Group Pushes Electoral College Reform

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Orionthehunter:
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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You’re right – imagine if the election of 2000 had been by popular vote. Not only would we have had recounts in every precinct, but the resulting confusion and chaos could have plunged the country into something approaching civil war.

The political genius of the Founding Fathers leaves me in awe.
 
Well not only that, it would be driven into further caos by people claiming voter fruad everywhere. I just keep remember clips on the Drudge Report from a local news station a guy laughing he just voted twenty times.
 
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jman507:
Well not only that, it would be driven into further caos by people claiming voter fruad everywhere. I just keep remember clips on the Drudge Report from a local news station a guy laughing he just voted twenty times.
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I wouldn’t consider it hyperbole to say the Electoral College has saved us from civil war on at least one occasion.
 
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Orionthehunter:
On top of every other issue (pro and con) there is one point that has not been addressed.

…Whenever the margin is small, there is pressure for the losing side to question every vote. With the electoral college, the focus is narrowed to just a few states.
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You make an excellent point. In fact it is such a good one, that it was brought up previously by myself in post #11, and by Jay74 in post #55. 🙂
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estesbob:
Fortunately it would take two thirds of the states to overturn the electoral College.
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How do you figure?
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Erich:
This Jackson County (MO) Election Board web page, about a third of the way down, describes some interesting historical curiosities.
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That really is a good web site. And it illustrates what MikeWM had been explaining to Geldain.
The result is that in 1988, for example, the combined voting age population (3,119,000) of the seven least populous jurisdiction of Alaska, Delaware, the District of Columbia, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming carried the same voting strength in the Electoral College (21 Electoral votes) as the 9,614,000 persons of voting age in the State of Florida. Each Floridian’s potential vote, then, carried about one third the weight of a potential vote in the other States listed.
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Digitonomy:
How do you figure?
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Takes 35 states to amend the Consititution. This would have to happen in order to abolish the Electoral College.

As Vern has already stated: the wisdom of our Founding Father’s is amazing!

All the “vote comparisions” in order to prove an invalid argument has certainly been entertaining, I must confess:)
 
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MikeWM:
Oh, I can imagine that to be the case. On the other hand though, it seems like this base is covered by the 2 Senators per state method, which I think is a very good idea. The bias to the smaller states is just significantly less in the electoral college than in the senate.

It still seems to me that it could be helpful for democracy to get rid of the electoral college. The fact that one person can get more votes than another and lose doesn’t bother me too much, as I see why the system is there. But the current system does create ‘no-go’ states (or rather ‘don’t-need-to-go’ or ‘no-point-in-going’ states) which would be changed, in my book probably for the better, by a simple majority system.

Mike
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America is a republic, not a democracy. Our founding fathers were wise enough to realize that simple majority rule democracies always fail.
 
Ummm… the Electoral College actually gives more voting power to the smaller states. When I lived in South Dakota my vote was worth more than the vote of someone in Florida because we had more electorals per capita.

If you take out the Electoral College the only areas that will matter are the densely populated areas. The reason the Gore took the popular vote is because he took most of the votes in north-eastern seaboard.
 
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Shibboleth:
Ummm… the Electoral College actually gives more voting power to the smaller states. When I lived in South Dakota my vote was worth more than the vote of someone in Florida because we had more electorals per capita.

If you take out the Electoral College the only areas that will matter are the densely populated areas. The reason the Gore took the popular vote is because he took most of the votes in north-eastern seaboard.
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This is the way it works, because it gives people in rural areas the same voice as the people in heavily populated urban areas. The founding fathers did it this way because they realized that a representative republic was better than flat out majority rules. We are a republic, not a democracy. If we did away with the electoral college, the Democrats would always keep power as none of the rural votes would matter.
 
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