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Electoral College, learn about it, and realize that they aren't making a vote, they are fulfilling a role, and that each and every state has chosen to follow the vote of the people in the state, with the only slight differences being the cases of Maine and Nebraska, and even that's had minimal impact. States deciding to choose electors based on anything else would be a laughable outcome, and they just aren't going to do it. And they don't cotton too well to people who don't fall in line. As a result, the reality is? The Electoral College is just a pro forma sham, that doesn't really matter except to distort public interaction, and Donald Trump lost the real vote that matters, that of the people.

Then he lied about it. Which just shows his own deceptive practices, because even he admitted that the popular vote was what he considered important. People who try to ignore the popular vote (mostly ones that lose it) and rely on the Electoral College, are so deeply wrong, that they don't ever want to admit it. Some of them, like yourself, even make up sham excuses about how somehow the Electoral College does something to protect small states. They're wrong too.

I'm sorry, Lynnwood Rooster, I know you are committed in your partisan myopia to a complete and utter defense of the Electoral College, today, but since I also know you would completely change your tune if the circumstances were different, it's not exactly persuasive. You're not committed to any kind of moral position, you will simply believe you are at war with EastAsia, that the chocolate ration has increased, and that wrapping yourself in the Constitution will justify any malfeasance.

At least you're committed to that, so we know what you'll keep on doing.

> No. Counted any way voters preferred Clinton.

There's no such thing as a "popular vote" in America. You may as well talk about the "white male landowning vote", because that's just as silly. And that metric USED to matter: the popular vote NEVER has.

If you like the idea of a popular vote, the http://www.nationalpopularvote... compact is a pretty good start. It doesn't take the same buy-in as a constitutional amendment, but you will need to make sure member states can't opt out at the last second or something.

But right now, the popular vote is not a thing. Donald Trump won the election, and he won it with plenty of electoral votes to spare.

The main effect has always been to elevate the voice of lower population centers.

That's complete bullshit. The EC only happens to just slightly amplify the vote of just the very tiniest of states. It's not a significant effect, and certainly doesn't make candidates pay any more attention to Wyoming.

While it is true that states like Florida, California, and New York have very large populations and therefore more electoral votes, the voice of those states alone cannot dictate the course of the country.

Except Florida is a swing state, so yes, they DO single-handedly decide the election, and roll right over all the small states (some years). Ditto for Ohio. This year it was mostly Pennsylvania that swung the election...

Anybody noticing these are NOT small states? The electoral college makes small states EVEN MORE IRRELEVANT than they would be on a pure popular-vote basis. It makes big states with nearly even partisan divides incredibly valuable, and every one else's vote is practically worthless.

That's probably why even SMALL STATES have enacted National Popular Vote legislation, as well as large ones. We're 2/3rds of the way to eliminating the electoral college... Just a few more states joining on will make it a reality.

The electoral college only makes sense as a way for slave-holding states to use their slave population numbers (at least three-fifths of them) to multiply the value of the white population's votes. Obviously this was important for ensuring more populous states couldn't out-vote them and push to eliminate slavery. Today, it's a nuisance we don't need.

Without the Electoral College, would politicians even bother courting anyone except cities with Population Density Disorder?

The popular vote this time around was decided by just 3 million votes... It only takes a couple smaller states to put together 3 million votes.

The electoral college does NOT give small states a big voice... It gives a hand-full of swing states a big voice (and most of them are big like Florida, Ohio, etc), and leaves small states even MORE IRRELEVANT than they would have been just based on 1-person, 1-vote. At least candidates would be spending some money on TV and radio ads in small states trying to turn around a few thousand votes that were predicted to go against them.

That's probably why even SMALL STATES have enacted National Popular Vote legislation, as well as large ones. We're 2/3rds of the way to eliminating the electoral college... Just a few more states joining on will make it a reality.

The electoral college only makes sense as a way for slave-holding states to use their slave population numbers (at least three-fifths of them) to multiply the value of the white population's votes. Obviously this was important for ensuring more populous states couldn't out-vote them and push to eliminate slavery. Today, it's a nuisance we don't need.

