I hate to ask a political question on this forum, but you guys are all intelligent people and I don't feel like signing up for a political forum lol.
My question is, can anybody give one GOOD reason as to why somebody would prefer the people vote for their president, as opposed to the Electoral College voting? Everybody around me doesn't like it, but don't like it for the wrong reasons though. Sure, it's not exactly a "Democracy" then, but that is definitely not a bad thing in the case of selecting a president? I could give quite a few reasons why I think the college should stay, but have never heard in my life one good reason as to why it should go. Thank you :}
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Not exactly what you asked for:
When I was in college I had to take a political science class. When we were learning about the electorial college, the professor was in favor of it and put forth several arguments for it, then wanted someone to argue against it. I suggested "if this winner take all system is so good, you should grade the final exam the same way. If a student gets more than 50% of the questions right that student will receive an A. If a student gets less than 50% correct, that student will receive an F."
Needless to say, he didn't think it was a good idea.
The American presidential election system looks like a compromise solution cobbled together by a committee. I'm not sure what problem it's designers were trying to solve, but what they created seems to be a cross between a national popular vote and winner-take-all local electorate votes at the state level. Nobody understands it, and everybody seems to get disappointed.
I think America needs to rethink its electoral system from top to bottom to find a way to allow a wider range of voices to be heard in Congress and the White House. A lot of people seem to end up feeling disenfranchised under the present system, especially after the recent election. The Westminster system, modified by a proportional system such as MMP (mixed member proportional) allows greater representation for minor parties and forces the big dinosaur parties to take notice of minority interests because of the need to form coalitions.
Of course, no system is perfect. And the only person who ever went into parliament with honest intentions was Guy Fawkes.
As far as I know the electoral college was a system created by the founding fathers to stop "mob-voting." This is when large groups of uninformed people come together through false rumors about a candidate, and vote against him. However, in this day and age, with our massive communication systems this is no longer required, as most everybody is now somewhat smart and knowledgable about the candidates of an election. The electoral college is only around because it serves to give the political parties landslide victories. I also have heard that the electoral college has decided 7% of presidential elections, but I don't know if this is necessarily true.
There is no good reason for the electoral college. The house and senate provide the states with proportional representation. The presidential election being decided by direct vote would provide the individual voter with proportional representation.
@Nyralathotep I think that that's only a good comparison if you want to use the "winner take all system" for both of those things. But, why can't we use the 2 different systems seperately? The grading system and system used to elect a president are different and don't see why a sane teacher wouldn't use an actual grading scale.
@chimp3 Although there might not be a good reason for it, what I'm asking is how or why is it better than allowing the people to vote instead?Can you list one reason why the people should be the ones to vote as opposed to the College voting? I know that the Electoral system could use some changing if it's going to stay.
Well of course some things have to be winner take all. Consider a family voting on which puppy to adopt; can't really adopt 40% of one and 60% of the other.
I don't see how what you've said is a good reason then. Some things are a winner take all thing, and the grading scale isn't.
Right, it was kind of a joke.
Oh crud, I'm sorry I didn't catch that! My bad
How about: Person A can win 2.5 million votes more than Person B, yet Person B becomes Pres. because of the Electoral College.
See I don't think that is a bad thing. The reason is because I would rather have politicians with even just a couple of years of experience be the ones to make a decision as big as that, seeing as a huge chunk of citizens don't seem to know enough about who they're voting for, or are biased somehow, or only vote because their parents tell them to, or those who might not quite be mentally capable.
The reason is simple. The popular vote from, let's say California, is hugely democratic. The sheer weight of Californians voting strictly along party lines does not necessarily represent a knowledgeable demographic, which the POTUS vote needs. Having lived in California, New Hampshire, Ohio, Mississippi, Indiana, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, South Carolina and Florida, you can say I've lived amongst the varying demographics and their mindsets. Personally, I do not align with party politicking. I align with politicians who speak smartly and effectively. That hasn't been very well represented in a long time but politicking is more about deception than anything else. It's the religion of the secular side of people.
If the popular vote majority in California was Democratic, the majority of Electors would also be Democratic by virtue of the popular majority. The popular vote decides that. But, the Electors are not nominated by their party for the purpose of hard-line party partisanship. They are nominated from a group of elected state office holders who are respected for their even-handed, objective positions and outlooks on the state of the union. These people are intelligent, aware of the issues and the concerns a nation holds important and not in the slightest bit moved by popular voting imbeciles who couldn't tell you the capitol of their own state.
