How the Electoral College Was Nearly Abolished in 1970

History channel ^ | August 3, 2020 | Dave Roos

[Vigilanteman]

For Maine and Nebraska, it is actually a contest in each state plus each district. The ObaMao Campaign set up a separate campaign office in Omaha in 2008 to pick off a single Nebraska congressional district successfully even though they knew there was no chance of winning the other two congressional districts or the state.

[DuncanWaring]

For all intents and purposes, the entirety of Hillary’s popular vote margin was NYC and coastal California.

[hanamizu]

“I wouldn’t call it “selfish” for a state to not want to be entirely irrelevant...”

---

Well, strictly speaking it is selfish to want to avoid irrelevance. But I was being sarcastic when I used the word. Why would anyone think that states would willingly cede their importance in national elections and politics? It is like asking states to give up their equal voice in the Senate.

[zaxtres]

This is a bunch of BS lauded by an incompetent shill. First, the Electoral College appears in the Constitution. Second, the House and Senate can pass an Amendment (not a bill) in Congress but it would take the States to ratify it. Since the States never got a chance to vote on ratification of the Amendment, the Electoral College never even got close to being destroyed.

[Bogle]

You might very well be right although my point is much much much larger than CA. I suppose what I’m thinking is that Trump didn’t even campaign in some states or cities. Had the strategy been different and he attacked NY City like a laser for 10 months, it would have been a brand new ball game with a brand new strategy and a different popular vote. I don’t really know how many people he could have swayed in NY City or LA had he campaigned there (10 months like a laser). But the popular vote numbers aren’t static, which reflects a miscalculation that a lot of Dems are making. The bottom line is that when a person acknowledges that the numbers are dynamic and the game and the strategies would change, the only thing we know for sure is that the numbers would be far different. But I’ll admit I can’t say for sure the Dems wouldn’t win. The good thing is that we’ll never have to find out because the electoral college, in all its beauty, is here to stay!

[metesky]

IIRC, before the election of 2000, when the Rats thought that Gore's strategy would lose the popular vote but win in the EC, PIAPS wrote an op-ed in the NYT praising the EC.

Too bad, so sad.