Latest / Why We Do What We Do / The Electoral College pt. 1

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The Electoral College pt. 1 · Why We Do What We Do

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: You're listening to Why we do what we do. Welcome
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: to Why we do what we do. I'm your delegate,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Host Abraham.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: And I'm your votes don't count host shame.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Oh my goodness. We're a psychology podcast. We talk about
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  Speaker 1: all of the things that people do and animals do,
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  Speaker 1: is we talk about systems that we have put in
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: place to try and oppress people inside of that system. So, yeah, welcome,
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us.
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  Speaker 2: This should be a super happy, light episode.
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  Speaker 1: It will not if you are joining us for the
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  Speaker 1: first time. Thank you so much for being here. We
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  Speaker 1: are happy to have you. We are going to today
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  Speaker 1: be talking about politics because politics is a thing that
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  Speaker 1: is psychology stuff, and that's why we're here. Yay. And
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  Speaker 1: leave us a rating and review, tell a friend, do
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: all those things. But I'd also like to just wish
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: you happy Spamoni day.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and also a happy finance broker's day.
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  Speaker 1: I guess, do you know what spamoni is? I look
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: at it.
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  Speaker 2: I have no idea.
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  Speaker 1: Apparently it's a layered Italian ice cream with fruits and nuts.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, I support that.
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  Speaker 1: Then it is a Brazilian blowout day.
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  Speaker 2: Of course it is. It's an international day of remember
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: it's attribute to the victims of terrorism.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Oof's a that's a heavy one to unpack. Yeah. It
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: is Internet Self Care Day, which I would interpret to
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: mean get off the Internet.
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  Speaker 2: I would interpret it to mean that you take your
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: Internet to get a manicure.
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  Speaker 1: Oh that makes sense, Okay, sure.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a National Medical Docometrist Day.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: What is a docimetrist?
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: Today? Is full of things that we did know about.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: It is a poet's day. Oh, so write your haikus.
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  Speaker 2: It ish Senior citizens Day, speaking of the electoral college.
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  Speaker 1: All right, I had to look this up. A docent
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  Speaker 1: metrist is a member of a radiation oncology team okay,
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  Speaker 1: who oversees radiation treatment plans for cancer patients.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, cool.
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  Speaker 1: Wow. Interesting. I didn't know that was a thing relevant
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  Speaker 1: to Senior Citizens Day, as it were people who are
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  Speaker 1: maybe more on the more likely end of the spectrum
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  Speaker 1: to be getting cancer. And we support our senior citizens.
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  Speaker 1: They're very important and we care about them very much
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: and we definitely want to make sure that they are
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: well taken care of. We do, all right. It is
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: World Goat Day.
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  Speaker 2: It is. I was gonna say something, Now, I don't
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  Speaker 2: know what I was going to say about it, because
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: it's just it's just the data celebrate goats.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: I guess Simone Biles Day.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: It's Simone Biles Day. Yeah. It is Drive Sober or
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: Get pulled Over a week. I mean that should be
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  Speaker 2: everybody say finally, Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: I thought that was just a law.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: It is Minority Enterprise Development Week.
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  Speaker 2: That's National Aviation Week, so you know, getting that big
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  Speaker 2: metal tube and fly across the sky.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: It is Little League World Series Day. Apparently they do
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: a World Series for Little League. Did you get to
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  Speaker 1: participate in that when you were doing Little League?
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  Speaker 2: Almost I was on a team that did pretty good
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  Speaker 2: and we did not We did not qualify, and that
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  Speaker 2: was like the last That was the last season of
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: the Little League I played before I went into like
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: travel ball.
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  Speaker 1: So okay, got it. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: It's also Hayden Pannetier's Day. Panetteer, Hayden pantteer, her birthday.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: It's her birthday. Yeah, happy birthday, Hayden.
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  Speaker 1: Long, long time front of the show. I wish all right,
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  Speaker 1: as we said, I think we said we were talking about,
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  Speaker 1: well we didn't actually say we said before we started rolling,
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  Speaker 1: but I don't think we've mentioned yet what we're sorry,
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  Speaker 1: let me take a step back. In the United States,
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  Speaker 1: we are coming up on a major election to elect
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  Speaker 1: our president, a new president, at least from who the
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  Speaker 1: current president is new essense, And interestingly, we don't know
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  Speaker 1: how it's going to turn out, largely thanks to the
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  Speaker 1: fact that we know that even if one of the
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  Speaker 1: candidates wins the majority of votes, and not just the majority,
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  Speaker 1: they could win a comically gigantically huge margin of the
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  Speaker 1: majority of votes, they still might not become the elected
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  Speaker 1: head of state in the United States because of our system.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, and so this may be a two parter episode
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  Speaker 2: because we are going to unpack this horrific thing called
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  Speaker 2: the electoral College, and it's a thing that has vexed
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  Speaker 2: many people, but I think the majority of people don't
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  Speaker 2: even understand what it is.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, Yeah, and I think we're tipping our hands a
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  Speaker 1: little bit in terms by calling it horrific. But we're
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  Speaker 1: going to unpack this as straightforwardly as we can. We
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  Speaker 1: will be interspersing our own commentary. A lot of what
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  Speaker 1: we're going to do is we're going to dig into
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  Speaker 1: the history of the electoral college. We're going to explain
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  Speaker 1: how the electoral college works. And we're going to get
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  Speaker 1: into arguments that people have made for keeping the system
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  Speaker 1: as is, and arguments that people have made for changing it,
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  Speaker 1: and then some of like what's kind of going on
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  Speaker 1: in the world of the electoral college. And so, as
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  Speaker 1: we said, we're calling it an electoral college, you might
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  Speaker 1: just call it an electoral system, because an electoral college
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  Speaker 1: is not a place. No, it's certainly not a college,
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  Speaker 1: at least not in the university sense of the world.
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  Speaker 1: It's like a college electric yeah, definitely not an electoral
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  Speaker 1: It's maybe collegiate in the sense that it's a group
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  Speaker 1: of people who are in a position to do something,
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  Speaker 1: but really instead, the electoral college as a process, and
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  Speaker 1: in the United States and in some other countries, it
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  Speaker 1: is a process by which our head of state in
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  Speaker 1: the United States, the president is chosen by a system
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  Speaker 1: of votes.
