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The electoral system

Should we keep it or get rid of it?

  • I think we should keep it.

    Votes: 36 47.4%

  • I think we should get rid of it.

    Votes: 33 43.4%

  • Other

    Votes: 7 9.2%
  • Total voters
    76
Re: The electoral college

Casper said:
And that is not how it works today, the thing falls apart with how Senators are elected, meaning the rest has also exceeded it shelf-life, easy to fix, and neither side will ever do it, "they" do not trust the People meaning the People should not trust "them".
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but you stated.." look back at their times and you might find the real answer. and i did, and showed you i am correct.

the 17th amendment to the constitution moved the u.s. away from a mixed government of a republican form of government to a more democratic form of government, which the founders sought to avoid!

democratic forms of government are not stable and lead eventfully to tyranny, because they are full of faction/special interest.

the founders wanted a republican form of government, to prevent faction/ special interest from taking over the government, and running on their interests, instead of the interest of the people- states- and the union.


federalist #10
The other point of difference is, the greater number of citizens and extent of territory which may be brought within the compass of republican than of democratic government; and it is this circumstance principally which renders factious combinations less to be dreaded in the former than in the latter.
 
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Re: The electoral college

ernst barkmann said:
but you stated.." look back at their times and you might find the real answer. and i did, and showed you i am correct.

the 17th amendment to the constitution moved the u.s. away from a mixed government of a republican form of government to a more democratic form of government, which the founders sought to avoid!

democratic forms of government are not stable and lead eventfully to tyranny, because they are full of faction/special interest.

the founders wanted a republican form of government, to prevent faction/ special interest from talking over the government, and running on their interests, instead of the interest of the people- states- and the union.


federalist #10
The other point of difference is, the greater number of citizens and extent of territory which may be brought within the compass of republican than of democratic government; and it is this circumstance principally which renders factious combinations less to be dreaded in the former than in the latter.
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So then you agree with updating the system so that all elected officials are elected by those they serve, good:roll:
 
Re: The electoral college

casper said:
so then you agree with updating the system so that all elected officials are elected by those they serve, good:roll:
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no sorry i want to go back to a republican form of government a mixed government, which separates power, ...democratic forms of government are evil and lead to tyranny!
 
Re: The electoral college

democratic forms of government are evil!


"democracy is the road to socialism" - Karl Marx

"democracy is indispensable to socialism." - Vladimir Lenin
 
Re: The electoral college

Why on Earth would we want to get rid of the electrical system?

Who in their right mind would advocate tha..........

......

Nevermind.
 
Re: The electoral college

Get rid of it. It's an outdated and unfair concept and should be abolished. It should be replaced with an instant runoff popular vote.

Although I could accept keeping it if representation were made proportional and gerrymandering was banned.
 
Re: The electoral college

Why don't you adopt the French system?

Skip the primaries and let all candidates from all parties run in a first turn of a general election. Then make a run-off between the two best, one or two weeks later.
 
Re: The electoral college

Federalist #10 - The other point of difference is, the greater number of citizens and extent of territory which may be brought within the compass of republican than of democratic government; and it is this circumstance principally which renders factious combinations less to be dreaded in the former than in the latter.


people call for more democratic government, yet! complain of factious combinations controlling our government.
 
Re: The electoral college

jamesrage said:
I do not want densely populated states like New York, and California deciding things for the rest of the country and our founders did not want a handful of densely populated states deciding things for the rest of the country. So I vote to keep things the way they are.
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Talking about this or that state "deciding" is a very Electoral College way of looking at things. When it comes to the popular vote, you're not talking about states anymore. You're talking about people. States only vote as a monolithic block in the Electoral College, if you had a popular vote system they wouldn't be electoral blocks anymore.
 
Re: The electoral college

Greenbeard said:
Talking about this or that state "deciding" is a very Electoral College way of looking at things. When it comes to the popular vote, you're not talking about states anymore. You're talking about people. States only vote as a monolithic block in the Electoral College, if you had a popular vote system they wouldn't be electoral blocks anymore.
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Getting rid of the electoral college would mean that ten populated states gets decide who the president is for the other 40 states. No thank you.
 
Re: The electoral college

jamesrage said:
Getting rid of the electoral college would mean that ten populated states gets decide who the president is for the other 40 states. No thank you.
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No, it means a majority of the US electorate gets to decide. We start talking about voters deciding instead of states deciding. It may not seem like it under the Electoral College system, but there are voters in every state in the country (Mitt Romney got more than 4 million votes in California last go-around).

