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California may be rushing off the other side of that plateau just as fast.
People in a democracy get to do that.
Eh, what it means is there is far too little checks and balances. Luckily the nation has them, even some before something leaves the branch (the filibusters in the Senate.) It seems more or less the Arizona government allows more laws to get passed by voters than the government. Some election years had some 20 prop votes on the ballot.
Other than the National Pact I just mentioned you would need to convince them or many other states like them as it requires 38 states to vote to change it.
Just seems in this highly tech age with computers and servers so relatively easy to manipulate, the electoral college system is way out of date. We need a change in America...and....fast!!!!
This last election just proves how haywire an election can go. This is too important for fooling around; we need a better system. One vote, one person. Of course corruption will still be around; but maybe there can be better checks and balances.
Should have been changed long ago. At the very least changes should have started with the Bush/Gore fiasco.
Our country is a republic of states united, not a democracy.
If you do not like how your state allocates its electoral votes, work for change through legislation to make splitting vote rather than "winner take all" the system your state employs. Most states are winner take all.
Our country is a republic of states united, not a democracy.
If you do not like how your state allocates its electoral votes, work for change through legislation to make splitting vote rather than "winner take all" the system your state employs. Most states are winner take all.
A proportional plan is a worse idea than what we currently do.
I would like to see a direct vote.
However, if this is impossible, we are better off leaving this system the way it is. All these ideas about a proportional plan and splitting votes will just make things worse because of the advantage the EC gives to small population states.
All this talk about how "America is a republic and not a democracy" is a bit off-key. Yes, the Founding Fathers originally designed a system that we would call a republic. However, since that time monumental changes have occurred in our electoral system that probably alter the nature of our original government. Let's look a few:
1. Women, minorities, non-property owners, and citizens eighteen years of age and older can now vote in elections.
2. Senatorial elections are decided by a majority vote of the people and not by state legislatures.
3. The electors do no make the presidential selection choice on their own. They make it based on which presidential candidate obtained a majority of votes in their state.
4. The vice president is no longer the candidate with the second highest margin of electoral votes. He runs on the same ticket with the President.
5. Political parties now dominate our electoral system.
I would say that talking about America in classic terms is somewhat outmoded. Perhaps, America is now something a little different than what it was in 1789. Instead of being either a republic or a democracy, perhaps it is a "representative democracy". A representative democracy has features of both systems. It is little wonder that many of us agitate for a more direct means of electing a person to the highest office in this land.
If you want the country run by CA and NYC only, then you get rid of the electoral college system and NO politician running for president will waste their time in smaller states because they have no voice. I voted democrat this past election, but feel smaller states should have a voice in our country because they are part of our country. I don't think small pockets should be running everything.
A proportional plan is a worse idea than what we currently do.
Why do you say that?
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I would like to see a direct vote.
While I would like it, it hurts the smaller states.
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However, if this is impossible, we are better off leaving this system the way it is. All these ideas about a proportional plan and splitting votes will just make things worse because of the advantage the EC gives to small population states.
Not really. What it would do is divide the state. The smallest state(s) has 3 votes. What that would do is maybe give someone who would typically get 0 in all or nothing or a district case a single vote from that state. It also causes more trips to bigger states to get a share of their votes.
Quote:
All this talk about how "America is a republic and not a democracy" is a bit off-key. Yes, the Founding Fathers originally designed a system that we would call a republic. However, since that time monumental changes have occurred in our electoral system that probably alter the nature of our original government. Let's look a few:
1. Women, minorities, non-property owners, and citizens eighteen years of age and older can now vote in elections.
2. Senatorial elections are decided by a majority vote of the people and not by state legislatures.
3. The electors do no make the presidential selection choice on their own. They make it based on which presidential candidate obtained a majority of votes in their state.
4. The vice president is no longer the candidate with the second highest margin of electoral votes. He runs on the same ticket with the President.
