Eliminate the Electoral College

reply to post by antonia


Not all states have a "winner take all system." Some base their Electors on Congressional Districts, Maine is one such state.

As for not voting because of the color of your state, that's absolutely ridiculous! Maybe if the citizens of your state came out to vote, your state might be more of a purplish color. Perhaps you should work for a campaign and target those like minded folks as yourself and get them to the polling stations. That's how it works.

When you complain that your vote doesn't count and then back up that statement by saying you don't vote...Well, I guess you're right. Your vote can't be counted unless you VOTE!

Originally posted by Feltrick
reply to post by antonia

 

. When I say "stable" I mean we have had the same form of government for over 200 years.

Mmmk, you should have said that. The reason why this has occured is not because of the constitution. You happen to live in a country with a lot of natural resources. The U.S. has never faced a wide scale famine, has never lost millions of people to it or to any natural disaster (these tend to be smaller scale) and that really helps if you are trying to form a stable government. Certainly having an instituted method of electing a government helps, but generally when people are starving and hurting, they don't give a damn about this. What brings most governments down is not the lack of a constitution, it's starving, poor and malcontent people. There are actually countries that have been more stable than the U.S. and they have direct popular vote (specifically the Nordic countries).

As for those unqualified presidents, which are you talking about? Is it someone you didn't vote for but won and now you feel slighted so you call them "unqualified?"

Oh, so you haven't noticed the scores of posts on this board which says Obama, Bush and whoever someone hates today was unqualified?

Once again, How is the current system not mob rule? People go out and vote, the state hands over the electoral votes to the guy who won the popular vote. The electors are generally bound by law in most states to vote for the winner of the popular vote. So hence, the president is chosen by a majority of voters. Isn't that mob rule?

Originally posted by Feltrick
reply to post by antonia

 

Not all states have a "winner take all system." Some base their Electors on Congressional Districts, Maine is one such state.

There are very few states which have that system and you know that. Again, your vote doesn't mean squat if you didn't vote for the winner in a winner take all state and that's not fair to those people.

Al Gore supports an end to the electoral college.

www.huffingtonpost.com...


See video here:

thehill.com...



The new plan:

National Popular Vote

reply to post by antonia


Very true, we can't all be winners and sometimes the folks we want to be our representatives lose but that doesn't mean your vote doesn't count. It was counted and your candidate did not have enough supporters to gain Electors. Maybe next time you'll be more proactive in the campaign to try and persuade those who didn't vote to get off the couch and out to the polls.

Again, as was taught in grade school, we live in a Republic. Our Constitution, which has survived 246 years, gives us a representative government, if you feel that it should be changed then contact your Congressman. If your Congressman doesn't feel the same as you, find someone that does and work on getting them elected. That's how our system works.

To the poster above, if Al Gore is against the Electoral College then it must be working.

reply to post by antonia


This Republic has survived an invasion from a foreign land, a brutal civil war, a depression, several wars, assassinations, etc., etc., etc. Not sure what your point is. If anything, the depression should have destroyed us, but it didn't. There are countless numbers of citizens who go to bed starving and yet this government survives. Do we have the best elected officials? No, there are probably other men and women who could do better, but they aren't running for office. Are our current elected officials unqualified? No, unless you don't support their policies.

I remember a time when, though you didn't necessarily like the President, you still respected the office. All that changed with the advent of Rush Limbaugh clones who try to divide this nation down red and blue lines. Red states can easily become blue states and vice versa if the citizens work for change. But it can't happen when the majority would rather sit at home and complain about the system on some mediocre website that, in the big scheme of things is moot.

That said, ATS is one of the best websites for social change and idea expression, please don't close my account...

Anyway, get out and be an agent of change if you feel strongly enough. If not, keep complaining and see how that works out.

reply to post by antonia


If you eliminate the electoral college, the small states have no say in elections any more. Soon, they would be completely ignored by the federal government as insignificant. Eventually, there would be no need for any Congressional representation from them either.

reply to post by Feltrick


my point is still valid, it doesn`t matter what name you apply to our form of government,if the person with the most votes doesn`t win then why even have a system that allows people to vote?

Originally posted by usernameconspiracy
reply to post by antonia

 

If you eliminate the electoral college, the small states have no say in elections any more. Soon, they would be completely ignored by the federal government as insignificant. Eventually, there would be no need for any Congressional representation from them either.

why should small states have an equal say? small states make up a minority of the population of the U.S. so why should the minority have an equal say in what the majority wants?
if every special interest group was allowed an equal say we would have chaos and nothing would get accomplished.

