Do you like the electoral college or not?

Question

WHY?!?!?!?!?!?!?!... or WHY not?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Answer 1

Keeps candidates from ignoring small states in favor of just going to and after large popular vote states. Otherwise your president would be the choice of Ca, NY,TX, FL, Oh Pa and maybe nowhere else,

Answer 2

I do, and believe the founders were ingenious when they elected it. The electoral college more adequately represents landowners. Without the electoral college only major cities like San Francisco would be able to send candidates to the White House. All the people living between San Francisco and New York City would have no say and their votes would not count. Does Wyoming really want Gavin Newsome deciding what is best for Wyoming?

With the electoral college, candidates must appeal to both the city slickers and the country hicks since San Franisco is only allotted ONE electoral vote. Candidates must appeal to the rest of the state and their delegates (all 53 of them). And to the thousands of delegates in all the other 49 states.

While not perfect, the electoral college is a better representation of the nation as a whole and protects the nation by allocating importance and respect against each congressional district.

Gore would have been a horrible president. Gore actually campaigned only in select major cities and metropolises, while Bush got the country people interested in the election and registered to vote.

Answer 3

No I don't like the electoral college because it is not representative of the popular vote always. The election of 2000 is a perfect example, i.e. Gore won the popular vote by lost the electoral college vote.

The best way to ensure that the electoral college is representative of the popular vote is to award the candidates electoral votes the percentage of the popular vote they won, i.e. if a candidate received 46 percent of the popular vote in a state, they should receive 46 percent of that state's electoral college votes. This could really make a difference in states that have the largest number of electoral votes with California, Texas, and New York having the most.

I seriously doubt this will ever happen unfortunately but I can always dream anyway! :-)

Answer 4

The Electoral College may have made sense in 1789, but it has long outlived its usefulness. In 1789, communication was poor and the average citizen had little access to information about the candidates. Back then, the Electors who voted in the electoral college were not necessarily picked by the voters at all, and they were not necessarily pledged to vote for a particular candidate. The Electors could be picked by state legislatures, and they were expected to carefully consider who to vote for in picking a president.

Now, the Electoral College, under which states generally vote as a block - with all their electoral votes going to the winner of the popular vote in the state, is great for people who live in swing states such as Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio. People in swing states (also known as battleground states) get lots of visits from candidates who pay attention to what they want. The candidates also spend a great deal of money in those states for campaign advertisements.

The Electoral College is great for the Miami Cubans because neither party wants to upset them by easing the embargo on Cuba.

Unfortunately, if you don't live in a swing state, you are just a spectator in presidential elections - The candidates don't even bother to visit spectator states after the primaries except to raise campaign contributions, because it is assumed that the state will vote blue or vote red. Why bother with the needs of Texas or California, when you know that Texas's electoral votes are going to go to the Republican and California's electoral votes are going to go to the Democrat?

Some Republicans in spectator states, such as Congressman Ron Paul of Texas, favor keeping the Electoral College. These people claim that getting rid of the Electoral College would favor liberals on the East and West Coasts. But if John Kerry had won just 60,000 more votes in Ohio, he would be president today, even though Bush won the national popular vote by more than 3 million votes. In response, the conservatives who favor keeping the Electoral College argue that this was an anomaly that is not likely to happen again if we keep the present system. (By January of 2009 when the new president takes office, the Republicans will have had control of the White House for 28 of the previous 40 years.)

Republicans tend to benefit when the voter turn out is low, and moving to a popular vote system, would increase the voter turnout, because every vote would count. Republicans have also been active in challenging the right of people to vote in areas where most voters are likely to vote Democratic (based on the claim that the voter is not properly registered or has been convicted of a felony or is ineligible for some other reason.) The current Electoral College system permits Republicans to concentrate their vote suppression efforts in a few swing states.

In theory, the Electoral College gives more power to small states like Alaska or Montana, because each state gets at least 3 Electoral Votes, but in practice the candidates don't pay any attention to a small state, unless it is also a swing state with roughly an equal number of Democratic and Republican voters.

The fact that the so called fly over states get a extra representation in the Electoral College is largely irrelevant. The worse thing about the Electoral College is the winner take all way that almost all of the states award their electoral votes - which prevents all but a very few states from being spectator states.

There is a realistic plan to get rid of the electoral college, and the state of Maryland enacted it into law in early April. The Hawaii legislature recently passed a similar bill, but Hawaii's governor vetoed it on April 23rd. Nevertheless, the plan has a considerable amount of support among both Democrats and Republicans.


See: http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/04/10/schneider.electoral/index.html

The idea of one person - one vote is an important principal in a democracy. But the greatest evil of the electoral college is that it concentrates power in a very few states, something that people who favor the Electoral College claim that it avoids.

For more information, see:

http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/pages/explanation.php
and
http://www.every-vote-equal.com/

Answer 5

Absolutely I am for the electoral college. If we elected the president based on the popular vote New York, Texas, and California would elect the president every cycle. I want a president that represents the whole country not just a few states. Can you imagine a president that only had to campaign in a few states???

Answer 6

It has lost almost all relevance today.

Communications is the key. The Electoral College mattered when results of a complex event like a national election would take weeks to arrive in a central location, then need a certified body to insure the results were valid.

A direct vote can be achieved today. The EC is no longer needed.

Answer 7

I prefer it. With the electoral college, voters are spread out across the country. We have extreme liberal pockets of voters in the US. California, New York, and the liberal North East usually vote overwhelmingly democrat. These pockets would dominate in all presidential elections if the popular vote were used.

Answer 8

I like it because it ensures that all states have their equal say in who is president. When you vote, your vote actually counts in your state, the winner of the electoral vote then puts their votes toward the national election. This way your votes in Wyoming have just as great of value as they do in New York.

Answer 9

Yes, it insures that candidates for President must campaign and listen to the issues of other parts of the country besides the major urban areas and states with smaller populations.

Answer 10

I like it. I think it is pretty fair. Without it, the residents of some states wouldn't have an affect on the elections.