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  Speaker 2: And I think that starting with that sentence is already
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  Speaker 2: going to throw people off because I think a lot
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  Speaker 2: of people think that when you vote, your vote counts
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  Speaker 2: towards that selection of the head of state. But the
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  Speaker 2: truth is is ultimately the president is elected by the
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  Speaker 2: electoral College, and we'll talk about that as we go,
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  Speaker 2: but like that is something that I think is really
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  Speaker 2: important to remember when we unpack this. Yes, very much
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  Speaker 2: so so a long time ago, when people started living
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  Speaker 2: in communal groups so large they became unmanageable, some very
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: charismatic villains convinced people to make that villain the leader
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  Speaker 2: of the group and called that person a king, who
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  Speaker 2: would hold on to that power until they died, then
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  Speaker 2: abdicate to their next of kin. So, uh, kings the worst.
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  Speaker 1: I've definitely wanted for a long time for us to
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  Speaker 1: do a whole episode on monarchies and royalty because it's
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  Speaker 1: such a fascinatingly bizarre system.
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  Speaker 2: Especially the monarchies that believed in keeping their bloodlines right limited,
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  Speaker 2: so like their family tree was just a trunk.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, that was a weird thing that happened. Well,
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  Speaker 1: it's just a trunk is pretty good, all right. So
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  Speaker 1: there was that system that I mean, there were other
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  Speaker 1: versions of a system, but mostly what happened these groups
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  Speaker 1: got large, they appointed a king. That king had absolute
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  Speaker 1: power and authority and would stay in power forever. That
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  Speaker 1: was largely how those systems existed. At some point we
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  Speaker 1: decided that wasn't a very good system. For one thing,
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  Speaker 1: when they decide that they are they deserve that power,
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  Speaker 1: they start doing very crazy things, as has happened, and
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  Speaker 1: we'll talk about those at some point in the future
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  Speaker 1: when we cover royalty, but suffice it to say it
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  Speaker 1: was not a very good system. And instead, many countries
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  Speaker 1: started asking the question like, how else could we arrive
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  Speaker 1: at a leader that we in a way that we
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  Speaker 1: think is fair. And so they started asking the people,
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  Speaker 1: the citizens of those countries, to cast a vote, to
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  Speaker 1: cast a ballot, to basically get together and collectively decide
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  Speaker 1: who they thought should become that country or that whatever
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  Speaker 1: government's leader.
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  Speaker 2: Right, So, somewhere along the way, some very cynical, conniving,
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  Speaker 2: elitist jerks, and for the purposes of this episode will
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  Speaker 2: call them federalists. They decided that the general public could
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  Speaker 2: not be trusted with the responsibility of choosing a leader
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  Speaker 2: because they were too stupid and because they didn't agree
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  Speaker 2: with the federalists. But the idea was they kind of
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  Speaker 2: touted it as the general population is not intelligent enough
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  Speaker 2: to be able to make a decision about who was
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  Speaker 2: going to lead them.
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  Speaker 1: Right. So, in several governments that wanted to have this
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  Speaker 1: brand of democracy where sort of it's run and chosen
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  Speaker 1: by the people, but not actually grant real power to
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  Speaker 1: the will of the people, they instead invented an electoral
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  Speaker 1: system in which, rather than citizens directly choosing their head
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  Speaker 1: of state, representatives would choose on their behalf. So there
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  Speaker 1: would be people that were already in power, and that
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  Speaker 1: group of people would then choose the overall leader who
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  Speaker 1: made policies who affected everybody.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, those are the folks that said we know what's
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  Speaker 2: best for you, yes, exactly, and also we don't care. Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: that's what they would say. But then they would go, actually,
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  Speaker 2: we're voting on what's best for us. Yes, yep, try
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  Speaker 2: and stop me, yeah exactly. So, uh, you know, it's
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  Speaker 2: you can't even find the college, you know. So, of course,
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  Speaker 2: when you are in a position of power, and the
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  Speaker 2: extent to which you can keep or even expand that
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  Speaker 2: power rests not with how the public feels about your leadership,
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  Speaker 2: but how their representatives choose to vote, then there's a
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  Speaker 2: lot of incentive to win over the representative, not the people.
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  Speaker 2: So like, basically, we're going to hold on to the
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  Speaker 2: folks that are going to keep us in power.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, So they would appeal more or less to the
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  Speaker 1: body of legislators and they would maybe promise them they'd
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  Speaker 1: promised to grant them privileges and to grant them power
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  Speaker 1: if they supported them in becoming president. And then it
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  Speaker 1: didn't really matter what the people wanted. There was just
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  Speaker 1: sort of these insider deals where the person who was
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  Speaker 1: president or wanted to be president would make some sort
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  Speaker 1: of you know, under the table elbow promises about getting
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  Speaker 1: other people power if they helped get that person elected.
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  Speaker 1: And so that was sort of what that system would
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  Speaker 1: look like. So, for this and kind of many other reasons,
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  Speaker 1: most thriving democracies don't use an electoral system to choose
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  Speaker 1: their head of state. It's kind of considered in a
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  Speaker 1: way to be an archaic, unfair system, and it carries
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  Speaker 1: that potential for corruption because, as I said that, the
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: people in power can basically just do a lot of
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  Speaker 1: back rooms swindling deals with other people who have power
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  Speaker 1: to ensure that they either secure power, maintain power, or
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  Speaker 1: expand their power.
