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Electoral college vs Popular vote

Aberration said:
Winner takes all means your vote isnt counted.
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Huh? If the vote is tied and your person who you say their vote doesn't count, then winner takes all the way that person picks.

Or should that person know before they vote that this can happen?
 
AliHajiSheik said:
Huh? If the vote is tied and your person who you say their vote doesn't count, then winner takes all the way that person picks.

Or should that person know before they vote that this can happen?
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I don't believe in a popular vote. Even at the State level. If there are 7 delegates for my State, they should be split by voting districts and if one district votes Obama but the rest vote Romney the district that voted Obama should not have it switch to Romney.
 
Aberration said:
I don't believe in a popular vote. Even at the State level. If there are 7 delegates for my State, they should be split by voting districts and if one district votes Obama but the rest vote Romney the district that voted Obama should not have it switch to Romney.
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Then lobby your state legislature to change it. It is the state that determines how their electoral votes are determined. Then again, since you don't believe in popular vote, if your town votes one way and the rest of the district votes another, then your vote doesn't count.

Silly. You have an expectation that your vote should count, not that your vote should decide.
 
AliHajiSheik said:
Then lobby your state legislature to change it. It is the state that determines how their electoral votes are determined. Then again, since you don't believe in popular vote, if your town votes one way and the rest of the district votes another, then your vote doesn't count.

Silly. You have an expectation that your vote should count, not that your vote should decide.
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I find the idea of the country being ruled by the cities as silly.
 
AliHajiSheik said:
I find the idea of being ruled as offensive.
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And in achieving that end I would prefer to move progressively towards smaller and smaller groups until the individual is sovereign, instead of towards larger and larger groups where we are under one big monstrosity.
 
Dwight said:
For 10 states to have 270 EC votes combined they must have a total population notably higher than 50% of the total population of the country.

The key feature (some suggest detraction) is that it provides far more sway/say per person in the smaller population states than those in the larger population states.

As for why we have it still, it would take the approval of a lot of those smaller population states to amend the Constitution to make the change.
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To me, it's definitely a negative point. I don't believe that living out in the middle of nowhere should give you more of a say in who the president is. I would very much like to see the archaic institution gotten rid of.

What's interesting is that there's currently an effort to try to do an end run around the constitution by getting 270 electoral votes worth of states to sign a bill that would require their state's electors to vote for whatever candidate won the national popular vote (their website is here. So far 9 states totaling 132 electoral votes have passed the bill. Since states are allowed to choose how to pick their electors, it seems to be legal, but it should be interesting to see what happens if it passes and is challenged in the supreme court.

Most polls (both now and in the past few decades) have shown that a pretty large majority of Americans wants to do away with the Electoral College. It will happen sooner or later, it's really just a question of when.
 
Fisher said:
As has been indicated here, replacing the EC with the popular vote would still only require that you win a majority in a minority of states. It would not cure the problem of only needing to win the majority in a minority of the EC votes.
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Huh? Replacing the Electoral College with the popular vote would require you win a plurality of the votes in the entire country. It wouldn't matter any more what state you lived in.
 
molten_dragon said:
Huh? Replacing the Electoral College with the popular vote would require you win a plurality of the votes in the entire country. It wouldn't matter any more what state you lived in.
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It would matter even more because the population is not evenly dispersed. Most of the country lives in CA or East of the Mississippi so there would never be a reason to campaign anywhere else without the EC.
 
Fisher said:
It would matter even more because the population is not evenly dispersed. Most of the country lives in CA or East of the Mississippi so there would never be a reason to campaign anywhere else without the EC.
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No, it wouldn't matter at all. If the votes aren't divided up by state, then it doesn't matter what state the voter lives in. Yes, candidates would likely focus most of their campaigning efforts on high-population areas, but they do that now. It only makes sense to do your campaigning where people are.

And honestly, how much does physical, in-person campaigning matter? What percentage of the people who vote for a candidate do so because they went to hear him speak in person? I'm guessing it's pretty low. Most of what matters now is TV appearances. It's been that way for years, and it's only going to get more so in the future.
 
molten_dragon said:
No, it wouldn't matter at all. If the votes aren't divided up by state, then it doesn't matter what state the voter lives in. Yes, candidates would likely focus most of their campaigning efforts on high-population areas, but they do that now. It only makes sense to do your campaigning where people are.

And honestly, how much does physical, in-person campaigning matter? What percentage of the people who vote for a candidate do so because they went to hear him speak in person? I'm guessing it's pretty low. Most of what matters now is TV appearances. It's been that way for years, and it's only going to get more so in the future.
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What percentage of TV money outside the 20 most populated states do you think those states will get? Here is a hint--It rhymes with the name of the guy who played the fiddle while Rome burned.

I'd be all for ending the EC because I do not live in Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas, etc so I don't care if they never get heard, but they might have something to say about it....
 
Dwight said:
For 10 states to have 270 EC votes combined they must have a total population notably higher than 50% of the total population of the country.

The key feature (some suggest detraction) is that it provides far more sway/say per person in the smaller population states than those in the larger population states.

As for why we have it still, it would take the approval of a lot of those smaller population states to amend the Constitution to make the change.
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No, it won't.

