Electoral college

[frugal saver]

LoL, yeah considering how he couldn't pass sensible gun control provision (like preventing terrorist watch list people from getting guns which most people support)..I seriously doubt he can abolish the electoral system. That's pretty much ingrained into the constitution. Also the electoral college gives the red states with low population an advantage. This is why the democrats always ended up losing the electoral votes but wins the popular vote (happend 2/5 past elections since 2000). Republicans will say that Obama is trying to destroy the constitution if he brings it up.

Trying to remember High School Civics--but if the Electoral College is in the Constitution, then the only way to change it would be through an Amendment. So full Congress, then President, then all 50 states would have to ratify it.

And just a note--as of end of the day Friday (as votes are still being counted) Trump was ahead in popular votes.

[StormRichards]

Trying to remember High School Civics--but if the Electoral College is in the Constitution, then the only way to change it would be through an Amendment. So full Congress, then President, then all 50 states would have to ratify it.

And just a note--as of end of the day Friday (as votes are still being counted) Trump was ahead in popular votes.

Not really sure what website is up to date, but the last time I looked Clinton had over 600k more votes.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

yep she's ahead by 600k votes and everything isn't tallied from the west coast states. It's a not close like 2000. Since they I can honestly say I've always told my DH i hated living in non-swing states and didn't get "why we need the electoral college". I just never felt my vote, though I've always voted mattered.

I'm not disagreeing reading CCF's post about the difficulty of a popular vote but I think if we did distribute electoral votes by popular vote then it might be more fair.

Right now it's so incredibly unfair I doubt you would have anyone arguing that someone who won the popular vote could lose the electoral vote. And the fact that it could be a 79% to 21% popular vote and still lose the electoral vote means this needs to be changed.

[pflyers85]

My response to your post was 100% on topic and 100% correct.

Gore and Clinton having winning the popular vote is meaningless because you have no idea how many people stay home because of the electoral college. Considering all of the experts were predicting a Clinton win, it isn't a far stretch to suggest a lot of Trump supporters in the expected blue states stayed home feeling their vote wasn't going to matter.

Sure but you could also look at it the other way that Democrats stayed home in solidly blue states because their vote also had no impact on the outcome.

I do agree with your premise that ultimately the popular vote doesn't matter. Both candidates campaigned on the notion that the Electoral College would decide the election so the outcome of the popular vote is irrelevant. Had the popular vote been what is used to determine the election the strategies for both campaigns would have been vastly different so it's incorrect to assume Hillary would have won the popular vote.

As far as debating electoral college versus popular vote I saw a good analogy on Facebook over the weekend. Saying the popular vote should prevail as what determines the election is like saying MLB should determine the World Series champion by which team has more overall runs scored rather than the team that won the most individual games in the best of 7 series.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

Maybe but right now as it stands the electoral college feels very biased for only swing states. If you are red or blue then what's the point?

[Singuy]

I don't think you guys understand the bias of the electoral college.

States with the least people are the bias states! It is mandatory for every state to receive 3 electoral college votes..EVEN if the state has 1 person living in it. That 1 person literally have more power than anyone in the U.S with that vote. Because of this rule, people's vote count more in South Dakota than in California.

This is why you see states with very low population being biased toward their political stance(whether it's blue or red). Just so happen rural areas are more RED so the Democrat will most likely lose most elections if the popular vote is close. Some states are just more bang for the buck than others. This is why you can win the presidency with only 21% of the popular vote if you want to play the electoral college game. That's pretty much not democracy.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

No it was created during a time when we had slaves and women didn't vote. I'm not exactly it's still worth preserving an archaic tradition. After all slaves = 3/5 person so it's inherently created bias.

It was supposed to prevent the majority of ignorant people from overruling the elite. And it was also prevent the tyranny of the majority. I hear the popular vote now was 1 million more votes for HC.

