this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2024
212 points (95.3% liked)

You Should Know

33392 readers
5 users here now

YSK - for all the things that can make your life easier!

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must begin with YSK.

All posts must begin with YSK. If you're a Mastodon user, then include YSK after @youshouldknow. This is a community to share tips and tricks that will help you improve your life.



Rule 2- Your post body text must include the reason "Why" YSK:

**In your post's text body, you must include the reason "Why" YSK: It’s helpful for readability, and informs readers about the importance of the content. **



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding non-YSK posts.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-YSK posts using the [META] tag on your post title.



Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.

If you harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

If you are a member, sympathizer or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.

For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- The majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.

Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.



Partnered Communities:

You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.

Community Moderation

For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.

Credits

Our icon(masterpiece) was made by @clen15!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I’ve seen several people claim that their state’s vote for the US presidential election doesn’t matter because their district is gerrymandered, which does not matter for most states.

Most states use the state’s popular vote to determine who the entire state’s electoral college votes go to. No matter how gerrymandered your district is*, every individual vote matters for assigning the electoral vote. [ETA: Nearly] Every single district in a state could go red but the state goes blue for president because of the popular vote.

*Maine and Nebraska are the notable differences who allot individual electors based on the popular vote within their congressional districts and the overall popular vote. ~~It’s possible there are other exceptions and I’m sure commenters will happily point them out.~~

Edit: added strikethrough to my last statement because now I have confirmed it.

Of the 50 states, all but two award all of their presidential electors to the presidential candidate who wins the popular vote in the state (Maine and Nebraska each award two of their electors to the candidate who wins a plurality of the statewide vote; the remaining electors are allocated to the winners of the plurality vote in the states' congressional districts). (source)

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca 10 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Do states have more or less electoral votes based on population?

Like would California have more say in who becomes president than Idaho?

Or is it that stupid system where each state has an equal amount of votes?

[–] Cort@lemmy.world 14 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Both actually. Each state gets 2 plus the proportional split ( based on population)of the remaining 435. So California as a whole has more say than Idaho as a whole but each individual voter in California has less say than an individual voter in Idaho.

[–] Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 9 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

It's assigned proportionally but each state gets a few extra votes to give smaller states more weight.

Originally, states would then award these proportionally, but some state got "smart" and realized that if they gave all their votes to the most popular candidate they'd get more attention ... other states soon followed suite and Madison went and died before he could fix this abuse of the system (which bothered him).

https://fairvote.org/why-james-madison-wanted-to-change-the-way-we-vote-for-president/

[–] Croquette@sh.itjust.works 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Inbetween. Each state has a number of voters for the electoral college, but it is not proportional to the population of the state. A less populous state vote is worth more than a populous state generally.

That is why Trump became president while losing the popular vote in 2016, and swing states are so important.

[–] LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world 5 points 4 months ago

Population of a state does dictate the number of electorial votes, which is why California has 54. Florida surpassed population of NY a few years back and now you will see Florida has 30, while NY has 28. On the other hand population is disproportionately represented when it comes to the Senate, because each state has 2 senators, regardless of population.

"Swing states" are just important in the fact that if you already know 60% of a state will vote red/blue you don't need to campaign there as much, because convincing 10% of the population to change their mind is harder than convincing 3%.

That said, Texas is seen as "Red" and people claim Florida is "Red" these days as well. A 3% flop in 2020 would have made both states blue.

Note that every state that gained electorial votes since last election I believe is expected to vote red though, as they are usually tied to lower taxes and cost of living, which many people I believe moved to when remote work became more prominent (others will argue because people moved for other reasons but that's neither here nor there when it comes to the number of electors part)