later years proposed an endment that would've eliminated thr EC and replaced it with ranked choice voting (Madison letter to George Genry. 1824).
I forgot about that Madison letter and just Tweeted it!
Are there really people that actually think the electoral college is good?
Yes, and they're all conservatives
@@Mavuika_Gyaru nailed it
@stevvvvveperry It would already be miles better if they didn't have winner take all system. If state has 5 votes and result is 20/80 then in current system winner gets 5 votes and 20% get silenced. If winner got only 4 votes and other 1 then the 20% at least would have some voice and there would be more reason for candidates to campaign in that state because you can maybe get one vote there while in current system you will never be able to equalize 30% difference and campaigning there is pointless.
there is always someone who benifits from a broken system
Good Stuff. Keep fighting the good fight.
Getting elected officials on board for changing the electoral system will be difficult, since they largely benefit from it as is.
Informing people about some of the possible the problems with the systems as is, along with some possible ways to improve them is so important.
Mr. Beat you are a class act as always. There are many such as Crowder that will move the goalposts forever, and it’s nice to see a REAL educator collide with their nonsense. Much love.
Winning the electoral vote requires 270 votes. Biden won California, New York and Illinois, a combined 95 electoral votes. Those three states put Biden 35.2% of the way to victory.
158 million people voted in the 2020 election. This means to win the popular vote, you would need 79 million votes. In the three states mentioned, Biden won approximately 19.8 million votes. This is approximately 25% of the votes he would have needed. How does popular vote give big states more power?
A great point!
I've always thought Electoral College was stupid same as gerrymandering, I want popular vote. I want equality.
Great vid Mr Beat! Honestly, I really liked your last Electoral College video too. In my view, it was setup during a different era and most people would like to see a majority wins system. (or me who'd like to see a multiple party system and majority wins).
You are 100% correct Mr. Beat!!!! The electoral college sucks and should go!!! If we must keep the electoral college, I agree that it should be changed so each states divides up their electoral votes by district. An EVEN BETTER idea would be to have states divide up their electoral votes PROPORTIONALLY based on the PERCENTAGE OF VOTES cast for a candidate in each state.
I agree! I prefer just going with the popular vote with some sort of runoff system. Proportional results would be a fair compromise.
The rules for calculating proportionally has to be uniform for each state and be reasonably fair though to prevent a state gaming their results for one candidate.
You could also divide the two senator-like seats proportionally and the other, representative-like, seats by federal congressional district.
@@palmercolson7037 Good point! The danger of gerrymandering is a good reason to divide up ALL of a state's electoral votes proportionally.
Nebraska and Maine already do that.
@@crgrier More states need to
With the Electoral College, Ross Perot has no chance.
And yet he still probably had more of a chance with the EC than the popular vote
Goddamn two party system…
This comment is actually perfect. Ross Perot won no states yet he got around 19% of the popular vote. He was rather popular for an independent yet he still didn’t stand a chance. I wonder how 1992 would have gone if Ranked Choice was a thing
I think that's more so about the party divide than the electoral college though. Even with a national popular vote, he still wasn't rivaling Clinton or HW. Maybe ranked choice voting?
You would have had Perot electors in the EC if more states had proportional allotment; so it's not exactly a problem "with" the EC.
I wonder how the 1992 race would have ended had Perot not withdrawn from the race in July. He re-entered the race in October, but by then most people had made their decision.
I live in Finland. Finland is a Republic. We had our type of "electoral college" but it was ruled as undemocratic and now we only have the popular vote. I'd still believe that Finland is quite a well working Republic and democratic at that.
Btw:
Having only a popular vote actually made Finland more democratic and now everyone's voices can be heard.
Dear lord, it’s so nice to just hear someone speak common sense about how our elections should go. And that’s such a good point that LITERALLY EVERYTHING ELSE is voted on by a majority vote, the president should be as well
There are some people on the right who want to implement electoral colleges on State Elections too (like RazorFist) because they seems to care more about the location that votes come from rather than the actual amount of votes.
