Last time I checked, Bush received more than the requisite 270 Electoral Votes required to win the presidency. These votes were furthermore certified by the House of Representatives as legitimate. Therefore, any assertion that Bush didn't legitimately win is complete and utter bullshit.

Oh, you're right, my mistake. Thank you for setting me straight. :rolleyes:

Anytime, you pretentious jackass. You wanna make outlandish claims, back them up, don't sit here and try and act like the bullshit you spew is true without any kind of proof.

What's pretentious and outlandish is an electoral college system that misrepresents the total population of the United States.

But this belongs in a different thread, and I know it's not worth wasting my breath on the likes of the Night Phoenix.

Well it's in a different thread now.

The Electoral College is necessary so that we still have something resembling a federation. The misrepresentation problem can be solved by adding more voters to the College, probably as many as there are members of the house. That has it's own problems, though. Ideally we should also have more members of the house to better represent more people. But then more congressmen equals... more congressmen.

What a worry.

Your ignorance as to the actual purpose and reasonings behind the Electoral College is startling. The people were never intended to be represented by the Electoral College in the first place, the states were.

If elections focused on populations, the folks who would most definitely win would just visit New England, California, and Texas. The electoral colleges make up for this by giving the remainder of the states which, albeit are typically much less in population, are still worth at least one Electoral. Sure, California is worth way more than North Dakota, but still, candidates will spend time there. In the population spectrum, California has 33,871,648 as opposed to North Dakota's 642,200.

Why is the Electorial College even needed(besides what Brady said)? What is the point of us voting if it doesn't matter in the end?

What Gech said.

(Also, brilliant name for a thread supposedly coming from NP.)

You say that it helps candidates visit less populous states more, I say that it makes it so candidates never visit states which are obviously Republican or Democrat. North Dakota never gets visited by anyone because they know the three electoral votes will swing Republican. Bush won ND easily in 2004, 63%-36%, so what incentive would either candidate have had?

Imagine, on the other hand, if we had no electoral college. Bush would have come out of North Dakota with about 196k and Kerry with about 111k. Well, now Kerry and Bush both have incentive to visit North Dakota, because maybe one or the other could pick up another 20k-30k votes. When you consider the popular vote only differed in 2000 by 500k, that could be huge.

Instead, every close election year, the election comes down to a handful of states that are borderline red-blue, most recently Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, etc. All other states are ignored in the run-up, including both states from your example.

That's a good thing, really. Because candidates don't have to campaign in every single state, it means that the financial strain will favor third party or independent candidates somewhat. If a third party can successfully campaign in a key state like California, they're shoeing themselves in on a road to legitimacy.

Some people might bitch about it being unfair, but due to the free flow of information that we enjoy with cable networks and the internet, it's easier more than ever for anybody to follow presidential campaigns. Honestly you could say part of the problem is that people have to be campaigned to in the first place.

In using the electoral college, third-party candidates basically have no chance in any state. Even if someone gets 7% of California, the main story is that the Democrat took all 55 electoral votes.

If we didn't focus on the electoral college, we'd at least get to say, "Hey, look, Joe Blow got 2% of the overall vote, thats pretty impressive for XX party!" much like we do in local elections.

They do that already. The point is that the way the system is set up currently doesn't put an incredible financial strain on campaigns. Do you think that a third party ticket could get anything resembling legitimacy if it had to campaign in every single state? How would that be feasible even for the Repub and Dem tickets? If you win one state, you get the electoral votes. That's a much better indication of legitimacy than getting maybe 2 million voters nationally.

The founders of our country chose the current system because most of them believed the common person wasn't smart enough to vote for their leaders. People are too easily swayed and herded like sheep. While this is harsh it is sadly true for a lot of people..

Yes, I know people are still somewhat manipulated in the current system but it's still better than the other choice, imo..

It's not perfect but it's better than a direct democracy, where the minority is crushed and the majority has too much power.

Last I checked the Constitution prevented majorities from restricting the rights of minorities.

Ross Perot is remembered for getting 20% of the popular vote, but most people never consider that he didn't even win a single electoral vote. He was the most successful 3rd party-candidate in 80 years and he campaigned in all 50 states. No electoral votes.

I mean, you're telling me that the electoral college is legitimate because 1) candidates won't visit Wyoming because we know how the electors will vote and 2) candidates won't visit Wyoming because it is too expensive. That's two reasons why Wyoming, the least populous state in the nation, isn't focused on at all in presidential elections. And the funny thing is that those two reasons are also why California, the most populous state in the nation, isn't either.

I think the system is broken if a handful of states get all the attention.

And what Gech was arguing wouldn't mean that the most populous states get the most attention, but everyone gets equal attention according to their population density. Sure, in a popular election, Los Angeles would be more of a focus than, say, Columbus, OH, but why shouldn't 10 million people get more face time with the candidates than 700,000? He says that the most populous states get all the attention, I say the population centers, regardless of state, get all the attention. Now, it's just based on a formula.

I believe (and, certainly, this is how the job has evolved) the President should represent the people. Congress already represents the states and localities. The electoral college was largely designed because the framers felt going from the prime minister system to the popular system was too large a jump to take at once.

