Electoral college for presidential elections - good or bad?

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In summary, the electoral college system is less reliable due to the fact that it only listens to the people in states that are majority republican or democrat, and that the electors can choose to not vote with whomever the state votes for.
  • #1
KingNothing
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4
I'm undecided and would like to hear your viewpoints.
 
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  • #2
did you check to see if this has been discussed before?
 
  • #3
Bad, imo. It might just be since I live in Utah and therefore doesn't matter what I vote anyway, since, due to jerrymandering, I will never be heard anyway.

The electoral college just allows jerrymandering (intentional or not) to happen. It also basically nullifies anybody's vote who lives in any state that is a majority of some other party (for republicans that would be california and a few others, and for dems it would be utah and a few others).

Go with the people's vote. They've been doing it reliably in Europe for years, and I don't see why it cannot or shouldn't be done in the U.S., since we don't do paper voting anymore and our machines, AFAIK, have been reliable.
 
  • #4
I think it is good because it increases the voting power of people who live in small states.
 
  • #5
I live in a small state, but I happen to think that the electoral college system is perverted. It was handy back when our electors had to travel by horse or coach to the capitol to cast our votes. It is entirely unnecessary, now. We can vote in real-time unless Diebold finds a way to corrupt that, too.
 
  • #6
I don't think the electoral college is good or bad, but unnecessary. I think we should try direct popular vote when it comes to presidential elections.
 
  • #7
All you're doing is switching between whose voice is basically silenced. Instead of republicans in california and democrats in utah being meaningless votes, you have rural people who won't be listened to by politicians. For example, here in California, state politics pretty much centers around LA and SF. No one really cares about rural areas.
 
  • #8
turbo-1 said:
I live in a small state, but I happen to think that the electoral college system is perverted. It was handy back when our electors had to travel by horse or coach to the capitol to cast our votes. It is entirely unnecessary, now. We can vote in real-time ...
How does that follow? Electors traveling by horse and carriage just as easily could also be carrying a piece of paper with the popular vote on it!
 
  • #9
russ_watters said:
How does that follow? Electors traveling by horse and carriage just as easily could also be carrying a piece of paper with the popular vote on it!
And they were empowered to violate that vote in the case of contention. Catch a clue.
 
  • #10
Well, which method silences more people?
 
  • #11
KingNothing said:
Well, which method silences more people?

I'm going to have to go with Electoral college vote.

See, there shouldn't be too much of a worry about rural vs urban people since representation is handled through Congress/Senate, not the Presidency, and any issues with how the congress/senate are decided upon is up to the state (some use caucus, others use direct voting). The President is basically a representative of the country as a whole. If you listen to the electoral college, you normally get what the people truly vote for, but on occasion, the person with the "popular vote" loses because of the electoral college.

From http://www.infoplease.com/spot/campaign2000race.html

Four times in election history a candidate has won the popular vote but lost the election.

1824, Andrew Jackson had popular vote, but there was a bit of a dispute, house voted to put in Quincy Adams
1876, Samuel J. Tilden had the popular vote, but lost electoral vote to Rutherford B Hayes (185 - 184)
1888, Benjamin Harrison became president by winning 233 electoral votes, even though he received only 47.8% of the popular vote. His opponent, Grover Cleveland, garnered 48.6% of the popular vote, yet received only 168 electoral votes.
and the most recent one:
2000, Al Gore won 48.38% of the popular vote and 266 electoral votes. George W. Bush won only 47.87% of the popular vote but received 271 electoral votes, thus won the election.

(I paraphrased some, copy-pasted the rest)

While the electoral college voters are supposed to vote with their constituents, sometimes they don't (again from same site as above):

In 1988 for example, a West Virginia elector did not vote for Michael Dukakis, who had carried that state. Instead the elector voted for Dukakis's running mate, Texas senator Lloyd Bentsen.

