Should presidential candidates get at least 50% of the vote to win an election?

Question

Bill Clinton became president with less than 50% of the vote. There should be a runoff election so we can get a president who the majority of the voters want.

Answer 1

No. Presidential candidates should get 50% of the Electoral College vote.

We live in a Republic, not a Democracy.

This is not American Idol. We must follow the Constitution, even though both parties continue to destroy the protections found in the document while promoting their socialist government and their attempts to replace our soverign nation with the North American Union and other multinational government schemes.

Answer 2

while you are welcome to your opinion, this is not what our Constitution provides.

America is a Constitutional Republic, not a democracy. The voting rules, including the Electoral College and the whole 'mess', were carefully hammered out as a compromise between the then independent 14 states. The issue was as you suspect -- rights of the smaller states to not be dominated by the ones with greater population.

So far, the present system has worked well. Candidates have to run and work to earn votes in the smaller, likely rural, states as well as the large cities and urbanized states.

Should you want to change this, please recall that a Constitutional Amendment requires the affirmative vote of 75% of the states -- which obviously includes a number of small states who political power you would be trying to reduce. So they'd vote 'no' and the system won't change.

Which is fine by me.

:-)

Answer 3

Yes. If there are three candidates, and no one gets a majority, the lest vote recipient should be dropped and within 1 week of the initial election the runoff should be held

Answer 4

No, what ought to take place is that if a state has say 4 electoral votes, and one candidate gets seventy 5% of the huge-unfold vote. he ought to get 3 of the electoral votes, the a million left ought to bypass to the different candidate to symbolize the smaller voice of the individuals.

Answer 5

No it wipes out at a chance for 3rd party...the 50% rule would empower the current establish power of the 2 party system.

Answer 6

try telling that to al gore! bush should not even be president now! yes, i agree with you! the popular vote should carry more weight than the electorate does!

Answer 7

With this scenario, you are eliminating even the possibility of other party candidates.

Open your eyes and look around, there are more options than the two parties you seem to think there are.