5. Political parties now dominate our electoral system.
I would say that talking about America in classic terms is somewhat outmoded. Perhaps, America is now something a little different than what it was in 1789. Instead of being either a republic or a democracy, perhaps it is a "representative democracy". A representative democracy has features of both systems. It is little wonder that many of us agitate for a more direct means of electing a person to the highest office in this land.
The thing with the changes are they are from structural issues that were not perceived as a problem. Won can vote then was set up based on power. White male property owners had powers, everyone else didn't. There were not many freed black men back then so it wasn't an issue and there were backwards views on women too. Then one day, there was. The presidential issue comes from the third presidential election when there was turmoil between Jefferson and Adams. Adams won the presidency, Jefferson won the GO. They were on different ends of the political spectrum and butthead a lot. The next election brought us the famous duel between Hamilton and Burr. Obviously these changes weren't exactly foreseeable. There are changes that NEED to get done but I dont see them because of congressional power amd political gridlock.
This thread is disappointing. I thought Great Debates threads were supposed to be held to a higher standard. Half of the defenders of the Electoral College want it kept because thats what our Founders wanted. Our Founders also owned human beings as property, whipped, them and probably even raped them too. They also never intended for women to vote, or be anything other than baby factories. I don't know what obsession people have with Idolizing our Founding Fathers as if they somehow know better than us, and always will.
I will admit that it is unfair to hold historical figures to our modern moral standards, because times change and countries & societies evolve. Our founding fathers KNEW this, and that is why they never intended our government to be stagnate and never changing. They specifically set up the constitution to be able to evolve with the times, and they even imagined a constitutional convention should be called every decade or so as to come up with a new, updated constitution. Unfortunately, when that first decade came to pass, fools in the government idolized what the founding fathers had created too much to call for a convention, and choose to ignore the wishes of the founders. That created the silly precedent of forever idolizing the founders that lasts till this day.
The other half of the defenders of the electoral college mistakenly believe it was created to protect rural areas, or small states, or some other conservative nonsense(seeing as the majority of the country was rural when the electoral college was created.) The electoral college is mentioned nowhere in the constitution, and thats because it was created out of necessity, not as some kind of voter protection enshrined in our constitution.
People forget this fact, but the US is actually the oldest democratic country in existence today. Our founders had nothing to base it to, only ideals left behind from ancient times. When it came time to deciding on a voting system, they needed to find the quickest, most efficient way to elect a president in a vast sparsely populated country. There was no radio, telephone or even telegraph. The fastest communication took days/weeks, and the states still held on to their identities as colonial rivals rather than a single united country.
One election would be a logistical nightmare to oversee, instead each state would hold their own election. This way, not only was easier to hold the election, each state wouldn't have to rely a neighboring rival state to oversee their own election. The states would elect their representatives and send them to the electoral college, where the real election could take place on a more manageable scale. The founding fathers were also kind of intellectual snobs, they didn't want the uneducated masses electing an orange orangutan to office, so the electoral college also functioned as a defense mechanism, through faithless electors, for elites to keep undesirables out of office. And it worked until Andrew Jackson broke through the ranks.
The Electoral College is a relic from colonial days and no longer serves its function. We're not a group of former rival colonies recently banded together against an empire and separated by weeks long communication systems. We don't want power to be focused on a lucky few, rather than the masses. Its time to shake off the relic from the past and come up with a new voting system. And not just for the Presidency. Its sheer lunacy that someone can win an office with less than 50% of the vote. A winner take all system, like we have, leads to a two party system, where people vote for the lesser of 2 evils, rather than the candidate they want to vote for. Rank order voting or the Alternative Voting method would solve much of the problems with our political system.
In the past nine months since the election we have hard that the electoral college is flawed.
Go back to 1787 and complain. The electoral college is a result of the Connecticut compromise. It gives each state the same representation in the Senate, as all states are equally sovereign, but gives populations in states proportional representation in the House. There is no way states will agree to allow half a dozen large cities to decide our President.
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