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Slashdot Asks: Should The US Abolish The Electoral College?
Last night as votes were still being counted, statistician and editor-in-chief for FiveThirtyEight Nate Silver pointed out that while Donald Trump has been elected president of the United States, "it's possible, perhaps even likely, that [Hillary Clinton] will eventually win the popular vote as more votes come in from California." We now know that she has indeed won the popular vote by a slim margin. American journalist Carl Bialik adds via Silver's blog: Hillary Clinton could still conceivably win the election -- or she could lose the national popular vote. But since both outcomes look unlikely, we should start preparing ourselves for the possibility of the second split between the national popular vote and the electoral vote in the last five presidential elections. A coalition of 11 sates with 165 electoral votes between them has agreed to an interstate compact that, once signed by states with a combined 270 or more electoral votes, would bind their electors to vote for the winner of the national popular vote -- in effect ending the Electoral College. New York just joined this week. It wasn't enough to affect this election, but maybe today's result will spur more states to join. The results of this election echo the 2000 results, where Democrat Al Gore narrowly won the popular vote, but George W. Bush won the White House. It brings into question whether or not the Electoral College should be abolished in favor of the popular vote. As a refresher, the Electoral College is comprised of electors that cast their votes for president. Each state has a set number of electors that is based on the state's population -- the candidate who wins the state's popular vote gets those electors. Technically, on Election Day, the American people are electing the electors who elect the president. The New York Times has a lengthy article describing how the Electoral College works, which you can view here.
It's funny how these conversations always take place after the Democrat loses.
In 2000, the conventional wisdom was that Bush would win the popular vote and Gore would win the electoral college so there was article after article by liberals in the summer of 2000 on why the electoral college would matter. Google it.
The electoral college prevents politicians for completely ignoring 90% of the country and focusing only on the few really big cities. It also prevents voter fraud happening in one area affecting the entire election because it limits the damage done by voter fraud.
The electoral college idea was genius and there is a reason why the country is not a democracy and why we don't elect presidents via popular vote.
The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy
The STATES elect the president, not the populace. In the early days it was the state legislatures that elected the Electors, who went to Washington to vote for president. Along the way the state Electors were changed to being voted on by the people. The president has never been elected by popular vote. If you want to change that then you change the original intent of the Constitution. Not saying that is a bad idea, just that it all makes sense if you understand it.
California has approx 574,000 voters per electoral vote. Contrast that to Wyoming with 142,000 voters per electoral vote. (This is because each state gets a minimum number of electoral votes.)
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/map_of_the_week/2012/11/presidential_election_a_map_showing_the_vote_power_of_all_50_states.html
How in the world is that fair? Are we not giving voters in some states more power to elect the President than others?
And don't forget that the Democrats and Hillary supporters paid the media to NEVER EVER mention this when they were having a go at Trump over the wall thing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yMmG5p0Ll8
You need to read up on US civics a bit then.
The US was set up as a union of individual states...in the US constitutionally, MOST power is supposed to reside in the states. The US constitution does not grant rights, instead, it is there to enumerate a very few rights and power the Federal govt has. Over the years, the fed has grown more powerful than it was intended, many of us want to rein that back in.
But they way it was set up, you are a citizen of your state first, and THEN a citizen of the United States.
The closest analogy might be the European Union.....they actually in ways mimic what the US did. Think of the individual states as small countries unto themselves, and the Federal govt is one way to regulate the relationships between them and as a singular front to dealing with the rest of the world.
Its actually kind of interesting. Back in the day, there was huge rivalry between states....even today, when you meet someone, you will often ask where they are from. If from a different state, that's kind of a big deal, you know they have started life out in a bit different culture than you did.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Kids these days. Do some reading. Fed paper number ten maybe?
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed10.asp
No, California goes to great lengths to make sure undocumented people don't vote. I have related my recent, personal experience in this post. We had to provide a lot of documentation. My son is a 6th-generation Californian on his mom's side and I have lived here since 1987, and it was still a pretty big hassle to document my kid.
Bruce Perens.
This is not how it actually works. Small states have outsized representation in the electoral college, as compared to their population. Wisconsin has a population of 5.8 million and 10 electoral votes. Texas has a population of 27.0 million and 38 electoral votes. If you won 5 states the same size as Wisconsin, it would represent a population of 29.0 million and you'd get 50 electoral votes. Texas has a population that is 7% smaller than 5 Wisconsins, but is allocated 24% fewer electoral votes than 5 Wisconsins would have.