I just want to say I appreciate you for thoughtfully considering the comments on your video and not 'rage responding' to comments like I have seen others do. It's not that I've seen other RUclipsrs post angry response-to-comments videos, it's that they don't concede any points the comments made at all. You took the time to thoughtfully respond to a wide spectrum of negative comments and conceded when you were wrong. I liked you a lot already, but now I like you more. I feel like I can generally trust your perspective. Even when I disagree with you (which I rarely do, I'll admit I'm stuck in an echo chamber that favors your opinions), I know your perspective is trustworthy. It's a much-needed voice in a time when media in general has become very untrustworthy.
I also feel your perspectives generally provide space for disagreement. I feel that if I wrote a thoughtful comment in favor of the electoral college, you wouldn't lash out at me.
Agreed. I know a lot of people that just don't vote because they believe, and rightly so, that their vote won't count. Everyone should have their vote count, EVERY SINGLE VOTE SHOULD COUNT!
Technically still doesn't make every vote count because people aren't going to win the presidency by 1 or 2 votes
Why should every single vote count? I am asking from a philosophical standpoint. If you researched the candidates and weighed the pros and cons of each and made decision on who to vote from based on that, and then I come in after you and vote for people who I think have cool last names should my vote count just as yours does?
Id honestly feel my vote would be worth even less in most other systems, id go into reasoning but that varies depending on the system in question.
@@CStone-xn4oy absolutely...because we have (or should have) freedom of choice here in America
@@CStone-xn4oy proof by contradiction: let’s assume that some votes _should_ count more than others, then there will need to be a metric by which one can quantify how “important” (or “valuable”) any particular vote is,and that metric will either be subjective (like the one you propose, based on how much research effort went into any particular vote), in which case, how are the criteria chosen and evaluated so as to be fair; or, the metric will be objective, for example, based on sex, age, wealth, party affiliation, or skin color, and such objective criteria can always be demonstrated to be inherently _unfair._
Having established that any “some votes count more than others” scheme will be unfair, we can therefore conclude that the only fair system will have to count all votes equally.
the problem with people defending the electoral college by saying it protects the minority from the oppression of the majority is that the electoral college only protects the specific minorities it is aggregated for, people who live in small states, while suppressing any minority it isn't aggregated for since minorities of a winner takes all state are rounded out of being represented entirely.
And instead of being aggregated alongside any minority you are purposefully trying to protect it is aggregated along arbitrarily set geographical lines by the happenstance of history which use to be right leaning racist nationalists who oppose federal government influence so they can run a slave empire, but now we're so connected it only aggregates alongside a vague trend of that.
If you took all African Americans and made them a state that state would have the same impact on American politics as California or Texas, but instead they are a minority in every state they are found in.
If you want to give minorities more say in at least making sure that the candidate that they like the least doesn't take power and do a holocaust or something, the best way to do so is with some version of ranked choice voting that prioritizes not making common least favorite candidates win. The second best way is to have a constitution that says the law must be applied indiscriminately
If pure winner take all majority democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on where to go for dinner, the electoral college is 50 groups of 2 wolves and a sheep voting on dinner, and ranked choice or star voting without the electoral college is 2 wolves and a sheep giving 5 dinner options each and taking turns throwing away their least favorite one until they agree on a place with a good menu, that the wolves like more yes, but at least the sheep can make sure that the wolves are eating pig or something
Thanks Maiq, may you travel on warm sands.
Beautiful wording
I love the consistency of Mr. Beat's views on this topic. The people who treat the electoral college as some holy doctrine inscribed by the guardian angels of the US on a stone tablet are deeply weird.
There are many aspects of our constitution that are weird, and we just keep the structure of the Constitution just because we fetishize the founders. They were a bunch of 20-something political nerds. Many of them were very flawed, very elitist, and very narrow-minded relative, and the system they created was new in 1790, but is very out-of-date today.
A Bicameral Legislature is not normal today. Pardon power is not normal either. The way we view rights and responsibilities of government are very odd. We have very few rights and they are very absolute rights. In other countries they have many more rights like the right to education, healthcare, safe working conditions, living wage, privacy, democratic government, life, etc and they have so many that their laws have to balance all of those rights when they conflict with each other.
@@stevencaruso825 Damn, why do you have to list all of the elements the Founders put into the Constitution that were actually pretty epic? Of all the things the Founders got most wrong, slavery and having a power Executive separated from Parliament, you didn't mention either.
