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In the past nine months since the election we have hard that the electoral college is flawed. Two out of the last five elections saw a different popular vote than the electoral vote, that is simple to understand. But is it a symptom of the system and we should just leave it or should we fix the system? And if we chose to fix it, what do we do?
I say yes. It let's only 10% of the voting populous truly decide the president since they live in swing states. If you live outside of a swing state, what is the use in voting? My suggestion, tie electoral votes to the state's popular vote. So you win 60% of state's popular vote, you get 60% of the votes. For states with 5 votes, that would be 3 votes going to a given candidate.
Ideally, sure, but purple states would hate this because they'd feel that they have "no net voice".
I understand your position. I disagree with it. But I understand it.
Can you understand that others -- quite a few others in this thread -- have a different position?
A slight majority of the people in this country favor abolishing the Electoral College.
That doesn't mean it should be abolished, but it does mean that your viewpoint is not the only viewpoint Americans hold on the issue.
When did I say that my viewpoint was the only one? But my viewpoint is a very VALID one because, as I stated repeatedly, everyone else is jumping the gun and talking about how the 'flawed' electoral college system should be changed. But, again, the electoral college system IS NOT FLAWED. We've always known that the popular vote is not how we elect Presidents. It's the way it was intended. It's just that certain people now think that, if they don't win, then something MUST have gone wrong. Changing the system because you think it will serve a particular party isn't the way to fix anything. It's a sad commentary on how little people understand about our system of government. There will always be losers in our society when it comes to politics. You just have to get used to it.
Going to the original question, Yes the Electoral College is somewhat flawed. However, I still prefer it to a straight popular vote as that would concentrate the electoral effort even worse then it is now and is against what the Founding Fathers desired.
What I would propose is to change the system to a modified congressional district system with electoral votes divided up by congressional districts and states. I believe this is the system in use in Maine and Nebraska. The candidate who wins a congressional district would receive one electoral vote and the overall winner of a state would receive the two electoral votes for the state. Using the example of Kentucky where the Republican candidate carried 5 of the 6 congressional districts, while winning the state overall and the Democratic candidate won 1 congressional district, the electoral votes would be divided as follows- Republican 7 votes and Democratic 1 vote.
In the most recent election, Maine was won by the Democratic candidate while the Republican candidate won one of the two congressional districts. The vote was split with 3 votes for the Democrats and 1 vote for the Republicans.
I think this would cause the parties to pay attention to parts of the countries they ignore come election time- the Democrats might pay attention to rural districts in Mississippi represented by Democratic candidates while the Republicans might pay attention to rural districts in upstate New York.
What are the differences? What differences do they differences make?
The major concerns at that time:
Major industrial states versus agricultural states.
Heavily populated states versus lightly populated states.
States with higher proportions of voters to residents versus states with lower proportions of voters to residents.
States with major metropolitan areas versus states without major metropolitan areas.
States with major religious and other cultural concerns versus culturally homogeneous states.
What differences are there today?
1787 was before the Industrial Revolution reached America. There weren’t any industrial states. But the various states differed in their usage of slavery.
“Heavily populated areas” were very few. Maybe Philadelphia, Boston and New York City. The overwhelming majority of American residents were engaged in agricultural pursuits, living in the countryside, in isolated enclaves. Transportation was highly limited. It was a chore even for the “elite”, like Jefferson, to travel from central Virginia to southern Pennsylvania. Today, any yokel with $300 can fly from Miami to Seattle. The vast majority of Americans live in cities or suburbs, and something like 2% (or less) engage in anything having to do with farming.
Arguably, there is less distance between the Mesopotamia of Hammurabi, in 1800 BC, and the America of 1787, than there is between the America of 1787, and the America of 2017.
Sure, human nature is essentially invariant. Tension between professionals and the untutored, are endemic – and have been, since the first shamans and medicine-men of prehistory. So what? The point is, that the compromises made for a political document of 230 years ago, simply don’t comport with the topical compromises of the present day.
Major concerns of today:
- What to do about public funding of the elderly (Social Security, Medicare, etc.)?
- What to do about global warming?
- How do we deal with technological innovation potentially rendering vast numbers of jobs/people obsolete?
- What to do about healthcare?
None of those concerns was of absolutely any relevance in 1787.
Last edited by ohio_peasant; 08-08-2017 at 12:50 PM..
When did I say that my viewpoint was the only one? But my viewpoint is a very VALID one because, as I stated repeatedly, everyone else is jumping the gun and talking about how the 'flawed' electoral college system should be changed. But, again, the electoral college system IS NOT FLAWED. We've always known that the popular vote is not how we elect Presidents. It's the way it was intended. It's just that certain people now think that, if they don't win, then something MUST have gone wrong. Changing the system because you think it will serve a particular party isn't the way to fix anything. It's a sad commentary on how little people understand about our system of government. There will always be losers in our society when it comes to politics. You just have to get used to it.
You are one of those people who believe in tradition. Since the Electoral College was the way it was back in the late 1700s, therefore it must continue to be that way in the 2000s. Well, you can continue to wear your powdered wig, if you wish. I (and a slight majority of Americans) choose not to.
I'm going to say again what I said in a previous post. I have ALWAYS believed it should be a direct election, one man, one vote. I believe that now when I'm a Democrat. I believed it when I started out as a Republican. And I believed that when I was in junior high and first took a course in civics. My view on this matter has not changed throughout my life, despite which party I belonged to, or which candidate I supported. And for you to assume that all people who favor such a change (again, a slight majority in the country) is based only on partisanship only proves that you are the partisan one here because you can't think any other way.
It isn't that the electoral college system is flawed -- although if you were honest, you would admit that it does not operate as it was intended -- it's that the method of presidential elections is flawed. And, as the floundering fathers realized, one goal of Americans should be to make a more perfect union, clearly indicating that it was not a perfect union back in your days, nor is it today.
Since you are stuck in the colonial era, go snort some snuff.
That's how things stand. The point of this discussion is that many of us believe that a presidential election should be like any other election. The winner should be determined by a majority or plurality of the votes cast. The presidential election is the only election in this country that is decided in some other way. It needs to be changed.
.
It is like any other election: The direct popular vote stops at the state level, like every other election.
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