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Elections Should the US election be decided by electoral votes or popular votes?

Should the election be decided by electoral votes or popular votes?

  • It should be decided by popular votes.

    Votes: 91 52.6%

  • It should be decided by electoral votes.

    Votes: 79 45.7%

  • It should be decided by winning both.

    Votes: 3 1.7%
  • Total voters
    173
Falsedawn said:
If you have anything you want to say to me, you can quote me directly instead of sneak dissing like a pussy praying to god I won't see it.

Let me know when rent is due too.

<3>
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Looks like I've offended another keyboard warrior.
 
foxnewsfan said:
Looks like I've offended another keyboard warrior.
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I'm not offended that i'm always on your mind. Means I made an impact on that peanut brain.

I just prefer to feast on your tears when you go into bitch mode.

<Waaah>
 
1 vote per state plus 1 vote per million or part thereof.

500,000 citizens = 2college votes

1,500,000 = 3 votes

23,500,000 = 25 college votes

Every state is important but the will of the people as a whole respected too.
 
DanSavage said:
EC is a winner take all. It's a contest of States, not citizens. It prevents states with large population centers, such as California, Texas and New York from deciding the fates of the rest of the nation.

What did the Founding Fathers get wrong? They didn't have to see the future. They knew from experience what resulted from bad government.

Nope. Just the opposite. The EC protects the rights of everyone because the tally of EV from less populous states can offset the EV from more populous states. As I wrote, the EC is a contest of states, where whole states decide the fate of the country and not just a few large cities.
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The E.C. is not designed in the Constitution as winner take all. That's up to each state. Like I told someone else, you assume voters in each state as monolithic. Either you believe in the fundamental precept of democracy (one person, one vote essentially), or you don't (aka electoral college shenanigans) and want to artificially inflate the value of certain votes over others.

Do you really need a list of things the Founding Fathers get wrong? This isn't a knock on them but it's really fucking long. Let's just go with the filibuster, another uniquely American fuck up. Or ya know, how less than a century later the country fought a civil war. Or how about how the electoral college had to be changed in less than a decade.

Governance has advanced in the past 3 centuries, and acting like the U.S.'s founding was somehow the ultimate evolution of good governance is really dumb. Let's just toss out the really big point everyone misses with the EC. No other country uses it . This means for you to conclude it's a good idea, America must be unique (not just different, completely unique from every other country in the world), when it clearly isn't. Ergo, the U.S. keeps a bad idea around is the logical conclusion.
Seano said:
I tend to think that rural areas are conservative while cities are more liberal, based on what I see in my state at least. By using the simple majority popular vote to decide our electorate hundreds of thousands , even millions ,of people end up having no say. By splitting the electorate, we at least get to have some input. Why should you get all 4 of my states electoral votes when nearly half the people didn't want you to have them? Splitting the electorate allows more voices to be heard, simple popular vote only allows the majority's choices.
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Demographics and political leanings change. And again, if their ideas are good, let them win on merit. And if you want to split the voting pool, it's even better to split it more through the popular vote. That eliminates the people not being heard entirely.

And the popular vote allowing only the majority's choices to win on that day is not a bug, it's a feature. That's the entire point of an election or democracy. If you want populations to be heard, make it a popular vote so every vote counts. As it is right now, there's no point in campaigning or listening to safe states. That's a huge failure.
 
Kaybee said:
Should be popular vote; under the current system if you are a conservative in California/NY/Illinois or a liberal in a red state your vote basically doesn't matter and I'd reckon overall those demographics don't even bother showing up because they know it is true.

The GOP has also been way too complacent over the past two decades because they can depend on the electoral college as a crutch to hide how badly they have failed to make in-roads with the American populace. This is to their own detriment imo, because they seem more focused on trying to game the system rather than finding ways to appeal to demographics outside of hardline conservatives and that's gonna bite them once the boomers start kicking the bucket en masse.
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Ain't that the truth. Trump lost the popular vote TWICE. Republicans have won the popular vote only once in the last 6 elections but have served THREE terms due to the electoral college cheese.
 
I think that the states should be allowed to split electoral votes, rather than winner takes all. Seems that it would make each vote count that way.
 
Cherry Brigand said:
they dont have to fight to preserve it because, once more for the back rows, IT'S IN THE CONSTITUTION.
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It could be amended tomorrow in theory, but in practice, they don't have the votes and the reason is because Republicans know they would win maybe 1/5 elections without it. Seriously, in the last SIX elections Republicans only won the popular vote ONCE, but served THREE terms because of the Electoral College elevating underpopulated areas. In fact, since 1988, Republicans have only won the popular vote twice out of nine elections (H.W. Bush in '88 and W. Bush in '04). So they last won it 16 years ago and then 16 years before that.

<{dayum}>
 
Ottawaguy said:
I think that the states should be allowed to split electoral votes, rather than winner takes all. Seems that it would make each vote count that way.
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Or just avoid the problem of gerrymanding or how to apportion state votes and make it a straight popular vote? Simpler is better here.
 
avenue94 said:
Governance has advanced in the past 3 centuries, and acting like the U.S.'s founding was somehow the ultimate evolution of good governance is really dumb. Let's just toss out the really big point everyone misses with the EC. No other country uses it . This means for you to conclude it's a good idea, America must be unique (not just different, completely unique from every other country in the world), when it clearly isn't. Ergo, the U.S. keeps a bad idea around is the logical conclusion.

Demographics and political leanings change. And again, if their ideas are good, let them win on merit. And if you want to split the voting pool, it's even better to split it more through the popular vote. That eliminates the people not being heard entirely.

And the popular vote allowing only the majority's choices to win on that day is not a bug, it's a feature. That's the entire point of an election or democracy. If you want populations to be heard, make it a popular vote so every vote counts. As it is right now, there's no point in campaigning or listening to safe states. That's a huge failure.
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I think we all know that politicians aren't elected "on merit". They're elected on the basis of whether there's an elephant or an ass on their posters.
 
Ottawaguy said:
I think that the states should be allowed to split electoral votes, rather than winner takes all. Seems that it would make each vote count that way.
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They are allowed. The issue is that with partisanship being what it is, a party that has the power to fix it would likely have the state's votes locked up and thus wouldn't do it.
 
electoral college 100%

in regards to R's hiding behind it, it certainly benefits them and gives them a shot. but if we were to go to popular vote only, you'd see inland states probably fall in line to vote against the coastal strongholds like NY and CA. things would change. there wouldnt be many democrats in iowa for example if every election is just NY and CA running a train on everyone. its tyranny of the majority, and the minority would smarten up eventually

just my opinion
 
DanSavage said:
EC is a winner take all. It's a contest of States, not citizens. It prevents states with large population centers, such as California, Texas and New York from deciding the fates of the rest of the nation.

What did the Founding Fathers get wrong? They didn't have to see the future. They knew from experience what resulted from bad government.
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The founders did not anticipate the disproportionate system (remember, the House being capped, which is the biggest factor here, didn't happen until 1929). Further, they didn't anticipate all states being winner-take-all (Madison even proposed an amendment to prevent that), which is another factor. They also didn't anticipate that the EC would normally decide the presidency (they didn't foresee the rise of parties and viewed the EC vote as being more likely to act to narrow the field down). Lastly, they figured that voters wouldn't know much about the presidential candidates but they would know a lot about the electors they were voting for.

So they got a lot wrong, but also they didn't have any plan to prevent majority rule. Just worked out that way.
 
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