Thoughts on the Electoral College

[JayhawkSD]

Think about how we create laws in this nation; about how out legislative process works. Simply put, it is a consensus of state votes. In the Senate each state has an equal voice. In the House each state has a voice proportional to its population. We do not create laws by the tally of the national popular vote, and there is a reason for that which has to do with the fundamental nature of what this nation is.

We are a federation of states, in which each state maintains its own identity and a high degree autonomy while being a part of the nation as a whole. Each state has a say in matters of national governance, and it is a consensus of states which governs. That is part and parcel of who we are as a nation, and it is written into our constitution.

And it is how we elect our president, by means of the Electoral College, in which each state has a voice approximately proportional to its population, just as laws are passed in the House of Representatives. It’s actually more fair than the Senate, in which each state has an equal voice. The Electoral College is not some “outmoded method,” it is integral with the definition of the nation.

When passing legislation we do not even count the national popular vote, because national governance is not about the national popular vote. Electing a president is a matter of national governance, too, and for that reason a presidential election is not about the national popular vote either. It, too, is a matter of the consensus of states for precisely the same reasons that legislating is.

[LisaL]

1. Voice is nowhere near proportional to population.

Large states weight a lot less in the electoral college than they should be based on their population.

[dumbcat]

2. I think that's what he said

Folks may not like it, but it's a fact.

[Dem2]

12. You don't see the non-sequitur in this?

And it is how we elect our president, by means of the Electoral College, in which each state has a voice approximately proportional to its population, just as laws are passed in the House of Representatives. It’s actually more fair than the Senate, in which each state has an equal voice. ??The Electoral College is not some “outmoded method,” it is integral with the definition of the nation.??

The Senate - 2 electors per state - is EXACTLY why the Electoral College is NOT like the House of Representatives and is WHY the system is NOT proportional to population and is ridiculously unfair.

[JayhawkSD]

17. The difference is hardly earth shattering

California has 55 votes to 3 for Wyoming. That is not so disproportionate as to be the unfair situation claimed.

Come on, folks. I know we are all upset by this loss, and that includes me. But let's not throw out the baby with the bath water. This is a system which is representative of the nature of the fundamental formation of our government. Nothing is perfect, but to go tinkering with it every time we are unhappy with one outcome is to invite disaster.

[Dem2]

21. In NH, based on electoral college and swing state status,

My vote is many times more powerful than that of an average American.

So, haha, I have more power than most of you peons, perhaps I should be selfish and shut up.

AmIright?

[tinrobot]

22. You are right. You got the power.

Winner take all plus the electoral college makes a few districts in swing states the only thing that matters in an election.

The idea of a candidate actually representing a population of 300+ million goes out the window in favor of courting a hundred thousand or so key voters in a few swing states. It allows one party to pull 10-20K minority voters off the rolls in a key state and significantly affect the national election.

It may be how we got here, but moving forward, it does not serve us well.

[William769]

25. Yep, we can't go tinkering with the Constitution.

The Three-Fifths Compromise was a compromise reached between delegates from southern states and those from northern states during the 1787 United States Constitutional Convention. The debate was over whether, and if so, how, slaves would be counted when determining a state's total population for legislative representation and taxing purposes. The issue was important, as this population number would then be used to determine the number of seats that the state would have in the United States House of Representatives for the next ten years. The effect was to give the southern states a third more seats in Congress and a third more electoral votes than if slaves had been ignored, but fewer than if slaves and free persons had been counted equally, allowing the slaveholder interests to largely dominate the government of the United States until 1861.[1] The compromise was proposed by delegates James Wilson and Roger Sherman.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Fifths_Compromise

We also at one time didn't elect Senator's, The State Legislature's did.

I believe there are several amendments to our Constitution.

"but to go tinkering with it every time we are unhappy with one outcome is to invite disaster." So much for that logic.

[JayhawkSD]

26. We have changed the constitution when we needed to.

We changed it because slavery was generally abhorrent, obviously. I would suggest that direct election of Senators is not a totally good idea, as it gives us a legislature with two "Houses of Representatives" only with different terms.

We also changed it because people decided that drinking alcohol was a bad idea. That worked out well, didn't it?

I will stand by my idea that changing the constitution because of one election outcome is to change the meaning of the constitution in a harmful way; to establish the idea that it can be changed to suit the demands of a political party.

[onecaliberal]

3. I'm sorry but a state with 30 million shouldn't be reduced to the same voice as 1 million.

It's bullshit period.

[Abq_Sarah]

4. Should a state with only 2 million

Have no voice?

[onecaliberal]

5. They should have a voice that represents their 2 million not have 3.5 times the voice of the 30

Million state.

[Abq_Sarah]

6. In other words, no voice

Maybe throw them 2 electoral votes out of pity?

[tinrobot]

7. Or how about just one person one vote?

Wouldn't that be the most fair?

[JayhawkSD]

10. Please explain that for me.

California has 55 votes in the electoral college. Wyoming has 3. How is that the "same voice?"

