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Do you like the electoral college voting system?

Do you like the electoral college voting system?

  • Yes, I think it serves its purpose very well.

    Votes: 19 33.9%

  • No, I think there are better alternatives.

    Votes: 23 41.1%

  • I think it has legitimate rasoning but could use some reform.

    Votes: 14 25.0%
  • Total voters
    56
Another thread about how people want something changed and no discussion how they propose to get it changed. Face it, it will not changed in your lifetime and probably never.

The founding fathers who were smart enough to know that there should be a way to change it but that it should only happen with broad support.
 
iacardsfan said:
Get rid of it. It was implemented because back in the day there were nearly no educated voters, there was no mass media, and essentially the biggest states had the best chance because they had the most people to vote for their hometown guy. Now we all know that we have means of becoming informed and we are not just going to vote for the guy we know. There is no need for it.
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>implying that that has changed or ever will change
 
bigchief said:
Here's a few extreme scenarios I came up with. Granted this would never happen, but it's within the realm of possibility with our current system. Also I'm sure that my numbers aren't 100% percent accurate but they're close enough to give you the general idea why I'm opposed to the electoral college.

Scenario #1
11 states vote for the winner with a 1 vote victory in each state. Half of their voting pop. in 2012 was roughly 32 million.
(California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas)

39 states and the District of Columbia vote 100% for the loser. Their voting pop. in 2012 was roughly 56 million + all the people in the other 11 states that voted for the loser = 88 million.

32 million win with 270 electoral votes
88 million lose with 268 electoral votes

Scenario #2
39 states and D.C. vote for the winner with a 1 vote victory in each state. Half of their voting pop. 28 million.

11 states vote 100% for the loser. Their voting pop. 64 million + all the people in the other 39 states and D.C. that voted for the loser = 92 million.
(CA,FL,GA,IL,MI,NY,NC,OH,PA,TX, and Washington in exchange for New Jersey)

28 million win with 270 electoral votes
92 million lose with 268 electoral votes

Scenario #3
11 states vote 100% for the winner. voting pop.= 64 million (270 electoral votes)
(CA,FL,GA,IL,MI,NJ,NY,NC,OH,PA,TX)

39 states and D.C. vote 100% for the loser. voting pop.= 56 million (268 electoral votes)

Scenario #4
39 states and D.C. vote 100% for the winner. voting pop.= 56 million (270 electoral votes)

11 states vote 100% for the loser. voting pop.= 64 million (268 electoral votes)
(CA,FL,GA,IL,MI,NY,NC,OH,PA,TX,WA)
Click to expand...
I support the existing electoral collage system because it is the best way to represent the will of the people while protecting the voice of the individual states.
 
haymarket said:
Popular vote winner should get elected. Flush the Electoral College.
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Popular-vote aka mob-rule is exactly what the electoral collage was made to defend against.
 
Gore would have won without electoral college. We wouldn't have been in Iraq also so sure.
 
JohnWOlin said:
Gore would have won without electoral college. We wouldn't have been in Iraq also so sure.
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Right, and if Obama had won in 2008 he would have closed Git'Mo and got us out of Afghanistan immediately. Life would be perfect if only we could get our party into power.
 
obvious Child said:
Proportionally allocation of each state's EC. Make at least part of each state a battleground.
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How?

A state is a battleground for a reason. No one arbitrarily just decided "ok, this and this and that state are battlegrounds but no others".
 
Jerry said:
How?

A state is a battleground for a reason. No one arbitrarily just decided "ok, this and this and that state are battlegrounds but no others".
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What do you mean "how?" Proportional allocation changes how ECs are allocated. Rather than all 55 of California's votes goes towards a Democrat due to the winner take all, only a portion of it does. This gives Republicans incentive to actually compete in California. Same thing for Texas except it's Democrats.
 
Get rid of it completely. It's outdated and unnecessary. Hopefully the national popular vote movement gets enough states to sign on to do an end run around it so it doesn't have to be changed in the constitution.
 
haymarket said:
Popular vote winner should get elected. Flush the Electoral College.
Click to expand...

