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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.
Serious question, but what is stopping the electoral college people from voting for Hillary despite what the people in their state voted? From what I've read, even those states that have laws that mandate how the electoral people have to vote, the punishments are so laughable for breaking that law that they might as well not exist.
The strategy of focusing on the most populous states still holds true under the Electoral College.
Actually, no. The strategy that holds true under the Electoral College is that of focusing on the most populous SWING states. Neither candidate spend much (if any) time campaigning in California, the most populous state. As a resident of California, I would prefer a system wherein two electoral votes (the number of Senators) are awarded to the statewide winner, and one electoral vote is awarded to the winner of each Congressional district. No Constitutional amendment required, as the method by which a state selects its Electors is determined by the state, not by the Federal government.
But that happens anyways. Generally, "safe states" don't get nearly the attention from candidates as the battleground states.
Mind you, I think one of the things that is going to come out in the wash from this election is that the idea of "firewall states" is a phantom, a miasma built out of pseudo-scientific demographic bafflegab. Clinton didn't lose because Trump stormed the gates so much as she lost because the firewall that Obama had built didn't really exist, or at the very least, it only existed so long as the candidate in question was Barack Obama. I read a report this morning that Bill Clinton had been worried in the lead up to the vote that she hadn't done nearly enough campaigning, that she had put all her effort into battleground states.
In fact, people like myself were actually criticizing Trump for spending so much time in states where his vote was safe, but I think, whatever you think of Trump, his pollsters and campaign team recognized that relying on the notion of safe states is pure hubris. Trump may have built the new engine of presidential elections, and he did it with less money and less resources than Clinton. By every rule in the presidential campaign book, Clinton checked all the boxes, and yet a portion of the supposed safe demographic walked away from her and voted for Trump.
The question that the Dems and Republicans will spend the next three or so years trying to answer is "Is Trump's victory a bizarre one-off, a sort of American Brexit, and will never happen again, or is there a new paradigm taking form?" I'd say as interesting as the 2016 election was, I'm wagering the 2020 is going to be the real product of this disruption. I'd also say guys like Nate Silver and Sam Wang may want to find something else to do, because this, even though I didn't believe, did end up being a Brexit-style vote, where traditional demographic models failed utterly and the pollsters and aggregators by and large got it wrong.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
if two people get a large number of votes, having a few more or less doesn't change how qualified they are to be president. But if those votes came from more regions of the country, specifically from more states, then the one winning a large fraction of the popular vote and the larger fraction of states is the best choice.
If you disagree with that then you would be better served abolishing the senate than worrying about the electoral college as the Senate is all about regional voting not population representation.
Until the senate is gone, the president has to work with both the house and the senate so we need a president with a mandate in both houses for his/her agendas. The electoral colleges strikes that compromise.
Another rational for it, is that it renornalizes the weight of the state away from turn-out to the actual population. If there's a hurricane or a snowfall in some state then the turn out is depressed. But the actual vote is still a representative sample of that state. Thus renormalizing the weight of that vote to the population of the state not the turn out makes sense. Ergo the Electoral college makes sense.
One could tweak it. I dont' like the winner take all method of most state. I'd prefer a proportionality of delegates by the states vote plus a modest bonus for the overall winner in the state.
We don't need actual living breathing delegates I believe. The states can just submit their results. In the event of a tie we could send state reps on short notice.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
We live in a Republic, not a democracy. The Electoral College does serve a purpose, one that you disagree with, but it still serves a purpose. The GP outlines it very nicely and in unbiased terms.
A republic is a type of democracy.
The election is over, you can take off your brain constricting hat now.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Actually it wouldn't- it would require states with 270 electoral votes to agree to pick the electors for the winner of the popular vote. Since the constitution days the legislature of the several States can pick electors (there's no requirement for even having a popular vote), it's perfectly constitutional to do so. There's already an attempt to do this which is halfway there https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
You blithering moron, the framers of the Constitution didn't put in the Electoral Congress because of any wise notion they had. It was because they were afraid poor people were too stupid to be allowed to pick their president.