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  Speaker 2: Right, So, in a democracy, we believe that the people
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  Speaker 2: should be able to choose their leaders and that their
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  Speaker 2: participation in the matter is counted equally with everyone, So
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  Speaker 2: one vote equals one person. Otherwise, a small handful of
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  Speaker 2: people get to wield a heightened power to make legislative
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  Speaker 2: choices that affect the majority of people who did not
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  Speaker 2: choose to be subjected to that legislation. But we'll get
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  Speaker 2: into that in a little bit. Well, we have digressed somewhat.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, just as you said. The point is, somebody who
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  Speaker 1: was not chosen by the people is making policies for
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  Speaker 1: the people, and that is kind of the whole reason
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  Speaker 1: to move away from a system like a monarchy in
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  Speaker 1: the first place. Right, So, all right, going back to
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  Speaker 1: the United States here. So in the United States, the
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  Speaker 1: founding fathers, the powers that be, if you will, we're
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  Speaker 1: trying to figure out how we were going to choose
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: these leaders, and there was a couple of ideas for
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  Speaker 1: how this might be done. And again, they didn't want
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  Speaker 1: a king, oh some people did, but they were kind
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  Speaker 1: of trying to get away from this monarchy thing and
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  Speaker 1: instead moved toward a democracy, because the idea here was
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  Speaker 1: that we wanted freedom that we felt like we lacked
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  Speaker 1: in previous countries to which we belonged, and the only
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  Speaker 1: way to get that is through some kind of democracy.
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  Speaker 1: So one idea was that the voters would elect to Congress,
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  Speaker 1: and the Congress would then choose and elect to the president.
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  Speaker 1: As we're sort of describing before, right, So the president
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  Speaker 1: entirely chosen by a congress of people, and the Congress
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  Speaker 1: was elected by the people, but the president would then
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: be chosen by the Congress. That is, voters would not
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: get to elect the president at all, except by maybe
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  Speaker 1: hoping that the Congress people that they did vote for
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  Speaker 1: would elect a president that they wanted. However, hope is
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  Speaker 1: not counted in an election. Just so we're clear, Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: there was no choice in the matter if the decision
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  Speaker 1: was to go with having Congress select leader. The other
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  Speaker 1: idea was that qualifying citizens would elect the president as
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  Speaker 1: the head of state with a majority vote. Whoever received
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  Speaker 1: the most votes would become the president. But of course
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: there's the issue of a qualifying citizen who was specifically
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  Speaker 1: described as quote free white persons.
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  Speaker 2: Yep.
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  Speaker 1: This would be men only, and white men at that,
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  Speaker 1: because women did not have the power to do this.
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  Speaker 1: And I did see some allusions to the idea that
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: they would have to be land owning and of good
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: character as also potential qualifiers. So sure, so still not
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: super representative, still not really a democracy in that sense,
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: but that was the ideas. The two ideas were either
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  Speaker 1: we win by a simple majority vote by the citizens,
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  Speaker 1: free white persons, or we have the Congress choose the presidents. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: I think in those cases, having somebody elect something for
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: you just feels off, like when we have to elect
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: to play ads and you get a choice in the matter.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, So we've been talking about this, this whole system
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  Speaker 1: of elections here, and the idea of either having Congress
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  Speaker 1: select the president so that the citizens had no say,
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  Speaker 1: or having citizens have all the say this was not
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: really acceptable to everybody, and particularly not necessarily enough to
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: the powers that be, So instead they settled on a
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  Speaker 1: compromise in electoral system.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, so, according to Alexander Hamilton of Hamilton fame, that's
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  Speaker 2: what he's most famous for as the musical Hamilton. Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: at this point in the Federal's paper number sixty eight.
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  Speaker 2: The compromise was between states with large populations and small populations,
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  Speaker 2: with a fear that states with large populations would always
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: control the presidency.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: Okay, so let's just say that exact same sentiment using
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: slightly different words. I want to make sure we're we're
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: just restating it so that we're all clear here. The
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: people in the minority were afraid that the people in
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: the majority would outvote them. Yeah, that was essentially the
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: compromise was, Well, just so we're clear, Yes, that is
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: how voting generally works. When we're like at a company gathering,
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: like having a birthday party or something, and we weren't
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: a vote on the kind of ice cream we get
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: for the company party, whatever it is, and the majority
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: of people choose chocolate chip cookie dough, we don't then
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: go to John and say, well, you didn't want this,
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: so you're going to give you five extra votes so
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: that you can make everyone else eat coconut ice cream instead.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: The whole idea with having people vote is that the
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: majority wins, right, so right, So yes, the people and
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: the minority were afraid that they would be out voted
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: by the people in the majority, which is what would happen,
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: because that's how voting works.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: That's how voting works in every other system.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, also how scoring works in games. Whoever gets
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: the most points wins, say whoever gets the whoever does
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: the worst in this game wins, because that would make
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: no sense from a competitive standpoint, just throwing that out there.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: We also don't say, oh, because you belong to the minority,
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  Speaker 2: your points count. More like, you don't get to shoot
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: three pointers, you get to shoot six pointers. Yeah, like,
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: that doesn't make any sense. We'll change the rules for
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: single people.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: Your team's not quite as good as our team, so
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  Speaker 1: we're just going to make it so that you get
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: an advantage starting in your points count for more.
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  Speaker 2: Right, exactly, kind of going back to what we're talking
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: about here. So they wrote into the constitution that the
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: president would be chosen by electors. It does not actually
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: say electoral college in the constitution. Just to be clear,
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: for those folks that are going to show up in
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: our comments as sovereign citizens or whatever you want to
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: throw at us, it does not say electoral college in
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  Speaker 2: the Constitution. Each state would get a number of electors
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  Speaker 2: equal to their congressional representation two for their senators. Every
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: state gets two senators and one for each of their
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: House of Representative members. The two for the Senate favor
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: small states, who then get much more powerful representation for
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: their individual votes, and the representatives favor larger states who
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: have more people. So in this way, states would send
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: electors to cast votes on behalf of the state, so
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  Speaker 2: essentially the state has people who vote for the state.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: Yes. Also, if you do the math really quick, that
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: means that if you have a guaranteed two senators and
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: you're going to have a minimum of one House of
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  Speaker 1: Representative person who is voted in, that means that every
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: state's going to have a minimum of three electoral votes. Right,
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: that's just how it has to work, because you're always
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: gonna get two fore your senators and then one for
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: every House of Representative member that you send to that chamber,
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  Speaker 1: and so every state gets a minimum of three. Okay,
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  Speaker 1: that means that states that have very very very very
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: very few people, let's just say six, they get those
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: three electoral votes. Even those states that have millions of
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: people would not have a equal number of electoral votes,
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: where it would pretty proportional. So if one had six
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: and one had six million, or one had six people,
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: one had six million people. It would not then be
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: that like for every two people in the state with
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: six people that get a representative, every two people for
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: the six million people would get a representative, coming down
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: to a nice three million representatives. That's not how that works.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: The people who are in the small state would have
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: way way, way, way, way, way way way more power
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: and their vote right to choose people who then show
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: up in the elections. Right, So that's essentially how the
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: electoral system is set up. Just makes you really clear
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: on that, right.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: So this was not at all clearly spelled out in
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: the constitution. So and I think that's really important to
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: remember here because that's the whole thing with the constitution
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: is like a lot of times it's kind of like
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: interpreted and misinterpreted and all that fun stuff. So, yes,
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: but let's let's unpack this for a second. So, for instance,
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: what if an elector chooses not to vote how the
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: majority of people and that state voted. The constitution doesn't
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: say that they have to vote with the majority of people.