[tinrobot]

23. Wyoming has 600,000 people, California has 38 million.

38m/55 = 690K voters per Electoral Vote

600K/3 = 200K voters per electoral vote

Wyoming voters have approx 3.5x as much voting power. How is that fair?

On top of that, about 40% of California's voters are Republicans. They get zero say in the electoral college if California goes blue. The opposite applies to states like Texas. How is that fair?

So many inequities. You can argue state's rights all you want, but the end result does not represent the people.

[csziggy]

15. They are not - states with larger populations have more electoral votes

The problem is that most states have decided that their electoral votes are winner take all. If the electoral votes were divided in the same ratio as the votes each candidate receives it would make a tremendous difference. By my rough calculations, that would have given Clinton 279 to Trump's 258 but obviously my math is not quite right, probably thrown off by McMullen's large percentage in Utah the smaller votes for Johnson and Stein in other states.

A major problem with trying to set proportional division of each state's electoral votes is that the margins are just too tight to divide them up properly. the closer the vote, the harder it is to decide who should get which odd electoral votes - and third party candidates seldom get a single one.

Perhaps a more even division of population in congressional districts so that every district in every state represents a nearly equal number of people and assigning one electoral vote to each precinct would work better - and the electors would be bound to cast their vote for president for the person who won in the precinct they represent. But that would still leave out third party candidates altogether.

[tinrobot]

8. We're deciding elections based on lines drawn on a map centuries ago.

A bunch of political compromises made in the 18th/19th century drew a bunch of lines on a map to address 18th and 19th century issues. Those lines still determine the makeup of our current government.

We're now in the 21st Century. We're not the mostly rural / expanding frontier nation we were when those boundaries were determined. That part of our history ended in the early 1900's. More people have lived in cities for over a century. More and more of our problems are centered around cities. Yet those people are precisely the ones who are most under-represented.

Sorry, but the system is antiquated, it is not fair, and it needs to be revised.

[JayhawkSD]

9. So, are you saying that our legislature is outmoded too?

Are you saying that people who do not live in large cities should be governed by those who do live in large cities? Sorry, you and I have very different definitions of "unfair."

Are you saying that when Alaska and Hawaii joined the union they should have done so with the understanding that they would have no voice in national governance because they had no large cities?

[Liberal In Texas]

11. Not no voice. But they are a minority.

Don't you understand that the majority rules? Simple majority. That's it.

[JayhawkSD]

14. And since national governance is a consensus of states...

...then a majority of states, weighted by population, wins the election. Within each state a simple majority of the population determines the choice of that state. It's not rocket science.

And in this election a large number of states, each with a "minority vioce" which even you admit they should have, voted against a fewer number of states with larger voices. The minority voice states outnumbered the fewer states with large voices and carried the election. That's the way elections work.

[tinrobot]

24. This is simply is about one person one vote

Since more voters live in cities, then perhaps they will have more say (or not, since they don't vote as a block)

But the fundamental concept is equal representation - one person, one vote, regardless of location.

If you think state borders matter more than that concept, then we have a fundamental disagreement and nothing more to argue.

[JayhawkSD]

13. "Those lines still determine the makeup of our current government."

Not really. They determine the identity of the people who live within the boundaries of the state. The states existed before they became part of the nation, and they did not agree to give up their identity in order to join the union.

[JonLP24]

16. The Congressional districts aren't all that proportional

http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre1958102900

[JayhawkSD]

18. And that has nothing whatever to do with the Electoral College. nt

[JonLP24]

20. I was addressing this line

In the House each state has a voice proportional to its population.

I don't have issues with the setup of the Senate and am sure other posters can give my views on the electoral college.

[JayhawkSD]

28. It's still irrelevant.

The number of Representatives is allocated based on the population established by a ten-year national census. If they are not allocated fairly within the states, resulting in more of fewer voters in some districts than in others, or creating advantages for one political party or the other, that is a problem created by the state itself in the way it creates its own districts.

It does not alter the number of Representatives allocated to the state by the constitutional process, so each state does have, in fact, a number of Representatives approximately proportional to its population.

[JayhawkSD]

27. The election is the product of the process.

Again, this feverish demand that the Electoral College is a disaster that needs to be changed is the result of losing an election, and it flies in the face of logic. If the method was that the election was determined by the popular vote, the candidates would have campaigned differently and voters would have voted differently.

In Clinton's favor? Maybe, maybe not, but it is impossible that it can be known she would have won.

California, where Hillary got 3 million of her 2 million votes edge, has 11 million votes, and neither candidate campaigned here. In a popular vote election, do you think that they would not have been contesting for every vote in California as part of the national total? Do you think that would not have altered the 3 million vote margin here? Sure, diehard Clinton fans are going to think it would not, but that cannot, in fact, be known and common sense says it almost certainly would.

Do you not think that the electoral college caused fewer Republican voters in California to vote at all, knowing that their vote would be overwhelmed?

The votes came out the way they did in no small part because the electoral college is the way it is. It caused some voters to stay home, and campaigners to adjust their strategy. To suggest that the vote total would have been the same in an election known in advance to be determined by the national popular vote total is nonsensical.

Not to mention that, we determine matters of national governance by a consensus of states.