http://www.yubanet.com/artman/publish/printer_64081.shtml

This seesm fair to me so far. Can anyone give legitimate, non-BS reason, why the electoral college should not be eliminated?

sure, because we all know the election was stolen and the supreme court elected bush...

Why not put all the power in the hands of the people? Because the majority of people are STUPID!

Absolutely. How about the electoral college lessens the probability that a candidate will win election as president by appealing to a narrow regional constituency, rather than a broader, national one?

For proof, I offer the electoral maps from the last two presidential elections. John Kerry and Al Gore both did very well in the urban northeast and the urban west, the great population centers of the country. They also did well in Illinois (because of Chicago). But President Bush did better in the middle, and outside the urban areas mentioned, including in urban areas in the south and midwest.

The interests and issues of the coasts and urban areas are not necessarily those of the rest of the country. The founders had their own geographic issues to deal with - North vs. South. They designed a system that would serve the interests of all the people of the country.

I wish I could link to the maps from either of the most recent elections, but I cannot, unfortunately.

Abolishing the electoral college is great if you are from a highly populous state, like California. But it doesn't work for most of the United States. The Electoral College has worked to balance the interests of all Americans for 220 years. It would be a mistake to eliminate it.

Go Red States!

Because it is one of the last bastions of federalism - it should actually mean something to be a state. The states are more than just subdivisions of the feddle gubmint, and the electoral college is one of the significant, meaningful institutions derived from that fact. Another is the Senate - it's not "fair" that the Senate has an equal number of votes from Montana and California, unless you realize that California and Montana are more than just the sum of their votes: they are also Free and Independent States - "united States" as the Declaration of Independence described them.

If memory serves, the election of George Bush in 2000 marked only the third time a candidate had won the popular vote yet lost the election. It's not worth going through the hassle of amending the Constitution to eliminate something that happens so rarely.

The electoral college has only bucked the popular vote four times in over 200 years of history, so your arguement redsfan is basically bunk as the college is effectivley selecting the people's choice.

Your discussion of maps and regional issues makes no sense. If we did not what to give the costal areas too much say, then we need to peel back the votes Cali, FL, and NY get and redistribute. With a country this large, and a popluation this large, and such a diverse geography, you will never negate regioanl interests. And whould you want too? Each region of our contry has something different valuable and different to contribute....we make a better country when we have all of our interest represented, no matter how testy it can get.

Either way, with about 10% of the electoral vote, or 12% of the population, California will always weild power in an election. Chicago will always influenece the vote totals of Illinois, and so on.

It is time to bolster our country's interest in voting again, and go to the popular vote...have a vote that actually counts. For the four times where the people's choice was not selected because of the college, three served only one uneventful and embattled term, while the other currently enjoys some of the lowest public support of all time.

Where the college overrulled the will of the people, it obviously failed. Time to go to a national popular vote, and make all the votes count, and get people interested and excited about their right and need to vote once again.

Here's my plan for restructuring how we vote:

Keep electoral votes (kinda of), but canadites should get a percentage of the votes, not the entire thing. (exact percentages to be worked out)

My reasoning is that I hate voting in Illinois - Illinois is almost ALWAYS a democratic state... so if I decide to vote for another party, my vote is either lost in the large majority, or in the very small minority. I want my vote to count. If I know that my vote could possible lead to someone only getting 85% of the vote, then they should get 85% of the electoral votes, and not 100% (like I said, numbers to be worked out - some kind of weighted average could work).

That's why I voted third party in the last election - I knew that it would be a landslide for Kerry in Illinois, so my vote would be lost either way, and I decided to try to get a third party to that meaningful 5%.

Just my two cents into politics.

Probably the best argument for abolishing the Electoral College is the possibility of a election being decided by what they refer to as a "faithless" elector. If the election results came down to a one vote decision, there would be tremendous pressure on electoral voters for the winning candidate to throw their vote to the loser and change the results of the election. Remember, they are not required to vote for the winner of their state.

The leader of this country could well be decided by someone being induced (by money, power, blackmail or whatever) to change their vote.

Same in NY. Why should I bother to vote when I already know what the outcome is going to be?

(regardless of which side I am voting for)

I always felt that one reason to keep the electoral college was to prevent long, painful recounts worse than the one in Florida in 2000. If the popular vote was the deciding force, anything remotely close, would go to countless recounts throughout the country, potentially crippling us for weeks at a time.

Rudy will put NY into play next year. You'll still go Blue State, but it'll be the first time in MANY years that the GOP ticket will even be looked at in New York.

I just think they need to ask me...I'l pick the next president...the world would be a better place if everyone just did what I suggested...

I agree that the College has effectively represented the will of the people. since it isn't broken, there is no need to go throught the time, trouble, and effort to fix it.



If my discussion of maps and regional issues made no sense to you, I apologize. However, it perfect sense to the founders. It was the reason for the institution of the Electoral College. Hamilton wrote in Federalist #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." It is clear that the founders wanted the President to appeal to as broad a cross-section of the states as possible.


I absolutely agree that there will always be regional issues and bias. And your argument favors retention of the College, not its abolition. And the system does "peal back" the votes of large states like California, Florida, etc. Allocation of approximately 19% of the electoral votes by geography instead of population favors smaller states.



First, I do not accept your inference that an individual vote cast under the current system does not actually count, or that such a vote would somehow count more under a system of direct election. In fact, the individual vote has less effect in a direct election, since it is one vote among tens of millions. In the current system, the individual vote elects a slate of electors who may represent up to 10% of all the votes cast (based on California's electorla votes).

Second, I cannot accept your contention that the Electoral College "failed" in the four instances where it overrode the results of the popular vote. I would submit to you that the in the first three cases where the College overrode the popular vote, that the College prevented the exact kind of regional bias polling that I identified in my earlier post.

Third, in the most recent case, President Bush's current approval ratings nothwithstanding, he won both the popular and electoral vote in 2004.

Fourth, direct election is an operational nightmare. If you think the 2000 recount in Florida was a royal cluster-#$%$#, imagine what would have happened under a direct popular election. The vote difference was .5%. There would have been a recount in all 50 states. Imagine Florida times 50. We might still be waiting for a winner.

Finally, there is no evidence to suggest that direct election will bolster participation. You would have much better luck making election day a national holiday. In fact, that's probably a pretty good idea, and I would wholeheartedly support that. And if the majority of the eligible voters can't be bothered to come out and exercise their franchise, then they deserve what they get. They forfeited their right to complain when they decided to stay home. Elections are decided by the people who show up.

Because if the electoral college were eliminated, candidates would truly only need to focus on a few large states to win the majority. So, why bother campaigning in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island....

Now, could the electoral college stand to be overhauled? Sure. It's been awhile since I researched this (probably about 7 years!) but Maine's electoral votes can be split.

We would never see a single candidate here in Iowa if that were the case.

I'm sure they're there for the corn fritters...

See now that is a southern thing, I am not sure I have seen corn frittes here!!!!

They do that now WITH the electoral college.
No one cares about Rhode Island...
California, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, Florida, etc. decide the election even WITH the Electoral College...

I have to say, of all the threads I have started (instigated ) in here, this one has resulted in some of the most lucid arguments from both angles. Good job y'all.

But as it is now, Maine et. al. have more of a say than if it were only the popular vote.