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: Do all the electors need to vote how the majority
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: of the state voted, or should they distribute their vote
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: proportionally relative to the constituents of the state. Your guests
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: is as good as theirs. There is no guideline on that.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: But this wouldn't come up right away, so who cares.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: Let's just enshrine this into a nearly impossible to repeal
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: law and hope for the best. And so they did.
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: They basically just said, we're gonna go with this. We
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: don't have all the details yet, but like, this is
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: definitely gonna be a thing that we do.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this is probably good enough, we think, so let's
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: just not think about it anymore and make it a
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: part of our constitution. Very difficult to change.
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: Right, you have to have another amendment to change an amendment.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: Correct, Yes, okay, so most of the time, to be fair, like,
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: most of the time, what has happened with the system
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: is that the majority of the population of a state
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: voted for a candidate to become president. Most of the
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: states voted the same way, All of the relevant electors
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: were allocated to that candidate, and the candidate went on
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: to become the president, meaning that most of the time,
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: the majority votes goes to the candidate that Canada then
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: wins and becomes the president. That is how it has
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: happened most of the time the elections have taken place.
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: Right now, there are fifty one voting entities with electors
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: in the United States. Each state in the District of
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: Columbia or DC, our capital. Historically, states have enacted a
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: winner takes all system in which whoever receives the majority
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: of votes in that state receives all of the state electors.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: So if presidential candidate A gets the majority of votes
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: in Florida, then the electors will say, Okay, we are
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: going to vote for A because our people said they
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: wanted A. And that's typically how it's gone. And then
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: we say typically because there are several times where that
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: has not happened.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: And the other thing here is is thinking about like
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: you say that our people say we want Candida A,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: but what you mean by our people is that it
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: just happens to be in the majority, not all of
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: our people. So let's just say we had a state
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: that had a whopping twenty electors. That's a lot of electors,
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: by the way, right, and fifty point zero zero zero
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: zero zero zero zero one percent of the vote went
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: to one candidate, where forty nine nine percent of the
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: vote went to the other candidate. Let's just say there
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: was a one vote difference. Let's just say that just
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: for fight, right, Yeah, because it doesn't matter, because I
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: mean they would in this case, it would go to
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: a recount usually most laws. But let's just say that
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: what they they there was one vote. They were really
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: confident in their account, and the one vote went to
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: the one candidate went in favor of the other candidate.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: Then what would happen is the candidate with that one
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: extra vote would get all twenty electors, even though bear
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: barely half the state support of that candidate, right right,
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: And this gives rise to the idea of their being
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: red States Republican voting right and blue States Democrat voting
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: in the country, because they would get all the electors,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: which means that state would then be described as belonging
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: to that candidate, even if again they barely got half
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: of the vote in that state. However, this system has
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: been changed a little bit in two states. In nineteen
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: seventy two, the state of Maine decided to split its
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: electoral votes using something called a congressional district method ooh.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: Interesting. In nineteen ninety two or nineteen ninety six. I
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: guess maybe Nebraska adopted the same strategy. In the congressional
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: district method, two of the state's electors go to whoever
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: wins the majority of the voter's choice, but the remaining
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: electors are assigned to the candidate based on the majority
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: of congressional districts. This could mean that the candidate gets
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: all of the state's electoral votes if all congressional districts
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: vote by majority for a single candidate, as has happened
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: several times in these states. But this could mean that
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: the state sends two electors to vote for the popular
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: candidate for the state's voters, but sends additional voters to
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: vote for the other candidate, which actually happened in two
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: thousand and eight, twenty sixteen, and twenty twenty.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: Yes, they split their electoral vote. They're the only two
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: states to do it. Now. I want to clear some
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: things up because I know we have listeners who are
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: not United States citizens. So for those outside of the
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: US who are still listening to this, I continue to
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: say majority of votes and not just the most votes
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: as you might see in other democracies. This is because
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: we only have two major political parties in large part
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: thanks to our electoral system. Then we'll get to that later,
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: but it means that the majority of the time there
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: are only two viable candidates who are running for the
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: position of president. In a system where there is a
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: strong showing of other candidates, a candidate might win the
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: presidency or whatever the position they're trying to get to
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: is with only thirty percent of the vote because the
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: remaining seventy percent would be split among many other candidates.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: But one candidate did get the most votes even if
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: they didn't get a majority, and therefore they still won
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: the election. In other democracies, in the United States, that's
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: not how it works. They have to have a majority
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: vote in order to win, right.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: So anyway, most of the time, the candidates supported by
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: the majority of people gets the majority of votes and
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: the majority of electors, and the US has a bloodless
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: coup in which they oust the previous sitting president and
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: replace them with a new president with specific term limits.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: Actually that part, the specific term limits, peaceful transitions. That's
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: actually a pretty important part of our kind of the
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: way that we think of our country.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: Very important.
