I remember my brother (who used to be a history professor) once telling me that we would always have the electoral college...until a person won the popular and lost the electoral. This had happened before, but not in the modern times.

I don't want this thread to turn into a "ZOMG Gore should be President crapfest," but are 2P2ers for the electoral college or against it? Why or why not? Is it true (as some have said) that only metropolitan cities will get campaigned in? I'm very for switching to the popular vote, it just makes sense to me. According to IST "in 2004, candidates spent 99 percent of campaign funding in only 16 states, leaving the rest of the country without a political voice."

This just seems like such a no-brainer to me, but I'm open to hearing the other side. It doesn't seem as if someone in New York should have to (leaving out the argument of the other things on the ballot and focusing on presidency) go out and vote when they know it is going Democrat. If I wasn't into politics, I might have a hard time going and voting in Kansas where the opposition of who I usually would want almost always wins.

Thoughts?

I would prefer we just switch to a Delegate like system where its based on Congressional Districts. Obviously it can't be as messed up as the Democrats system, but even if they just did 1 EV per Congressional District and then 2 Per the State-wide Winner, it would be better then The EC.

I don't think it matters very much. I'm no fan of democracy, but I think that the sort of system the US has is pretty crappy and ensures a 2 party system with minimal possibility for change. A parliamentary system is way better.

The electoral college is stupid. One reason off the top of my head is that it discourages knowledgeable in non-swing states from voting, because pre-election polls guarantee with almost absolute certainty that their vote will not count. Thus, not only are some people de facto disenfranchised, but also the electorate becomes disproportionately comprised of uneducated, uninformed people who don't know **** about the electoral college vote. These people are also collectively less informed about politics in general, and decisions by the uninformed have worse expectation than decisions by the informed.

That currently happens in a few states. States are free to do this if they choose. There was a movement in California to change it, and I don't think it happened.

"How NPV works is this: Instead of a state awarding its electors to the top vote-getter in that state’s winner-take-all presidential election, the state would give its electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. This would be perfectly legal because the U.S. Constitution grants states the right to determine how to cast their electoral votes, so no congressional or federal approval would be required. NPV could go into effect nationwide as soon as enough states pass it (enough states to tally 270 electoral votes—the magic number needed to elect a president). In 2008, NPV bills are expected to be introduced in all 50 states."

This seems like it might catch on.

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/...toral_college/

I disagree. I think it matters big time to the way we do things. This is evidenced by 4 POTUS being different due to having electoral college instead of popular vote.

Under the parliamentary we could give Bush a vote of no confidence and have the election now. No need for impeachment. I like it.

I'm for a parliamentary system just so we can have question time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzpxL...eature=related

Yeah but all those elections were super close. What is magical about 50.5% of the vote? Why should such a HUUUUUUUUUGE power swing be decided by such a tiny difference? My criticism of the system is the following (and it doesn't matter if we abolish the electoral college or not, the criticism still stands):

1. A 50.001-49.999 victory results in the victor having the same powers as a 75-25 victory.
2. Marginal viewpoints and third parties are ignored. Contrast that with a parliamentary system, where if a party gets 5% of the vote, they get proportional representation. In the US, if the Libertarian party gets 5%, they get nothing. What a ridiculous, anti-democratic system.

Election night would be no fun without the colorful maps imo.

I'm pretty sure the constitutionality of this is in question, but has not been tested yet.

As for the electoral college, 2000 was probably the best example of why we should have an electoral college. Can you imagine Florida throughout the entire country?

You could think of it this way. In a nationwide vote, your vote will never matter. The probability of one vote making a difference in a nationwide election is very small. In 2000 though, about 600 Floridians' votes did matter.

Another way to think of it: Your vote doesn't matter, because the two parties are going to sell out to corporate interests way in advance of your interests. They don't care about your vote. They care about money.

As long as the two parties are entrenched in American politics your vote doesn't matter a whole lot.

I am interested in these proportional parliament or IRV ideas.

MCain wants question time under the present system.

Yeah, any president who wants to can sit there and let Congress ass rape him. I'm sure Congress won't object to a weekly Prime Minister's Question's style examination of the president. No way McCain allows as freewheeling questioning session, if he does it at all.

In this blog at 538.com-- http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/...rts-gop.html-- Nate argues that since "the allocation of electoral votes lags behind changes in the distribution of the population," there is actually a chance this year that McCain could win the popular vote but come up short in delegates (the simulation actually gives a greater chance to this happening to McCain--5%--than to Obama--3%).

I suppose if that happened, there might be some impetus for a change to the system (in that both sides would have recent memories of being "robbed" by the system.

Why? If there was a nationwide initiative to implement this, surely there'd be just as much support for the popular vote? Rational states should never implement such a measure on their own (despite the fact two of them did) as it reduces their "voting bloc" power. As a system it's only marginally better for creating more competitiveness (i.e. swing districts in safe states are now worth voting in) but still has just as much possibility of electing popular vote losers.

Representation in parliament is not correlated to power. If one party gets 55%, another gets 40% and another gets 5%, what does it matter that the third party got 5% of the seats? They can debate in parliament? Debate outside of the legislature is likely to be much more effective. In the more likely scenario thatif they hold the balance of power, their power will vary vastly based on what combinations make it to a majority in parliament - not their popular vote. And even then, the result isn't necessarily democratic. The very nature of democracy, whatever your views on it, means 5% viewpoints simply can't dictate policy when the result would be significant majority opposing it. Either a minor party pressures a major party into adapting policy that is opposed by the majority of the population, which is undemocratic, or policy which is supported by the majority of the population, which given its nature is likely to be implemented at some stage anyway.

1. Scrap the electoral college

2. Implement instant run-off voting

If there was a popular vote in 2000, there wouldn't have been any meaningful controversy, because the margin in the election would have been half a million votes instead of a few hundred.

Wow, I agree with Vaya for once. We must be right.

Quibble: Who certifies the National Popular Vote results? What if a recount is needed?

You can't say this unless you think every single person would have made the same decision to either vote or not vote in an election based on popular vote rather than EC. You'd have a better argument saying that Team X should have beat Team Y because Team Y didn't score enough points in garbage time.

for the electoral college

I think the alternative would lead to pandering to metropolitan interests and giving them an edge.
I'm not a big metropolitan person even though I spend a fair amount of time there.

Interesting, hadn't thought about the "uneducated voter" consequences.

This is definitely true; consider a Republican living in Washington DC, a district that always votes for the Democtats? Should he even both going to the polls? He is literally wasting his time and gas by voting.


The need for recounts is exacerbated by the electoral college. Think of it this way: what if instead of having 50 states, we had 5,000. Can you imagine how many states would end up "too close to call," and require a recount to accurately determine the winner? We'd have recounts after every election.

In contrast, the chance that the national popular vote is separated by even a few thousand voters is very small. Below are the results of the popular vote since 1940:

http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/ele.../pop_vote.html

The closest election occurred in 1940, where the winner was ahead by a full 25,000 votes, in an electorate less than half the size of today's.