No voter has EVER voted to elect the President of the United States on Election Day.
Do you know how the Electoral College works? Well, neither does anybody else. Here's a brief overview:
For every presidential election, the parties that have presidential candidates in each state chooses representatives. Every election day, voters choose one of the representatives from the party they like best, and at the end of the day, the party whose representatives received the most votes total gets to send representatives to vote for the president.
Nowhere do the representatives commit to voting for the candidate their party favours.
Therefore, if some scandal involving the Democratic candidate occurs between the time the Electoral College is elected and the time they actually choose the president, some representatives for the Democratic party might change their vote and vote for someone else!
The President should be elected by the people and for the people.
The Electoral College was first established because the government did not trust its citizens to elect a capable leader. Things are very different now, and even if we citizens of the United States of America do choose a poor president, isn't that our mistake to live with for four years? It isn't like the president is elected for life, so we would have the chance to fix our mistakes.
Shouldn't citizens determine their own future?
The top candidate elected for President by the Electoral College is required to have at least one-half (270) of all the Electoral College's votes to ensure that the President is elected by majority vote. If no candidate gets over one-half, the Electoral College loses the chance to selected a president and the vote goes over to the House of Representatives, who are allowed to choose any candidate of their liking, regardless of his public popularity.
Abolish the Electoral College.
It is detrimental to the very idea of democracy, as we citizens cannot even elect our own President!
Point/Counterpoint?
Now, something I can agree with. The electoral college has LONG outlived its purpose; it's only fear of change and traditional reasons that it's still around. I'm really surprised it hasn't been abolished by now.
Not that I disagree, but some things to think on.
The electoral college helps small states attract canadates that wouldn't visit otherwise. It works as a sort of regional equilizer.
Also the electoral college serves as a small safe guard against voter ignorance. Would you hire someone with no education to operate on you? Similarly, while voters can learn about the issues and be informed not all of them are going to. Many people voter for the type of president they would like to have a beer with and do not consider the complex social, and monatary issues involved. The electoral college provides some type of extremely flawed safeguard against this. Anyways, it is very rare for the electoral college to go against the peoples wishes.
I disagree. Like al.brow said, the electoral college keeps races from devolving into Texas-California-New York-Florida, and makes sure the issues of less populous states are heard.
The Electoral College really is a loser. Contrary to Al Brow's post, the current system in fact leads to nearly every small being completely, utterly ignored -- not a cent is spent on doing anything to affect any person's opinion or interest in voting in states that aren't close. That's nearly every small state and two thirds of big states and most mid-sized states.
Short of abolishing the Electoral College, we can work with state legislatures to the right thing for the American people -- join other states in a formal agreement to guarantee election of the national popular vote winner. Check out www.nationalpopularvote.com for more.
The elctoral collige should stand! however it needs total re drawing, make it so that states elctoral colliges can be voted on indpendently in each state, also make it so the elctorial collige HAS to vote for who wins. As of right now they dont have to actly vote for who wins there states votes, they can chooice to go the other way, one day i want to do that just to create a problum and call for reform....somebodys gonna have to!
So... the majority vote doesn't count, just the people who voted in particular states?
I concur wholeheartedly. I think its funny how many cases have passed through the Supreme Court on the precedent of the "One Man, One Vote" policy which directly applies to the elections of representatives, and yet, when it comes to the most important person in the country... we have no direct voice in the election whatsoever.
The electoral college system effectively kills any kind of third party option. Major parties won't change the system if they can help it because it means they have more power without having to negotiate with minor parties. If the electoral college were replaced by a system with direct voting and the possibility of runoff elections, third parties would grow a lot, since if no candidate from the major parties reached 50% of the popular vote they'd HAVE to negotiate some points. This would make feasible, for example, a second round alliance between the Greens and the Democrats in order to defeat Republicans, if and only if the Dems were willing to concede some issues to the Greens.
Just an outside opinion.
Gosh, you're great. But I think that what you're saying is more than just an opinion. It's certainly truth. The electoral college system IS killing any potentially successful third party. Heck, it's even killing our two main parties (well, destroying their integrity, which is worse than death, I sometimes suppose). Alas, though, we'll never change.
(I'm predictable. You know what's coming...)
"Alas, though, we'll never change."
WRONG! That's what THEY want you to say! Even if you know that you'll lose several (countless!) times, stand for what you believe in! A string of heroic defeats is much better than watching exit polls on TV during election day. Your example might even convince others to follow. Don't stop trying to change reality for fear of losing, because the only lost fight is the one we abandon.
The present is one of struggle, the future is ours (said the guy who, after a lot of struggle, did claim the future through getting his face on countless tshirts).
It should go by the popular vote.
Gina
The Framers of the Constitution claimed that they followed the political philosophy of David Hume to “…make politics a science.” [2] But the Electoral College established in Article II of the Constitution of 1787 abandoned the true and eternal natural law of logic and mathematics for a false and temporal fuzzy math of political arithmetic.[5] As The Federalist Papers, the Constitution of 1787 operates upon the principle that “…in political arithmetic, two and two do not always make four.” [6]
I hate to disagree with some of you, but if you get rid of the electoral college, the Presidential campaigns would change a lot. Sure the people's voice would be heard, but it would be the people in the states with the biggest populations...like California, Texas, and Florida. That already happens some, but it would happen a lot more because the people would be closer together in the cities and there would be more of them. Who would want to stop here in the midwest where we don't have as many people as the coastal states? So in essence, if we get rid of the electoral college, we give the power of choosing the President to our states representatives and give California, Texas, Florida, and other big states the decision. Is that fair? Plus, with the 2000 Presidential election, Florida had a lot of problems with their voting. Let the smaller states have a say in their national leaders too.