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: The last election to not do that.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, in the past, the alternative was to have the
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: power of regimes change hands with not bloodless coups, but
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: with violent coups where people were murdered, imprisoned, exiled, usually murdered,
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: and also could be just generally stripped of their power
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: in whatever way that that happens. And that's how many
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: other of these coups have taken place. But I think
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: people have used lovingly used the term bloodless coup to
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: describe peaceful transitions of power where the people can alternate
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: who is controlling in particular government at any one time. Right, Okay,
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: there have been a handful of instances in the history
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: of the United States in which the candidate with the
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: most votes did not actually win the presidency with the
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: system in place. So the first one was all the
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: way back in eighteen twenty four, and essentially what happened here,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: and we talk about this a little bit in our
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: episode on when the two parties switched places philosophically. Essentially,
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: there were four popular candidates on the ballot, all from
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: the same party. I'm not going to list them all,
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: but Andrew Jackson was one of them, and he actually
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: won the plurality of the popular vote and the electoral
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: College vote. But so like by this measure, he definitely
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: should have won, right, but he didn't win the majority
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: of votes, which was required according to our constitution for
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: him to become the US president. So in this case,
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: the provision that they are not chosen by the majority
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: of voters, the vote instead does go to Congress, as
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: we talked about before, and that's what happened here. This
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: meant that Congress got to decide on the outcome of
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: the election. But when they do this, they only choose
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: from the top three candidates, and as we mentioned, there
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: were four. The fourth candidate was Henry Clay, and so
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: he was then removed from the decision pool of possible candidates.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: But he was still a powerful politician and I believe
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: at the time was Speaker of the House, and he
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: used his political influence to back John Adams for president
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: with the promise that Adams would make Clay the Secretary
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: of State if Adams won. So what happened was Clay
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: used his political clout to sway power away from votes
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: toward Jackson, who had won the people's vote, and Adams
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: was chosen despite having lost all of the votes in
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: all the ways that matter. Jackson was furious at the
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: insider bargaining and argued that the election was stolen from
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: the will of the people. And I gotta say he's
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: not wrong.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a pretty harsh thing, especially when it's like
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: it doesn't really like from a very parsimonious perspective, it
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: doesn't make sense. But also how ironic that his last
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: name is Adams. And we are at another ad break.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: Okay, we're back. And so we've been recounting the history
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: of instances in which the election in the United States
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: chose a president who did not win the popular vote.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: The first one here in eighteen twenty four. What happened
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: was there were just there were four viable candidates on
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: the ticket. That was the last time that was going
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: to happen probably ever, at least until if we ever
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: moved to a rank choice voting system. But never in
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: the mind we're not here to litigate that election, or
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: really any election for that matter. We're just recounting history. Okay,
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: so that was eighteen twenty four. In eighteen seventy six,
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: so we're now at was that fifty two years later?
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: Close enough. We're not a math podcast, where a psychology podcast.
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: We'll talk about why we do what we do, not
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: how we calculate what we calculate.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: Fair enough, all right, So eighteen seventy six, Republican Rutherford B.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: Hayes squared off against Democrat Samuel Tilden in an extremely
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: contentious election. And if you remember one of those names
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: and not the other, then that will tell you how
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: this election went. But let's just impact this. Tilden won
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: the popular vote, but he was one electoral vote shy
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: of the nomination, which Hayes successfully obtained. Now, of note
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: here both candidates claimed Florida as a victory. Of course, Hayes,
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: as a Republican, and this was following the Emancipation Proclamation,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: argued there had been several credible reports of voter suppression
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: and voter disenfranchisement in Florida that prevented votes from being
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: counted or even cast at all. Florida.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: It's always Florida. Why is it always Florida. It can't
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: ever be another state. It always has to be here. Yeah, anyway,
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: all right, So, just twelve years later, in eighteen eighty eight,
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison engaged in a gross campaign
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: in which they would outright bribe citizens to vote for them.
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: I wish I had the kind of money to bribe
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: enough people to vote for me. Yeah, like that feels
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: like a lot of money.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: They apparently described some of these citizens as floaters who
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: like didn't care who the candidate was, that just whoever
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: paid them the most they would cast a vote for
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: that person, So they were they were just happy to
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: get paid, which I do understand, but also that should
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: be wildly illegal. Yeah yeah, yeah, whoever's the richest candidate
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: wins like that, doesn't know anyway.
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's weird.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, So this is eighteen eighty eight, Cleveland's Grover Cleveland. Here.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: He won over ninety thousand more votes than Harrison, over
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: ninety thousand, which should I've been an easy victory. We're
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: talking about the eighteen hundreds. We didn't have that many
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: people here, not even all of the states that we
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: currently have were states at this time, So like ninety
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: thousand was a lot. He won by ninety thousand votes
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: more than Harrison, but Harrison squeaked by with slim, slim
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: tiny margins in other states, receiving more electoral votes than Cleveland,
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: even though he lost the popular vote. Now, Cleveland did
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: go on to beat Harrison in the next election and
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: win the first and hopefully only instance of a president
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: serving two non consecutive terms. But the whole point is
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: just that in this election, Cleveland won quite handily ninety
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: thousand more votes than his opponent, but lost the election
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: because of the electoral college, where Harrison was able to
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: secure those slim slim majorities in states where he then
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: got all of the electoral votes in those states, even
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: though he barely won them.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: Right now, Fortunately we learned our lesson. We haven't had
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: that issue since then, which is really nice, isn't it. Okay,
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: back to Florida. Just kidding, So in two thousand, well
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: kind of just kidding. Yeah, no, not kidding, not kidding
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: at all. Nowhere back to Florida, of course. So in
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: two thousand, George W. Bush lost the popular vote by
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: whopping five hundred thousand votes, which is basically the entire
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: state of Wyoming at the time, right.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: The size of it. Yeah, I mean, I'm excited, yeah,
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: but like, yeah, yeah, that's how many people were vote
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: Like we were over inside of al Gore's They voted
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: for al Gore.