Unless someone rigs a voting machine (or several, really), the electoral college remains less reliable due to several factors, the first being that in states like California - people are ignored when they aren't republican, simply because a majority of the state is not, therefore giving ALL of the states votes to the democrat, even if it might be about 30% voting for the republican.

Secondly: the electoral college electors can choose to not vote with whomever the state votes for, though it causes a bit of a stir, thus fouling up the entire vote.


Some say that the electoral college is beneficial though since it makes the candidates pay attention to relatively small states like Utah, or Colorado, or Wisconsin. I would argue though, that, again, the President's job is to represent the US as a whole, not be unfairly biased towards smaller states. They have the senate for that, in which the smallest 25 states (accounting for an incredibly small amount of the population) can vote for/against any other bill that affects them in the legislative branch.
 
  • #12
What if everyone voted for three electors, one representing their district and two representing the entire state. It would still help the smaller states but your minority vote in California or Texas could still have an impact.

PS It would be interesting if someone calculated the result of Bush vs. Gore using this method.
 
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  • #13
turbo-1 said:
And they were empowered to violate that vote in the case of contention. Catch a clue.
...so you agree that the traveling has nothing to do with it?
 
  • #14
It gets kind of frustrating for people living in non-swing states, both dem's and repub's alike, because their votes are generally much less meaningful.
 
  • #15
skippy1729 said:
What if everyone voted for three electors, one representing their district and two representing the entire state. It would still help the smaller states but your minority vote in California or Texas could still have an impact.

PS It would be interesting if someone calculated the result of Bush vs. Gore using this method.
You could do that, and I think it would get rid of some of the disparity, but if you're going to take the time to tally everyone's vote in order to get district/state results, why not just tally everyone's vote and take that at it's value and put whoever wins that as president?
 
  • #16
the main problem is not the electoral college, but rather the winner take all aspect.
 
  • #17
Physics-Learner said:
the main problem is not the electoral college, but rather the winner take all aspect.

Yeah, but the only way to have a non-winner-takes-all aspect is to have it just be individual vote based.

Even if you split it by the street, and have each street vote, it would still be winner-takes-all... just... in this case the winner takes a lot less. Even in an individual vote you could say the winner takes all, but... you can't exactly say "I'd like 51.5% McCain and 48.5% Obama" as an individual - that just makes no sense.

Again though, if we're going to have to tally everyone's vote to get the idea of what the elector person should vote for, then we might as well just tally everyone's vote and be done with it.

Also, while there might be times that an elector would like to vote against his people in the case of contention... I don't see that as a good thing. Good or bad, we have a representative democracy for a reason.
 
  • #18
an electoral college does not require actual electoral humans to vote.

you can have a non-winner-take-all by simply portioning the electoral votes.

i am not necessarily against a popular vote, just saying that you can have an electoral vote. the main reason for this sort of electoral vote versus a popular vote is to give the smaller states a bit more say.

i think this was promised to the smaller states to get them to join the union. if this is true, i don't know that we can take it away now.

i would prefer a very small federal govt, so the issue would start to become moot.
 
  • #19
Physics-Learner said:
an electoral college does not require actual electoral humans to vote.

you can have a non-winner-take-all by simply portioning the electoral votes.

i am not necessarily against a popular vote, just saying that you can have an electoral vote. the main reason for this sort of electoral vote versus a popular vote is to give the smaller states a bit more say.

i think this was promised to the smaller states to get them to join the union. if this is true, i don't know that we can take it away now.

i would prefer a very small federal govt, so the issue would start to become moot.

Oh trust me, I don't take much of what anyone says here as their actual opinion. It is nice to have good arguments though on what a lot of people would see as a "Trivial" thing.

I'll have to ponder this some more. :D
 
  • #20
russ_watters said:
...so you agree that the traveling has nothing to do with it?
The problem was that the votes had to be reconciled once electors from all the districts showed up. That allowed back-room dealing and "unfaithful" casting of electoral votes. And at the time that this system was set up, traveling time (by coach, horse) could be very time-consuming. This system did not allow electors to get feed-back from their constituents when they were faced with choices about whom to throw the votes to.

Today, a national popular vote would be a much fairer system with less opportunity for leveraging heavily populated states into "winner-take-all" situations in which people in less populated states are ignored.

We hear it all the time. If candidate X can carry NY, PA, OH, and CA, (s)he's in good shape with the electoral votes. That's no way to run a national election, and it perverts political discourse by allowing parties to swamp key states with money while ignoring the will of the general populace.
 
  • #21
As many have alluded to: the electoral college is a core principle of American government to prevent majority oppression. The electoral college prevents the urban centers from totally ignoring the very necessary rural areas. This minority protection (and I don't mean minority race) is there to preserve the democratic process and actually allow for freedoms for all citizens - not just those in the majority of opinion. The founding fathers totally understood that democracy, itself, can be a form of oppression. Many of those that came to American in the 17th and 18th century were outcasts and understood that their place wasn't neccessarilly viewed positively by the majority, so the government was setup with these protections. We have representation by not only population (House) but by state membership (senate). These together form a balance of location and population based representation which help to mitigate any majority oppression (presuming that larger states would attempt to oppress the smaller states via policy or otherwise).

This is one of the more common arguements, and I am suprised no one has said it yet: but without the electoral college, presidental candidates can 'fly over' less populated states. They only need to go to the population centers to garner support. With the electoral college, all of the country means something (except AK and HI, apparently? but that's a different issue).

The electoral college is also a firm reminder that individuals do not elect the president, the states do. It's just mandated that states hold the election on the same day every cycle. If the electoral college was to be eliminated, it would further change the states to just being vestigal administrative bodies.

Without this equal representation across different lines - what is to stop a policy that gives tax breaks to urban dwellers while putting additional taxes on rural folk and farmers? The urban folk will clearly not want to pay more taxes and could easilly 'out vote'* the farmers and impose restrictions that are fundamentally unfair. The electoral college (and senatorial representation) both serve as checks to protect the local-minoritys in the country.


(*I really wanted to use the phrase 'out democratize' heh)
 
  • #22
turbo-1 said:
Today, a national popular vote would be a much fairer system with less opportunity for leveraging heavily populated states into "winner-take-all" situations in which people in less populated states are ignored.

We hear it all the time. If candidate X can carry NY, PA, OH, and CA, (s)he's in good shape with the electoral votes. That's no way to run a national election, and it perverts political discourse by allowing parties to swamp key states with money while ignoring the will of the general populace.

Part of that dicotomy, though, is the 'swing state' mentality. That presumption about 'carrying' those different states is already seeing 30 other states as republican locks and 5 other states as democrat locks. Those states listed above just happen to be the largest swing states (however CA hasn't been 'red' since the 80s). I'd argue that a popular vote would cause an even further centralization of campaigning. You can drop PA and OH off those campaign stops. NY, TX and CA would be where 90% of the campaign time was done.
 
  • #23
whether we want to give some people more power than others is debatable, for sure.

we would be much better off with a small federal govt, such that most issues are decided within each state.

but by far and away, the biggest unfairness comes from the winner-take-all aspect of elections. by far and away, this is the reason that many states are "flown over".

most states are going to vote one way or the other, regardless of what the candidate says. this is why our elections come down to 10 states instead of 50. and what we most need to change.

each state should get a number of electoral votes. again, a separate issue as to whether they are apportioned only by population, or by region as well.

but then each state, without any need for real electoral college people, automatically send their electoral votes based upon the popular vote of the state.

a few states already do this. if i recall, colorado is one of them.
 
  • #24
Physics-Learner said:
but then each state, without any need for real electoral college people, automatically send their electoral votes based upon the popular vote of the state.

a few states already do this. if i recall, colorado is one of them.

