do you agree with the electoral college stsyem?

ShoelessRye said:
How about the fact that a Wyoming voter's senate vote has 30x the power of a California voter's senate vote? I mean a state will send two senators to the Senate no matter if they have 1M voters or 60M voters.

And then you have all the gerrymandering of House districts...
Click to expand...

Given there's a balance of power, I would expect small states wanted a voice in more than just the senate
 
The senate was created to balance the house so small populated areas were fairly represented.

It
 
oleDirtyBast4rd said:
I'm a conservative in CA and think it's bullshit that all 55 electoral votes go to the Democrats. Makes me feel like my votes don't count. What says you sherdog? Can anybody support the current system?
Click to expand...
It actually improves GOP popular vote tallies because democrats in CA have pretty low turnout.
 
ShoelessRye said:
Right, but when the Senate was created was one state's population 50X that of another?

House District Maps should be controlled/designed by non-partisan commissions. Sure there would still be some politics involved, but where it's at now is utter ridiculousness.
Click to expand...

You are talking gerrymandering and that is restricted and controlled by law especially in the south due to voting rights.

Dividing/gerrymandering districts can help or hurt a party and is frequently done by the controlling party the other party has the right to dispute the redistricting and often does based on unfair race gerrymandering, in other words there is a system in place to control redistricting and fairness. It need constant over sight but the system is there.

http://redistrictingonline.org/redistlawreview.html
 
ShoelessRye said:
Right, but when the Senate was created was one state's population 50X that of another?
Click to expand...

The senate protects smaller states in the legislative branch while the electoral college protects the smaller states in the executive branch. (in theory)
 
Just another elitist mechanism (like the Senate) to thwart democracy.
 
I had to write a report on the electoral college. I originally believed that it was bullshit and the popular vote is the proper method but after doing the report and discovering the beliefs of the framers I changed my opinion.

1) gives smaller states more power. Candidates would ignore these states of it was popular vote. Small states are ignored either way but not if they are battleground states that will determine the election. This gives them more representation that they wouldn't have if it was a popular vote. Also the consitution was made "to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority". If left to a popular vote, the largely populated states will be able to dictate politics and only have their views catered to. The EC prevents this because no democrat has the campaign in CA or NY since its a lock or a republican in Texas.

2) it is safety net on people making horrible voting decisions. The framers believed that a charismatic candidate can win the presidential election even without having the proper experience or education. The EC works as a check to prevent this by blocking the candidates influence with state lines. An example of this occurring is Arnold becoming governor in CA only because he was a big time movie star.

I forgot the rest of my report but I'll look it up and post more from it if you guys are interested.
 
Electoral college system works fine in my opinion.

If people don't like their state's winner-take-all system, they can always change it. It's literally a state by state decision and gives the individual states complete autonomy in how they allocate those votes.
 
Sohei said:
Just another elitist mechanism (like the Senate) to thwart democracy.
Click to expand...

Going by your posts history I do not think you want a true democracy/majority rule; at least I would hope so.
 
Last edited:
Hate it... I also feel like my vote doesnt matter. I live in Illinois and I'm liberal but we always vote Dem
 
MDWv2 said:
2) it is safety net on people making horrible voting decisions. The framers believed that a charismatic candidate can win the presidential election even without having the proper experience or education. The EC works as a check to prevent this by blocking the candidates influence with state lines. An example of this occurring is Arnold becoming governor in CA only because he was a big time movie star.
Click to expand...
Didn't work in 1980.
 
James Keith said:
Before the election, there was actually talk of there being an electoral/popular vote mismatch in Gore's favor, and amusingly both sides argued for the version that would benefit themselves according to the backwards prediction, and the opposite of what turned out.
Click to expand...

Finally, someone with a memory. The Dems argued for the elctoral college and the repubs against it. Bush lost a couple of points from the pre-election polls presumably due to the OUI news. Jonathan Alter of Newsweek was the first person to complain about the electoral college on the election night (actually it was past midnight) as he suddenly found it to be scandalous. At the moment Gore was still behind in the national count but California was coming in heavily for him leading to the conclusion that he would win the popular vote.

In terms of the recount, neither side cared about an honest count. Gore only asked for a recount in three heavily dem counties. Bush could have asked for a statewide recount but didn't because he was clinging to a narrow lead. While the Florida secretary of state was repub the counties that were recount were controlled by dems and the status of each individual ballot was frequently voted on as 2 dems yes and one repub no. The farce was the result of a national election being within 1,000 votes in a deciding state. Objectively, would it have been better if Gore had been declared the winner by a dispute 100 or 200 votes? No.
 
Jack V Savage said:
You mean so that less-populated areas were *unfairly* represented, right?
Click to expand...

How about so the majority does not have absolute control on the minority, something you should be in favor of.
 
oldshadow said:
How about so the majority does not have absolute control on the minority, something you should be in favor of.
Click to expand...

What prevents the majority from having absolute control over the minority is the notion of rights and a constitution. Giving outsized control to people who live in Southern states has zero impact on that issue.
 
Jack V Savage said:
What prevents the majority from having absolute control over the minority is the notion of rights and a constitution. Giving outsized control to people who live in Southern states has zero impact on that issue.
Click to expand...

and one of those rights is the electoral college
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Forum statistics

Threads
1,236,980
Messages
55,459,099
Members
174,787
Latest member
Freddie556

Share this page

Back
Top