[Eagle]

With your scenereo, they have an equal vote just like everyone else.... as it should be.
The fact is Hillary won. Just as Al Gore won. We are just to depraved of a country to allow fairness to prevail

No, they both lost.

To suggest that either of them would have won if it was held by popular vote is presumptuous. There are plenty of people that choose not to vote because of they do not feel their vote counts.

As long as it is done via electoral college, popular vote is meaningless.

The popular vote is indeed meaningless. Hilary didn't win. Al Gore didn't win. There's a reason that the Electoral College (EC) is in place. The founding fathers were wise beyond what we could've imagined in adding this system to the U.S. Constitution. This helped me understand the EC a lot better.



"I want to talk you about the Electoral College and why it matters.

Alright, I know this doesn't sound the like most sensational topic of the day, but, stay with me because, I promise you, it's one of the most important.

To explain why requires a very brief civics review.

The President and Vice President of the United States are not chosen by a nationwide, popular vote of the American people; rather, they are chosen by 538 electors. This process is spelled out in the United States Constitution.

Why didn't the Founders just make it easy, and let the Presidential candidate with the most votes claim victory? Why did they create, and why do we continue to need, this Electoral College?

The answer is critical to understanding not only the Electoral College, but also America.

The Founders had no intention of creating a pure majority-rule democracy. They knew from careful study of history what most have forgotten today, or never learned: pure democracies do not work.

They implode.

Democracy has been colorfully described as two wolves and a lamb voting on what's for dinner. In a pure democracy, bare majorities can easily tyrannize the rest of a country. The Founders wanted to avoid this at all costs.

This is why we have three branches of government -- Executive, Legislative and Judicial. It's why each state has two Senators no matter what its population, but also different numbers of Representatives based entirely on population. It's why it takes a supermajority in Congress and three-quarters of the states to change the Constitution.

And, it's why we have the Electoral College.

Here's how the Electoral College works.

The Presidential election happens in two phases. The first phase is purely democratic. We hold 51 popular elections every presidential election year: one in each state and one in D.C.

On Election Day in 2012, you may have thought you were voting for Barack Obama or Mitt Romney, but you were really voting for a slate of presidential electors. In Rhode Island, for example, if you voted for Barack Obama, you voted for the state's four Democratic electors; if you voted for Mitt Romney you were really voting for the state's four Republican electors.

Part Two of the election is held in December. And it is this December election among the states' 538 electors, not the November election, which officially determines the identity of the next President. At least 270 votes are needed to win.

Why is this so important?

Because the system encourages coalition-building and national campaigning. In order to win, a candidate must have the support of many different types of voters, from various parts of the country.

Winning only the South or the Midwest is not good enough. You cannot win 270 electoral votes if only one part of the country is supporting you.

But if winning were only about getting the most votes, a candidate might concentrate all of his efforts in the biggest cities or the biggest states. Why would that candidate care about what people in West Virginia or Iowa or Montana think?

But, you might ask, isn't the election really only about the so-called swing states?

Actually, no. If nothing else, safe and swing states are constantly changing.

California voted safely Republican as recently as 1988. Texas used to vote Democrat. Neither New Hampshire nor Virginia used to be swing states.

Most people think that George W. Bush won the 2000 election because of Florida. Well, sort of. But he really won the election because he managed to flip one state which the Democrats thought was safe: West Virginia. Its 4 electoral votes turned out to be decisive.

No political party can ignore any state for too long without suffering the consequences. Every state, and therefore every voter in every state, is important.

The Electoral College also makes it harder to steal elections. Votes must be stolen in the right state in order to change the outcome of the Electoral College. With so many swing states, this is hard to predict and hard to do.

But without the Electoral College, any vote stolen in any precinct in the country could affect the national outcome -- even if that vote was easily stolen in the bluest California precinct or the reddest Texas one.

The Electoral College is an ingenious method of selecting a President for a great, diverse republic such as our own -- it protects against the tyranny of the majority, encourages coalition building and discourages voter fraud. Our Founders were proud of it! We can be too.

