The US Electoral College, what do you think of it after reading this

For those curious for the full texts and further reading i'll include the links below, but for the sake of basic understanding, i'm going to take a small portion of which I think are a bit more important to the subject, and simple.

• Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
• The Electoral College: Enlightened Democracy

Heritage author

James Madison...

Alexis de Tocqueville...

And lastly, something that might not be related to the EC, but I think is quite prevalent in our society today.

Personally, and to be short, I think the EC achieves its goal, and has with the number of times popular vote has lost, whether it be Obama vs. Clinton during their primary (Obama losing pop. vote) or Trump vs. Clinton.

The allusions of our founding fathers and other foreign political figures that observed our nation shouldn't be something to be ignored.

 

It does it job. I see no problem with it at all. The EC has only been won by a candidate who lost the popular vote 5 times in presidential history.

 

They were talking about a Wyoming rule where the representative to population ratio for each state would match that of the smallest state (currently Wyoming) which would directly effect electoral college since the # of electoral votes is based on the # of senate and house members in each state. But I don't think it's going to happen because the already huge electoral presence in california would triple putting our fate pretty much in NY and CA's hands.

I don't like the system though, there's only a misdeameanor / fine as punishment for faithless electors. We've only had 2 since 2000 but the potential is there for cheating. the concept is good but the execution is flawed

 

If you win the popular vote you should be the winner, otherwise it is not fair and the system is flawed.

 

I agree that the original intentional of it was needed due to uninformed voters back when it was constructed. However, now more than ever we have more access to information than ever before. It served its purpose I believe we should move on and make sure everyone's vote count to help reduce voter discouragement when voting.

 

The problem with this is for CA, TX, NY, FL and all your high population states would determine the outcome every election. Especially as the USA population keeps moving into densely populated cities.
If popular vote wins then a candidate would be better off spending all their time in California New York and Florida. If they win California 100% popular vote, the other candidate could win 100% of North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Ohio, Idaho, Nebraska and West Virginia and still lose by 17 million votes. But the electoral college makes all those states worth 58 delegates vs California's 55. It's a great system in my opinion.

How exactly does everyone's vote not count?

 

Because of the electoral college system, the effective outcome can be exactly the same for many permutations of votes. Poster is suggesting that each vote has equal weight instead of contributing towards a very binary sub-outcome that determines the larger outcome.

 

So then let me ask you this, do you fully understand why our founders chose this system over a pure democracy? Contrary to what everyone seems to think, the US isn't a true democracy, we're a federation of 50 individual states that are self-governing.

I can just as easily argue that people are more uninformed today than they've ever been, or should I say MISINFORMED. The Wikileaks emails only proved how hard the DNC and Hillary's campaign made a push to influence the media (against Sanders & Trump). The outcome of the Democratic primary goes to show how easy it is to influence people. To be quite honest, i'd argue the millennial generation (perhaps most tbh) is the least educated on the facts of any specific matter than the small percentage of those who take the time out of their day to weed through the misinformation and propaganda.

Doesn't even really matter what side of the political spectrum you fall on, you can find any number of videos of some random reporter or YouTuber asking strangers or people at Hillary/Trump rallies very very VERY basic questions, and none of them can answer them. If not that, the same half-truths, propaganda lines, or total lies are often parroted.

Having access to limitless knowledge doesn't default to the general populous being knowledgeable.

 

I Disagree firmly the last debate Hillary showed she was policy politician. People tend to dismiss Hillary more because she doesn't have that presidential charisma she was very good at policy and should be noted for that. I will add as well a perfect candidate never exist imperfection is just part of most candidates they make mistakes. I form my opinion from policy. No information doesn't guarantee that but that was the reason they came up with the electoral college and lack thereof. People have information now it is up to them how they interpret it.

 

That's entirely wrong, historically incorrect, I don't think you fully understand why they didn't choose to go the route of a pure democracy, it has nothing to do with 'information.' It entirely revolves around the above phrase, "tyranny of the majority."

Click on the above links and actually read in full, that's why they're there, so you can actually grasp the history and thinking of our founders rather than filling your knowledge gap with your own opinion.

 

The best man won

 

The United States is (not alone in being) a corporatocracy presented as a consitutional republic. Just wanted to correct you there.

But I agree, the EC does serve it's purpose and while there may be minor flaws (which I mentioned above) I don't think it's as big of a disaster as everyone makes it out to be just because their candidate won the popular vote because of California but still lost the election.

 

Are you being serious or just trying to be funny and witty? The US might operate with corporations in mind because of lobbying and corrupt politicians, but that has absolutely zero bearing on our written-in-stone structure of government. Your any litany of pseudonyms doesn't change that fact.