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, but w won the electoral votes after
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: a hotly contested dispute over the very confusing ballots and
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: documented instances of voter suppression in Florida. Again, the whole thing,
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: I remember when that happened.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: I do too, I can.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: I could speak to that specifically. It was dude, I
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: never thought that I would have to use the term
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: hanging chads, but like that was a big thing. Basically,
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: what was happening was some ballots were not counted because
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: when they did the recounts, they said some of the
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: else wouldn't count because the holes that were punched in
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: that ballots were not completely punched, So the ballot wasn't
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: balidated because of this hanging chad. Basically, like the little
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: paper hoole piece of paper that was yeh, a little
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: piece of paper that was still stuck to the ballot
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: that basically said no, these don't count. It's a hanging chad.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: So that's what the hanging chad was.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they're like, our voting ballots are too fibrous, and
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: so those people's votes don't count. The other thing that
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: happened too, it'd be god, it almost might be worth
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: doing maybe a minui to unpack what happened in this election,
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: because this was a mess. But one of the other
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: things that happened with the actual ballots, so never mind
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: the voter suppression stuff that is worth unpacking at some
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: point also, But one of the other things that happened
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: is like the ballots were laid out in such a
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: way that sometimes the vote for the candidate you were
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: voting for was underneath the like it was a skew
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: under the name it was supposed to be under. So
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: it was unclear visually who how you were supposed to
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: select the candidate you wanted to because if the being
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: wrapped around into a different line, for example, than it
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: looked like you were voting for a different person. And
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: there were very very clear instances where people were confused
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: about what they were supposed to do in that election.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: So with digital voting, that kind of issue has gone away,
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: and counting has become much more efficient and much more accurate.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: But that is what happened in two thousand at least, right.
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: And then some other stuff that happened. The Florida State
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: Supreme Court ordered to recount, but the US Supreme Court
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: halted the recount on the grounds that it violated constitutional
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: voting rights, and the electoral votes were assigned as is now.
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: I also want to point out another thing that's super
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: important to remember about all the stuff that was going
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: on at that time. The governor of Florida was a
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: man named Jeb Bush.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: Any relationship would you wonder.
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: If he was related? Yeah, he was his skin brother.
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: So like there was it was such a it was
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: a cluster. It was an absolute cluster. At the time,
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: it was an absolute mess. And it was one of
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: those things that that was like my first like kind
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: of the first time that I was so invested in
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: politics because I was about that age where I'm like,
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: the next election, I'm going to vote, and I was like,
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: what is happening? Like I remember like just being so
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: upset about it when it happened here.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, And one of the reasons Florida comes
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: up a lot is because they do have a lot
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: of electoral votes. There are a lot of people who
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: live in Florida, so they carry a lot of weight
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: in elections, and so it is important that the count
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: can really really sway the outcome of an election.
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Florida's considered a swing state, so like it historically
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: has been democratic or Republican kind of back and forth,
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: despite the fact that our governor has mostly been like
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: a conservative candidate, Like it's considered swing state because we
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: have so many, like dense, populous cities that sway the
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: vote to a more left leaning vote sometimes.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, So just going back to make sure we
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: recovered this. So in that eighteen eighty eight election, Cleveland
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: won with ninety thousand more votes. At the time, that
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: was a pretty significant amount of people. And then, you know,
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: one hundred years later, more than one hundred years later,
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: in two thousand, we have this other instance where they
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: win by an incredible five hundred thousand votes, which is
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: more than five times as many people. And granted the
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: country had grown a lot by then, but five hundred
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: thousand votes, as we said, is equal to the size
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: of the entire state of Wyoming at least around the
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: time of the two thousand election. It was. It's a
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: little bit closer to six hundred thousand people in Wyoming now,
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: but that's still like, yeah, so many votes. Okay. Now,
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: sixteen years later, in twenty sixteen, Hillary Clinton beat Donald
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: Trump with a staggering two point eight million vote lead.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: Two point eight million, Like, our population didn't grow that
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: you know so much between two thousand and twenty sixteen
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: that that's a proportional number. That is the largest gap
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: of all time proportionally and otherwise, two point eight million
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: votes is so so, so many. But Trump won in
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: a few key states with very large elector pools, even
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: though we had some tiny margins and some of those states,
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: so that he was able to secure all of the
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: electoral votes in states, even though he barely won by
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: a majority, He just won in more states where there
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: are more electors. And so even though he lost by
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: a staggering number of actual votes from the majority, he
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: ended up winning the electoral count and became the president. Right,
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: So I.
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: Hope this is starting to kind of illuminate the issue,
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: but we'll keep going. So, even in the twenty twenty election,
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: although Biden won the popular vote and the electoral vote,
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: he won both. He won by more than seven million votes,
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: by the way, Yeah, seven million votes, and it was
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: still considered a stolen election, which is hilarious, that's what
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: people argue. Anyway, It was still considered a close election
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: in which Trump still came close to winning because of
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: the electoral votes.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, even though he lost by seven million votes. Just yeah,
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: that is so many. That's just that's so embasingly many.
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: A lot of votes.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: That's a lot of votes. I'll tell you what if
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: you think that's not a lot of votes, Let's just
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: do a little exercise. You can pause the podcast if
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: you want, go and count to seven million. Make sure
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: make sure you stay on track, and when you're done,
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: come back and pick up where you left off. And
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: by the way, I might ask you to time yourself
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: and see how long it takes.
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: Okay, I just want to kind of on average, now
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: that you've brought that up, I want to see how
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: long it would take somebody to count the seven million.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: I've wanted to do a mini on this because I
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: actually heard a because we're so bad at large numbers. Yeah,
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: as a species. It seems like I heard someone describe
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: this and it was kind of a staggering amount. And
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: now I also consider, like, just conceptually, how long it
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: would take to count you to a thousand. Now, how
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: long it would take you to count to a million.
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: Once you get to a million, you have to basically
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: start over, because you go one million in one, one
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: million in two, and you have to count to a
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: million again. Six more times. So, yeah, it's hard to
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: wrap our heads around numbers that large. Yeah, go ahead,
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: look up, let see what you find.
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: So if you you counted one number per second, which
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: some of those numbers take a little bit longer to
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: say in a second, but if you did one number
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: per second with no breaks at all for any reason, sleep, eating,
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: anything like that, it would take eleven days, thirteen hours,
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: forty six minutes and forty seconds to count.
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: To seven million, or to a million, that is, to
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: a million.
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: You're right, to seven million. It's seven times that.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: Okay, So so seventy seven days more than seventy seven
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: days because it is eleven eleven days. How many hours?