Decision-making doesn't happen at the state-level under a popular vote system; it does happen at the state level under the Electoral College system (which is why we can look forward to hearing all about the parochial concerns of Ohio, Florida, Iowa, etc this fall).
 
Re: The electoral college

Greenbeard said:
No, it means a majority of the US electorate gets to decide. We start talking about voters deciding instead of states deciding. It may not seem like it under the Electoral College system, but there are voters in every state in the country (Mitt Romney got more than 4 million votes in California last go-around).

Decision-making doesn't happen at the state-level under a popular vote system; it does happen at the state level under the Electoral College system (which is why we can look forward to hearing all about the parochial concerns of Ohio, Florida, Iowa, etc this fall).
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The only reason libs support abolishing the electoral system is because they want ten or so densely populated liberal states deciding the president for the rest of the country. The feel that Al Gore was cheated so they invented this false claim that Bush stole the elections and feel that Gore should have won. If voters in the top ten or twelve states were mostly conservative then libs would not be trying to abolish the electoral college. The fact that Romney got 4 million vote doesn't change the fact that Obama got nearly six and half million votes in California.
 
Re: The electoral college

I vote we go with a parliamentary system. Get rid of the elected office of POTUS all together. Nation-wide elections in the US have become nothing more than a costly, time-consuming, media extravaganza. This flawed system has given us the ridiculous two-party structure we have today in which only two greedy "clubs" have entrenched themselves within the political power structure and there is no voice for a third party or independents. With a winner-takes-all set-up in most states, this has become a system where millions of popular votes don't even count at all. The words of George Washington from his farewell address ring so true today:

“However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.” - George Washington
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Re: The electoral college

The system will not be changed.

Having said that, I also prefer the way things are. I tend to support most measures that increase the powers of individual states and decreases the emphasis on the office of he Presidency. The country was not founded and will not thrive on direct election of a type of 'king'. It was founded as a confederation of independent states coming together.

New York is not Wyoming is not Alabama. I prefer to have 50 individual social and political experiments than one monolithic one. 330 million people are too diverse and unwieldy to have needs met by more centralization.
 
Re: The electoral college

Iamjesus said:
The system will not be changed.

Having said that, I also prefer the way things are. I tend to support most measures that increase the powers of individual states and decreases the emphasis on the office of he Presidency. The country was not founded and will not thrive on direct election of a type of 'king'. It was founded as a confederation of independent states coming together.

New York is not Wyoming is not Alabama. I prefer to have 50 individual social and political experiments than one monolithic one. 330 million people are too diverse and unwieldy to have needs met by more centralization.
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But more and more centralization is unfortunately what has happened with two parties entrenched in Washington. This will not change until the electoral process changes. It is quite the conundrum.
 
Re: The electoral college

Anomalism said:
I say trash the electoral college and use the popular vote instead. Is it not entirely asinine that the person with the most votes can still lose the election?
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I say no.

Major cities with very dense populations lean more liberal and would always control the outcome.
 
Re: The electoral college

Geez, here we go again... More people who think that it's OK to allow a small handful of states to make this decision. Now PAY ATTENTION AND LEARN SOMETHING.

Congress is elected by The People, the President is elected by the States. It's part of how we make sure that we don't concentrate too much power in any one place. Going to a popular vote only means that the "tyranny of the 51%" becomes the rule of the land. We are NOT a democracy, we are a Constitutional Republic and that means that we don't allow too much power to be concentrated anywhere. Get rid of the EC and the ONLY places that matter would be those high population density areas. You would have candidates pandering to those people and those people alone, leaving the rest of us to go pound sand.
 
Re: The electoral college

I strongly favor the electoral system that we have always used in this country. It is in effect fifty separate state elections rather than one conglomerate one, which gives less populous states a greater say than they would otherwise have. Candidates for Congress and the presidency would not even bother to campaign in states like Wyoming or North Dakota if there were no electoral system. They would just spend all their time in places like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

Collectivists despise the electoral system because they would like an even vaster and more dominant federal government, which is the antithesis of the strictly limited central government our Constitution designs. These people, who want to transform the U.S. into a sort of large-scale Sweden, know that states with big urban populations are home to a disproportionate share of the takers and drones whose votes collectivist candidates can buy for promises of federal handouts. Direct democracy means the rule of the mob--the lumps in the lumpenproletariat voting themselves a share of money earned by other people.
 
Re: The electoral college

faithful_servant said:
Congress is elected by The People, the President is elected by the States.
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Under the current system the President is still de fact elected by The People, it's just through an odd aggregation of state-level popular votes. The question is whether there's any rationale for aggregating popular votes at the state level instead of nationally. The arguments in favor tend to be pretty unconvincing.

