For the snowflakes who want to end the electoral college

[FirebirdCamaro1220]

Originally Posted by GABESTA535

So in Texas, that means Loving County (population 82) would have the same influence as Harris County (population 4,092,459)? That's even worse than the current electoral college since the vast majority of counties in every state are rural.

It also benefits states with too many counties, like Texas and Georgia. It would mean Texas would have 500% more votes than California despite having like 60% as many people

[SuperOscar]

Originally Posted by FirebirdCamaro1220

It also benefits states with too many counties, like Texas and Georgia. It would mean Texas would have 500% more votes than California despite having like 60% as many people

It would be so much easier to just go off the popular vote and be done with it.

[TheCityTheBridge]

Originally Posted by Redraven

" But that doesn't change the undemocratic nature of the electoral college"

Amazing!
No matter how often it is said, there are still people who believe the United States is a DEMOCRACY!
simply amazing!
Once again, the United States is NOT a democracy, and never has been. The founding Fathers hated and feared democracy as a form of government.
The United States is a Federal Constitutional Republic.

See this discussion:

http://educatorssite.com/?p=411

The United States is a democratic republic. It has become more democratic over time--direct election of Senators, extending the franchise to non-landowners, women, and freed slaves. The electoral college was never about "fear of democracy." It was about compromise to accommodate the elite in slave states, who wanted the enslaved populace to count for representation in the federal government (although they did not want the enslaved populace to count as human beings under local law). Today it is an artifact of that history that we haven't fixed yet. We should. It now results in just a handful of states being important for Presidential campaigns--including only one of the 4 largest (California, Texas, New York, and Florida).

Originally Posted by wallflash

This is an argument becoming in vogue with those attacking the EC to try and discredit it. In point of fact though the FF absolutely distrusted a popular vote, and the point of the EC was for there to be learned men who would know the candidates, and who would vote for the best man , as the representatives of the people. The voters well understood that what they were doing was voting for local men who would then be their representatives in voting for the executive branch. Later it become common ,then expected that the electors would vote for the winner of their states pop vote.

And if you think candidates would care about New Hampshire or Wyoming in a national pop vote, you are naive. There is a reason Obama was campaigning in NH and South Dakota in the last days of his campaign, and it wasnt to bring a few thousand individual votes from these sparsely populated states over to his national grand total. It was because the EC system made NH and SD relevant in the POTUS election.

And 38 states are not going to give up that relevance to allow CA,NY,TX,OH and FL decide the POTUS through pop vote. Get used to that.

The FF evidently felt differently about that , because they COULD have relied upon that, but they didnt . Your argument that a national pop vote that could effectively focus only on the major population centers of a few states will somehow pick a POTUS that would better represent the American people as a whole , rather than a vote in which even the smallest states from the west to the northeast have relevance and must be addressed by the candidates , is nonsensical. Again, it is the EC system that has every year brought candidates into states like NH, SD, Iowa, Nevada,etc. The campaigning of the candidates in past elections and this one has shown that the EC system causes them to more actively attempt to reach ALL Americans , not just the ones in the large urban areas.

This is an appeal to authority--a fallacy imagining superior reasoning in the "Founding Fathers" as a whole. The electoral college was a compromise to accommodate slave states & give them greater power in the Executive branch than their free population would warrant. Presidential candidates don't care about Wyoming now. They care about a handful of states, not including California, Texas, or New York--our most populous states with the largest economies.

There is a possibility that states totaling 270 electoral votes could impose a national popular vote through a compact to bind their electors to the winner of the national popular vote.

In a national popular vote, a candidate still needs to appeal to a plurality of voters. In recent elections, that has meant more than 50 million people. There are a lot of ways to put together that many people, but you can't do it with just a few states (based on historical voting patterns).