Electoral College

[UltimateSoul]

Anyway,the one thing that seems weird about the elections it is the way the final canidates receive votes.Rather than going by the counties they go by state and it seems to me like an all or nothing gambit.This then means that canidates could win all of the "big states"and only pay attention to the "lesser," states with smaller populations.
For example take California,it has well over 50 votes while Alaska only has 3,which do you think the canidates will pay more attention to?
Both the Republican and the Democratic parties have states that they usually win(Texas,California.)
Also, going by counties could reduce the amount of time it takes to determine the winner while going by state could significantly delay the outcome.
So, what are your thoughts on this?
Hope it wasn't that boring.
*falls asleep*

[makaveli121212]

i think the system is fine...california should have more of a say than alaska becasue more people live there...each state is represnted proportionally to its population at the last census...i dont understand what you want to do with counties, but in this case i dont think change is good

[User6773]

If you went by counties, Bush would have won by a landslide.

Even though Gore got lots of votes in densely populated areas, Bush got the vote of the true majority of the country.

Thus, this might be a good idea.

http://www.ajocreations.com/images/election/Bush_map.gif

[Cenright]

They get equal proportion. Those votes are based on popultion, so instead of going to an entire state, the people running to be president would just stop in all the major cities around the us.

You can actually win with only a few more than a quarter of the vote. If a little more than half the people in just the biggest states vote for you, you can win That means someone with a little less than 3/4 of the popular vote might not be elected. (That is mathematically correct, but in reality, that would never happen.)

There have been minority presidents though, where 55% voted for another person, and even only with 45% of the popular vote on their side, they still won. It doesn't happen often, but it still happens.

[User6773]

That's what the point of the electoral college is.....as you see from the map I posted, Bush deserved to win because he represents the people of the whole country, whereas Gore represents the people of densely populated areas.

[VxDx]

The question of votiong isn't about area though, or number of counties. The system is based on population, so if a densely populated area votes for candidate A, clearly that should and will have more sway than if Bumsville Idaho votes for candidate B.

[ROCKETs]

i dislike the electoral college primarily because it discourages anything other than a two candidate election. minor parties cannot compete under the system, as most people do not want to waste their vote on someone who can not win the election. very few countries (about 15) besides the US use this system; and other countries using alternatives to it so far have been very successful at representing the population. france, for instance, encourages many political parties to form because one only needs to win 1/8 of the votes, and then the majority in a later election.

[makaveli121212]

yeah youre talking about france...listen to yourself...they have one of the most unstable governments in the free world...they have like 10 political parties...of which one is a communist party

[ROCKETs]

what's wrong with communism?

[Anticrombie0909]

Are you serious? Communism fails. Always. It is not in the nature of human beings to survive in a classless society, there will always be those that rise to the top and sink to the bottom. It's just our nature.

Anyway, I don't like the electoral college because I think it discourages the idea that the voters are actually voting for their president...for instance, in the last election, Gore won the popular vote, but lost the electoral (and made a big stink about it while doing so). I think that we should get rid of Delegates and the electoral college and have the people directly vote for who they want...it would make their votes seem like they count more, and I'll bet we'd get a higher turnout of voters.

Interesting statistic: for a country that puts so much emphasis on freedom to vote and democracy, only about 55% of elegible, registered voters actually vote in Presidential elections. Then you take a country like Russia, which everybody thinks of as such a communist nation, and nearly 96% of elegible voters do so. Wierd, eh? Just shows that we love a hypocrite.

[Cenright]

That electoral college keeps any president from winning with 10% of the popular vote. If votes are split between 20 different parties, that could happen, even when 2 or 3 parties are fairly close. They steal votes away from each other when all of them would have been alright. Instead a 4th of 5th place person wins and you have even MORE people dissatisfied with the government.


To many people working for close to the same thing messes everything up. That is why there are representatives in the first place.

[makaveli121212]

you need to get 50+% of the electoral votes to win...if not then i think congress then votes on the president

[UltimateSoul]

It just seems to me that a canidate could win a state by a small margin,and yet still receive all the votes. I'm not saying that the entire system should be dropped,but that slightly different voting system could represent people's opinions better.

[Turgon]

Yes i agree however if we were to drop some of the system we shouldnt completely go by who gets the most popular votes.

[Laharl]

To those that say California gets more of a say than Wyoming, let's pretend, you're wrong. Wyoming gets 3 electoral votes, to California's 55. If you did division on the total state population in each state by the number of Electorals, Wyoming is over-represented. I believe Cali is something like 600,000 per vote, while Wyoming is 150,000 per vote. Less people make a bigger impact.