I'm Tara Ross for Prager University."

Source: https://www.prageru.com/courses/poli...ctoral-college

[Singuy]

So disappointed that I read the entire thing and find out it's from Prager University. The fake right wing university that tells you money is free speech, and fossil fuel is the key to saving our planet because there's a correlation between oil and water. (I probably watched 80% of all their youtube videos because A. they are well done and B. would like to know the perspectives of the ultra right).

I am not understanding the protection from tyranny of the majority. If you can win the presidency with just 21% of the population voting the right way exploiting the electoral college system, isn't this tyranny of the minority? Isn't that WAY worst? If the majority of the people want to take this country one way, why should a smaller group of people have just as much say, preventing what majority of the people want?

[StormRichards]

And in walks the alt-left

[Singuy]

And in walks the alt-left

Glad you are here to have a conversation

I am more moderate than you think....but excuse us for using our brains trying to make sense of all of this.

[StormRichards]

Glad you are here to have a conversation

I am more moderate than you think....but excuse us for using our brains trying to make sense of all of this.

Gave up having a conversation with you when you trolled my thread last night and got it shut down.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

Eagle explain why the rural vote should count 3x as much as the urban vote? Why should African Americans still not be 3/5 a person? Why should women be allowed to vote? Does society evolve? Does the needs change of people? http://time.com/4571626/electoral-co...ong-arguments/

I think the electoral college needs to go. I said that since 2000 when Al Gore lost. Too bad the democrats didn't work on it then. The truth is I think CCF brings up a good compromise of delegating votes based on % won in state. It would make everything more competetive.

And right now it's not really rural versus urban? It's swing state versus non-swing state. Everybody deep red or blue has no say in picking a president. And it just seems unfair that living in a place like CA you have absolutely no say. How is that fair?

Explain why the minority gets to be a tyranny? When the founders created it they even said it was to prevent the ignorant common people. Well turns out we still have the elites and everyone else. Except now the elites in both parties are having trouble with all the masses.

[Singuy]

I don't think the democrat can ever get rid of the system at its current state. Only republicans can but the amount of odds getting rid of this system is overwhelming since it's in the constitution.

What I find interesting is that perhaps there are more democrats than republicans. Don't you think there's a reason why democrats are ALWAYS pushing people to vote while republicans never do? I think everyone knows the more people who vote, the more blue everything becomes. So it's up to the democrat to excite their base and get them to vote(like Obama). Trump gave his base all sorts of excitement and yet only ended up with 60million votes, less than Romey. So perhaps the electoral college can remain...what the democrats need are more appealing candidates. Al Gore and Hillary in the grand scheme of things were snoozefests.

[Eagle]

So disappointed that I read the entire thing and find out it's from Prager University. The fake right wing university that tells you money is free speech, and fossil fuel is the key to saving our planet because there's a correlation between oil and water. (I probably watched 80% of all their youtube videos because A. they are well done and B. would like to know the perspectives of the ultra right).

I am not understanding the protection from tyranny of the majority. If you can win the presidency with just 21% of the population voting the right way exploiting the electoral college system, isn't this tyranny of the minority? Isn't that WAY worst? If the majority of the people want to take this country one way, why should a smaller group of people have just as much say, preventing what majority of the people want?

@Singuy
I didn't look into the political stance of Prager University. It was just an alternative to what I'd been reading so far.

Again, you assume that the founding fathers wanted the United States to be a pure democracy. Clearly they did not as the system in place is a democratic republic. The tyranny of the majority is the issue or at least that's the theory. The chances of a president winning 21% of the popular vote in the required states to win the electoral college is very slim.

Democratic Republic: A democratic republic is, strictly speaking, a country that is both a republic and a democracy. It is one where ultimate authority and power is derived from the citizens, and the government itself is run through elected officials.

Democracy: A democracy is a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.

Republic: A republic is a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch.