Let's get rid of the Electoral College

What a wonderful Resurrection.

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Yes, I am in favor of getting rid of the electoral college. If we were to get rid of the electoral college, the presidential candidates would put more time and emphasis on the most populated states. Republicans would spend more time in traditionally populated democratic states like California and New York. Democrats would spend more time in traditionally republican states like Texas. The reason for this is because those huge populated states will no longer be winner take all. They would become one person and one vote. Winning any particular state would no longer be the goal of presidential candidates. Instead the goal would be to win as many votes as you can within the most populated states. It being a red state, a blue state, a deep red state, or a deep blue state would no longer matter. Only thing that would matter would be that they be heavy populated states.

Both republicans and democrats would virtually ignore the smaller less populated states and focus most of their time on the larger more populated states.

Both parties would spend virtually all of their time in California, Texas, Florida, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and Minnesota, Wisconsin, and possibly two or three other states. Both parties would virtually ignore most of the middle of the country. Both parties would virtually ignore most of the south.

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@Robert Gentel,

I agree in principle to flunk the Electoral College.

There appears to be a great problem for a popular vote:

In principle, one person, one vote.

That is, a Nobel laureate has one vote that is exactly as the same as the one in the hand of an illiterate redneck.

The voting power between the two is equal, yet personal influence between is very different.

The former would lead us into great enlightenment, while the latter possibly leads us into darkness of ignorance.

How to solve this problem if the Popular Vote is accepted?

Robert Gentel wrote:

Flunking the Electoral College

Quote:
There is no reason to feel sentimental about the Electoral College. One of the main reasons the founders created it was slavery. The southern states liked the fact that their slaves, who would be excluded from a direct vote, would be counted " as three-fifths of a white person " when Electoral College votes were apportioned.

The founders also were concerned, in the day of the wooden printing press, that voters would not have enough information to choose among presidential candidates. It was believed that it would be easier for them to vote for local officials, whom they knew more about, to be electors. It is hard to imagine that significant numbers of voters thought they did not know enough about Barack Obama and John McCain by Election Day this year.

And, while these reasons for the Electoral College have lost all relevance, its disadvantages loom ever larger. To start, the system excludes many voters from a meaningful role in presidential elections. If you live in New York or Texas, for example, it is generally a foregone conclusion which party will win your state’s electoral votes, so your vote has less meaning " and it can feel especially meaningless if you vote on the losing side. On the other hand, if you live in Florida or Ohio, where the outcome is less clear, your vote has a greatly magnified importance.

Voters in small states are favored because Electoral College votes are based on the number of senators and representatives a state has. Wyoming’s roughly 500,000 people get three electoral votes. California, which has about 70 times Wyoming’s population, gets only 55 electoral votes.

The Electoral College also makes America seem more divided along blue-red lines than it actually is. If you look at an Electoral College map, California appears solidly blue and Alabama solidly red. But if you look at a map of the popular votes, you see a more nuanced picture. More than 4.5 million Californians voted for Mr. McCain (roughly as many votes as he got in Texas), while about 40 percent of voters in Alabama cast a ballot for Mr. Obama.

One of the biggest problems with the Electoral College, of course, is that three times since the Civil War " most recently, with George W. Bush in 2000 " it has awarded the presidency to the loser of the popular vote. The president should be the candidate who wins the votes of the most Americans.

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I lean to supporting Robert's position. I think I posted such here long ago, but it may have been a different thread.

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@edgarblythe,

You don't think the States should decide who will be the President of all the states?

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@McGentrix,

I think the people should determine who will be president of all the people.

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@MontereyJack,

MontereyJack wrote:

I think the people should determine who will be president of all the people.

They do. The people of each state has an election and the person that gets the most votes (in most states) gets that states votes.

See, the office is "President of the United States of America". It's not "President of the people of North America".

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@McGentrix,

Why should a vote from one person in one state be the equal of perhaps two dozen votes in a different state?