The only way to change that is to change the Constitution

The electoral college can be neutered without a constitutional amendment. All it takes is states with a majority + 1 of electors agreeing to pledge their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote. Cf: http://www.nationalpopularvote...

The point of the EC is to ensure broad national support for the only elected executive position in the government.

No, the point was to get some way to utilize the large slave populations in some states, without letting them vote.

The point is to give low population states some equal footing in the say of the only executive position up for election.

No, they get only a tiny amount more say. Since you only need a simple majority of electoral votes, and it makes no difference if they are from large or small states, you can still easily skip the small ones.

Where were the candidates spending all their time? Florida, Pennsylvania, North Caroline, etc. Hardly tiny states... deciding the election.

POTUS would be selected by the cities because low population areas interests are overridden by the millions in one city.

That's still 100% true, candidates don't go campaign in rural areas, at best they're directed to cities in swing states.

The non-swing states, which reliably vote one party or the other, are 100% left-out today, whether they are large or SMALL, precisely BECAUSE of the electoral college. If it was purely a popular vote, the candidates would care about those few thousand undecided voters out in the middle of nowhere, just as much as the voters in the cities.

The swing-state issue is a ridiculous and unnecessary distraction, which ensures the few states with evenly divided party voters, have a blank check to make demands of presidential candidates, no matter how much those policies might be detrimental to the other states.

And by the way, we're already two-thirds of the way there... Just a few more states need to sign-on, to make it reality in the next presidential election.

It's being worked on using state-level national popular vote legislation. 105 votes worth of states are still needed - that could be as little as four states (e.g. Texas, New York, Florida and Virginia).

There is such a movement. The approach is to get 51% of the states (measured in electoral votes) to sign a compact that will force them to vote in the electoral college for the winner of the popular vote, regardless of the results in their state. They are currently 61% of the way.

> It is also promoted by those who want the Federal Government in charge of everything instead of it's original limited role.

Nonsense. Lots of conservative organizations back this idea.

http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/pages/blogs.php

I like the concept, I like the approach, and I would support its implementation in *all* states [...] I dislike gerrymandering

You're contradicting yourself. Please familiarize yourself with electoral votes assigned by congressional district. electoral votes assigned in proportion to the number of votes a candidate gets (Only being proposed in red-controlled "blue states"), and the national popular vote.

You may observe that some of the text above is underlined. This is called a "link". If you move your mouse over the link, and click with the left mouse button, your browser (the browser is the program that lets you see the WWW part of the Internet; it's the program with the big blue "e" you use to get on "the internet") will open up a new page which will enlighten you about something you're obviously very ignorant about.

As multiple posters have been trying to explain to you, giving each congressional district its own electoral vote is unfair because the districts are gerrymandered. Having each state give electoral votes to the president in proportion to the number of presidential votes that state gets would be fair--but only if all 50 states implement it. Right now, the only state that wants to implement that idea is a Republican-controlled state that usually gives their electoral votes to the Democrat. Observe no similar proposal in, say, Texas.

The national popular vote being proposed will only go in to effect once enough states pass the law to determine who wins the presidential election.

You whine like a baby when I point out that you're an idiot. But the bottom line is this: We're trying to explain something to you. You're ignoring our explanations. You're either too dumb to understand our explanations or are a partisan hack too thick-headed to contradict the BS Fox News spoon-feeds you.

The claim was that this approach only hurts Democrats and is neutral for Republicans; it is an incontrovertible fact that this system in Nebraska has benefited Democrats at the expense of Republicans

Sure, the electoral vote gerrymandering scheme would benefit Democrats if it was only implemented in "deep red" states like Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. However, the fact of the matter is that no "red state" has proposed gerrymandering their electoral votes since the 2012 election. It's only Republican controlled blue states -- namely Virginia and Pennsylvania -- that have been trying to come up with gerrymandering schemes to take electoral votes away from Democrats.

In terms of fairness, this approach starts to move our election system away from the "first past the post" outcomes by allowing state votes to be split [...] Why shouldn't electors be chosen the same way as Congress

The most fair way for votes to be counted in a democracy is one person, one vote. A system that would let a presidential candidate with 4% fewer votes than the leading candidate win is inherently unfair. The electoral college system in the US is a historical relic which needs to go the way of slavery and no suffrage for women. Hopefully, the national popular vote will get enough states on board that we never have to worry about "red states" or "blue states" in presidential elections again.

