It is time to abandon the Electoral College. I say. It is not working

and it is toooooooo easy to cheat. We have witnessed this. NOW its time to do something about it

people--perfectly.

and we've tried to get rid of it before, the nearest attempt to success was when Johnson was President, but of course the racist southern Senators blocked it for some paranoid "dey moan take arr gunns an marry us off to black people" reason.

now it's the small states who complain that if the electoral college is abolished, their unfair and undemocratic advantage would go away, and that's just no fair.

pretty much gaurentees that no one will visit Us



In this 24/7 media, we do not need the electoral college

the 2000 elections. When the popular vote of the people is diminished due to the Electoral College, it disenfranchises voters.

Better late than never, I suppose, but I'm more concerned at this point with the electronic voting fraud that has made every election since 2000 a joke.

What's your proposed alternative?

and each county has one place to turn it in to and a Democrat and a Repuke count it together at the same time.

I've seen enough mail ballot fraud to be leary of that proposal; candidates who go to people's house and "help" them fill out the ballot, usually only voting for themselves and no one else.

Imagine a straight popular vote with them in charge of the machines.A few thousand extra votes here and there in solid red districts would be a nightmare to catch.

NO system will work until we get transparent voting.

BTW...I DO agree with removing the electoral college

to mirror the actual popular vote within a state. Colorado has already done this and the sky has not fallen.

This is the intermediate step to doing away with it completely and allowing the popular vote to elect the chief executive.

We've seen what leaving it in place has done to us. Doing away with it overnight will cause the conservatives to scream forever. Doing it in two increments may just allow them enough time to get used to the idea.

I actually think the electoral college is far and away better than any other system, though it's certainly not perfect. This would be an excellent improvement.

It is really that simple, granted a PR type electoral system like SOME state practice would be an improvement, wouldn't that just as easily destroy the power of small states though? That seems to be the biggest reason FOR the electoral college today, but to be honest, I really don't see candidates clamoring to go to Wyoming now, with the system we have, having a President that is elected by popular vote won't change that.

is that elections would end up being thrown into the House of Representatives because no one will have a majority. I haven't checked how the 2000 election would've turned out under a proportional system, but in 2004 (by my admittedly shaky math), chimpy still would've been elected, albeit by a smaller margin (272.49 votes to 255.73, instead of 286 to 252). What catches my eye is that chimpy's margin would've been just barely enough to keep the election out of the House, even though there was no credible third party campaign being waged. I suspect, without knowing, that several recent elections would've been thrown into the House under a proportional system. IMHO, having the House select the President is not a good thing and any change to the current system that would make such a result more likely is problematic to me.

I don't want California, New York, and Texas deciding every election.

right?

While the electoral college is fair in representing smaller states it does place an unhealthy emphasis on much larger states. While a straight popular vote would seem like the best alternative it would allow for a much larger margin of error as well as a greater ease of dishonesty. Everyone knows what happened in 2000 and that was with the E.C imgane how rampant the cheating would be in red states with a striaight popular vote.

2000 and 2004 would never have happened if Dick Daley and LBJ were still alive.

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

but abolishing the Electoral College won't change that.

Why the hell do people from smaller states think they should have more say over those from larger states? Because that's basically what happens now. If it makes sense for smaller states to have larger states by the balls, it damn sure should make sense for the larger states to have a bigger say in who we elect for president.

I would gladly support abolishing the current system.

There was a pretty good commentary about this in Mother Jones:

The Indefensible Electoral College
Commentary: Why even the best-laid defenses of the system are wrong.

By Bradford Plumer

October 8, 2004


What have Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Bob Dole, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the AFL-CIO all, in their time, agreed on? Answer: Abolishing the electoral college! They're not alone; according to a Gallup poll in 2000, taken shortly after Al Gore -- thanks to the quirks of the electoral college -- won the popular vote but lost the presidency, over 60 percent of voters would prefer a direct election to the kind we have now. This year voters can expect another close election in which the popular vote winner could again lose the presidency. And yet, the electoral college still has its defenders. What gives?

