Popular or Electoral ?

[TSOL]

I always think about the 2000 Race when Gore had more votes than Bush-Assclown-warmonger

Popular vote 50,460,110 to 51,003,926

Is the electoral system a fair one or should it be decided on actual votes ?

I tend to fall into the camp of ACTUAL VOTES but am open for being enlightened

 

[pdavis]

I am of the opinion that the states electoral college should be proportioned to its popular vote.

 

[Abyss19562]

I am of the opinion that the states electoral college should be proportioned to its popular vote.

I agree with you

 

[asgardshill]

Doing away with the Electoral College is fine. If you live in a big city and agree 100 percent with the edicts of the politicians in said big city, that is. On the other hand, if you live in Flyover Country or are a minority, your representation in the halls of power is pretty much limited to "Shut up and pay your taxes" with a straight popular vote.

The Founding Fathers knew this was true as well, and I tend to trust their judgement over a few holdover Sore Losermen still holding a grudge from 2000.

 

[Truth Warrior]

How about votes by county in 2000 and 2004?
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/vote2004/countymap2000.htm

 

[literatim]

We are a republic, not a democracy. It is funny that people want to solve our election process with more of what has already caused our problems to begin with--which is the deterioration of our republic.

 

[Goldwater Conservative]

All the Electoral College does nowadays is filter the popular vote. Under the winner-take-all arrangement, it doesn't benefit small states that much, since the swing states tend to be larger. Also, the effect of the +2 from their equal representation in the Senate barely skews the results considering how many Representatives there are (80% of our Congress is based on population, after all).

Personally, I would prefer a direct election based on popular vote, coupled with a weaker presidency and less government power at the federal level. The proportional allotment of electoral votes is also a good compromise idea (but not the one based on congressional districts, which would probably be worse than the current system).

 

[SovereignMN]

If you eliminate the electoral college and go to a popular vote then what will happen? The candidates will only campaign in the major metropolitan areas. Since the major metropolitan areas are overwhelmingly liberal and craving government welfare you will have BOTH parties scrambling to increase the size of government....MUCH MORE SO THAN NOW!

If you think the government has expanded beyond it's constitutional limits now, you ain't seen nothing yet.

The founders were genius in crafting the electoral college. It retains State Sovereignty. State "X" has Y% representation in Congress, then they get Y% of the voice in electing our President.

 

[apropos]

The electoral college isn't perfect, but the Founding Fathers weighed their options and decided it was the best of all available solutions. They feared that a tyrant could manipulate the populace in a direct democracy and achieve the presidency that way. They wanted to give extra power to the smaller states (thus minimizing the chances of a Civil War and tensions between large and small states), and they wanted to create a buffer between the population and the presidency in the hopes that the greater good would always be chosen upon. The electoral college also meets only once, so it is more impervious to foreign manipulation.

Obviously these solutions aren't full proof, and the shortcomings were known at the outset of the founding of the republic. This is why it was said "a Republic if you can keep it".

For this question, it might be best to hear it from the horse's mouth. Federalist Paper #68 is Alexander Hamilton's argument for the electoral college. There are some more related Federalist papers also, I think.

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/federal/fed68.htm

It's important to remember that a lynch mob is democracy in action. Perhaps that is why the word 'democracy' doesn't appear in any of our founding documents a single time.

 

[jmbrewr]

The last thing we want to have happen today is to do away with the electoral votes for several VERY obvious reasons:
1. The demographics would leave out any and all rural populations during the campaign.
2. From the results so far in this election MOST of Americans are either illinformed or uneducated
and
3. We are not a democracy for a very important reason: The individual gets left out and eventually discriminatory practices become the norm. We do not want a majority to determine what is good for all because the influx of immigrants in the past 20 years have come from socialist countries or countries ruled by either a dictator or a monarch. Bringing this mentality into our political system would seriously undermine "by and for the people" and the idea of personal liberty. Think about it: a majority of religions in the world believe that the state should be managed by a religious ideology. And a lot of these ideologies teach that if you do not adhere to the rules and laws of their religion you are deemed an outcast of some sort and should be put to death. I for one do not wish for this ideology to take a front row seat to Personal Liberty

 

[IndieRocker79]

Does the electoral college system need reformed to keep up with the changing times? Probably. Does it need done away with in favor of a strict popular vote? HELL NO! I like the idea of proportionate delegation of the college like certain States have begun. For instance let's pretend the popular vote in the sovereign State of Mishatuckiana is as follows:

Candidate A 150,002
Candidate B 149,273

We'll say the sovereign State of Mishatuckiana has 5 electoral votes up for grabs. In the winner take all system, Candidate A presumably gets all 5 votes. In Congressional district allocated delegation, Candidate B could actually end up with all 5 votes. Neither is very representative of what the people in this State decided. Thus I would like to see 3 to Candidate A and 2 to Candidate B. That is the most fair and representative manner for the State's electorate to vote.

Is it exactly what our Founding Fathers had in mind? Yes and no. Obviously it isn't what the Constitution dictates. However, the Constitutional authors didn't calculate long math into the future to determine we'd hold 50 states all of unequal proportion in the difference of millions of residents, either. The Founding Fathers never intended nor expected these United States of America to be as geographically large and demographically populous as we have become. So the system needs to be examined and altered, in the spirit of the system as it was originally designed. I believe the representative delegation via popular vote percentage is the fairest way. 51% to 49% = even split with 1 extra delegate to the winner. 75% to 25% = a 3-to-1 split with 1 extra delegate to the winner. And so on. How states with an even number of delegates would handle this would requite more thought. However, I feel each State should implement some form of this system. Everyone who agrees should pressure their State legislatures to vote on an amendment to do so.

God save the Republic!

 

[Goldwater Conservative]

If you eliminate the electoral college and go to a popular vote then what will happen? The candidates will only campaign in the major metropolitan areas. Since the major metropolitan areas are overwhelmingly liberal and craving government welfare you will have BOTH parties scrambling to increase the size of government....MUCH MORE SO THAN NOW!

But the problem is the metropolitan areas don't vote as a bloc. 80% of this country is urban, and about the same percentage of this country's conservatives and libertarians live in urban areas. In fact, rural areas have their fair share of leftist policies... just ask Iowa and its farm subsidies.