Those states get the most campaning either way. They have the most electoral votes too. I think it should be majority. And how is it that the state where Bushes relative is governor is the one that decided the election? If those stupid chads had made a difference it may have been Gore for the first 4 years and maybe Global warming wouldn't be such a big issue.
We are not ignorant and incapable to choose our own president. This is what the electoral college and founding fathers tell us.
You are right, the electoral college was something created to stem voter ignorance, at a time when many didn't know who the candidates were until they got a ballot with their names on it...
Now, at a time when the average 12 year old could name all 16 candidates of the two major parties, and tell you their stances on the economy, the electoral college is an outdated insult on American intelligence.
It is because of the electoral college not voting in the way of the voters that Mr. Bush is in office again...
To keep it fair as far as sizes go, I feel that they should have electoral college members that are bound to vote for their choosing party. If the college somehow ends up in a tie, then they should revert directly to the popular vote... Also, independent parties do get to send electoral college members if their candidate wins, independents just don't win the popular vote very often....
The electoral college dumbs down the election and grossly alters the scales in favor of a small handful of states.
In the last two elections, we all knew that it was going to be decided in Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.
None of the candidates bothered much with Los Angeles or Bismarck or Atlanta or Houston, because millions of voters in those cities might as well stay home since their votes wouldn`t change a thing. In the 2000 election, fewer than 300 voters in Florida could have changed the final result, but instead we ended up with the president whom the majority did NOT vote for. Also, with hundreds of suspicious votes in Florida, the vote would have been far more clear if those millions of votes in big states would have counted equally, and the counts would be far less questionable.
The most knowledgeable voters (say an economics professor at a leading university} tend to have the votes that count the LEAST, while some of the states with the most poorly educated voters count MANY TIMES as much. I think this is largely why it gets dumbed down to `Who would you have a barbecue with` instead of being about the issues that change the course of the world.
It is entirely possible to end up at some point with a president who is opposed by the vast majority of American voters (in fact it`s bound to occur eventually}, and if we haven`t fixed it before then, it will be too late and we`ll be stuck with someone virtually nobody wanted.
The Electoral College was designed for a rural coalition of former colonies. Today, most Americans live in cities and suburbs, and they deserve for their votes to count equally.
It was designed by a couple of pretty smart guys. We just don't do it like we are supposed to. Founder's didn't like democracy, it was a dirty word. They wanted the wise to rule. And the electoral college would accomplish that if we did it right. The electoral college voters are supposed to be picked by the state legislators, who were voted for by the people. The electoral college voters had no reason to vote with the majority of the state or anything else, they were supposed to be intelligent, trustworthy people from the state that the state gov't would recognize and vote for. On election day they would vote for the BEST canidate on the ticket based on qualifications not political party.
Today b/c the people are party loyalist there is a very rare chance that the electoral college voter goes againist the will of the majority...so that line in the OP about forcing them to vote with the majority, they already do. With one maybe two exceptions.
The real electoral college is THE BEST way to stop the dumbing down you talk about...we just don't do it right anymore.
Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted
yeah, kill the college -its stupid and undemocratic
al gore was the 2000 president anyway = no iraq war, no ethanol subsidies -stupid energy policy
If I can save one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain. - Emily Dickinson
There are a couple of problems with getting rid of the electorial college. One, it would hurt smaller states. Currently canidates who run for president will visit the smaller states because they still hold sway in the electorial college, with every electoral vote counting to add up to the needed 270. If we were to get rid of the electoral college, the canidates would then only visit the larger states and cities because they have the largest population and the most sway. Also, when someone is elected into office, they are going to heed more to the opinions and wants of those bigger cities/ more populated areas so they can please the people there, so they can get re-elected. Thus, neglecting a lot of the wants and needs of the smaller cities, and regions.
Additionally, getting rid of the electoral college would mean taking away some of the power the constitution gave to congress when it split up the powers between the branches of goernment to keep the checks and balances of the government. And whent he house picks delegates to cast a vote, they choose people who are hard core supporters of the person elected by the popular vote. They don't just pick any random person and tell them to vote for so and so.
Also you argue that the constitution was writen the way it was because our forefathers didn't trust the people to elect the president, but it is better now. Yet, when people don't even know how our president is elected, which is in the constitution and hasn't changed since then, I am not sure that voters are all that much more informed then the fore-fathers were suspicious of them being. It is sad when you see people electing someone due to looks and not actually having a clue who or what they stand for.
Though the electoral college does do a poor job in reflecting the views of the voters, the problem lies more in the voters. Voter turn-outs are extremely low, if the people want their voices to be heard or their candidates to win they should be more active in their political lives. Also, I agree with Al brow because voters don't always know what they are voting for and what issues they have to address to meet their needs. Have you ever seen someone say "yes" to a proposition without fully acknowledging what it really does? People do that. What we need to do is educate the voters and encourage more people to vote. That's the reason why the Founding Fathers built the Electoral College, because voters don't know the complicated world of politics. If we have a better informed society, we have a better chance of passing laws and electing a president truly meant to address our needs and better our lives.
The Electoral College is not this bastion of evil that people think it is. Its purpose was to prevent mob rule and the election of a wildly popular politician who doesn't belong in government. I think we still need that safety net.