Want to know why the Electoral College has outlived its usefulness and needs to be replaced by a system based on the popular vote in order to ensure the future of our democracy? This Web site --- www.nationalpopularvote.com -- will answer every conceivable question and concern you might hold that runs counter to the idea.
Still want to debate the matter? Bring yourself back here, and -- despite this being a site devoted to technology and not politics -- we'll have ourselves a public back-and-forth.
Want to read what some of the nation's major newspapers are saying about the drive to ditch the Electoral College, try this editorial from the New York Times and this one from the Chicago Sun-Times.
Honestly, I'm itching for a fight. Make my day.
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Electoral College
Popular vote is mob rule. The Electoral College throws a roadblock in their path.
We have gotten into the mess we are in by ignoring the wisdom of some dead old white guys who were pretty smart. They revolted over 1% taxartion and we can't even calculate the per cent we pay. We'd have a better chance of knowing where an electron is than the exact percentage we pay in taxes. Politicians do a GREAT job of hiding the true cost.
Before you continue the erosion of the Constitution, let's consider that we are NOT a democracy. We are republic. The foundation of a republic is that minorities have rights! And, we are all minorities at one time or another.
I am immediately opposed to anyone changing the Constitutional process since we have a great track record of screwing things up. Let's just review some of the more bone-headed ones: Sixteenth Ammendment gave us an income tax. Ninteenth Ammendment women's vote gave us the Prohibition Ammendment which gave us organized crime. Twenty Second Ammendment that gives us lame duck Presidents.
And we have enough screwballs running around changing stuff even without changing the Constitution. Our money is valueless; backed only by the full faith and credit of something called the "Federal Reserve Bank" -- a club of bankers. Our national debt is a joke. Education is a government run dumbing down of our people. Illegals are invading our country. The "war on drugs" is filling our prisons, infringing on our liberty, and defying human nature. Government in healthcare is killing us while bankrupting us. Social Security is a Ponzi scheme.
AND, government at all levels is running amok.
Here you are advocating changing to be MORE democratic?
Please stick to technology. Social engineering is best left to the philosophers and cynics. At least they understand what a dangerous thing a human being is. And when that life form gangs up into "government", it is like a plague of locust.
Bear in mind that only the government is capable of committing a genocide. It's a powerful force that needs to be constrained, restricted, and severly limited.
The electoral college is one way to do just that.
IMHO!
The gentleperson's humble rant
Oh, goodie-goodie, someone took the bait.
A few points to address in this person's defense of the Electoral College:
First of all, the Constitution is silent on the method of electing the president and vice president. States themselves decide how their electors will be aportioned to the EC, hence the situation where a couple of states buck the winner-take-all convention (Maine, and, oh, I forget). So, there would be no need whatsoever to monkey with the Constitution to do away with the EC; all it would take would be for states representing 270 electoral votes to agree to commit all of their electors to the winner of the popular vote -- period. The other states could go on doing whatever they please and it won't matter.
As for trampling on minority rights, the EC already does that in spades, presuming by "minority" we mean small-state votes. Twelve of the 13 least populace states (NH being the exception) are so predictably aligned with one of the two major parties that the allocation of their EC votes is a foregone conclusion, hence they matter not a bit in the general election. Ditching the EC would once again put *all* the residents of these small states in play. Same goes for the big states, of course, as it should: It's just ridiculous that Republicans in California and Democrats in Texas play no appreciable role in electing presidents, while Texas Republicans and California Democrats are routinely taken for granted by the campaigns.
Oh, this is fun ...
Plurality not the answer
Unreconstructed southern states-righter that I am, I was prepared to defend "not messing with the Constitution" with both barrels, but while checking my facts, I won myself over to the Buzz side.
A federalist issue changed my mind: if candidates don’t have to worry about winning battleground states, there will more incentive for them to address real national issues and leave purely state matters alone.
But the popular vote plan at NationalPopularVote.com isn’t the solution. It even exacerbates one of the major problems the Electoral College has – what to do one no candidate receives a majority of the vote, which has happened in forty percent of the presidential elections in my lifetime.