I like that idea, but it would be very hard to pass since it would require a constitutional amendment. An alternative would be to have every state do it like the only 2 sane states (Nebraska and Maine) do it. States could dole out their electoral votes based on the percentage of their popular vote. That way the electoral college vote would more accurately reflect the popular vote.
 
Jerry said:
Popular-vote aka mob-rule is exactly what the electoral collage was made to defend against.
Click to expand...

Your premise fails right out of the gate. Popular vote is NOT mob rule. It is how we elect every public official in America. MOB RULE is a right wing euphemism designed to scare the elite who feel they need extraordinary protection against the wishes of the American people. The word MOB is suppose to conjure up images of roaming bands of cretins armed with pitchforks and torches, perhaps today guns and other weaponry, rampaging through our streets in wild rioting doing their worst to the innocent. It is a dishonest term intentually used to commit intellectual fraud of the worst sort.


There is no MOB who elects state governors. There is no MOB which elects state senators or representatives. There is no MOB which elects members of Congress. There is no MOB which elects mayors and councils and school boards. All these people go through a peaceful, organized and systematic election process and the winner of the peoples vote gets the office to represent the people.

Yes, many of the sainted Founders were indeed part of the elite of that time two and one-quarter centuries ago. They wanted to protect what they had and saw the Electoral College as a final bulwark against the will of the people should it come to that. That reality is NOT something to trumpet or be proud of. It is a sad historical reality that we should be ashamed of just like the found a way to continue the practice of slavery or treat females as little better than something above farm animals.

The Electoral College may be the last vestige of protecting privilege and power for the American elites and we should admit that and crush and flush it ASAP.
 
DashingAmerican said:
The system definitely needs reformed, I think instead of by state they should do it by county even.
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If we do it by county, the number of delegates would need to increase as we have well over 538 counties in the country. Plus if you still want to have any notion of fairness you would need to do something similar to the EC and try to proportion # of votes by population within the counties. I could easily imagine the delegation count being over 5,000.

Not a huge deal, but unnecessarily complicated and still prone to many of the problems that the EC has.

Personally, I would love to go to a proportional system. People are going to vote for parties anyway, at least the vast majority, so just accept that and go with it. If you do proportional systems, the various subgroups in each party don't have to keep their uneasy marriage and we can go with smaller and more narrowly focused parties that actually better represent people's interests.
 
I believe the President should have to carry the popular vote in at least twenty-six (26) states in order to become commander-in-chief. I do not like that a President could win only the 11 most populated ones and be leader of the other 39.
 
johnny_rebson said:
We must keep the electoral college.

If we switched to the popular vote, states like Montana and Wyoming would be completely ignored during the presidential election.
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How many times did Romney and Obama visit these two states or even talk about their local state issues? They were considered safe states and pretty much ignored anyway.
 
Black_Zawisza said:
>implying that that has changed or ever will change
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Even if we are not educated, we have the mass media that allows us to know the candidates, not just go n and blindly vote.
 
haymarket said:
Your premise fails right out of the gate. Popular vote is NOT mob rule. It is how we elect every public official in America. MOB RULE is a right wing euphemism designed to scare the elite who feel they need extraordinary protection against the wishes of the American people. The word MOB is suppose to conjure up images of roaming bands of cretins armed with pitchforks and torches, perhaps today guns and other weaponry, rampaging through our streets in wild rioting doing their worst to the innocent. It is a dishonest term intentually used to commit intellectual fraud of the worst sort.


There is no MOB who elects state governors. There is no MOB which elects state senators or representatives. There is no MOB which elects members of Congress. There is no MOB which elects mayors and councils and school boards. All these people go through a peaceful, organized and systematic election process and the winner of the peoples vote gets the office to represent the people.

