AKA why the electoral college has gotta go.
though looking at the comments the folks who live in the red part think this is why the electoral college has got to stay. because they like getting 3.5 votes per capita.
Tyranny of the few is a pretty sweet deal if you belong to the few.
The wild part is how those people view this as the equal version. Like their votes counting as more than other people’s votes is fair because if it wasn’t like that then they’d be in the minority.
Americans, particularly American conservatives, have a horrible habit of equating area with population. Yeah, if we ditched the electoral college a small section of the country would have more power. Because that’s where most of the country lives. Hate to break it to the rural folks in Nebraska, but they are not what the “real” face of America looks like. They’re not even average Americans. The average American lives within commuting distance of a medium to large city. We simply act like they’re average because they have power disproportionate to their actual numbers.
California is the most populous state in the country. We make up more than 10% of the US population, fully a third bigger than Texas which is the next most populous state. We are also the biggest contributors to the US economy and get back almost nothing of what we pay in federal taxes. But politicians get elected not by listening to us and our needs, but by actively dismissing us as those crazy hippies who don’t understand what “real” Americans are like. Instead they focus their efforts on Ohio and Michigan which have smaller populations than the LA urban area alone.
Now, I do think we need to care about rural populations. Everyone deserves to have their basic needs met and both parties have failed at helping with that for some time now. But your vote shouldn’t count for more than mine just because there’s more empty space around you.
I’m in OK. My vote counts probably 3x over what someone’s in either coast does. If my democratic vote cancels out 3 republican votes it’s still morally wrong even if they’re voting for an objectively worse candidate than I am. But explaining that to them gets us nothing but piss, bile, and ‘anon’ hatemail from people whose loud claims of supporting equality is paper-thin at best and crumbles when they realize that supporting said equality means they won’t get what they specifically want 100% of the time. This fear of becoming the new minority is in direct contradiction to their deeply held belief (or lie, if we’re completely honest) that minorities are somehow more privileged than everyone else. This is what leads to groups like the alt-right, PragerU, and Turning Point who can’t handle the idea of losing privileges they’ve long mistaken for rights. Suddenly having more than one ethnic family or LGBT character in a TV show is “forced representation” or “white/straight erasure”, minority rights activists become “entitled whiners”, non-christian groups standing up for their civil/human rights transform into “christian persecutors”, and anyone who listens to scientists over pastors and corporate-owned politicians is magically part of a “secularist conspiracy”.
octoberspirit 