While I agree with the overall point of the article, and we NEED to directly elect the president. whoever receives the most overall votes should be president.....
I disagree with "The primary impact of the Electoral College is to give the citizens of some states more influence over the presidential election than citizens of other states."

The number of delegates for each state is based off of population.
and in any decision, the tie breaking votes seem more important, but is that necessarily so?
If the supreme court ruled 5-4, is the tie breaking vote really any more important than the 4 other justices who voted yes?
It's a relativistic viewpoint. All of the votes were equally important, it's just one SEEMS more important.

No the Electoral college is flawed because it enables the possibility of a situation where the majority of Americans vote for one person, and a different person becomes president. That's unbelievably asinine.

It doesn't matter though. Both candidates are always exactly the same. Bought and paid for by the real powers that be.
The electoral college enables the election to play out more like a game, and it entertains the drugged out dumbed out masses.

Originally posted by Tardacus
reply to post by Feltrick

 

my point is still valid, it doesn`t matter what name you apply to our form of government,if the person with the most votes doesn`t win then why even have a system that allows people to vote?

Thomas Jefferson once said, “nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.”

Do you really want the 10 most populous states controlling the other 40? That's what your advocating. Presidential candidates would need only campaign in large metropolitan areas, thus disregarding those in other areas.

Your point isn't valid. This form of government has lasted as long as it has because the creators of the Constitution understood what they were doing. Every vote counts, every state counts and in so doing the smallest states have a say in this Republic just the same as the larger states. Do you really think it's a valid point that NY and CA should have more of a say in the way this country is run than WY or NE?

I am not applying any name to this form of government, I am telling you what it is. We learned this in grade school. Just because you feel "disenfranchised" because you live in a state where the majority of the populace doesn't hold your views makes no sense. Again I say to you, get away from the computer and be an agent of change for your political views.

I'd like to see the top candidates, 3rd parties included of course, go through a rigorous Olympic style competition. Intellectual challenges, character tests, and physical challenges. I'm picturing a cross between Ninja Warrior, Jeopardy, and UFC.

In all seriousness, I think the electoral college is extremely outdated.

How about entirely scrapping the current system and moving to a parliamentary one in which you don't vote for a president at all. Not that a parliamentary system doesn't have its downsides (our MP, Scott Sims is a good guy but a Liberal party member, so a vote for him last election was a vote for that twit Ignatieff), but it beats the hell out of the American popularity contest.

I have addressed this issue in a few different posts.

I am all for getting rid of the electoral college. However, I am adamantly opposed to a popular vote election.

When trying to decide on the best process, we have to ask, what is the role of the POTUS? Is he the representative of the individual? Does he represent the states? I think the answer is somewhere in between. He is chosen to be the Head of the collective States. When dealing internationally, he is doing so as the chief executive for the collective states, but being an individual he represents the individual people.

After much contemplation on the matter, I came to the conclusion that the best and most accurate way to elect a president would be popular vote by state. In that process, the individuals would elect who they will vote for as a state. This would essentially be the way a Governor is chosen. The State would then vote a single vote based upon the popular vote. Each states has equal weight on the matter of who runs the country, as each state should. The only thing I have not decided on is the way to break any tie vote. Perhaps it could be done use the majority vote of the territories.

Originally posted by Tardacus

Originally posted by usernameconspiracy
reply to post by antonia

 

If you eliminate the electoral college, the small states have no say in elections any more. Soon, they would be completely ignored by the federal government as insignificant. Eventually, there would be no need for any Congressional representation from them either.

why should small states have an equal say? small states make up a minority of the population of the U.S. so why should the minority have an equal say in what the majority wants?
if every special interest group was allowed an equal say we would have chaos and nothing would get accomplished.

They don't have an equal say. Electoral votes are by population just like the number of representatives is. Beyond that, your question is ridiculous. If think that the smaller states should have no say, just based on the boundary lines of the state, that just doesn't make sense.

How do you not know this?

