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If you do away with the electoral college what other founding principles and or laws of this country would you like to throw away because it no longer supports your agenda?
There are a lot of reasons that it's important we maintain the electoral college system.
First and foremost, without it, the President would be elected exclusively by the large population centers, whose residents are necessarily out of touch with the vast majority of the rest of the country. Politicians would pander to these people exclusively, and the rest of the country would be left in the cold. It would be extremely divisive to switch to a popular vote system.
Along the same vein, minority interests would become complete non-issues, politically speaking. Who cares what the farmers in the midwest think? There's not enough of them to matter! Yet those people grow your food. Do you really want them to not have any significant input in the political process? If you don't like the agri-giants now, switch to a popular vote system and see what happens.
It's about representation. I know that moving to a popular vote would delight the Democrats of the country, as it could benefit them occasionally, but it would be very detrimental to the health and well being of our society as a whole if it were to happen. Small states deserve to be a part of the process, too.
It was genius on the part of the founders
and it'll take a Constitutional Amendment
to get rid of it and that ain't gonna happen.
It will not take a Constitutional Amendment. The founders were big on leaving things up to the states. If enough of the individual state legislatures get together and decide to allocate their votes based on the national popular vote then the electoral college will simply be a formality. Right now states with 49% of the electoral votes needed to implement this have agreed to.
If you do away with the electoral college what other founding principles and or laws of this country would you like to throw away because it no longer supports your agenda?
I'm sorry? What's wrong with my wanting my vote to count as much as the vote of somebody who lives in New York?
There are a lot of reasons that it's important we maintain the electoral college system.
First and foremost, without it, the President would be elected exclusively by the large population centers, whose residents are necessarily out of touch with the vast majority of the rest of the country. Politicians would pander to these people exclusively, and the rest of the country would be left in the cold. It would be extremely divisive to switch to a popular vote system.
Along the same vein, minority interests would become complete non-issues, politically speaking. Who cares what the farmers in the midwest think? There's not enough of them to matter! Yet those people grow your food. Do you really want them to not have any significant input in the political process? If you don't like the agri-giants now, switch to a popular vote system and see what happens.
It's about representation. I know that moving to a popular vote would delight the Democrats of the country, as it could benefit them occasionally, but it would be very detrimental to the health and well being of our society as a whole if it were to happen. Small states deserve to be a part of the process, too.
However, the action predictably comes down to a few states, making the votes of people in a state like Ohio or Missouri have an unduly large influence on elections as a whole - most campaign money and attention is spent in the swing states while the safe states like Utah and California basically get ignored.
I admit I don't know enough about the NPV to make a fully objective comparison between the two, but the Electoral College system does have issues. Perhaps a hybrid system of sorts (such as is implemented in Congress)?
And the Constitution is not supposed to be static but to change with the times to reflect new needs and requirements of society as a whole. there are several amendments that are there which would (upon attempt of repeal) probably fail dismally. For example, freedom of religion and speech. I think almost everyone can agree that that is one amendment that has universal acceptance (as compared to say the right to bear arms)
Get rid of the two-party system's power grab, and then we can talk about eliminating the electoral college for a popular vote.
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