what do you think of the american electoral voting system? if it is one country why go by state population?

Question

what can be done to change this and who wants to change this

Answer 1

I think that at this point in the evolution of the government and the American people, that the electoral voting system should be retired. The system was put in place by early Americans because of the lack of education and understanding of politics. In today's world, more people are educated and have a good understanding of politics. Why insult these intelligent Americans with this outdated voting system? It is surprising that in a world of such advanced technology that the American people have such an outdated way of voting. If this system were to be changed, people would have more confidence in their vote and take part in elections more so than now. The American people do not see the need to vote if the elections are only going to be based on a percentage of people that they are not even part of. If the elections were based on the votes of each individual person, they would be more accurate and show what the American people really want. If the American people saw that their vote really did make a difference, they would have a renowned interest in their government and local community and also be more willing to stand up and vote for what they think is right.

Answer 2

The electoral college as it is called was a good idea when first used because of the area that the US covered was quite large and there was no way to count all of the votes in a timely manner. I believe that this system is very out dated and should be replaced by simply using the computer technology we have to count the popular vote. This can be done almost instantly.
This will, however, never happen because the politicians already in power have, over the years, learned to manipulate voting district boundaries to help insure that they, the imcumbants, remain in office.

Answer 3

A lot of people complain about the electoral college...it's an old holdover from way-back, some people don't even vote for a presidential candidate because they assume that the electoral college will do largly whatver it wants. What's your proposal for distilling the will of the people off of paper ballots and doing so honestly, and effectively?

Answer 4

This question pokes at the heart of the difference between a democracy and a representative republic and nibbles at the edges of notions of sovereignty.

In a true democracy, all individuals in the polity would share in every decision of state. In the modern nation-state, this would be impossibly unwieldy and would require every citizen to be a full time legislator (not to mention the difficulties of disseminating information and calculating voting results).

The founders believed that a representative democracy was the best form of government achievable for a nation, which was considered something of a novel and naive idea at the time. In a representative democracy, the people elect leaders or representatives to handle the day-to-day job of governance. Periodically, elections are held to allow the people to express approval or disapproval of their representatives by returning them to office or voting them out.

The office of President of the United States, the singular embodiment of the executive power of the federal government, was considered to potent a position to be entrusted to direct election of the people. While a Virginian might be expected to be familiar with the leaders of his state, those that might stand for election as representatives, the United States as a whole was thought to be too large for most people to be familiar with that smaller body of people who would likely stand for election as President. Therefore, the founders established a college of electors, people directly elected in each state who might be expected to make the effort to familiarize themselves with the national candidates for President. These electors would then gather and choose the President.

The power to govern how electors were selected was entrusted to the legislatures of the various states. This goes to the question of sovereignty under the Federal Constitution. The federal government should be viewed as a government of sovereign states, and not necessarily of individual citizens. The states cede some of their sovereign power to the federal government, and are in turn directly represented in the federal government. Individuals are presumed to be directly represented at the state level, where individual liberties or sovereignty is ceded to the police power of the state. Thus, it seemed natural to the founders that the states ought to be the basic unit represented in the gathering of presidential electors, not individual citizens who were believed to be better represented at the state level.

Unfortunately, the concept of how truly limited the power of the federal government is has become muddled over time, predominantly by the aggregation of wealth in the federal system and an extremely expansive reading of the commerce clause of the Constitution. Presidential elections should serve as a reminder of how remote the federal executive is from the people and be a warning to citizens that the federal government does not directly represent them and should be treated with appropriate scepticism and wariness. Changing the presidential electoral system might be a misstep down a path leading to the aggregation of greater power at the federal level; the very outcome greatly feared by most of the founders.