Theoretically, a popular vote is great because it does away with the possibility of a President scraping out a win by getting only 22% of people to vote for him/her, and it even theoretically eliminates the arbitrary nature of statehood so candidates can preach to actual issues and not simply try to appeal to the state they're currently in. But I think there's a problem with that last bit-- specifically, majority rule can make things pretty bad for these states that aren't very populated. Imagine if a candidate said "You know what, our debt is out of control, so if I'm elected, I'll put in place legislation enabling me to sell all the assets in the states below Oklahoma on this list to clear our debt!" Now a campaign like that would be impossible because these less inhabitated states have a huge slice of electors. Under the popular vote system, everyone in other states may think "Hm, well, I know some people in those states, but I'm sure they'll be fine since selling their state would clear our debt. I think I'll vote for this guy!"

Obviously this is a ridiculous setup, but situations like that is why the electoral college was put in place, with the implication being that the sovereignty of states would be harder to violate if they had more weight to their votes. And I don't disagree with that on principle. Like others here, I think the major problem is most states relying on the "winner-take-all" subsystem. If 51% of Texas votes Republican but the other 49% votes Democrat it could really change things by splitting these electoral votes up according to their distribution.

Originally posted by antonia
Does not compute. If the electoral college was gone it wouldn't matter what the population of the state happens to be. It would be one person, one vote and to me that is better than what we have now.

The idea was to have the states hold the power to stop a person that after the election was found out to be invalid to hold the office, a traitor, or committed a felony that would result in impeachment anyways, from ever taking the position in office in the first place.

It was set up as a last line of defense against crimes against the American people, based on the conscience' of the electoral college voters.

To bad so few think it's a rubber stamp and never vote their conscience.

It baffles the mind, that Americans don't elect their President directly, with a straight +1 national vote.

IE, the one that gets the most votes nationally, even if it's only 1 vote more than the other guy, wins.

In Canadian and English politics (which I am used to) we elect our local Federal MP (Kind of like your Congressman), and then the generally person who is leader of the party with the biggest number of seats in Parliament becomes Prime Minister. As there are 3 parties in Canadian and British politics that matter, sometimes a coalition is needed in order to gain that majority, such as the current coalition government in the UK between the Conservatives and *gasp* LIBERAL DEMOCRAT Party (see, in other countries, the parties can work together)

However, In Canadian and English politics, the parties pick their own leaders, so we don't directly elect the Prime Minister, either. But then again, we never claimed to be the greatest democracy on Earth.

In American politics, you make your vote for Romney or Obama. People think that they're actually voting for these candidates, when in fact, your voting for the people in your state that make up the electoral college. In some states, it's as low as THREE people who make the decision.

Now, generally, those electoral college representatives vote the way that the majority of voters in the state tell them to, but in some states, they are not legally bound to follow this vote.

In reality, under 600 Americans make up the Electoral College that votes for President. In 2008, over 120 million Americans voted for their electoral college reps, and trusted under 600 people to make the choice for President for them.

It's really a sad state of politics that when the ballot says "Romney" or "Obama" and you put your mark, you're NOT actually voting for the person that you made the mark by.

The electoral college means that even candidates who win the popular vote nationally by large margins (such as Al Gore in 2000) might not get elected.

Of course, if American Presidential candidates had to appeal to a national audience rather than particular states, the campaigns would, amazingly, be MUCH more expensive.

The greatest democracy on Earth? Don't make me laugh.

Originally posted by tkwasny

Originally posted by antonia
Does not compute. If the electoral college was gone it wouldn't matter what the population of the state happens to be. It would be one person, one vote and to me that is better than what we have now.

The idea was to have the states hold the power to stop a person that after the election was found out to be invalid to hold the office, a traitor, or committed a felony that would result in impeachment anyways, from ever taking the position in office in the first place.

It was set up as a last line of defense against crimes against the American people, based on the conscience' of the electoral college voters.

To bad so few think it's a rubber stamp and never vote their conscience.

If this were the case, then the Electoral College would never have followed the judge's ruling and allowed a person who committed a felony to become President (GWB), so they've failed in the only reason they were there in the first place.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000

and the most important reason why the Electoral College is really necessary? Here are the states with MORE than enough population between them to elect the President given sheer numbers alone.

And if we are being honest, those are the states that elect the President even with the electoral college.

And the states who'd be lucky to ever see a Presidential plane briefly pass through their radar screens while travelling elsewhere...

Again, even with the electoral college, these States don't see candidates very often. For one, their vote count is too small to spen much time on. And almost all of them are firmly red or blue and so don't matter.



I'm fine with the electoral college, I'd also be fine with a straight popular vote. But your arugments don't really help you out that much.