As George C. Edwards III, a professor of political science at Texas A&M university, reminds us in his new book, Why the Electoral College is Bad for America, "The choice of the chief executive must be the people's, and it should rest with none other than them." Fans of the electoral college usually admit that the current system doesn't quite satisfy this principle. Instead, Edwards notes, they change the subject and tick off all the "advantages" of the electoral college. But even the best-laid defenses of the old system fall apart under close scrutiny. The electoral college has to go.

What's wrong with the electoral college

Under the electoral college system, voters vote not for the president, but for a slate of electors, who in turn elect the president. If you lived in Texas, for instance, and wanted to vote for Kerry, you'd vote for a slate of 34 Democratic electors pledged to Kerry. On the off-chance that those electors won the statewide election, they would go to Congress and Kerry would get 34 electoral votes. Who are the electors? They can be anyone not holding public office. Who picks the electors in the first place? It depends on the state. Sometimes state conventions, sometimes the state party's central committee, sometimes the presidential candidates themselves. Can voters control whom their electors vote for? Not always. Do voters sometimes get confused about the electors and vote for the wrong candidate? Sometimes.

The rest is at: http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004/10/10_202.html

Since it terminates democracy.

If you abolish the electoral college, some significant campaign reforms must come with it, so that politicians do not concentrate their campaigns in highly populated areas, which still leaves smaller states and rural areas out in the cold.

I think a good first step would be requiring that each state's electors be proportionate to the percentage of votes each candidate got in the general election. For example, if a candidate got 30% of the vote in Texas, then he should get approximately 10-11 electoral votes.

I think that is better than a winner take all system, it make the electoral college more inclusive, rather than just focusing on a few key states, you would have to try and win as many votes in as many states as possible.

BTW, I almost about that book about why the electoral college is bad for the U.S., but I picked up some other ones instead. Who knew it would have been relevant so soon.

The Electoral College was designed to ensure the "common man" (Founders speak for uneducated, ignorant, superstitious, mouth-breather) from deciding the make-up of Government.

The Founders didn't want Democracy, as they were The Enlightenment's children the loathed the two extremes, Dictatorship and Democracy, they wanted a Plutocracy or Oligarchical Republic ala Plato but not a hereditary Aristocracy because TJ and others knew one of the plebes might show some inherent ability and should be elevated to Rulership of the Land & People...

But, NOW you run into a HUGE obstacle: the College has the weight of History & Tradition behind it and that will be used as evidence why it should be kept.

I've never understood the first Tuesday rule. TUESDAY??? Even those 'blooming' decmocracies have voting on a day that 90% of the population isn't working. (Disclaimer: the 90% number is not factual.)

I don't think so. People have lots of options to vote, not just on the first Tuesday. You have early voting (which is available on Saturdays) and mail ballots, so there's really no excuse to say you couldn't make it to the polls, unless you're dead or incapacitated in some manner (and some of those people still manage to vote).

Moving it to a Saturday or Sunday in November - think about it: it's football season man. ;-)

My absolute favorite, including pre-season!

But yes, I do think it would help. I live in a densely populated area. It's not uncommon for people to leave at 5:30 or 6 am to start their commute and then returning after a long day 12 hours later. Then, it's pick up the kids from daycare and head for home. There isn't 'time' to get to the polling place.

Yes, it's true that there are other 'options'. I go directly to the poll on voting day because I don't want to take the extra time effort to request a ballot and make sure I send it in by the deadline. Besides, my polling place is the lenght of a football field away from my door LOL! And, frankly, I don't trust the voting process in the first place that my absentee ballot would be counted.

But about voting: I'm not sure it would increase voter turnout. I think most voters are fairly apathetic, or just turned off, and moving the day to a Saturday wouldn't really change their attitude towards the process.

The first thing that should be addressed is the reasons for low voter turnout, then we can start discussing changing the date.

and agree that the state's electors will vote for the person who won a majority of the popular vote nation wide.

That would work, and be easier than a constitutional amendment.

The guy has been interviewed on my local public radio program a couple of times. Wish I had more info but thought it interesting. Apparently Calif is considering it.

It would do away with the tyrany of the small states.

Read "Why the Electoral College Is Bad for America," by George Edwards.

This is a "democracy". You know, "one man..one vote"? It's just that votes in N.D., Why-oming, and Utah, carry more weight then them darn libruls from the big states where most people live.