 

I'm being serious. It does more than operate with corporations in mind. But you quoted the off-topic portion of my post, also you seem to be a bit of an asshole about it, so I won't go into any further detail here.

 

I quoted the first half because it's a stand-alone comment regarding the form/category of government we fall under, you agreeing or disagreeing with our electoral process has nothing to do with it. As it stands, your labeling of our form of government is nothing more than a pseudonym, you coming back with a cop-out crying that "you seem to be a bit of an asshole about it" makes it seem pretty obvious you don't want to try to attempt to combat the reality of your false labeling.

I can tell you're probably borderline conspiracy theorist, ie: "corporations run the world!" Kind of like how people like to think one particular ethnic group or religious group does also, neither are true, both are wild exaggerations that use cherry-picked examples to support their arguments.

The only credence your accusation lends is that laws and regulations have been put in place to either limit or support corporations. The reality of the matter is every example you bring to show our government works "for corporations, I could show you just as many laws that increased taxes or imposed any number of regulations that resulted in business being more difficult in any number of ways for that specific business or even the entire field of work.

tl;dr- your accusation isn't a one-way street where all roads lead to government working for corporations. But please, do go into detail, because i'd very much enjoy bringing you back down to reality.

 

I already PMed you, why are you typing here and not there? You angry little man. If you want an actual off-topic discussion we can do it there. My "cop-out" is me trying to keep this thread on it's original path.

 

Might want to slow down, I checked forums before messages and was literally going to come right back just to point out the irony of you messaging me, which appears to have gone over your head. The irony being you wouldn't post that here on the forums, wonder why. Hmmm. Irony.

For those interested, he linked this.



The irony being I called you a conspiracy theorist, and I was pretty much on the money.

Unfortunately, Perkins was already dismantled an entire decade ago and quite literally disappeared into obscurity because of his lack of supportive testimonies or any form of documentation.

Sebastian Mallaby - The Facts Behind the 'Confessions'

He has never supported his claims, and many of what he claimed was already refuted.

If you're going to sit here and argue with me, discontinue from using conspiracy theories, because this is exactly what you're doing.

Conspiracy theory meaning something that has documented evidence, not anecdotal evidence.

A good example of something that is conspiracy-esque, but is actually factual, would be something like the CIA-assisted coup in Iran that overthrew the Shah in the 70's. THAT to many is conspiracy, yet it's documented and now stands as historic fact.

 

Lol okay. I didn't realize this, I was linked this by a teacher and trusted it as truth. And no, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, I just enjoy this kind of stuff.

Congratulations sir, you win. I know it means a lot to you. My apologies for being wrong

 

It's not to be an asshole about it lol just saying that most conspiracy theories have more loose ends than fiction novels.

If it turned out everything he said were true, then it'd be cause for alarm, but even then, the majority of these things he talks about are foreign, the topic has more to do with domestic dealings. This is why I brought up regulations that have harmed our own corporations more than they've helped us.

Watch this, you'll find it very very interesting as to what i'm referring to regarding how our government has hurt our domestic businesses and their ability to do business.



E: Just to tl;dr sort of with what he'll talk about; he brings up important things such as government bailouts. Many of the issues we have (aside from our government's innate ability to overspend) is due to companies not failing when they should have, or things being regulated when they shouldn't have, due to whatever reason, and big brother government swooping in to hold their hand at the expense of the people and our future.

 

You can't go by straight popular vote. Well you can, but it will have just as many pieces of controversy as the EC creates. The confidence intervals in a winner could overlap, or the margin of error could be enough to sway such a small amount the other way entirely.

This problem is further compounded by the very real fact that there are mistakes (both honest and malicious) made in counting and even worse, voter fraud occurring. Could just be right wing media drivel, but some sites have claimed over 3 million of Clinton's votes came from illegal immigrants. Do I believe it? Not sure. But I definitely think, on both sides of the coin, some kind of fraud is inevitable. That already puts the Popular Vote in a precarious position.

If popular vote decided the winner, candidates wouldn't have to campaign everywhere. They'd only campaign in the high population states and then you'd have like, 5 states decide the election. Hillary got like 5 million more votes in California than Trump did. That's already 5x the amount of popular votes she won by.

People always try to say the Electoral College mitigates the power of some states but that could not be more false. Even with the Florida controversy, if Al Gore had even just won NH (4 electoral votes), he would have WON the election.

The EC forces candidates to campaign everywhere and makes campaigning way more important. Don't believe me? The last two places Donald Trump campaigned before election day? Michigan and Pennsylvania, where he stunned the world and won both.

That said, I am in full favor of abolishing the two party system and looking into the feasibility of alternative voting methods, such as Borda Count.