There is a very reasonable solution to many of these problems which does not require any changes to the US constitution: all the states agree to assign their electoral college votes to the winner of the national popular vote. After 2004 many "blue" states signed up. You can find more on their (admittedly horrible looking) site.

I don't think an amendment to the Constitution would be necessary. All the Constitution says is that states choose Electors, and the Electors vote on the President. It's up to the states how they pick Electors. In practice, they all have a first-past-the-post popular vote, but an individual state could choose to employ IRV or any other system.

Ideally, one would want a lot of states to get together and agree to all implement IRV together. Already, several states have signed pacts to all assign their electors to the winner of the national popular vote (see here). There's no reason we couldn't use the same approach to pass IRV. It's much easier to pass voting reform this way than it is through a Constitutional amendment.

Of course, the two major parties don't want it, so even with the lower bar it's unlikely to happen.

Our voting does not matter and campaigning is just a gigantic waste of time and resources. Hence movements like this.

Each state holds it's own election -- not for president, though, but for the slate of people who will represent the state in the electoral collage. They're the ones who elect the president, not you.

A historical mistake that we are more than half way towards obviating.

So, while it may seem like voting 3rd party is throwing your vote away, it isn't. You can think of it as voting against both parties, and if enough people agree with you a new party may rise to dominance.

... at the expense of one of the major parties. The two-party system stays intact, and all the problems that come with it stick around. In a few years, you'll be griping about that party just like you griped about the last one, because they will have expanded to fill the space occupied by the party they pushed out.

Furthermore, in the short term (i.e. the next couple decades), voting for a third party candidate harms your interests. It's worse than throwing your vote away.

Suppose you really like the Libertarians, who have low support in the polls, but your second choice is the Republicans, who have high support. You decide to take this advice and vote for the Libertarians. You know one vote won't cause the Libertarians to win, so the only outcomes are: (1) the Republicans win or (2) the Democrats win. Your preferred outcome is #1, but you haven't done anything to make it happen; someone on the other side who wants to vote for the Greens but votes for the Democrats instead is more likely to get their preferred outcome (#2).

So suppose you see the folly in casting one individual third-party vote, and instead you go on Slashdot to convince your fellow would-be Libertarians to cast their votes for a third party. Now you have a big happy bloc of voters who are voting Libertarian instead of their second choice, which we'll suppose is also the Republicans. But unless this bloc is big enough to win the election, you're all screwed, because the Democrats will win -- exactly the outcome you didn't want!

In other words, a third party vote only works "if enough people agree with you". If not, you're actively working against your own interests. You'd need some kind of pact that would only be triggered when enough people signed on to guarantee a win, kind of like the National Popular Vote laws are only triggered when enough states sign on to control the electoral college. Easier said than done when we're talking about voters who are free to do whatever they want, rather than states whose actions are bound by law.

And even that pact wouldn't change the two-party system, it'd just let you replace one of the two parties.

If you want meaningful reform, the best option is to change the voting method and break the two-party system. Doesn't have to be something fancy like preferential voting; approval voting would do just as well, and it works with the same ballots we already use. In the meantime, find the major party that suits you best, and work from the inside to get them to nominate candidates you can support.