The Electors are free to vote for any candidate they feel has the best interest of the nation at heart and the California Electors did not feel Hillary Clinton represented that. Even though she got the popular vote, the Electors did not think her suited to the job. Her majority popular vote was, by all measure and post antics in evidence, invalidated by the American Electoral College at large.
Also, it does not matter if the Elector majority takes all. If there's a majority, we simply dismiss the minority and the results are the same. People seem hung up on the winner takes all theme but the winner takes all if his majority is one or all. In the Electoral vote where 538 total votes requires 270 for a candidate to win, that's just a numbers game. It means the candidate who won edged his opponent by 2 votes leaving the loser with 268. Trump beat Hillary by a margin of 74 Electoral votes (306 to 232). That speaks volumes about her own party's lack of confidence in her at the Electorate level. It also speaks volumes about an Electorate who see Trump's qualifications in far greater depth and detail than the imbeciles in the popular voting booths.
I do not see the Electoral College as a monkey wrench in the popular voting scheme of things. I see them as having a far greater knowledge of the American foreign and domestic landscape than the average American citizen will ever have. But, they are elected by the popular vote so they either compliment each other or contradict each other.
It's very, very important to realize that the American people are not brilliant because they can vote. George Carlin pointed that out when he quipped "Think about how stupid the average person is and then imagine that half of them are even stupider than that." The popular vote is the glove that doesn't quite fit the hand if you ask me, but no one is asking.
Almost no one seems to understand what the electoral college is for. It's not a perfect system, but I challenge anyone to come up with a better one that solves the problem it's meant to solve.
The electoral college exists to make the smaller states relevant. The president needs to be concerned about the nation as a whole, not just the parts with big cities and dense population.
Think about it: once the president has 51% of California's vote, he gets all of those electoral votes, and to get more he needs to move on to somewhere else. If it weren't like that, the presidential candidates would only focus on the most populous states, because getting an extra 5% of California represents more people than all of, say, North Dakota. As it is, after 51%, it's pointless for a candidate to keep campaigning in that state. If it weren't like that, candidates would spend all their time in Florida, California, New York, etc, and would have no need to be concerned at all with the problems of rural Americans. They'd just always be trying to squeeze another few percent from the populous states.
I challenge anyone to come up with another system that is as Democratic as the electoral college, while making sure that the rural states remain relevant.
What is and isn't democratic is not well defined. I could certainly understand how someone might feel the electoral college isn't democratic; making your challenge quite odd.
I agree. The electoral college is not perfectly democratic, any more than our government itself is. That's why I say, "... _as_ democratic." The system is still mostly democratic; state by state, the electoral votes follow the popular vote. But on a national level, it doesn't always work out like that, and on an individual level, it has the effect of making your vote for President meaningless unless you live in a swing state. Still, I think that it is important that smaller and more rural states have a meaningful voice in the election, and I don't see a better or _more_ democratic way of doing that.
"_more_ democratic" or "_as_ democratic"? In who's opinion? Yours? Well then challenge is kind of moot.
In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. - George Orwell
P. S. @Pitar: Hillary _did_ get all of California's electoral votes. And in most states (29 of them, I believe) the electors are required by law to vote for the candidate who takes the popular vote in that state.
Okay everyone, buckle your seat belts. At the inception of this nation, there was a BIG problem. SLAVERY!
The northern states had a large white population, the south had a small white population but a large slave population. In order to keep the original southern states in the union (this preceded the Missouri compromise), the founders agreed that every negro could be counted as 1/3 of a person. This would balance the weight of populations between the north and south. Therein the next problem. In a true democracy, everyone votes. Since blacks could not vote as they were property but counted as population there needed to be a system to use that fact to give the southern states enough weight to balance with the northern population. Thus, the electorial college system was invented. Since the the electorial votes are distributed according to population it was representeative of the distribution of the populace.
For example: In 1790 the population of New York was around 350,000. In 1790 the pupolation of Georgia was around 65,000. But if you counted one third of the slaves the Georgia population was more than double of the original 65,000. Now if you distributed votes according to the revised population via an electorial college system, Georgia would have more influence on elections.
That is the SINGLE reason for the elctorial college and why it was adopted.
It is an antiquated system and should be disguarded for the populace vote.
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