The reason it works this way is because the number of electors is the number of Representatives that state gets in the house (which is allocated by population) plus the amount in the Senate (where every state gets the same number -- 2). It would be possible to adjust the system to make population differences have less impact. The simplest way would be to do it by just having the number of electors be the same as number of Representatives. But as it stands today you have a different impact in the Electoral College depending on the size state you are voting in.
But really it is there for a REASON.
There was a reason we had it. Several actually.
Yes, there were reasons -- unfortunately none of the ones you mention really are correct. They're the reasons that modern political analysts make up because they seem to make sense to them, based on how the system operates NOW.
But the Electoral College operated differently at the beginning, and if you read the various proposals and debates among the Founders, it's very clear that their motivations were quite different.
I'll try to sum it up briefly. There were some of the Founders who wanted Congress to choose the President. There were others who wanted more diverse voices from state government representatives. Few really wanted to entrust it to "the people," because they had all read their ancient Greek and Roman history and knew that democracies were largely disasters that eventually ended up putting tyrants into power.
There is NOTHING in the Constitution saying how Electoral College members are chosen, only that the state legislatures decide how. In the majority of states for the first few decades of the U.S., Electors were mostly chosen by state governments -- many states didn't even bother holding a popular vote AT ALL. Others had various hybrid systems. See the Wikipedia article on the Electoral College if you want more details.
Anyhow, how precisely did the Founders think things were going to work? Remember that there were no political parties at the beginning. They all assumed George Washington would be the first president, but they couldn't imagine consensus emerging after him. So the Electoral College was set up to create a "short list" of good candidates chosen by the states (according to whatever method the legislatures decided).
The Electors originally did not cast separate votes for President and Vice President -- they just had two votes, and at least one of them was required to be not for his home state. That was to prevent states from just deadlocking by electing people from home (since so much was invested in individual states at this time).
The idea was that most Electors would end up voting for someone from their home state, but also someone with more regional or even national consensus. And then those few names would float to the top -- and the "short list" would be sent to Congress to actually decide the election. Remember that originally the person with the most votes would be President, and the person with the 2nd-most votes would be VP.
The Founders -- living before political parties -- assumed that Congress (specifically the House of Representatives) would choose the President in most elections. The Electoral College only existed to create a "short list" based on representatives of state governments and thereby to guarantee more diversity than might come from an established body like Congress. (Also, Electors were required to meet SEPARATELY in their states, not en masse, to prevent the sort of collusion and "backroom dealing" that might happen in a body like Congress. That was another benefit.)
THOSE were the reasons why the Electoral College was created. It originally had nothing to do with most of the crap people say today. The concept that a "popular vote" would even be taken for President in most states wasn't even contemplated by the Founders, who just preferred to get input from state governments to narrow down the field, rather than letting Congress choose the President directly.
So now you know. The Founders were much more anti-"democratic" than you ever thought. And they introduced this complex mechanism to prevent centralized collusion and to get regional consensus around a short list of candidates in an era before parties and factions were assumed.
I disagree. Nate Silver's model was as wrong as everybody else's. It went from 70% on Clinton to 70% on Trump in a very short space of time. I would say there was some systematic error in the way in which it evaluated the opinion polls that was exposed as the election results came in.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
The United States of America is not a union of citizens, but a union of states
"We the People" not "We the States"
How come Slashdot never gets Slashdotted?
"they should have influence exactly in proportion to their populations"
California gets 55 electoral college votes, with 53 of those based on its population. Alaska gets 3, with 1 based on population. There is proportional representation.
Constitutionally, there is no requirement that the people even get a vote for President: "Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress..." A state may decide to let the Governor appoint all the electors directly, or let the statehouse vote. Nothing says the people shall vote for their electors.
The President is not the representative of the people. He (or she) is the CEO charged with executing the laws created by Congress, which itself is supposed to be representative of the people and the States as reflected by the House and Senate (or the Senate before the 17th Amendment). The President also represents the US interests in making treaties, as commander-in-chief (going to war), and making appointments for courts etc. See Article 2 for the enumeration of Presidential powers.
The President is not the leader of a mob bound to do what majority of the mob says. The office of President is the leader of the United States, not the leader of the people of the United States.
I suppose you'd be pleased if San Francisco, LA, NYC, Philly, and Boston could elect the president by themselves and ignore the rest of the country. But have a look at a county-by-county map and realize that almost exactly half of the voters are spread out over the entire country--commonly derided as "flyover country", while the other half are squashed into a small number of dense urban centers.