The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC). Every vote would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections. The bill would take effect only when enacted, in identical form, by states possessing a majority of the electoral votesâ"that is, enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538). When the bill comes into effect, all the electoral votes from those states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC). The Constitution gives every state the power to allocate its electoral votes for president, as well as to change state law on how those votes are awarded. The bill is currently endorsed by 1,246 state legislators â" 460 sponsors (in 48 states) and an additional 786 legislators who have cast recorded votes in favor of the bill. The National Popular Vote bill has been endorsed by the New York Times, Chicago Sun-Times, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Hartford Courant, Miami Herald, Sarasota Herald Tribune, Sacramento Bee, The Tennessean, Fayetteville Observer, Anderson Herald Bulletin, Wichita Falls Times, The Columbian, and other newspapers. The bill has been endorsed by Common Cause, Fair Vote, and numerous other organizations. In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a stateâ(TM)s electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). The recent Washington Post, Kaiser Family Foundation, and Harvard University poll shows 72% support for direct nationwide election of the President. This national result is similar to recent polls in Arkansas (80%), California (70%), Colorado (68%), Connecticut (73%), Delaware (75%), Kentucky (80%), Maine (71%), Massachusetts (73%), Michigan (73%), Mississippi (77%), Missouri (70%), New Hampshire (69%), Nebraska (74%), Nevada (72%), New Mexico (76%), New York (79%), North Carolina (74%), Ohio (70%), Pennsylvania (78%), Rhode Island (74%), Vermont (75%), Virginia (74%), Washington (77%), and Wisconsin (71%). The National Popular Vote bill has passed 22 state legislative chambers, including one house in Arkansas, Colorado, Maine, Michigan, North Carolina, and Washington, and both houses in California, Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont. The bill has been enacted by Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, and Maryland. These four states possess 50 electoral votes â" 19% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect. See http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact (which seems very comprehensive and easier to see the state-by-state-status than the NPV site) there have been four states the have fully enacted the law: Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, and New Jersey; their 50 electoral votes total amount to almost 19% of the 270 needed for the compact to take effect.

Read the article (or even the summary) again. The law would only go into effect when enough other states pass similar legislation so that they already control a majority of the EC.

This seems to be the same as the National Popular Vote Bill: http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/index.php It looks like "22 Houses" have already passed the bill, but I do not know which if states have fully enacted it (Maryland seems to have done so). California has had it pass both houses but I think it was vetoed by the Governor when it was run through the houses the first time back in 2006.

22 states have already signed on. Check out http://nationalpopularvote.com/

The proposal is to de facto abolish the electoral college by having states pass laws dictating that their electors votes match the popular vote--meaning that if a state has 100 electors, and the winner gets 60% of the popular vote, then 60 electors vote for the winner and 40 for the loser. It's not the case that all the state electors vote for the winner, giving him or her a unanimous victory in the electoral college.

Wrong. The proposal, the National Popular Vote, is essentially exactly what GP describes. One might legitimately dispute GPs characterization of which states are likely to pass the proposal, but GPs characterization of what the proposal is.

Maryland, Illinois, Hawaii, and New Jersey have signed legislation to give their votes to the national popular vote. The legislation goes into effect when more than half of the electoral votes come from states that have this legislation. http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/ Contact your state representative.

And since the only way to change it is in Congress and not the Executive branch, and they know this, you know they're doing it intentionally for publicity.

Since each individual state elects its own electorial college delegates, they can change how they do that at the state level. Many states have an initiative system that allows citizens to put new laws directly on the ballot (after getting a certain number of signatures). My state, Washington, recently passed Initiative 872 which changed the purpose of our primary elections to determining the top two candidates for the general election instead of determining the most popular candidate from each party. It was challenged by both major parties and declared constitutional by the US Supreme Court this year. The parties are still fighting it but the state is going ahead with it this year anyway.

Similarly, there was an initiative to get Washington State to use Instant Runoff Voting - I don't think the statewide initiative has yet to get enough signatures to make the ballot, although they claim they won a local measure in Pierce County and that county will use IRV.

Also, there is a movement called National Popular Vote to have a plurality of states agree to elect their delegates via the popular vote - if a plurality of states do, then the electoral college is effectively circumvented without any federal action.

You can't make the donkey or elephant drink, but you can sure tie them up and walk them off the plank.

Well, there is some room for optimism... there's a movement afoot amongst various states to agree to allocate all their electoral votes to the winner of the nationwide popular vote tally. The agreement would be legally binding and go into effect as soon as enough states are parties to it represent 270 votes (i.e. enough to be the sole determiners of the election winner). The bill has been passed in California and is awaiting the Governor's signature.

The beauty of this scheme is that it delivers the result we want (presidential election by popular vote) without having to change the electoral college system (and thus not having to modify the Constitution, which is a very difficult thing to do).

There are a number of states starting to change their electoral college policy to say that their college will cast votes for whoever wins the national vote count. If 13 states do this, then we will basically have a direct democracy WRT the presidency.