There have been many complaints leveled against the Electoral College. Many feel it unfair that the candidate with the most votes is not necessarily elected president. I've seen various people complain that it gives too much power to larger states, very small states, or politically divided states. Whoever happens to be gaining from this unfair situation is irrelevant. The important thing is they know who they are, and they will never agree to a change that would decrease their power. Since three-quarters of the states would need to approve a Constitutional amendment to remove the Electoral College, we can safely say it will never happen.
Meanwhile there is another problem with the Electoral College that has nothing to do with the balance of power between states. It is frequently overlooked, and fortunately it does not require abrogating the entire system in order to fix it. While many made a big deal of the fact that Gore received votes than Bush did in 2000, the significance of it should be discounted because of a key fact. For many Americans, it didn't pay to vote in the Presidential election despite the fact that the outcome was a tossup. As a New York resident, even if I had the right to cast 100,000 votes for president, it still wouldn't have paid for me to leave my home and do so. The reason is quite simple. All of New York's electoral votes go to the candidate who wins a plurality here. In the unlikely event that the Republican presidential candidate came within 100,000 votes of his Democratic opponent in a heavily Democratic state like a New York, the Republican would be winning by such a large margin nationwide that New York's electoral votes wouldn't possibly have decided the election anyway.
That many Americans, by the accident of the state in which they happen to live, have no conceivable way to influence an election through voting is an outrage. It happens to be possible to fix this problem without dismantling the Electoral College and weakening those who are currently favored by it. The solution is quite simple. In addition to the 538 electoral votes divided among the 50 states and Washington DC, grant an additional 3 votes to whichever candidate received the most votes nationwide. (Increasing the total number of electoral votes to an odd number will additionally remove the possibility of a tie.) Such a small increase in the number of electoral votes would not alter the balance of power between the states, but would still encourage everyone to vote for President in a close election regardless of where they live. It may even encourage states to attempt to increase voter turnout, so that the candidate the state favors will have more votes towards the "popular" electoral votes.
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I see one major obstacle for this idea, and I hope someone here has a solution. Under this new rule, it would only be fair that all US citizens could vote towards the PEV ("popular electoral votes"), regardless of whether they are citizens of a particular state. The residents of Puerto Rico should therefore be able to vote for president. Since Puerto Rico seems to be overwhelmingly Democratic, including their votes would increase the odds of the Democrats winning the PEV and therefore the election, which would hurt the Republicans. If it were clear that this were the only reason the Republicans opposed it, the Democrats would be able to use this issue as a way to woo Hispanic voters. It seems that Republicans would be able to raise other objections to this proposal ("Only change the Constitution when absolutely necessary"), and hence would defeat it without paying a political price.
My opinion on the electoral college has always been that it works EXACTLY as intended.
I wholeheartedly agree with the founding fathers that average citizens ARE NOT educated enough to be trusted with making such an important decision as the electing the president. Average citizens already have the power to be heard through the congress and on the local level.
The US Constitution is a FANTASTIC system the has lasted us over 200 years, a feat that many other modern democracies have not been able to pull off. Any attempt to alter it would be mired down in horribly unfair political tit for tat that I never want to see.
The popular vote was never intended to be a deciding factor in choosing the president and should remain as is.
Republican opposition would have nothing to do with Puerto Rico, which actually splits pretty evenly. Republicans simply do better in the current system and have no reason to vote for what would have to be an ammendment to the constitution. But complaining about the popular vote, as the democrats continue to do, is like complaining that the you won a tenis match because you one the most points or games even though you lost the most sets. The fact is that you allocate your resources to win the given contest, so nobody knows what would have happened if Bush had challenged the popular vote by campaigning in California and New York.
I think this is a good idea. I have another gripe with the current Electoral College process. When there's a tie in a given state, some state body, such as the state legislature or the governor decides how the Electoral College votes will be cast. This seems ridiculous to me. If it's at tie, then the votes for that state should cancel each other out and no Electoral College votes should be cast. That's what would truly represent the voters of that state.
Unfortunately this thread is turning into a question of who likes the current electoral system, and not whether a certain aspect of it could possibly be improved.
Mach5des: The fact remains that contrary to the founding fathers wishes, people are voting for president. The problem is that only the voters in some states have a reason to vote come Election Day. Are the voters in New Hampshire, Oregon, and New Mexico any smarter than those in Connecticut, California, and Texas? Under our current system, the former have more reason to vote on Election Day than the latter do - surely something the founding fathers wouldn't approve of.