Get rid of the EC and the ONLY places that matter would be those high population density areas. You would have candidates pandering to those people and those people alone, leaving the rest of us to go pound sand.
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Better they pander to a handful of swing states every election season?

I don't understand where this argument comes from. Small, rural states don't get attention in general elections any more than large reliable states (e.g., Texas or New York) do. Candidates spend their time in Ohio and Florida, not Wyoming.
 
Re: The electoral college

faithful_servant said:
Geez, here we go again... More people who think that it's OK to allow a small handful of states to make this decision. Now PAY ATTENTION AND LEARN SOMETHING.

Congress is elected by The People, the President is elected by the States. It's part of how we make sure that we don't concentrate too much power in any one place. Going to a popular vote only means that the "tyranny of the 51%" becomes the rule of the land. We are NOT a democracy, we are a Constitutional Republic and that means that we don't allow too much power to be concentrated anywhere. Get rid of the EC and the ONLY places that matter would be those high population density areas. You would have candidates pandering to those people and those people alone, leaving the rest of us to go pound sand.
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Incorrect. Or at the very least, only partly correct. The POTUS is now essentially "elected" by political parties. It is they who in essence control the nomination and vetting process for candidates. If anyone believes that ANY qualified potential candidate has equal access to the process, then they are sadly misguided. Where are political parties mentioned in the Constitution?

The electoral process has become a sham. Four Presidents (nearly 10%) have been elected after losing the popular vote....two by approx. a quarter-million votes. One president was elected after losing both the popular and electoral votes. Somehow I don't see this as a terribly democratic process and I'd guess it hasn't evolved into what the Founders intended it to be.
 
Re: The electoral college

matchlight said:
Candidates for Congress and the presidency would not even bother to campaign in states like Wyoming or North Dakota if there were no electoral system.
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Yeah, nobody went anywhere near those states during the 2012 general election campaign. That election was a 12-state campaign. Literally, there were general election events (held by a Presidential or Vice Presidential candidate in exactly 12 states last time. And four of those states had 5 or fewer events in them.

Where is this notion coming from that the Electoral College is generating 50-state campaigns?
 
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Re: The electoral college

brothern said:
Runoff? In a first-past-the-post as the Presidential vote would be, there would be no runoff procedures.
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FluffyNinja said:
But more and more centralization is unfortunately what has happened with two parties entrenched in Washington. This will not change until the electoral process changes. It is quite the conundrum.
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I just can't see any change regardless of how positive it may be. I also don't see any Constitutional amendments for decades...if ever. The system has too much entrenched inertia.

Another unknown variable is the relevancy of it all. Other than national security what will government in a technological society be like in 35 or 50 years? Schooling? Will kids go on line and register with some teacher in London? Will the future equivalent of Apple or Google be even more influential how we interact with one another...again, geographic location may be meaningless. Money all paperless and some currency used worldwide and not controlled by individual governments?

The nature of what we think of government might morph into 'whatever' in a couple of generations. Perhaps identifying as an 'American' will seem quaint and the idea of national flags have great grandkids rolling their eyes. ' 'They died for what?!' Or, we call ourselves Americans or Texans or Alaskans and it is more like rooting for a football team...fun but not not having much meaning in our day to day lives.
 
Re: The electoral college

Why complicate things unnecessarily? Count votes. Whomever got the most, wins. You can devise innumerable twists and twerks and whatabouts but why not just vote for who you want to be President? It's not rocket surgery, folks, and you don't need to reinvent the wheel.
 
Re: The electoral college

Grand Mal said:
Why complicate things unnecessarily? Count votes. Whomever got the most, wins. You can devise innumerable twists and twerks and whatabouts but why not just vote for who you want to be President? It's not rocket surgery, folks, and you don't need to reinvent the wheel.
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Why not? Do Canadians do it? No. Your head of state is a foreign monarch. However, your system is simpler. Not rocket surgery. First born child.
 
Re: The electoral college

Grand Mal said:
Why complicate things unnecessarily? Count votes. Whomever got the most, wins. You can devise innumerable twists and twerks and whatabouts but why not just vote for who you want to be President? It's not rocket surgery, folks, and you don't need to reinvent the wheel.
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Unfortunately, we can place most of the blame on the 12th amendment for that "reinvention" of the wheel. 1804.....essentially took the election out of voters' hands and made it virtually impossible for third parties to compete.
 
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