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Understanding the Electoral College

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Great video that explains its purpose and why it's necessary.

 
At this point, people are just whining for the sake of Whining. The electoral college is a thing of sophistication and beauty.
 
Why should I trust the electoral college? They ain't played nobody good. A middle-of-the-road SEC team would kick their ass.
 
Why should I trust the electoral college? They ain't played nobody good. A middle-of-the-road SEC team would kick their ass.

I dunno.
Their team has 538 members so they could wear down their opponents with an endless supply of fresh substitutions.
 
At this point, people are just whining for the sake of Whining. The electoral college is a thing of sophistication and beauty.

i'll bet you'd say just the opposite if the tables were turned. In fact I'd bet the house on it.
 
At this point, people are just whining for the sake of Whining. The electoral college is a thing of sophistication and beauty.

Educational.

Who elects Electoral College electors?

What guarantees are there that they are not as corrupt as the rest of the political whores?

If they don't vote as expected based on the state November elections, what is the remedy and the punishment?
 
i'll bet you'd say just the opposite if the tables were turned. In fact I'd bet the house on it.

It's a losing bet since I constantly mocked Democrats for whining about Bush losing the popular vote but winning the E-COLLEGE. You're another person who has dramatically embarrassed themselves.
 
Why is the US the only country that has this weird system?

Why is the US the only country that votes on Tuesday, instead Saturday or Sunday?

Are others stupid and the US so smart?
 
Why should I trust the electoral college? They ain't played nobody good. A middle-of-the-road SEC team would kick their ass.

Why should you trust the guy that counts your vote. I might just have slipped him a $20 to change it to Trump. :lol:
 
Educational.

Who elects Electoral College electors?

What guarantees are there that they are not as corrupt as the rest of the political whores?

If they don't vote as expected based on the state November elections, what is the remedy and the punishment?

There are only a handful of cases in the last couple of hundred years where electors didn't vote in line with what the people wanted. In half of those cases it was because the candidate they were sworn to had died. In no case was the outcome of the election affected.

The electoral is an anachronism. It made sense when the states actually mattered. They don't. Even worse the electoral college system, more specifically the winner-take-all aspect of the EC system that most states implement, make most states largely irrelevant and the election decided in the "battleground states." That effectively disenfranchises a significant amount of the populace.

We should either go to a popular vote system or a system where states apportion their EC votes based on the popular vote in the state.
 
Gov 101. Representation based on LAND and POPULATION, not just population, is what the important stuff in this video really boils down to.
 
There are only a handful of cases in the last couple of hundred years where electors didn't vote in line with what the people wanted. In half of those cases it was because the candidate they were sworn to had died. In no case was the outcome of the election affected.

The electoral is an anachronism. It made sense when the states actually mattered. They don't. Even worse the electoral college system, more specifically the winner-take-all aspect of the EC system that most states implement, make most states largely irrelevant and the election decided in the "battleground states." That effectively disenfranchises a significant amount of the populace.

We should either go to a popular vote system or a system where states apportion their EC votes based on the popular vote in the state.

If the people are willing to call for a constitutional amendment, such a thing could be done.
 
Several reasons, which may or may not have been legitimate at the time but don't really have much validation now.

Here's a good article on it: Election 2016: Why Do We Vote On Tuesdays? : NPR

As for why we still do it? Tradition, I guess.

Well, we're all entitled to our own opinions that's for sure. I'd reckon that if the American populace really did feel that the electoral college was an antiquated system, a movement for a constitutional amendment rectifying such an issue would have sprung up by now. On the other hand, maybe a huge chunk of people are just too stupid to understand the electoral college and so what they don't know they don't bother complaining about.
 
There are only a handful of cases in the last couple of hundred years where electors didn't vote in line with what the people wanted. In half of those cases it was because the candidate they were sworn to had died. In no case was the outcome of the election affected.

The electoral is an anachronism. It made sense when the states actually mattered. They don't. Even worse the electoral college system, more specifically the winner-take-all aspect of the EC system that most states implement, make most states largely irrelevant and the election decided in the "battleground states." That effectively disenfranchises a significant amount of the populace.

We should either go to a popular vote system or a system where states apportion their EC votes based on the popular vote in the state.

I'd rather a system where states apportion their EC votes based on the vote within the state (which I assume is another way of saying take down the "winner-takes-all" system in some of these states in favor of a system where EC votes can potentially go to numerous different candidates based on the outcome of the vote in each state). A direct democracy doesn't seem attractive to me for many of the same reasons it wasn't attractive to the founding fathers.
 
Why should you trust the guy that counts your vote. I might just have slipped him a $20 to change it to Trump. :lol:

Dammit, because Hillary would have won if we didn't have the stupid electoral college!!!!!!!!!!
 
Gov 101. Representation based on LAND and POPULATION, not just population, is what the important stuff in this video really boils down to.

So votes of those with more Land count more than those with less Land?
 
So votes of those with more Land count more than those with less Land?

Not at all. It's dual representation, not just representation based on land.

Just as there is a senate, so is there a house of representations.

Admittedly, it won't come out to be perfectly even, it is human after all and prone to error.
 
Dammit, because Hillary would have won if we didn't have the stupid electoral college!!!!!!!!!!

That's the only reason liberals want to dump it. They don't actually respect the Constitution.
 
Not at all. It's dual representation, not just representation based on land.

Just as there is a senate, so is there a house of representations.

Admittedly, it won't come out to be perfectly even, it is human after all and prone to error.
I would prefer the electoral votes be based on each county, with no wiggle room to change the will of that county, then that area is actually represented, that I not quite how it works now.
 
Dammit, because Hillary would have won if we didn't have the stupid electoral college!!!!!!!!!!

Actually I have been thinking about this.
She wouldn't have won.

The winner calls for the majority of the vote. That means 51%.
She only got 48%.

It still would have gone to the house and trump would have won the election.
 
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