I'm just posting this on here because it wouldn't let me post in the Politics. I was wondering if anyone in here had any reasons why the electoral college system is better than just doing a popular vote. I can't really think of any good reasons.
...Exactly, I cringe whenever I hear those ads saying that our votes count, the electoral college totally makes a joke out of our democratic process, anyone who paid attention to the 2000 election would know that. Peace and Love, Dan
It balances the power of larger states with that of smaller states. Now if we had total popular vote, the only states you would need to carry would be large, desnely populated states, so you could win. You could totally ignore the midwest and the south and still win, thus you would only represent part of America, not the whole country.
Well if it was all about the popular votes it wouldn't matter what state you were in, except for the kajillions they might put in advertising in those paticular areas. But that's an issue with the campaigning, not the vote. Maybe a little of both I guess. But to me, it sucks becuase it doesn't matter who I vote for, Texas is going to go for GW. So basically my vote doesn't count. It would count, however, if it was all about the popular vote.
Suppose our president was decided by the popular vote. Most Americans live in densely populated areas, namely the coasts and Texas. The midwest, west, and South, though representing a much larger geographical area and more diverse population, don't have heavy concentrations of people, and would be ignored or underapreciated by candidates. Entire ways of life would go unrepresented because let's face it, people in different parts of the country live very different lives, and what's good for California and New York might not be good for Oklahoma and Nebraska. But people in Oklahoma and Nebraska would be ignored because more voters live in NY and Cali.
In the current system the smaller states are way, way overrepresented. For example, Wyoming has 500,000 people compared with California's 33 million. WY has 3 electoral college votes, CA has 55. In order to be fair, CA should have 198 votes if WY has 3. So yeah, I guess I could support the electoral college, but only if the number of votes were relatively proportional to each state's population. Peace, Al
You put that so eloquently. If you read al_from_mn's post he makes the point that the majority of people are not being represented. MaxPower in turn (actually beforehand) seems to say that regions or states are more important in being represented, actual regions of people and their ideas rather than majorities of the population. I haven't read anything on the electoral college and why it exists so I found this pretty interesting; that is why I asked. I think I've been swung to the states' rights side of things.
The other thing to keep in mind is that the Electoral College will continue to exist unless an amendment to the constitution is passed which would require a 2/3 majority of states to ratify it. Consequently, states who benefit from the current system would have to vote to give up this way of leveling the playing field. Also, the founding fathers felt that this (the electoral college) was a necessary check on the fickleness (?) of the American electorate, i.e. popularity in one region might unduly sway an election.
