Electoral College

[JOEBIALEK]

The framers of the U.S. Constitution created the Electoral College as a result of a compromise for the presidential election process. During the debate, some delegates felt that a direct popular election would lead to the election of each state's favorite son and none would emerge with sufficient popular majority to govern the country. Other delegates felt that giving Congress the power to select the president would deny the people their right to choose. After all, the people voted for their representatives to the federal legislature. The compromise was to set up an Electoral College system that allowed voters to vote for electors, who would then cast their votes for candidates, a system described in Article II, section 1 of the Constitution.

Each State is allocated a number of Electors equal to the number of its U.S. Senators (always 2) plus the number of its U.S. Representatives (which may change each decade according to the size of each State's population as determined in the Census).

Whichever party slate wins the most popular votes in the State becomes that State's Electors-so that, in effect, whichever presidential ticket gets the most popular votes in a State wins all the Electors of that State.

The debate has started again as to whether the U.S. Constitution should be amended in order to change the presidential election process. Some promote eliminating the Electoral College in favor of a direct popular vote for president while others believe the Electoral College should remain unchanged. Just as compromise solved the initial problems of the framers so it is that compromise can solve this problem. The solution is to change the electoral votes to electoral points and reward each candidate a percentage of points based on the percentage of popular votes received in each state. This would eliminate the "winner take all" system thus allowing for all the votes to count. A voter is more apt to believe their vote counted when a percentage of popular votes are taken into account rather than the "all or nothing" system currently in existence. Further, this new system would integrate the desire for a popular vote for president with the need for the individual states to determine who actually gets elected. For example, in Alabama, President Bush won 63% of the popular vote and therefore would be awarded 5.67 electoral points as compared to Senator Kerry with 37% of the popular vote and 3.33 electoral points. In the event of a tie, the national popular vote results would decide the outcome.

If one tabulated the final totals from Election 2004, they would find Bush with 274.92 electoral points versus Kerry with 257.71. The existing electoral college votes shows Bush 286 to Kerry 252. I believe this compromise would reflect a truer intent of the will of the people as exercised through their states. This would also prevent the smaller "red" and "blue" states from being virtually ignored in favor of the larger "battleground" states.

[JSE]

I see your well on your way to;

"fine tune America and stear the United States in a positive direction."

Thank God we have you!

JSE

[jack70]

The compromise the founders decided on (electoral college) was as good a solution to the corrupting concept of "pure democracy" (tyranny of the majority) as anything else they were considering. If we'd gone with the "pure" vote concept instead, we would have undoubtedly had nothing but presidents from the state of NY during the whole 1800's. Now maybe that would've been better, but it's NOT a good thing conceptually, when we all know how favoritism & influence corrupts otherwise well-meaning people in power. One thing the founders understood well (why they were so special), was that even good men are flawed, and only by making it (power) HARD and difficult to dole out, was there any safety in government for the people themselves.

There is absolutely NO WAY you're going to get an amendment passed over-turning the electoral college today... simply because the majority of the states would lose power (read: money & influence). The votes... aren't there.

The concept of doling out percentages of states electoral votes is already done in ME & KA (or NB?). It's an interesting concept, but has some problems too. First, unless ALL the states did it (the same way too), you'd have an even skewier system. For example, Sen Hillary Clinton has been moaning about the "unfairness" of the electoral college (read: she wants more Dem electoral votes from small states)... that is, she's playing this political "card" strictly for votes, by implying it's "UNFAIR". But... if she REALLY thought changing the system was a good idea, she'd put real effort into changing NY state's constitution so that NY's votes were doled out percentage-wise. Of course, she want's NOTHING of the kind, at least as long as NY continues to vote Democratic. In short, she has no desire to change the system, has no leadership bona-fides (as her predecessor did, Patrick Moyniham)... she's just another political hack, running on fear & lies, not on what's best. But what else is new... both parties do it (for the most part).

If ALL the states changed to this system, through statewide constitutional changes, you'd have a better system... well, maybe.

You'd still have problems if ALL the states changed their individual constitutions. There are simply LOTS (too many) of ways to do this... none perfect. You could do it by district (if you win a district you get that 1 electoral vote), or by pure overall state vote... electoral votes doled out according to the overall popular vote, (percentage wise). But then you have the problem of deciding WHERE the cut-off margins are. From a pure mathematic point, that's going to be a highly contentious issue... where the "breakpoints" are when deciding how the (electoral) vote is divvied up (percentage-wise). The law has to be specific, and politicians don't like that. (what's the saying, making laws is like making sausage).