@@stevencaruso825 It’s not bicameralism itself that’s unusual, it’s the fact that the Senate still has real power instead of being more-or-less just a formality
It certainly not a holy decree. Its a creative and clever solution to one of the fundamental flaws with Democracy. It helps to prevent small states from being completely ignored while at the same time preserving the power of the majority.
@@CStone-xn4oy it was a solution for getting slave states to join a very tenuous union. Plenty of more democratic countries with proportional representation like Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and Finland do fine. Lol
I'm giving Ground News a shot solely on your recommendation.
It's a great idea, and solves a problem I've been dealing with for awhile.
Ty.
Mr. Beat, this is still your best take. I am glad that there are other people who are willing to stand up to the electoral college in order benefit democracy.
Additionally, I still don't fully understand why anybody is in support of the electoral college. Why be against having more say in YOUR government?
Because, at this point, the electoral college is basically a crutch for the GOP that allows them win with only a minority of votes. The reality of the situation is that the EC has become an increasingly partisan issue in recent years due to the fact that two Republican presidents would've lost elections in the last couple decades without it.
I am so glad we have well made transparent informational videos like this that can be real and tell it like it is while giving educated, well constructed rhetoric and solutions towards the topics discussed. Well done.
What a fantastic and good-faith appraisal of arguments defending the electoral college. Great work.
Defenders of the EC are the victims of historical inertia and trying to find good reasons for what exists, but sometimes those reasons are a bit of a stretch and on the whole unconvincing.
And a lot of them are just playing politics to keep their favorite party in power. They know the EC benefits them. It takes the power away from the rightful majority and gives it to a bunch of farmers (exaggerating, but still)
Or just people with an opposing opinion who may see the flaws in ec, but still choose to support it over popular vote😐
The electoral college is one of the dumbest things we still uphold.
Not really our primary systems are FAR worse as those literally give a handful of people power to elect whoever they want and use absurd systems that are far more complex than what needs to be. No EC has a reason to exist but its due to be updated in a way that more reflects the splits in states as winner take all doesnt reflect the voter maps. The problem is that if the electoral college was to just vanish and was replaced by pure population it would swing the power to much into the hands of major cities and population centers when it come to canidates campaigns. The college was created to curb "tyranny of the majority" basically a system where major cities get to vote for the president and therefore his/her platform and campaign will be tailored to only cities and large urban areas, meanwhile small rural areas that produce very vital resources like food and cash crops, and manufactured goods dont get any thought. 2016 honestly showed really why we need the a system like the EC as Clinton didnt even campaign in the rust belt meaning the area where most of America's food is grown and its exports are manufactured, meaning had she won their needs would have been disregarded for the costal areas that have larger populations. Now fast forward to 2020 where Clinton begins imposing COVID mandates on these same areas where people arent crammed together like in cities but becasue she never bothered to even give them a thought of even campaigning there are suddenly being forced to wear masks in sweltering 100F weather dispite the nearest person not being within 2 miles of you. Im absolutely for a better system that more reflects the wants of the country, but not if it comes at the expense of groups of people. We would have to create major campaign reforms (which im also very much for) to help prevent certain areas from getting special treatment.
The only demographic group who majority support the electoral college are white Donald Trump voters. The electoral college has no majority support from any other demographic group!
@@josephimperatrice5552 You do realize thats like 50% of the country right ?
@@TheSilverPhoenix100
50% of Americans are not pro-Donald Trump because if they were Donald Trump would not have lost the national popular vote twice. And everytime Donald Trump loses the national popular vote he always loses it by a landslide and not by a hair. He loses it by the millions and not by the thousands let alone the hundreds. And also during Donald Trump's entire four years in office no poll has ever put his approval rating at 50%!
@@josephimperatrice5552 triggered much ?
I completely agree. The arguments for the Electoral College are not compelling. For me, the electoral college discourages me from even bothering to want to vote in presidential elections when I know that my state will swing one direction or the other.
If you live in Oklahoma, and you were the deciding vote for your elector for the past 40 years, the only year you'd effect the results of the election is 2000.
OMG, that dude in the other video is crazy annoying. Does he have to be so condescending? That smile on his face looks like it hurts. I don't think I could watch a video from him. The snippets you showed was difficult enough.
