Comment on So how will VP picks be done?
BlitzFitz@lemmy.world 3 months agoAnd if it’s just for one party vs both, what would that be bad?
I get why it was changed for VP for the dem vs Republican nominee. But why wouldn’t we want, as a party, better representation on who we voted for.
Gestrid@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
That’s exactly what happened in 1800. Both Jefferson and Burr, who were from the same party, tied in the electoral college vote. Some people in the party didn’t like Jefferson, but they but didn’t like the opposing party even more.
Each electoral college member got two votes. So all the electoral college members who were part of what would be the winning party ended up casting one vote for Burr and one vote for Jefferson, resulting in a tie. (Due to slow communication in those days, they all assumed someone else was going to be the one who would cast the tie-breaking vote.)
The tie went to the House of Representatives to break it, as is specified in the Constitution. Unfortunately, neither Burr nor Jefferson got the majority vote needed even after thirty-five separate votes. On the thirty-sixth vote, Alexander Hamilton managed to convince some others to vote for Jefferson, and he got the majority vote he needed and became president.
BlitzFitz@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Ok, but that’s for the EC and for presidential and VP nominees by the EC.
In the dnc we have delegates with 1 vote for their nominee. If the delegates vote for 1 dem and another gets the 2nd amount of votes, then they’d be Pres and VP nominees for the dnc. Or actually do ranked choice for dnc nominees to get voter ranking of nominees.
How is it better for a presidential nominee to pick who they want vs listening to the peoples actual preferences.
Gestrid@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
Ah, that’s what you meant. A presidential nominee will typically pick someone who’s different enough from them (but that they still fundamentally agree with) that people who felt underrepresented by the presidential nominee pick will feel represented by the vice presidential nominee pick. That’s the general logic behind who becomes the VP pick.