And (such a system) makes voter fraud a more likely thing. Today it's unlikely to happen in most states, where one party gets a dominant majority... there's simply no reason to dispute who won a state's electoral votes (like Alabama in your example). But with such a new system of electoral divy-up... imagine a close election, like 2000 -- you'd have virtually ALL 50 states going through (being challenged) in state and local recalls (in court), with all the legal BS, shenanigans and delays in order to get a result... it could take months, if not years!!... not just in close elections, but in ANY election. It would make FL-2000 look like a piece of cake. Our election process would become a joke, and alienate even more people.

Yet again, the founders were smarter than we give them credit for.. LOL..

[JOEBIALEK]

thanks.........some good points

[piece-it pete]

Excellent post, and great responses.

The biggest difference between our form of gov't and most of the other democracies in the world is the electoral system. The fact that we are called "States" shows the founders' basic commitment to local control - the feds' power was to be extremely limited. Keep in mind that the Constitution was a joint agreement entered into by Sovereign nations - each State being a seperate country at that point, answerable to nobody. (see that, nobody? you're more powerful than you thought lol)

They were very jealous of their power and control.

And it worked! We are by any reasonable measure a huge success.

So IMO changing our fundamentals should be looked at VERY carefully.

One statement I have not seen posted to this thread: there is no significant difference between proportional allocation of electoral votes VS a direct election. The result is much closer, very very close, to a popular election. Which gives the large population centers even more power than they already have over the rest of the country.

It will actually dilute weak States' influence even further.

And jacks' right, there is NO WAY two thirds of the States are going to give up their power willingly. Even a blue State like Colorado.

To my colleages on the other side of the aisle, I plead your greater understanding. Our system is more important than a win or loss or two. Bush won twice. Clinton won twice. Our system works - the compromise still stands.

Pete

[jack70]

The biggest difference between our form of gov't and most of the other democracies in the world is the electoral system. The fact that we are called "States" shows the founders' basic commitment to local control - the feds' power was to be extremely limited.
PeteOur "republic" form of government has (unfortunately) been erroded more & more over time as the federal government now has it's hand in almost EVERY pocket & aspect of life. I often wonder what they'd think of the huge powerful monster Washington has evolved into, with so many working FOR government, taxes at nearly 60% (hidden included), and the growth of Government at 2-3 times the rate of inflation. I think they might call for another revolution... LOL.

To revisit one issue I raised... imagine a state where you have 5 reps and 2 senators (7 electoral votes). Imagine further that the popular vote is 50.01 to 49.99 (ie, a really close election of a few hundred or thousand votes). No matter what criteria a state used to divvy up the electoral vote in a "proportional way", it's going to slant to one side much more than the popular vote shows (which would be a 50-50 split). Likewise, if you had that state divvy those electoral votes by the plurality of counties instead, you might have 4 majorities (in counties) for one candidate, and another county for the other candidate, splitting the electoral vote to 4-1, which might give a total 6-1 split... even though the popular vote is nearly even.

There are MANY other aberration type scenarios possible, but no matter what way you (state's might decide to) divvy up their electoral votes, none cover all the possible responses in a totally "fair" way. In the end it's a lot like sports, or life -- it's often not completely fair. Often it clearly is... but certainly not always.

You know, we tend to have this utopian way of thinking today... we all hope (& expect) (deserve?) to live to be 100... we think we should ALL (deserve to) be given the same (natural) gifts (health, smarts, looks, wealth, etc). We whine & cry to lawyers at the most minor affront. But even the poor (here) today live better than 99.9% of people even a century ago, let alone a millennium. You might say we're spoiled... or at least, we're (historically) unrealistic about many things. Certainly we tend to be narcisstic, ungrateful and unthankfull. Not that being idealistic is bad... it's what drives us to be better. But we tend to forget how lucky we are just to live in this particular time and place... in the long perilous timeline of human history.

So we tend to focus on minutia like the electoral college... trying to make it "perfection," all the while tens of thousands die on our highways every few months... or millions remain under slavery around the globe... or a hundred other pretty important things.

Another issue here is the fact the country still has the "same" number of representatives & senators (with the addition of new states), yet the country only had a relatively small number of voters in the late 1700s... the population was only a few million... (and women, blacks, immigrants, and many white men could not vote). Today you have over 300 million... being represented by the same number in congress. As much as a congress of a few thousand would represent each of us "better"...you'd also lose some (representative) power if you expanded congress to make up for the growth of the country. I guess you could call this "representative inflation" .... and there's no satisfactory way to solve it without giving up something in the process. You could likewise change & expand our representation in government... but might end up with more confusion and dilution in Washington. On second thought, maybe MORE dilution in government wouldn't be such a bad thing.