I agree with you. The Electoral College is antiquated. Giving states electoral weight based upon population seems rather unfair now since its original intent really does meet the need anymore. I have a preference for Ranked-Choice voting, but when I try to explain it to people, they look at me like I am speaking a foreign language.
RCV (specifically IRV) is just plurality voting with more steps. Maybe it's slightly better, but there are so many better single-winner methods available that "a little better than plurality" isn't a compelling reason to choose it.
@@galiantus1354 no, it isn't. there is an inherent difference in outcome, as voters are more encouraged to select their preferred candidate. in the current political climate, things are more polarized than ever, but most people would be willing to vote for an appealing third party. they don't because it is a terrible political strategy. a ranked system removes the bullshit political strategies aimed soley at party cohesion.
@@bobbirdsong6825 There are many ranked methods that actually deliver on what you are saying. IRV specifically is a bad method because of its method of counting. It's a math problem that not only creates vote-splitting, but obscures from the voter how to deal with that vote-splitting. So being honest can hurt you, especially in a competitive race (and don't we want competitive races?). Case-in-point: Alaska used IRV recently, and if 5,200 Palin voters had just not shown up to vote, Nick Begich - preferred by the majority of Palin voters over Peltola - would have won. It is a bad system. If you want a good ranked system, look at STAR, Ranked Robin, or even Single Transferrable Vote (multiwinner RCV). These systems do not punish voters for participating and being honest, and remove the benefit of party cohesion.
The problem with the United States is how difficult it is to update any of our antiquated institutions, despite their obvious inadequacies at meeting the challenges of today
In voting/elections, that includes our stubborn 2-party system, gerrymandering, FTPT, etc
Call me crazy, but this country has changed a lot since 1776
The nature of the current political system in the United States makes any efforts to reach mutual understanding seemingly impossible. Be they consumed by a conspiracy theory, indifference to our electoral process or a need to "one up the other guy," we are almost as politically divided as we were during the Civil War. The only difference may simply be the general lack of interest in dying for the cause, which is generally a good thing.
I don’t agree with you on many topics, but I do like that you care about speaking the truth. Most of the media is all about stretching the truth or straight up lying to try to persuade people. Thank you for what you do.
I LOVE Ranked Choice voting and fully believe that it should be implemented in the US.
Excellent video as always. Your ability to agree and disagree without ever attacking anyone is an example we all can learn from.
RANKED CHOICE VOTING kills Jerrymandering and 100 other problems.
No wonder the
best Problem-adressing Social-Commentary-Channel on YT, Some-More-News, and Second-Thought, both advocate for it. The Electoral College and much more has to be fixed and the Best way is to know WHAT is broken.
what, he littlerly attacked his GOP part of his Audience, he read out all the Comments he dissagreed with in SOUTHERN Accents to show the viewrs that those comments are from poor uneducated People who are most likley livin in red states...Southern accent=Poor and stupid for most people who Vote Democrat or live in Northan states. This video he makes it clear he has utter contempt for red state voters
CGP Gray mathematically disproved the big state bs
No you don't understand, the Founders got it right the very first time and created a perfect document from the start.
Please don't look up the Articles of Confederation or any amendment after the first 10. They got it right the first time and we can never ever change it.
So should we change the 13th or 19th amendments ?
You sound dumb af worshipping dead men
Mr. Beat, I just started watching your videos, and can I say I love your videos. Ignore the haters because those people are the ones who eat what the news spoon feeds them. I'm not big into politics but I love learning history about Presidents and learning cool new facts about them. You're super cool! Please don't change!
I just watched both your videos back to back and you have swayed me. With people thinking their vote will matter more it should cause more people to vote. For example someone inclined to vote for the Republican in California may not vote because it’s futile but in a populate election may be more compelled to vote.
That’s because people don’t understand the college.
Yes but at the same time people living in swing states would be less likely to vote without it
The Electoral college was made for that very reason. To prevent major population centers from strong-arming the election every time with mass numbers of votes. Not having the college would mean rural voters need not bother to vote because the absolute majority of Americans live in the city, and if the absolute majority wins the election, then the rural vote doesn’t matter. The same thing applies along party lines since party lines typically divide us into urban and rural categories as well. Republicans tend to be more suburban/rural, democrats are more often than not city dwellers. Other commenter here was absolutely right. People just don’t understand the overall purpose of the EC and that’s a problem that can only be fixed in our schools (which have been co-opted by democrats who desperately want the EC gone so they can win every future election). Anyway😅.