Aschmidt: It so happened Bush did campaign in California in the final week of the election. Unlike Gore, Bush was going for the popular vote. Had he of spent that time in Florida, he may have lost the popular vote by an even larger margin, but have avoided the whole recall fiasco. As my post made clear though, Gore's winning of the popular vote was meaningless since New Yorkers (among others) had no real reason to vote that election. Moreover, my idea does not abolish the Electoral College. It purposely does not address the unfair balance of power that it creases. It does however give every American, regardless of where they live, a reason to vote on Election Day.
If you think about it though, the real losers of my idea would be third parties. Many Nader voters switched to Gore at the last minute to help prevent Bush from getting elected. Of those who stayed with Nader, many of them lived in states like California, which Gore was sure to win anyway. Similarly, many Buchanan voters lived in states Bush was sure to win. Now imagine if every vote could count. Even if your state is overwhelmingly Republican or Democrat, your vote can help decide the closely contested national electoral vote. Even though that would only count for 3 electoral votes, in a close election that can determine the winner. It would be much harder for third parties to get voters. They would be stuck with only the true believers, not just those who want to protest to make a point. Ironically, since this idea hurts third parties, the two mainstream parties may be inclined to support it.
Some facts on the Electoral College (EC) need to be brought to light, here:
1) The EC was never meant to -- and still doesn't -- have any tie to a popular vote. Read the Constitution. In it you will find the you, Joe Q Public, have only the right to vote for two federal officals, your local congresscritter and your senators (thanks to the 17th Amendment). The state LEGISLATURES and ONLY the state LEGISLATURES have the right to allocate EC votes in whatever manner they damn well see fit.
So, your 'right' to vote for President is not a right at all. It never has been. It is a privilege granted to you by the State legislature much like your driver's license is. It is purely by tradition that all 50 states have chosen to do it this way. This is why the Florida state legislature was preparing to enact emergency legislation to re-allocate EC votes in case the US Supreme Court didn't over rule the Florida Supreme Court.
So if you think Bush v. Gore was a supreme mess, just think how messy it would have been had the state legislature interceded as such. All those consititutionally ignorant voters inside and outside of Florida would have been in for the shock of their lifetimes if it came out that NOBODY has any 'right' to vote for President at all and never had any ever.
2) The Founding Fathers (mostly) never thought the EC system would even come into play. Because, they never believed that it was possible for purely national candidates to arise. George Washington was the exception to the rule because he was the most distinquished national figure at the time. Then, the political parties formed, which helped create true national elections in that sense.
The Founding Fathers assumed that the EC would be deadlocked (you need a majority to win) all the time because of the expected plethora of 'favored sons' in various regional campaigns. In fact, that is what happened in the early, post-Washington and post-Jefferson years. And, in the case of an EC deadlock, the House of Representatives chooses the President. The Senate picks the Veep. Oh, how we came sooo close to creating the first parliamentary democracy in the world, like Canada and Britain has today.
3) There is an even easier fix along this proposal. In fact, Maine already practices it. The formula for determining how many EC votes a state gets is simple. Add up the number of all the congressional seats a state has with the two senate states have. Maine gives EC votes to the candidate who carries an individual Maine congressional seat, not the Winnner-takes-All system that is so disenfranchising. Then, the one with the most EC votes gets the two additional "senate" EC votes tacked on.
Any state can implement this on its own. The Federal government can not interfere (as long as it doesn't violate equal protection rights). My own state of California desperately needs to do this. As a Republican living in the second most liberal do-gooder county in America, my only hope at the poll is the vote for the Green presidential candidate in order to help siphon off votes form the Dem candidate (which is exactly what happened in Florida, btw).
But, I wouldn't feel so bad if at least the conservative districts in California (yes! we do have them!) got their vote counted.
4) However, if any reform that would proportionally allocate EC votes like in my point #3 or the original proposal were to become widespread between the states, then it would be more likely that the EC deadlock described in my point #2 would come to pass quite often. Our current predominance of 'winner-takes-all' does serve a purpose in preventing that, at least.
So, we might as well scrap the EC system completely and go with the President being elected directly from the House (like the German chancellor is by the Bundestag of Germany) or by a combined vote of the House and Senate (like the Swiss exectutive council is elected).
Of course, the svengalis of the two political parties know all of these possible outcomes and even others I have not brought up. And THAT is why the EC system will never be messed with, kiddies.