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This last election highlighted another downside of the EC allocation: it gives greater weight, on average, to white voters than minorities due to giving greater weight to rural voters than metropolitan voters.

This is not the intent, of course, but it highlights that when you create a system to artificially inflate the political importance of people based on a regional (vs democratic) considerations it can have the side effect of being king maker in politics for non-regional reasons like race.

That it makes a system where white votes count more than non-white votes on average is itself a form of tyranny of the majority and the regional tyranny of the majority is a specter that is less likely to come into play than the very real such situations that this artificial inflation of power creates.

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@edgarblythe,

They aren't. That's why big states have more votes than small states. You are suggesting that Montana and California have the same votes and they don't.

It takes Montana, Idaho, N. Dakota, S. Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Utah, Kansas, Iowa, Alabama to equal the same number of votes as California. Do you really think that is fair to any one in those states?

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@McGentrix,

It's democracy we live on , gob, from the Greek "demos", "people", not "stateocracy" (which is kind of a bastardized word since i don't know what the Greek word for our cocept of state is).

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@McGentrix,

No, gob, the people DO NOT determine who wins. You'e wrong. Thts why Trump is president -elect.

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@MontereyJack,

MontereyJack wrote:

It's democracy we live on , gob, from the Greek "demos", "people", not "stateocracy" (which is kind of a bastardized word since i don't know what the Greek word for our cocept of state is).

Right, except we are a representative republic and not a democracy "officially".

It is important to keep in mind the difference between a Democracy and a Republic, as dissimilar forms of government. Understanding the difference is essential to comprehension of the fundamentals involved. It should be noted, in passing, that use of the word Democracy as meaning merely the popular type of government--that is, featuring genuinely free elections by the people periodically--is not helpful in discussing, as here, the difference between alternative and dissimilar forms of a popular government: a Democracy versus a Republic. This double meaning of Democracy--a popular-type government in general, as well as a specific form of popular government--needs to be made clear in any discussion, or writing, regarding this subject, for the sake of sound understanding.

These two forms of government: Democracy and Republic, are not only dissimilar but antithetical, reflecting the sharp contrast between (a) The Majority Unlimited, in a Democracy, lacking any legal safeguard of the rights of The Individual and The Minority, and (b) The Majority Limited, in a Republic under a written Constitution safeguarding the rights of The Individual and The Minority; as we shall now see. More here.

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@McGentrix,

What our government actally is has changed from the only psrtially rdepresentative one it stsrted out as. In your terms, it is more like a costitutonal democracy-- no contradiction there.

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@MontereyJack,

No.

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@McGentrix,

Yes

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@McGentrix,

The president represents all the people of a single nation. All the people should have a whole vote.

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@edgarblythe,

Didn't you guys have a civics class or something in high school? The President doesn't represent anyone. That the legislature. They represent their constituents that voted them into office to represent them. That's why it's called the House of Representatives.

The Constitution assigns the president two roles: chief executive of the federal government and Commander in Chief of the armed forces. As Commander in Chief, the president has the authority to send troops into combat, and is the only one who can decide whether to use nuclear weapons.

As chief executive, he enforces laws, treaties, and court rulings; develops federal policies; prepares the national budget; and appoints federal officials. He also approves or vetoes acts of Congress and grants pardons.

You will notice that nowhere in there does he represent anyone. Oh sure, when he travels around the world he "represents" the country, but as CEO, not as a guided spirit animal or whatever you guys believe.

He leads the country which is a Representative Republic, not a Democracy. Read the link I posted above.

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@McGentrix,

I have known since childhood the case for the electoral college. I just happen to disagree with the reasoning in the 21st century.

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@edgarblythe,

That's a better answer. I can understand that.

I think it serves an important service, but I am a bit of a Federalist.

Look, we disagreed on something and neither of us thumbed the other down.

1 Reply

Let's get rid of the Electoral College

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