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: Oh I exited out of the window. It's gone.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: It's it's more than seventy seven days to count to
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: seven million. If you count one number per second, good luck.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: We'll see you in three and a half months, all right,
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: seven million is a gigantic number, now with the ever
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: white actually hold on, this is a little bit early.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: But I just asked you to go count to seven million.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: So let's let's uh, while you do that, we'll let
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: the ads play so that at least they'll be a
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: little bit of time in mid between. Okay, we're back
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: with the you're on like fifty, Yeah, maybe that's all right.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: Just six million, nine hundred ninetynine thousand, nine hundred and
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: fifty left, all right. With the ever widening disparity between
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: the popular vote and the candidate winning the election, there
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: has been sort of a growing number of people calling
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: to eliminate or just reform the electoral college, with the
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: National Archives reporting that there have actually been over seven
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: hundred pieces of legislation to do just this over the
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: history of this country. So some attempts have been made.
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's some social validity there for sure. I mean further,
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: and this is desired by most people, so like, this
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: is not just like something that is desired by folks
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: that have tried to legislate this. Most people actually agree
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: with this. So Pew Research polls found that in nineteen
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: sixty seven, fifty eight percent of the people thought the
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: electoral college should be abolished. By nineteen sixty it had
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: risen all the way to eighty one percent. It dropped
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: to seventy five percent in nineteen eighty one. Still most
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: of the people, by the way, by a huge margin.
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: But it has started to become more political. Democrats now
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: strongly favor elimination of the electoral college, up to eighty
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: nine percent in recent polls, whereas only about thirty percent
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: of Republicans do. Taken together, public support has literally never
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: been in favor of keeping the electoral college for as
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: long as people have been asked their opinion about it.
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: At the lowest it was fifty one percent, but the
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: highest over eighty percent. In the last twenty five years
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: it has pretty consistently remained over sixty percent. So and
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: I want to go back to those numbers in case
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: we kind of blew through that most people want to
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: abolish the electoral college. Roughly in recent polls, eighty nine
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: percent of Democrats want to abolish it, but thirty percent
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: of Republicans want to abolish it. I think that tells
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: a little bit something here.
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, the majority of people, And again it has
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: become a somewhat political issue for I think understandable is
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: maybe not the right word. Reasons that we can comprehend
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: why people don't want to necessarily get rid of it,
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: And we're going to unpack a lot of arguments for
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: the electoral college here in a moment or at some point,
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: maybe in a separate episode, but yeah, the majority of people,
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: throughout all of time that we've been asking people their opinion,
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: have wanted to get rid of the electoral college. We
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: know this is a bad idea, particularly when we granted
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: suffrage to all people in the United States who were adults,
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: it became increasingly obvious how bad an idea that it
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: really was. And the reason to not have a popular vote,
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: or the reason to have an electoral system in the
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: first place, was at least due in part to believing
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: that people were too stupid to be trusted with a vote,
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: which is grossly cynical and deeply unfair. Right, And that's
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: still kind of the reason. We'll get to that people
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: want to keep the electoral college, although weirdly it does
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: a little bit the opposite direction now, but we'll get
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: to that later. Okay. Important question to ask though, would be,
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: first of all, could we get rid of the electoral college?
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: And second, what would be the system if we got
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: rid of the electoral college? And I mean it should
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: seem it might seem fairly obvious to too many people,
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: but essentially the general proposal is that we would just
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: change to a popular vote, meaning that whoever gets the
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: most votes wins the election. One person, one vote, whoever
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: gets the most wins. That would be the proposed alternative.
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: Right, So what arguments do people make in favor of
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: keeping the electoral college and in favor of abolishing it.
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: It's similar to how we've done it in the past.
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: I think we'll kind of probably come up with some
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: arguments and stuff like that, but we might do that
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: in another episode, I think, because it's so much to unpack.
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: I don't know, how do you feel about that? Do
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: you want to maybe like start tackling that for a
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: part two?
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's go ahead and pause this here and then
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: probably come back for a part two where we'll talk
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: we'll discuss the arguments to keep the electoral college and
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: the arguments to abolish or revamp the electoral college, if
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: you will.
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: But I do want to kind of unpack this a
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: little bit, So I want to go back to something
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: they consider when you brought up the one vote, one
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: person equals one vote. I think that that, on the
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: surface is to me, makes sense and definitely aligns with
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: my value. So, like, as we kind of unpack the
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: rest of this, you will probably see that emerge. But
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: I do think it's important to remember that just because
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: somebody can vote doesn't mean that voting practices are equitable.
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: And you just brought that up with Florida and the
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: hanging chads and the ballots and how they were designed.
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: So there is going to be probably some conversation around like,
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: just because somebody can vote and they can get out
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: and vote, doesn't mean that the voting practices in their
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: areas are equitable and allow them to vote. So if
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: we do abolish a system where the electoral college does
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: not exist, then we do have to make sure that
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: our voting systems do not actively suppress or disenfranchise specific
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: groups of voters.
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: It's a very good point, yeah, that we again, and
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: why there's probably a good reason to actually spend a
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: whole episode going over things like voter suppression, because just
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: as you said, just abolishing the electoral college will not
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: fix the other issues that could possibly arise and may
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: even exacerbate some in terms of how elections are conducted,
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: because there could be a greater emphasis on other voter
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: suppression techniques that would try and disenfranchise people from participating
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: in an election at all. Might be one tactic that
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: has taken and or making it really difficult, or making
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: it unfair, or using unreliable technology like paper ballots but
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: in hand counting, or.
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: Not giving people water while they're in line, or using
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: military dressed up police officers to intimidate voters while they're
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: in line, or putting up precincts that don't have a
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: handicap accessibility, or not making ballots something that is accessible
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: to folks that are visually impaired, or geking.
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: It difficult to vote by mail, requiring people to vote
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: in person, requiring people to vote in the middle of
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: a wark week is like a thing, right, So like, yes,
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: there are a lot of other issues we'll need to
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: tackle to have the fairest, most evenly distributed system for voting,
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: But eliminating the electoral college or abolishing it would be
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: one of the most impactful things that would happen right
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: out the gate. Like that would result in some very
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: radical changes very quickly.
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: Yes, and we will talk about all of that in
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: the next episode on the electoral college.
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: That would be such a lovely way to end this episode.
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: But I'm going to do the thing that we always do,
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: which is I'm going to go through our credits really quick.
