Electorial College

**Opunaya** · #1 (**permalink**) 01-31-2008, 05:53 AM

Do you think we should still have this system?
United States Electoral College - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

AndtheDaysGoBy · 01-31-2008, 09:43 AM

no.. in my opinion its stupid. if the election were really based on the peoples vote, it would be won by popular vote... thats why its called POPULAR vote. and George Bush wouldn't be president right now.

**Brother of Yeshua** · 01-31-2008, 09:52 AM

Was it Nixon that was the last president who lost the popular vote? I could be totally wrong on that. I think there was another, back in the 1800's sometime, can't remember who.

Anyway, the electoral college makes no sense to me. It's inception was justified to "safeguard the people from tyranny" but in my opinion, it only seems to make tyranny potentially easier. Most people don't realize that delegates sent to the electoral college DO NOT have to vote in line with what their state's popular vote is. In theory, the people could vote for candidate A and the delegates could vote for candidate B, and candidate B would win the election.

This makes no sense to me if we are to live in a representative democracy. Now we're voting for representatives to vote for our representatives. Beauracracy upon beauracracy.

I can't view the electoral college as anything but a way to stifle the voice of the people.

**Opunaya** · 01-31-2008, 10:16 AM

"In the elections of 1824, 1876, 1888, and 2000, the candidate receiving an aggregate plurality of the popular vote did not become president (although, in 1824, not every state held a popular election, so the true popular vote is uncertain; in those six states, the legislatures appointed the electors). With no candidate having received a majority of electoral votes in 1824, the election was decided by the House of Representatives, and is thus distinct from the latter three elections in which a single candidate won in fact by an Electoral College majority." -- from the wiki article.

WillyBubba · 01-31-2008, 04:48 PM

The article at Wiki also cites reasons for having the current system. Personally, I can see it both ways and it merits consideration. After all, Senators were once not elected directly by the people and we have seen it prudent to have them choose. However, one of my strongest contentions for the current system is the potential evil of direct democracy. The Founders knew that direct democracy could be just as bad as any tyrant. While this goes more in determining laws and not so much who your leader is, there is some overlap, especially as minority voices (not strictly race minorities, but anyone not represented by the majority) and smaller states are better represented with this system (perhaps unfairly) though there still are of course larger swing states.

I plan on reading this the second I can get a hold of it:
A More Perfect Constitution

Static · 02-05-2008, 08:09 PM

Hey, does somebody with a little knowlege on this subject wanna outline it perfectly for those of us that aren't that clear on it? I read a little about this today on cnn.com, and as far as I could tell, it's an insane way to handle things. We might as well be in a monarchy if I'm understanding it correctly...

rightwinger · 02-05-2008, 08:18 PM

I don't have that great of a grasp on it.

Each state has a certain number of "points", or delegates or whatever the fuck they call them for the presidential election. The number of "points" each state has, is correlated with the number of representatives they have in the house, which is predicated on the population. Whoever wins the popular vote in that state, gets that states points. Some states choose to do that a little differently though. And the first to 270 wins.

But I'm not expert on this shit.

tombinghamthegreat · 02-05-2008, 10:28 PM

The electoral college back in the old days was effective because it was not as easy to count up the votes. Also the framers not only made great attempts to limit the government but to limit majority rule. Kinda odd but that is what i remember from my political science classes.