Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Electoral College

Post your reasons for why we should or should not use the electoral college for the presidential election.

The reasons for it: Federalist Paper 68

The reason against: Anti-Federalist Paper 72


My opinion? I hate the way that the electoral college works. There needs to be serious reform there. On the other hand, I cannot think of a better system.

The only thing that the Founders worried about just as much as they worried about a single tyrant is the tyranny of a mob rule.

A direct democracy, as explained in Federalist 10, allows for large factions. You need a Republic to create countless factions that overlap and therefore prevent any one faction from becoming a tyrannical power.

So, I don't like it's structure and lack of oversight or lack of standardization. But I cannot think of a better system.

Maybe a three way election? The President is elected by giving the winner of the popular vote 1 point, the winner of the 270 electoral votes 1 point, and the winner of a vote of the 50 State Legislature's 1 point. The candidate that gets 2 points wins. In the event of a third party candidate winning a point and creating a 3 way tie, the 270 electoral votes wins.

The electoral college prevented Al Gore from becoming president, it proved it's worth right there.

without it, you would have about 5 city-states electing the president, the massive metro areas of the U.S. (IMO)

This is a good point for sure�but its part of a vast corrupt system that needs badly to be dismantled.

H-a-J
Interesting proposal you bring forth, it certainly would spread the influence around and keep any one area from realy gaining a strangle hold on the office. Cheers NC

Maybe, maybe not. I understand why we have it, but I'm not convinced the electoral really helps smaller states and it may hurt. Here is what I think is happening.

In strong conservative states conservative voters are less motivated to show up at the polls in national elections. I know that is the case here in GA. Many conservatives know the republican voter will win here without their vote. So why bother. As long as the politician of their choice gets GA's electoral votes, their individual vote means nothing.

In places like California the liberal candidate is going to win no matter what. I believe there are an awful lot of conservative voters in places like California and in the Northeast that simply stay at home since they know their vote means nothing.

Having the electoral college makes voter fraud much easier. Under the current system corrupt politicians can pinpoint 3-4 large cities in 3-4 states and influence the vote in only a few small geographical areas enough to swing the election one way or another. Much harder to do that if the election is decided on the popular vote.

I simply believe the electoral college hurts conservatives more than liberals despite the results of the 2000 election. I honestly believe that if the election at that time had been the result of popular vote instead of the electoral college Gore would have still lost, and without the fiasco in Florida. I don't think we would have Obama now either.

JMR40's post kind of says we have that now, but I think this points to the real value of the electoral college. Without it, a presidential candidate will only have to campaign in urban areas on urban issues. The real divide in this country is urban vs. rural, and abolishing the electoral college would increase that divide and weaken rural areas even further.

Steve.

I don't think it would have mattered in that election. Between a weak Republican Candidate and people out to prove that they were not racist, Obama was a given, at that time in history. Re-election still puzzles me as it makes on sense at all. miles

I hate that the EC voters only have to vote the way they see fit. The is no law or oversight that forces then to represent their State. The popular vote can be for one guy and the EC can still vote for another.

I also hate the nonstandard way things are done. Some States give the popular vote winner ALL of the State EC votes while others will break the EC votes up based upon percentages. That's only if they aren't doing what I mentioned in the first paragraph.

I'm for the electoral college, but there should be the same number for each state. No one state should be any more or less important than any other.

I can't really agree with that concept 100%.

If your State has 9 people and mine has 1 person. You are making my votes 10x more valuable than yours and the overall vote doesn't capture the sentiment of the Nation as a whole. 90% of the people would be equal with 10%.

I think that the EC is a decent system that needs some big changes, but the concept is great. I would want to offset it in a manner similar to what you're saying by have the individual State Legislature's vote and that vote count as much as the EC vote.

That way you can take what you're proposing into consideration and give the States some of their power back over the Fed's

50 states, 50 electoral votes. Seems pretty fair to me.

Not even close to a representation of the people though...

Sure it is. If you aren't going by popular vote, then 1 electoral vote per state.

Of course it's not near as nice as knowing 11 or so states are a good representation of the other 39.

You touch on the issues that I have with the EC. So, I see what you're saying.

The State's that do the all or nothing vote with their EC votes do not take into account the percentages of the popular vote.

Candidate A get's 55% of the State vote, Candidate B get's 45% of the State popular vote, and Candidate A walks away with 100% of the EC votes for that State. That completely ignores the popular vote, especially if the State is one with a massive population.

That's why I like the idea of giving the popular vote equal footing with a vote of the State Legislature's (another way of doing what you propose), and balancing that with the system set in place to balance them, namely the EC.... use all three. Then you have State Soverignity preserved, the popular vote championed (reflecting the will of the people) and a mechanism to keep one group from over powering the other via a better EC.

Agreed. It's crap.

The Electoral College is not the problem, the problem is voting fraud, and until its taken seriously and people caught committing voter fraud get to serve serious jail time, then there are going to be problems. Voter Id's and making sure the voter lists are accurate, will go a long way. My state lost electoral votes, we were 8 now we are 6 and Texas picked up some. Going straight popular vote will mean a few big cities will decide the issue, just look at Canada, for the most part Ontario calls the shots and the rest of them, just shut up and here is the bill.

No, the real problem are all the [bleep] idiots that vote.