National Popular Vote.
 
My only problem with the EC is that most States are all or nothing. I think they (the Electors) should be divided by Congresional Districts won by each candidate. That would take the emphasis off the huge population centers like NYC, LA, Chi, Miami, etc. My vote in podunk TN would count as much as the votes in metro Memphis and Nashville. Someones vote who lives in Floyd County (Indiana) would count as much as someone who lives in Indianapolis or East Chicago/Gary.
 
BACotner said:
My only problem with the EC is that most States are all or nothing. I think they (the Electors) should be divided by Congresional Districts won by each candidate. That would take the emphasis off the huge population centers like NYC, LA, Chi, Miami, etc. My vote in podunk TN would count as much as the votes in metro Memphis and Nashville. Someones vote who lives in Floyd County (Indiana) would count as much as someone who lives in Indianapolis or East Chicago/Gary.
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Do away with the EC all together and your vote will matter wherever you live in the U.S.
 
Fisher said:
What percentage of TV money outside the 20 most populated states do you think those states will get?
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Huh? It has nothing to do with getting TV money. It's about the fact that the candidates do most of their campaigning on TV now rather than in person. And last I checked, even out in the middle of BFE, you can still get satellite, so the debates and the campaigning that's on TV is equally accessible to everyone in the country.

Fisher said:
I'd be all for ending the EC because I do not live in Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas, etc so I don't care if they never get heard, but they might have something to say about it....
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They would still get heard, and their votes would still count. They just wouldn't count for more than everyone else's votes the way they do now.
 
molten_dragon said:
Huh? It has nothing to do with getting TV money. It's about the fact that the candidates do most of their campaigning on TV now rather than in person. And last I checked, even out in the middle of BFE, you can still get satellite, so the debates and the campaigning that's on TV is equally accessible to everyone in the country.



They would still get heard, and their votes would still count. They just wouldn't count for more than everyone else's votes the way they do now.
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No they would not. People wouldn't even bother running ads to be heard on TV or on radio or in the paper in small states which is why small states would block you from ever getting the 3/4 to amend the Constitution to abolish the EC. states have not been fighting to leap frog to the front of the primary schedules because they want to be heard--they do it because there is huge pools of money in campaign ads that is dried up by the time the primaries reach them.
 
Fisher said:
No they would not. People wouldn't even bother running ads to be heard on TV or on radio or in the paper in small states which is why small states would block you from ever getting the 3/4 to amend the Constitution to abolish the EC. states have not been fighting to leap frog to the front of the primary schedules because they want to be heard--they do it because there is huge pools of money in campaign ads that is dried up by the time the primaries reach them.
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Do you think presidential candidates in electoral college atmosphere care more about small states? I can't recall the last time I heard about a candidate going to campaign in South Dakota.
 
poweRob said:
Do you think presidential candidates in electoral college atmosphere care more about small states? I can't recall the last time I heard about a candidate going to campaign in South Dakota.
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Michelle Obama visits Mount Rushmore

"Barack Obama had campaign events in South Dakota and the Black Hills during the 2008 campaign and paid a visit to Mount Rushmore."
 
Fisher said:
Michelle Obama visits Mount Rushmore

"Barack Obama had campaign events in South Dakota and the Black Hills during the 2008 campaign and paid a visit to Mount Rushmore."
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And he did so because of the electoral college? I'm not following the logic that votes from people in those states matters less without the EC.

In fact, if they get ignored, as a third party candidate, those are the ones I'd attack early so that you look more viable when you are leading in the polls in those states.
 
Fisher said:
No they would not. People wouldn't even bother running ads to be heard on TV or on radio or in the paper in small states
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Are you serious? Do you not understand how TV works? Candidates do most of their campaigning on the major national networks. National, as in, available to the entire nation.

And do you seriously think that candidates will completely ignore certain states or areas of the country when you (and thousands of other people just like you) would be waiting to jump down their throats about it?

Face the facts. The only affect that the electoral college has on campaigning is to force the candidates to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to get votes in a very small number of battleground states. That's it. It doesn't force them to pay attention to the low population states, and they aren't going to pay any less attention to the low population states if we got rid of it than they do now.
 
Our votes wouldn't mean a damn thing then, and urbanites dictate the terms.
 
Taylor said:
A national popular vote wouldn't be "winner take all"??
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A national recount (Florida 2000 style) would be quite an event.... in fact, it would be a mess; a constitutional crisis. The 50 independent elections, which are implied by the electoral college, ensure the issues of individual states are addressed; is consistent with the spirit of the 10th amendment; and is a practical way to administer a national election as any close "sub-elections" are isolated and thus more easily recounted (if you call Florida 2000 an easy recount).
 
The electoral college is just silly. It certainly doesn't protect "small states" or ensure that presidential candidates pander to their concerns. It merely shifts the battlefield to an arbitrary list of "swing states" (both large AND small).
 
It wont change since EC is the only way the GOP can win the White House. If it came down to a popular vote slog, then turn out would be key and considering there are way more Democrats than Republicans then the Dems would have the White House in most elections. With the EC, the GOP low population red states have far more power than they actually deserve.
 
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