CNN is no longer showing a projected winner of the popular vote.

So our largest population centers should not recieve the most focus... Makes perfect sense.

 

In the 21st century the EC is disenfranchisement of voters on both sides.

 

For example look at county map breakdown of Illinois, Minnesota, and New York. The big urban centers have their impact.

For example look at county map breakdown of Illinois, Minnesota, and New York. The big urban centers have their impact.

 

As they should, votes should count 1-1

As they should, votes should count 1-1

 

So for the record, you want to do away with the EC?

So for the record, you want to do away with the EC?

 

For the record I do. I get why we had it. But it is the 21st century and my vote should be equal to any vote in the nation as should yours.

 

How many votes are suppressed because they feel their state will be red or blue?

 

I wonder how much all that pomp and circumstance costs anyway when it all could be over on election night.

Why would any potential president care about or go visit states like North Dakota or South Dakota or Wyoming. Politics would only count towards the big urban cities because that is where the vote is. Good news, I guess, we would no longer have the crappy ads and speeches from each candidate.

I would be ok with popular vote if they got rid of the two party system. No one gets nominated from either party and we have one primary to narrow down to about 5 choices and then let the country decide.

Why would any potential president care about or go visit states like North Dakota or South Dakota or Wyoming. Politics would only count towards the big urban cities because that is where the vote is. Good news, I guess, we would no longer have the crappy ads and speeches from each candidate.

 

Why? Every vote matters! Did either candidate visit KY or Dakotas after primaries? It's predetermined. Jesus Christ couldn't have descended and changed the shade of KY or CA, but what if Repub won 40% of California? Today they get nothing.

I would be ok with popular vote if they got rid of the two party system. No one gets nominated from either party and we have one primary to narrow down to about 5 choices and then let the country decide.

 

I think it's a chicken egg issue. EC goes and we then have more parties.

I think it's a chicken egg issue. EC goes and we then have more parties.

 

100% I believe it would eliminate a third party chance forever. A third party will never be established without laying the foundation, and when every vote counts in the way that is being suggested, then people will never risk voting for someone other than the top two. Or rather, most people.

I've made the case against the Electoral College numerous times on this forum, so I trust my argument won't be dismissed as sour grapes over this election. There's simply no good argument for maintaining it.

 

I'll also add U.S. presidential elections have about 20% less turnout than similarly situated democracies, and non-swing states have a about 20% less turnout than swing-states; that's not a coincidence. If we got rid of the EC not only would every vote matter, but we'd have much higher turnout and there'd be much more competition for votes across the entire country. The idea that getting rid of the EC would mean elections would be focused in mega-cities doesn't stand up to reason.

 

I'll repost what I said about it last year for the sake of debate, but it largely derives from what the actual Framers said about the thing:

 

Like most things in the Constitution, the Electoral College was born of compromise between competing ideas, particularly ideas that were specific to that time period. Madison also notes that the system was created in a rush, and perhaps suffered because of it (He later goes on to label this part the “faulty part of the Constitution”):

 

The difficulty of finding an unexceptionable process for appointing the Executive Organ of a Government such as that of the U.S. was deeply felt by the Convention; and as the final arrangement of it took place in the latter stage of the Session, it was not exempt from a degree of the hurrying influence produced by fatigue and impatience in all such Bodies, tho' the degree was much less than usually prevails in them.

 

However, its intention of being a mechanism of indirect election is clear.

 

Hamilton wrote in Federalist 68 that the Electoral College would allow people to have some say, but the electors would be the wise men who made the final choice:

 

It was desirable that the sense of the people should operate in the choice of the person to whom so important a trust was to be confided. This end will be answered by committing the right of making it, not to any preestablished body, but to men chosen by the people for the special purpose, and at the particular conjuncture.

 

It was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations.

 

Thus it is clear from Hamilton that the idea of the Electoral College would be to allow the intelligent and objective among the citizens to choose the president, rather than have the citizens choose the president themselves. Yet, the Electoral College has not functioned this way since the first few elections, or for almost 200 years. (There's evidence that many from the founding period expected no one would win a majority in the Electoral College, thus the House would appoint the president and the Electoral College would simply serve as a nomination tool. Part of the compromise of the EC was that some "framers" thought the Congress should choose the president, thus the EC serving as a quasi-nomination tool was the compromise.)

 

Additionally, Madison also reasons that the Electoral College solved a problem brought on by slavery, saying that the system allowing electors to choose the president made the most sense because of the disparity between suffrage in the North and the slaveholding South:

 

The people generally could only know& vote for some Citizen whose merits had rendered him an object of general attention & esteem. There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to the fewest objections.

 

Today, these things are most certainly changed. Again, Electors are no longer the wise who decide among themselves who should be president, but are simply the rubber stamps of the votes of the people of each state. And universal suffrage has been achieved, thus the Electoral College no longer needs to balance the disparities between the North and the South on that measure.

 

So, the essence of the Electoral College is gone as the president is nearly directly elected at this point. The Electoral College now simply masks the popular will of the people by dividing it along state lines. Jefferson’s critique of the system is still relevant today: “The contrivance in the Constitution for marking the votes works badly, because it does not enounce precisely the true expression of the public will.”

 

It was never a perfect system, its reasons for existence are archaic, we admit that citizens are perfectly capable of choosing their representatives, and thus there are surely better and simpler ways of electing the president.

Stuck in tradition.

The electoral college better represents the nation as a whole. People in California are out of touch with the reality of 90% of Americans. That is why the state of California is so dysfunctional. The fact that HRC had 2.5 million more votes in California and is only winning the popular vote by 300,000 speaks volumes to the rest of the country, it's expectations, and it's needs. Had the CalifornExit happened before the vote, Trump would have won the popular vote by 2.2 million votes. Let that sink in.

Stuck in tradition.

 

Question, according to this article Democrats won popular vote in the Senate, too, the Democrats won the popular vote on for the Senate. Should they be in control of the Senate? I mean, 1 vote should equal 1 vote.

The electoral college better represents the nation as a whole. People in California are out of touch with the reality of 90% of Americans. That is why the state of California is so dysfunctional. The fact that HRC had 2.5 million more votes in California and is only winning the popular vote by 300,000 speaks volumes to the rest of the country, it's expectations, and it's needs. Had the CalifornExit happened before the vote, Trump would have won the popular vote by 2.2 million votes. Let that sink in.

 

Very interesting, considering their lives are way different than the other 99% of America.