@@lsemaldokhar4154 this is cope because you're acting like every city is a monolith that'll vote democratic every time, when you're just thinking of ones like detroit, chicago, new york, sacremento and los angeles which do NOT control an absolute majority of the population. even if we took literally every person in all of those states, allowed them all to vote and they ALL voted for one party (california+new york+michigan+illinois) you'd have 24% of the population.. less than a quarter
@@lsemaldokhar4154 So you're saying the votes of people in population centers should count less as opposed to rural voters just by virtue of them living in urbanised areas?
I always think it's surprising that people can argue so strongly against a "tyranny of the majority" while defending a system in which ALL of a state's EC votes go to the candidate who wins a simple majority. What about the communities and voters in that state who hold a minority position? They don't matter? It's completely contrary to what they claim to stand for. Your proposal to allocate them by district is so much better.
The majority of people in our country have no idea how the electoral college even works. Thanks for explaining logic to idiots Mr. Beats.
Mr. Beat is the idiot tho
And yet they're voting. What a dumb-ocracy we have...
Not sure he accomplished that goal. Why do you think we even have it?
@@JVLeroy223 there are people who think the US needs a $15 dollar minimum wage in congress right how. It is pretty obvious we live in a dumb-ocracy.
@@rorypaul153 you are correct. it should be $20 or even more
checkmate
I think one reason the electoral college was implemented is the flow of information. Back in 1787, it would've been a huge pain to individually count the nation's votes for the president. However, technological innovations in transportation and communication make it incredibly easy. I think it's time to shine some popular sovereignty onto the presidential election.
If technology and innovation have made it so incredibly easy to count the individual votes for President, why have a number of States now continued to count votes beyond Election Day?
@@davedthomson there is an inconvenient truth here somewhere.
@@davedthomson for several reasons, but among them is those states not accepting to use that newer technology-we still have paper ballots in a lot of places. It’d be nice if you were more informed on this topic before speaking, but lo, here we are
@@davedthomson That is neither a contradiction nor a counterargument to their point (even if it was a contradiction in their argument). In fact you also misrepresent their point.
Your comment makes no sense
@@davedthomson For as far back as I'm aware, states have *ALWAYS* taken multiple days to count votes.
If you want all the votes counted on election day, there needs to be more resources put into elections.
I know u probably won't see this, but I had for a long time been a fan of an electoral college (albeit with some need for reform), but that older video, quite honestly, I went in skeptical and came out reconsidering its importance. So regardless of the dislikes, u actually changed my mind. You, sir, are the first. I have listened to arguments, but yours were the most persuasive. The only thing I had a problem with was the puppet, but that's just your own personal creative choice. I think more would be persuaded without it, because the puppet did indeed voice my own thoughts at the time. I did have the patience with it, but I can see where others wouldn't.
As a right leaning Libertarian from Texas, I very much appreciate your videos giving it their all to be as non biased as possible and doing a great job at acknowledging when you do have a bias as well as pointing out what it is and where it stems from. I hate how divided we become and I enjoy someone taking on the challenge of defending their views with reasoned evidence and counter argument.
You're a good man, Mr. Beat.
"We can't let California and New York control the country and ignore everyone else! We need to let a DIFFERENT couple of states control the country and ignore everyone else!!!"
Did you know Texas and Florida both have more electoral votes that New York
@@alexiarai955 ahh but we can't let facts get in the way of a good narrative can we?
but without the electoral college, America would have had only Democrat presidents for 100 years ?
Exactly! Proponents of keeping the EC don't want a handful of big states deciding the election, but with the EC it's a handful of medium-population swing states deciding the election. That's worse! At least with the bigger states represent more people!
So can you tell me what these couple states that currently control the country with the electoral college are?
I appreciate the different voices of each argument. Thank you.
Liked because the electoral college is awful and needs to go.
Thank you for your idea of getting rid of the Electoral College. You make very good arguments for not having it.