Sun Tzu

This has been talked about before, but when I tried to bring the thread up again through search I could not find it. In any case, it’s been a few years. I understand the Electoral College and how it works; I just don’t understand why it’s still present. Some instructors teaching US Government present the Electoral College as a system that was put in place to assure everyone could vote. Since transportation was limited, they only way an entire town could vote was to conduct a voting process within the town. The candidate with the highest votes would be the one the town’s representative would vote for.
From the limited historical research I have done, the primary reason was the founding fathers did not want a true democracy. They felt a popular vote would be too reckless, and instead created the representative republic we have today.

I still don’t fully understand how the popular vote fully comes into play in these present times. US history shows that the Electoral College can go one way while the popular votes go the other. That’s a bad situation IMO. In other scenarios after the electoral vote has been tallied focus went to the popular vote in a way it counted. Obviously, the presidency came down to counting popular votes in Florida with Bush vs. Gore.

Is the Electoral College being outdated? I have heard the arguments that 5 cities would determine the outcome of the entire election. If you imagined a big black pot that could be passed around from state to state and everyone put their votes in it, how would five cities have power over any other? A person’s vote is their vote. Isn’t it as simple as that? What stops an electorate from being lobbied, threatened, or manipulated into voting a certain way? It seems there is too much displaced power there.

I was shocked to learn that Russia’s current election process is one direct count of the popular vote. It would appear they are currently more of a democracy that the United States. What is a good argument for continuing to use the present system?

As for the count- simplify it with easy to read names on paper. Have three individuals per counting team, one to count- two to verify, and televise the entire process. The current multifaceted system of entry and the count conducted privately behind closed doors by private companies provides too much opportunity for corruptive actions to occur. It would take longer, but money and resources are wasted on worse.



For more info: U. S. Electoral College

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inBOIL

Except that Russian elections aren't exactly free; if they were, then they would be more democratic than ours.
The only halfway reasonable argument I've heard is that the Electoral College requires a candidate to have a good geographic spread in their votes; once you have >50% of the votes in an area, it makes sense to woo voters elsewhere, thus keeping any part of the country from being chronically ignored. At least in theory.
It would also be good to define what the counting team is counting. There were disputes in the 2000 election about voters' intentions, and whether those intentions could be discerned by their mis-votes. You want to simplify it to reduce mistakes, which is a good idea. However, there will always be some idiot who manages to cast an unclear vote. There needs to be guidelines for dealing with those votes.

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djtestudo

The states decide how to use their electors. I believe in most cases state require their electors to vote for the popular winner in the state, though some still give electors the choice (with the heavy "suggestion" to vote as the state votes).

It is supposed to prevent tyranny of the majority.

It can be argued whether or not it actually does, or whether a system that can invalidate the popular vote is the best. But last time I checked, it's worked with minimal issues and changes for 220 years.

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Redlemon

I haven't really established a position on the Electoral College... but I've never seen someone complain about the World Series.

Back in 2002, San Francisco played Anaheim in the World Series. It was a 7 game series, which Anaheim won 4 to 3. However, San Francisco scored 44 runs, while Anaheim only scored 41. Should we award the Series to San Francisco?

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Poppinjay

I still can't believe Anaheim won the World Series.

But, that was a multiple event series. We vote for president once every four years. Whoever gets the most votes on the second Tuesday in November should be president.

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Redlemon

My point is that the each individual game of the World Series correlates to an individual state voting for President.

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MSD

This is what I always try to explain to people. It's supposed to prevent something like Hitler's rise to power in Germany through what started with an election, although if someone has that much popular support there's no guarantee that the EC wouldn't also be supporters. Hopefully we won't ever have a test case.

mvymvy

The major shortcoming of the current system of electing the President is that presidential candidates concentrate their attention on a handful of closely divided "battleground" states. In 2004 two-thirds of the visits and money were focused in just six states; 88% on 9 states, and 99% of the money went to just 16 states. Two-thirds of the states and people were merely spectators to the presidential election. Candidates have no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, campaign, or worry about the voter concerns in states where they are safely ahead or hopelessly behind. The reason for this is the winner-take-all rule under which all of a state's electoral votes are awarded to the candidate who gets the most votes in each separate state.

Another shortcoming of the current system is that a candidate can win the Presidency without winning the most popular votes nationwide.

The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC). The bill would take effect only when enacted, in identical form, by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes—that is, enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538). When the bill comes into effect, all the electoral votes from those states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).

The bill would make every vote politically relevant in a presidential election. It would make every vote equal.

The National Popular Vote bill has passed 21 state legislative chambers, including one house in Arkansas, Colorado, Maine, North Carolina, and Washington, and both houses in California, Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont. The bill has been enacted by Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, and Maryland. These four states possess 50 electoral votes — 19% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect.

See National Popular Vote -- Electoral college reform by direct election of the President
-----Added 7/8/2008 at 12 : 58 : 10-----
Senator Birch Bayh (D–Indiana) summed up the concerns about possible fraud in a nationwide popular election for President in a Senate speech by saying in 1979, "one of the things we can do to limit fraud is to limit the benefits to be gained by fraud. Under a direct popular vote system, one fraudulent vote wins one vote in the return. In the electoral college system, one fraudulent vote could mean 45 electoral votes, 28 electoral votes."

In Illinois in the 1960s, accusation of vote fraud by both political parties were commonplace. In 1960, a switch of 4,430 votes in Illinois and a switch 4,782 votes in South Carolina would have given Nixon a majority of the electoral votes. However, 4,430 votes in Illinois were only a focus of controversy in 1960 because of the statewide winner-take-all rule. John F. Kennedy led Richard M. Nixon by 118,574 popular votes nationwide, so 4,430 votes were not decisive in terms of the national vote count. Of course, if Nixon had carried Illinois and a state such as South Carolina in 1960, Nixon would have won a majority of the votes in the Electoral College, despite not receiving a majority of the popular votes nationwide.
-----Added 7/8/2008 at 12 : 59 : 46-----
Evidence of the way a nationwide presidential campaign would be run comes from the way that national advertisers conduct nationwide sales campaigns. National advertisers seek out customers in small, medium, and large towns of every small, medium, and large state. National advertisers do not advertise only in big cities. Instead, they go after every single possible customer, regardless of where the customer is located. National advertisers do not write off Indiana or Illinois merely because a competitor has a 8% lead in sales in those states. And, a national advertiser with an 8%-edge over its competitor does not stop trying to make additional sales in Indiana or Illinois.
Although no one can predict exactly how a presidential campaign would be run if every vote were equal throughout the United States, it is clear that candidates could not ignore voters in any part of any state.

djtestudo

That's not a bad way to think about it.

When I posted "tyranny of the majority", there was something else I wanted to say, but I couldn't figure out how. This helps me.

It prevents a successful "one-issue" or regional candidacy. Where in a direct-vote system enough candidates could emerge to allow one with a low percentage of the vote to emerge the winner, here the candidates have to appeal to a wide range of regions and people.

Hitler, in the 1933 election, only won 44% of the vote. Is it more democratic that 52% of the population didn't chose a winner (2000 US election) or 56% (1933 German election)?

I'm partial to increasing the democratic appeal of the Electoral College in a very simple way. Merge it with the congressional representative system in one of two ways:

1) Take the number of electoral votes per state and divide them by the percentage of the vote in the state.

Using Maryland in the 2000 election as an example, ~2,020,000 votes were cast. 1.14 million were for Gore (56%), 813,000 for Bush (40%), and about 67,000 for other candidates (4%). Under this, Gore would have won six and Bush four of Maryland's ten votes.

2) Use the popular vote in each electoral district to choose who that vote goes to, and award the two "Senate" votes to the statewide winner.

In this way, each local area can choose who they want for president, giving individuals an incentive where their vote counts, and there is also an incentive for winning an entire state.

Plus, instead of an official ceremony of vote-counting later-on, we will have a result immediately using either of these methods (excepting an extraordinary situation like in 2000).

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jorgelito

The Electoral College is deeply flawed. It needs to be discontinued right away. I think the "danger" of popular voting is way overrated and exaggerated. It is absolutely ridiculous that some people's votes in certain parts of the country count more than others. The Electoral College encourages pandering and is extremely divisive.

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The_Jazz

I will have something contribute once I stop laughing at the idea that the latest Russian election was somehow more democratic than anything in, well, any Western democracy. Sure, the electorate directly elected Medvedev, but the fact that Putin's government was openly arresting or harassing the opposition really makes the process a joke.

By the way, most Western democracies don't directly elect their leaders. Prime Ministers are elected out of their assemblies in almost all cases.

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shakran

Two schools of thought, and since I'm a journalist I get to be an asshole and not tell you which one I agree with

Situation A: Without the electoral college, city issues would trump rural issues. Here's how that works:

Let's say you have a country with one city, population 1 million people. It has about 250,000 people living out in the country, growing food, etc, to feed the city people with.

So the politician that only needs a simple majority, will go plunk himself down in the city and tell all the urban dwellers that he'll get them free wifi at every corner and reduced prices at Starbucks and a subway train, and a bus system that actually works. . all issues that rock if you live in the city, but that you don't give a crap about if you don't. The poor schmuck out in the country who needs public water, and roads, and maybe a fire station or two, gets nothing because really, as long as the politician can lock up enough votes in the city, he doesn't have to worry about making the country folk happy.


Situation B, we have the electoral college. Now the politician has to run around making the country folks happy, because the country dwellers' votes get melded into 1 vote, and the city dwellers' votes get melded into 1 vote. Now, if the politician pisses off the guys in the country, he loses the election. And, the city dwellers count for something too, because if he loses their vote, he loses the election. So he has to make everyone happy.

The downside is that now 250,000 country-living people actually have more sway than 1 million city-living people. The country guys get the same say as the city guys even though they're only 1/4 as many people, which means each country individual's vote actually counts for more than each city individual's.


So each system has good bits and a downside. Which do you prefer?