Maine and Nebraska are the only states to do this, and they just subdivide by congressional district, not by percentage of popular vote.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_District_Method#Congressional_District_Method
 
  • #25
I recommend anyone interested in this to read what the people who came up with it were thinking. It's in The Federalist Papers, mostly 68, but also sprinkled throughout. Some of the conditions that led to this decision are still true today; others are not. I will leave you with a quote from 68:

"Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States."
 
  • #26
hi mege,

at least it is not a winner take all, and is a better attempt at fairness.
 
  • #27
The electoral college is not really set up to protect the rights of the less-populated states, IMO. That protection is more logically embodied in giving less-populated states 2 senators each. James Madison's Virginia plan would have apportioned Senators by population. Instead a compromise was reached in which House seats were apportioned by population and each state got 2 senators, so that the sovereignty of the smaller states would not be so threatened by the might of the larger ones.
 
  • #28
Vanadium 50 said:
"Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States."

Oh, the naivete of a world that hadn't yet experienced television!

The entire idea was based on a Republican form of government. The average person was a citizen of his state and his state was a member of the United States of America. As such, a person's state should represent him and the rest of the people in his state in the federal government.

In fact, a person's representative in the House is the only person in the federal government that the average person could vote for. Senators were selected by the state legislature.

The idea of how electoral votes were divvied up just mirrored how the legislative body was divvied up.

The only unique idea was electing special electors to vote for a President. The more common way, at least at that time, would have been to let members of Congress vote for a President.

There is no requirement for a winner take all electoral vote. How electors are selected is something left entirely to the state. The electors could be selected by the state legislature or they could be voted on directly by the people. A state could let each elector vote their own conscience, a state could decide to select electors proportionally to the candidate's popularity in that state, or the state could craftily increase the power it has in an election by deciding that the electoral vote from that state has to be unanimous - with the pitfall being that every other state copies them to restore the power balance.

All of that made sense back in the days when the average person was hardly ever effected by the federal government. Their local and state elections were much more important. How could the average person know much about a candidate from a completely different state, anyway?

Today, I think it ought to at least be conceded that people are a lot more affected by the federal government they used to be and they know a lot more about national candidates than they used to.

Just as we had a Constitutional Amendment to force popular elections for Senators, we need a Constitutional Amendment to force national popular elections for President.

The drawback would be elections so close they require a recount. There's still a logistical advantage to limiting the chaos to a few small regions of the country (unless a recount is conducted in California which, sizewise, is a small country in a larger country).
 
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1. What is the purpose of the Electoral College in presidential elections?

The Electoral College was established as a compromise between electing the President by popular vote and allowing Congress to select the President. The purpose is to give smaller states a voice in the election and prevent larger, more populous states from dominating the process.

2. How does the Electoral College work?

The Electoral College is made up of 538 electors, with each state having a certain number based on their representation in Congress. When voters cast their ballots for President, they are actually voting for a slate of electors pledged to a particular candidate. The candidate who wins the popular vote in each state receives all of that state's electoral votes. The candidate who receives a majority of the electoral votes (270 or more) wins the presidency.

3. Is the Electoral College a fair system?

This is a highly debated question. Some argue that it is fair because it gives smaller states a say in the election and prevents candidates from only focusing on highly populated areas. Others argue that it is unfair because it allows a candidate to win the presidency without winning the popular vote.

4. Has the Electoral College ever caused controversy?

Yes, there have been several instances where a candidate has won the popular vote but lost the election due to the Electoral College. The most recent and notable example is the 2016 election, where Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but Donald Trump won the presidency due to his electoral votes.

5. Can the Electoral College be changed or abolished?

Yes, the Electoral College can be changed or abolished, but it would require a constitutional amendment. This would require a two-thirds majority vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, and then ratification by three-fourths of the states. There have been multiple attempts to change or abolish the Electoral College, but none have been successful so far.

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