As proposed, the plan is a pure plurality system, which awards the election to the candidate who has the most votes. France has a similar system and in the 2002 election, Jacques Chirac was first in the voting with just under 20% of the total. Results like that certainly encourage the opposition to question a winner's legitimacy. If Le Pen had swung another 1.5% of the voters from Chirac, France might have given its presidency to their very own version of David Duke. Fortunately for them, their method does provide a workable, if flawed, solution – a runoff – and Chirac cleanly won the second round with more than 80% of the vote.
Any replacement for the Electoral College should guarantee that the winner not only has the most votes, but has a majority of them. My own vote would go to the instant runoff method, where voters can indicate their second choices and more in case their preferred candidate is eliminated. It sounds complicated but is already used in some US cities like San Francisco and Cambridge, Massachusetts and in Irish national elections.
It probably is impossible to amend the Electoral College out of the Constitution, but NationalPopularVote.com does propose a workaround that seems doable. I would just hope they change the proposal to use something other than a straight plurality.
Modify it, don't kill it
The EC has one major flaw. The winner take all principle. My modification is a simple one, do away with the electors and and award the EC in direct proportion to the state's popular vote.
Example: Canidate A wins 40% of New York's popular vote, he gets 40% of New York's electorial vote. That would more match the "will of the people".
So what if we don't know the winner for two days. What's the hurry?
Excellent points
The plurality vs. majority question is an excellent one, although I'm not sure that our two-party system, however deeply flawed, doesn't already do a good enough job of preventing an outcome similar to what happened in France. Run-offs seem too radical to gain the necessary political support.
Eliminating winner-take-all from the EC would seem to be a step in the right direction, but then what exactly would the EC's purpose be?
And, once again, since there's *nothing* about the EC in the Constitution there would seem to be a decent chance that eliminating the thing in favor of *some* better system could be accomplished with surprising ease.
EC is in the Constitution
The Constitution doesn't name it, but it clearly defines the Electoral college.
This language would have to change in order to eliminate Electors and the EC and that can only happen if all but twelve states ratify a constitutional amendment. Since thirty-two states stand to lose electoral influence by doing so, that's a long shot at best.
Section 1 goes on to lay out electors responsibilities and one thing is clear: without an amendment, they are not obligated to vote at anyone's direction; not governors, not legislatures, not even voters. Electors are typically pledged to vote for a particular candidate but there is no Federal penalty for dishonoring that pledge as the Supreme Court has ruled that a state matter. It is possible to run a slate of unpledged electors, though, and such slates have won as recently as 1960. Alexander Hamilton explained how the system was supposed to work in Federalist Paper #68.
One system that might have a chance of replacing WTA is the Congressional District method now used in Nebraska and Maine. Each district chooses an elector with the remaining two going to whichever candidate gets the most votes statewide. The sales pitch would be that your vote could still help your candidate even when most of the state goes against him. The result would be more representative without having to abolish the EC. The problem is that one large state declining to go along could make things worse than they are now.
We are probably stuck with the EC and worse, winner-take-all.
Key passage
"Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct ..."
That's the caveat that allows this change to get done without a Constitutional amendment. The states can decide that their "manner" is to have all their electors vote for the candidate who got the most votes.
Use the popular vote, instead of electorals
I don't think the EC needs to be removed or changed, all that needs to be done is have the President elected by the popular vote, instead of the EC. That way, everyone has a vote and we then become a democracy where the majority rules. I believe the EC was created because the number of people in the states back then were so few, not all were highly educated and they were scattered so far apart with it taking weeks for news to spread just in the colonies, it would have taken months to elect a President.
The use of Electorals allowed the most knowledgable about the gov't and their reps to vote on who they wanted in office. Those were most likely the well to do and those with high educations. I think the regular guys were not so worried about who was elected, because they were busy with their own lives and families. Now we all have access to the government and our reps, so we should use the popular vote instead of the Electorals.