Group Pushes Electoral College Reform

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Geldain:
Repeating that over and over again, won’t make it true. If I vote for President in my state it counts just as much as the person voting in any other state.
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Repeating that over and over again, won’t make it true either. A voter in a big state has a lesser say than a voter in a smaller state. That is the point of the electoral college, after all!
Which is exactly what the system was designed to do;prevent highly populated states from dominating lower population states in Presidential elections.
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Exactly - which is why your equality of votes argument is wrong.
Based on what you’re writing, you don’t seem to understand the whole process, why it was designed and why it’s worked as designed every election since it was instituted.
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Really? What have I written that is factually wrong about the process? Or about why it was designed? Or about how it works? It’s all very well to say ‘you don’t understand this’ as a convenient way of dismissing my points but, simply put, you’re wrong.

Mike
 
Morning Glory:
According to these people, it would have been OK for Gore to obtain the popular vote and win the election, but not for Bush to obtain the popular vote and win the election?
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Where on earth does it say that in the article?

As I already said ‘this isn’t a partisan issue’, as these two recent examples make very clear.

As the article says
But FairVote research found that of the 18 states with the least population, “11 received absolutely no attention” during the peak of the campaign season, according to the Post-Intelligencer.
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The National Popular Vote campaign is backed by former Sen. Birch Bayh, D-Ind., former Rep. John Anderson, R-Ill., and other ex-members of Congress.
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Hmm, that sounds like what I’ve said through this thread. Odd that former members of Congress seem to think the same as me, for the same reasons as me, given I supposedly don’t understand anything about it 😉

Mike
 
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MikeWM:
Repeating that over and over again, won’t make it true either. A voter in a big state has a lesser say than a voter in a smaller state. That is the point of the electoral college, after all!
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:rotfl: Ok…well not really, but Ok.
[Exactly - which is why your equality of votes argument is wrong.
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Actually, it’s exactly why I’m right.
Really?
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Yes.
What have I written that is factually wrong about the process?
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“A voter in a big state has a lesser say than a voter in a smaller state.”
It’s all very well to say ‘you don’t understand this’ as a convenient way of dismissing my points but, simply put, you’re wrong.
Mike
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From where I sit, I’m right;)
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Geldain said:
“A voter in a big state has a lesser say than a voter in a smaller state.”
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Which is completely true. In a smaller state, one vote counts for a larger % of one elector than in a large state.
From where I sit, I’m right;)
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I don’t doubt it. Doesn’t mean you are though.

Mike
 
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MikeWM:
Which is completely true. In a smaller state, one vote counts for a larger % of one elector than in a large state.
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In a small state or a large state, a vote for President is of equal value.

Now, if you want to talk about Electoral votes, that’s a different horse to ride.
I don’t doubt it. Doesn’t mean you are though.
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Mike
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Doesn’t mean I’m not either, because I’m not;)
 
The thing is when the Constitiution was written, the Electoral College was not supposed to bring one man one vote in the way you say it should be, I’m sure there were people that thought that was an option & one they did not take. The most logical explaination was that it was to shift a bit more of the balance to the smaller states.

Before we say lets get rid of the electoral college, is to first understand why its there.
 
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Isidore_AK:
I think it would be balanced out by the senators from their “ex” state.

Essentially we would just be increasing the number of states by adding a few high-population/small land area states (I think we have 10 cities over a million?)…

Anyway, I’ll shut up now to avoid drifting any further off topic… 😃
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Well, let’s see how it works. Make Atlanta a state. Suddenly two more liberal Democratic Senators.

Make Houston a state. Suddenly two more liberal Democratic Senators.

Make Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco states. Suddenly six more liberal Democratic Senators.

You see the problem? You’re creating senators in the most liberal parts of the country, and not in the more conservative parts.
 
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jman507:
The thing is when the Constitiution was written, the Electoral College was not supposed to bring one man one vote in the way you say it should be, I’m sure there were people that thought that was an option & one they did not take. The most logical explaination was that it was to shift a bit more of the balance to the smaller states.

Before we say lets get rid of the electoral college, is to first understand why its there.
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I know, and I agree. I don’t think the need of perceived parity between the states is as acute as when the Constitution was written, so I think the other benefits of getting rid of the electoral college are more persuasive now, at least worth looking at.

Mike
 
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MikeWM:
I know, and I agree. I don’t think the need of perceived parity between the states is as acute as when the Constitution was written, so I think the other benefits of getting rid of the electoral college are more persuasive now, at least worth looking at.