Yes, many of the sainted Founders were indeed part of the elite of that time two and one-quarter centuries ago. They wanted to protect what they had and saw the Electoral College as a final bulwark against the will of the people should it come to that. That reality is NOT something to trumpet or be proud of. It is a sad historical reality that we should be ashamed of just like the found a way to continue the practice of slavery or treat females as little better than something above farm animals.

The Electoral College may be the last vestige of protecting privilege and power for the American elites and we should admit that and crush and flush it ASAP.
Click to expand...

So you would like that the state of California would pretty much elect a president every four years? That is what we would get.

We need to reform the system, but true democracy is not the way to go. If we went to strict popular vote, then why would a voter in Idaho even feel the need to cast a ballot when they know the population in California will trump all the votes?

Each state should be represented in presidential elections.
 
AreteCourage said:
So you would like that the state of California would pretty much elect a president every four years? That is what we would get.

We need to reform the system, but true democracy is not the way to go. If we went to strict popular vote, then why would a voter in Idaho even feel the need to cast a ballot when they know the population in California will trump all the votes?

Each state should be represented in presidential elections.
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It would be one person, one vote. An Idahoan's vote would count just as much as a Californian's.
 
Luna Tick said:
It would be one person, one vote. An Idahoan's vote would count just as much as a Californian's.
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Yes but when you have a population of around 37 million people compared to 1.5 million people...you see that big difference?

Strict popular vote would ensure that Californians would pretty much dictate presidential elections.
 
So what? Should the vote of someone in a smaller state have more value than one of a larger state? Every vote should have equal value. Right now they don't.
 
I agree the system should be changed. Also I am tired of hearing Ohio, Iowa, and NH deciding anything.

Message to Ohio.....We gonna do all we can to make sure ya azz aint deciding shiznit anymore. Time for Ohio, Iowa and NH to hit the back of the Bus and STFU! :2mad: :tomato:
 
AreteCourage said:
So you would like that the state of California would pretty much elect a president every four years? That is what we would get.

We need to reform the system, but true democracy is not the way to go. If we went to strict popular vote, then why would a voter in Idaho even feel the need to cast a ballot when they know the population in California will trump all the votes?

Each state should be represented in presidential elections.
Click to expand...

I have no idea what you are talking about with that California remark. Could you please explain how a state with about 11% of the US population would control an entire national election?
 
Luna Tick said:
So what? Should the vote of someone in a smaller state have more value than one of a larger state? Every vote should have equal value. Right now they don't.
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Its even worse. California has 55 electoral votes for a population of nearly 38 million people. Wyoming has 3 electoral votes for a population of nearly 570,000 people.

Break that down into electoral votes per person and we find that in California one EV goes for about 690,000 people. However, in Wyoming, one electoral votes accounts for only 190,000 people.

What that means is that the voter in Wyoming has three and a half times the actual weighted voting power of the voter in California.

That is a gross violation of the sacred American principle of one person - one vote. Sadly, that principle does not apply to the electoral college. And that is one reason why we should get rid of the relic of a time when we protected elites at the expense of everyone else.
 
haymarket said:
I have no idea what you are talking about with that California remark. Could you please explain how a state with about 11% of the US population would control an entire national election?
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11% is by far and away the most in our nation. The next state (Texas) is 8.04% of the population followed by New York which is 6.19%. California won Obama the popular vote during this election. 3% higher population makes a hell of a difference when we're talking about millions of people. Being a west coast state means that by the end of the election day that state would be the largest one yet to be counted with 11% of the population. 11% is nothing to sneeze at.

Romney had a lead in the popular vote before California was counted...look what happened afterwards. Obama got a 3 million advantage.

Now I'm not saying our current system is good because it isn't by any means. However, strict popular vote is no better.
 
But really - so what? Why should the vote of one American be any different in weight than the vote of another American regardless of what state they may reside in? People do not vote for a presidential candidate because they live in a certain state. Why should one EC vote in Wyoming be worth three and a half times what one EC vote from California is worth?
 
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