any else agree that the electoral college is outdated and should be eliminated?

Question

i believe in "one vote one person"... the electoral college was put in place in a time when populations in states were smaller and the fear was that they would not be fairly represented, times change and i believe it is time we elected our presidents strictly with a popular, majority vote.. if you disagree please tell me why. thank you in advance..

Answer 1

Thank You! I've been saying this ever since our last president got "elected"

Answer 2

The concept of a Republic and an Electoral College were designed because, with the communication and travel standards at the time, it would be impractical.

Today, we have the technology to take and count votes in a timely and secure fashion. Thus an electoral college would be unneccesary. Combine this with the concept of paper-trailed ballots, and you would remove the possibility of a staged election...like 2000 (where the voter's votes were ignored and the President was appointed by the supreme court, most of whom were given their jobs from one candidate's father) or 2004 (when the owners of the three primary voting machine companies are all active members of one party, and two of them (brothers) each guaranteed one condidate the election).

This is the only way to secure democracy...to have one. This is not a democracy. By definition, America is a Republic (same basic political system as USSR (United Soviet Socialist REPUBLIC) and The Republic of China. Republics have always...since Rome...fallen. It is an illusion of democracy that falls apart when people start realizing that the aristocracy rules and the people have no real say.

The United States needs to be reformatted into a true Democracy...from the ground up...with all rights securely protected. The Constitution needs to be updated. Loopholes need to be closed. The entirety of the Law should be available to all citizens easily, and should be easy to understand. The Executive Branch should enforce the Law, The Judicial Branch should interpret the law, and the Legislative branch should be the American People.

Answer 3

Actually, Asker is correct and original reason for electoral college was to keep the few cities from dominating the nation, which would mean candidates would not even bother to visit less populated states. First Answerer thought it had to do with slow voting result.

Believe it or not, there still exist many copies of the letters, documents, and speeches of that era, explaining why they were doing it.

I think the same as they did. This comes directly from the states rights concept which is the center of our government. Each state is to have some effect on results, as a state. Nothing has changed except Democrats lost an election because they sent Elian back to Cuba, which caused Florida Cuban Refugees to change their votes.

Funny thing is Elian was supposed to go back per US and International law, and the only thing I thought Clinton did right in his 8 years in office cost Dems the election.

We over 200 years became the most powerful nation in the world with the Constitution the way it was, and yet we have a steady stream of people who think we can make it even better by imitating Mexico. Say what?


If you like how Mexico does it, go to Mexico.

Answer 4

It can only be eliminated by a constitutional amendment. Oddly enough, no one ever proposes such a constitutional amendment in Congress because it would never pass muster with 3/4 of the States.

If we went with a strictly majority vote, presidential candidates would only campaign in the 10 most populous states. Not a good idea - wouldn't you agree?

Answer 5

It's much easier to correct than eliminate.

The basic structure of the electoral college -- number of electors per state equal to Congressfolk -- is defined by the Constitution. Changing that would require a constitutional amendment.

However, the allocation of electoral votes -- generally winner take all per state -- is actually controlled by each state. So, changing the system to provide proportional representation per candidate (pro-rata based on percentage of vote per state) can be done simply by changing the state laws, without amending the federal constitution.

That solves a lot of the problem, and can be implemented while we're fixing the other problems with the electoral system.

Answer 6

If you truly believe that, then you must be a Bush supporter, because he won by the largest popular vote margin in history. This is absolutely true !! Gore was fighting for the electoral votes !!

Answer 7

the electroral college is needed today more then ever. if we went to a striaght popular count elections all presidental canidates would spend all their time in a few states. states with small populations would never have any attention paid to them. then a incumbent president would then make sure that states lake Ca,NY, Flordia Texas and Ohio would get most of the federal money.all big cities would have ton and tons of federal money would be thrown at them. smaller communities would get nothing. so to insure each person vote is equally represtented you need electroral college.