Mike
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We have no objection to England getting rid of their version of the Electoral College. We, however, see the wisdom and value of ours and will keep it.
 
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MikeWM:
I know, and I agree. I don’t think the need of perceived parity between the states is as acute as when the Constitution was written, so I think the other benefits of getting rid of the electoral college are more persuasive now, at least worth looking at.

Mike
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I don’t know maybe it might seem to you that way in the UK, but not to me in Nebraska. As they say, all politics are local. But what do you think are the benifits?
 
vern humphrey:
We have no objection to England getting rid of their version of the Electoral College. We, however, see the wisdom and value of ours and will keep it.
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Gotta love the way you use the royal ‘we’ there. Oddly enough, I thought the former Congressmen mentioned in the article were part of your country too. I guess by ‘we’ you mean ‘those who agree with me’ rather than ‘my fellow Americans’ 🙂

Gotta love the way you say ‘England’ too. The name of my country is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, ‘United Kingdom’ or UK for short.

Mike
 
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jman507:
I don’t know maybe it might seem to you that way in the UK, but not to me in Nebraska. As they say, all politics are local.
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Well, indeed, as mentioned already.
But what do you think are the benifits?
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Increased interest, voter participation, the fact that candidates would have to chase every vote rather than ignore ‘safe’ states.

Mike
 
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MikeWM:
Increased interest, voter participation, the fact that candidates would have to chase every vote rather than ignore ‘safe’ states.
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I disagree here. What I think will happen is that the smaller States (e.g., NM, AZ, NV) will not turn out. There will be mass voter apathy because they will figure that the monster states: CA, NY, IL will pretty much dictate who will win.

All the political monies will be pored into these larger states and then distributed to states by number of voters. The small states, will hardly know an election is happening.
 
vern humphrey:
We have no objection to England getting rid of their version of the Electoral College. We, however, see the wisdom and value of ours and will keep it.
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:clapping:
 
Last time I checked, I lived in one of the United States of America, I’m not one of the “United Citizens of America.”

2000 was not the first time that a U.S. President was elected who received fewer popular votes than his opponent. The “unthinkable” happened twice before, in 1876 (Rutherford Hayes) and 1888 (Benjamin Harrison). In 1976, a shift of a few thousand votes in several key states would have given Gerald Ford an electoral-vote victory, but left Jimmy Carter with a popular vote plurality.

Recall too that, originally, Senators were not elected by popular vote; they were elected or appointed by their respective state legislatures.

The main arguments for and against the Electoral College system can probably be summarized as follows:

For:
  • The Electoral System is a unifying force that requires candidates to gather support from different regions of the nation in order to win the presidency.
  • The Electoral System is democratic, since it gives states with larger populations more voting power.
  • The Electoral System works to prevent victories by smaller, lesser-known political parties, and works to prevent elections from being thrown into the House of Representatives.
Against:
  • The “Winner Take All” system means that a candidate can win the election by gathering the majority of electoral votes while losing the popular vote.
  • There is nothing that mandates that the Electors have to be faithful to their party’s candidate, so Electors are not bound to the candidate for which the majority of citizens in their state voted.
  • The Electoral System gives the largest states more political power.
This Jackson County (MO) Election Board web page, about a third of the way down, describes some interesting historical curiosities.
 
The reason the left is pushing to change the electoral College is they know that that is the only possible way that left-wing extremist like Hillary Clinton could ever be elected President. Without the electoral College we would end up with a string of left-leaning Democrat presidents from big cities and/or big states.

Fortunately it would take two thirds of the states to overturn the electoral College. We are safe for now.
 
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estesbob:
The reason the left is pushing to change the electoral College is they know that that is the only possible way that left-wing extremist like Hillary Clinton could ever be elected President. Without the electoral College we would end up with a string of left-leaning Democrat presidents from big cities and/or big states.

Fortunately it would take two thirds of the states to overturn the electoral College. We are safe for now.
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Right. We should destroy the federal system for the sake of one politician.
 
On top of every other issue (pro and con) there is one point that has not been addressed.

The popular margin victory of Gore vs. Bush was very small. There ahve been similar such popular vote margin differenced. Whenever the margin is small (and what is small 1%, 2%?), there is pressure for the losing side to question every vote.

With the electoral college, the focus is narrowed to just a few states. If we had popular vote, every vote gained by contesting is the same. We will have election voting challenges in every precinct in the country. In a nation that is as evenly divided as we are today, w/o the electoral college, it will take years to sort thru a close election as every battle is fought in every precinct.
 
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