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: And also we're going to end by giving some recommendations,
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: which is the thing that we do. Okay, well, first,
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: I would like to say if you liked what you
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: heard here today and would like to support us, you
• 46:04
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• 46:07
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• 46:10
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• 46:12
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• 46:16
  Speaker 1: add free episodes, that sort of thing, and the good,
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: warm fuzzy that comes with supporting a show like ours
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: that tries to do our best to unpack these concepts
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: in a way that is digestible to a large number
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: of people, using our voices in our experience to do so.
• 46:31
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• 46:33
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• 46:35
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• 46:36
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• 46:39
  Speaker 1: says cool like we're in podcast merch, that's true, or
• 46:42
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• 46:44
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• 46:46
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• 46:51
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• 46:53
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• 46:56
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• 46:58
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• 47:00
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• 47:02
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• 47:07
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• 47:13
  Speaker 1: Other things, you can tell a friend what am I missing?
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: I'm missing some things.
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: You could vote for us to be the greatest podcast.
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, voting does open next year. We actually just
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: missed this year's but yeah, anyway, you could vote for us.
• 47:30
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• 47:31
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• 47:33
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• 47:36
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• 47:38
  Speaker 1: or just listen to all of them because we have
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: such silky spooth voices, except when I stumble through things
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: that I say, like I did just a second ago. Anyway,
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: if you do go over and join us on Patreon.
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: If that's one of the ways that you choose that
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: you'd like to support us, then I would like to
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: just say thank you, thank you to those people who
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: have made that choice who help us keep the show going.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: That is Mike, m Megan, Mike T, Justin, Brad, Stephanie, Olivia, Brian, Ashley, Kiara,
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: and Michelle. Thank you all, very very very much.
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: Y'all are the best.
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: My team of people help me make this show, without
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: whom this show would barely come out, if at all.
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: That is writing in fact checking from Shane and myself
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: our social media coordinator as Emma Wilson. And if it
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: sounds like we are two people having a conversation where
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: you can understand our speech, it is because our audio
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: engineer and producer, Justin works his magic every time an
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: episode comes out. I think that is it for credits, though,
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: Let's go ahead and recommend some fun things. Yay.
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: I love that.
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: Recommendations all right? As I said, if you are joining
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: us for the first time, welcome, And one thing that
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: we do is at the end of every episode, we
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: recommend something that we think is fun or whatever. I
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: don't know, we just recommend something. Yeah, and a lot
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: of times it's movies because we like movies. It's sometimes
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: it's books because we like books. It's just sometimes it's
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: a thing. Sometimes it's an activity. Right now, for me,
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: it's going to be a movie. I am recommending a
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: movie called Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. This
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: is the fourth installment in the rebooted series of the
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: Planet of the Apes. They have all, in my opinion,
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: been very very well done. The cgi on these is
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: getting just incredible. This last one, I thought was a
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: really great story, very well executed, really impressive visuals. I
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: love these movies. I think they're just they're exciting, they're fun,
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: they're interesting, they're well written, they're well shot, they tell
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: really compelling stories. I just think they do a really
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: good job with it. And it's a fun thought experiment.
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: Unlike a world without humans, I mean not without humans,
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: but where like another species has sort of taken over
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: and that's I don't know, I just think it's it's
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: there are other things that I think we're going to
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: pack inside of this in terms of like they get
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: into things like how culture develops and kingdoms and politics
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: and social commentary, and it's a they're just they're great movies,
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: so you can check it out. At least I know
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: at the time of us this recording, it is available
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: to stream on Hulu, but who knows where it will
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: be when you listen to this, if available at all,
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: But if you're interested, go check it out.
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I've heard they're really good. I have not seen
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: any of them, but I am excited to watch them
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: because I know I've heard nothing but great thing. So
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: there They're on my list of like movies that got
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: to catch up on. All right, so let's talk about
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: my recommendation, which is a band called Press Club out
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: of Melbourne, Australia. I found this band just totally by
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: accident on Spotify. It's one of those things where they
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: showed up on a on a weekly playlist type of
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: thing and they immediately hooked me and I have not
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: been able to stop listening to their full length record
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: late teens since I learned about this band. They are
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: so so good. It's a four piece, two guitars, bass drums,
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: guitar music. If you like that kind of stuff. It's
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: got kind of a like a poppy, like a pop
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: punk poppy vibe, but like not like newer pop punk
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: more like you definitely hear like Ramone's influences, like Green
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: Day influences inside of it. Oh interesting female vocalist, lots
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: of fuzz on her on her vocals, which is really cool,
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: and it's just super super catchy. I mean the minute
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: that you like put Crash on, which is the first
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: song on Late Teens, you are hooked, like it just
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: sucks right in and it just is a nice easy listen.
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: The record's only thirty four minutes, so it's worth checking out.
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: I think if you like that sort of thing, it's
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: very much so in that world.
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: Well, good job Spotify.
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks for that though.
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: Was press Club as the band the album Late Teens
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: for you? And then Kingdom of the Planet of the
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: Apes is the movie I recommended. Okay, yes, I think
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: that's all we have to say for now. We are
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: going to come back next time and we're going to
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: unpack the arguments for and against keeping the electoral system
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: as it exists. We'll have more recommendations at the end
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: of that episode, but please catch us next time because
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: I think this is really gets into the overall meat
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: of this discussion and the thing that we wanted to
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: spend I think a lot of time making sure that
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: we are really clear on where people are coming from
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: on this issue. And it's already clear where we're sort
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: of coming from, but it'll become increasingly so as we
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: round out this discussion. But I think more importantly, you
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: can make whatever choice you want for yourself. It's not
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: like this is a thing that's going to change anytime soon.
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: We'll talk about that, but we'll have I think a
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: robust discussion.
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: Yes, most definitely. I'm really excited to get into it.
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: All right, catch us next time. Thank you so much
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: for listening. Do you have anything else to add or
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: anything that I forgot? Shane?
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: Nope, nothing on my end.
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: All right, this is Abraham and this is Shane. We're out.
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: So yeah, you've been listening to Why we Do what
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: we do.
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: You can learn more about this and other episodes by
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: going to wwdwwdpodcast dot com. Thanks for listening, and we
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: hope you have an awesome day.