Ross Perot was also a billionaire.

A lot of third party candidacies can't even break the million mark in their warchest. Popularizing the election process ensures that only the two major Parties and eccentric billionaires can ever campaign on a significant stage.

This is my point though. In the current system, even the wealthiest candidate ever, even the most popular third candidate in the modern era of elections, wasn't able to get a single electoral vote.

You're saying the system is good because third-party candidates can get electoral votes to show some legitimacy. That's great in theory, but in practice, the chances of it happening are astronomically small.

(I'm with you on that the campaign process is broken.)

The chances may still be microscopic but the point is that they're there.

In any case, the change has to be made at the state level. Ceding control of the election process to the Fed ensures the triviality of state power. If you want electoral votes to be split up proportionally you have to do it through your state legislature.

I think that's why a lot of people are in favor of states switching to a proportional electoral college voting system instead of today's predominantly winner-takes-all style.

Also, I wish they'd stop saying Pennsylvania was a swing state. We're overwhelmingly Democrat since both of our population centers are, like, 80% democrat.

It's just all those fucking Amish in between screwing everything up. :argh:

Does nobody else realize how broken an election system is if a President can't win the actual MAJORITY of votes cast, but can still win the White House?

That is B R O K E N.

But a President does have to win the majority of votes cast -- Electoral votes.

Those are the votes that matter.

It's not broken, it just doesn't work the way you want it to.

I like how you keep reiterating what the electoral college system is and use that as the reason why it is correct.

"How could you possibly think that there is a better system? The mere fact that it is the system we are using means you couldn't possibly be correct in suggesting that it doesn't work properly!"

If you are just going to state the obvious, then get the fuck out. Say something meaningful. Simply stating that it is in use doesn't mean it isn't broken.

That's exactly why the electoral college is a stupid, broken system.

States are assigned "value" based on their population. But considering that the majority of the population doesn't even vote, the correlation between these values and voters is pretty much nonexistant.

A contingency of right-wingers, left-wingers or whatever else in any given state can completely sway an election, although it doesn't truly reflect the majority opinion of every person that votes.

Basically, it invalidates the opinions of people that live in less-influential electoral states. Just like Mikey has said five times in this thread already. Just because someone lives in a state with a large population doesn't mean that their opinion is more valuable than people anywhere else.

It's like how slaves and ethnic minorities votes only counted for a percentage of a white man's vote back in the day.

That's horseshit. Comparing the 3/5ths Compromise to campaign focus is just plain retarded. The fact of the matter is that regardless of the way the system is set up, campaigns will go to where the people and the money is. That happens to be in states like California and New York. An equal amount of money spent is going to reach a much larger amount of people in California than it would in South Dakota.

Opinions have no value, it's all about votes, and some jerk in Montana will never have the same value as somebody from Texas. It'd be nice if candidates would give equal screentime and pander to the buttfuck issues of all 50 states, but it'd also be nice if we all had unicorns and rainbows dropped skittles.

Practically it just isn't realistic, and in the long term you know why the system will always be broken from a populist democratic perspective? Because states are supposed to determine the voting laws. If the election of the president became popularized nationally who do you think would run it? The Fed. This might not seem like much of a danger to you, but if Florida is suspected of having a rigged election, imagine what could happen if actors sought to skew a national system? What would happen if all states had to use electronic voting machines? It doesn't matter how dangerous they are, since voters don't directly control the actions of the Fed, and they can easily extort state compliance.

You can gripe about how broken the system is in regard to the democratic principles of our democracy-spreadin' democratic democracy constitutional republic but it's a safe system. One not easily tampered with. With that in mind, the danger of a president being elected by a minor margin by a minority of popular votes is insignificant compared to our complete disenfranchisement.

I know. It was designed to be that way. It doesn't mean in any way that it is broken, just that you don't like it. It has worked effectively for the entire existence of this country and as of yet, I have seen absolutely ZERO reason as to why it has to be changed other than you don't like it.

So there's a difference between interest groups attempting to garner more votes nationwide versus just trying to garner more votes in states with high electoral payout? I don't see what you're trying to say, Brady. It all looks the same to me. People are still going to campaign the heavily populated areas because there are the most voters there, in theory.

But when you take mid-population state like, for instance, Florida or Ohio, and the votes there are very close, the winner-take-all system of awarding these electoral votes is just dumb.

People in this country should be rewarded for voting. In my opinion, that means that every vote should have the same weight. If people forget to vote, or don't want to vote, then that's too bad. I think it's a crime that it's possible for a President to be elected through a cockneyed system of awarding points based on population when those populations don't even vote in a number proportionate to the points they're assigned. And all this without even maintaining the popular vote throughout the country.

If we're so hung up over giving people these electoral points, then get rid of the winner-take-all scenario and reward the candidates a proportional amount of the electoral votes from each state. That way everyone's vote is weighed equally and everyone in the country has a say who becomes President.

And yes, I think it would be a good thing if the voting system was standardized across the nation. It would avoid hanging chads.

Despite all the dangers of vote manipulation that I've just outlined for you?

I'll take my chances with conspiracy theories versus being told my vote ultimately doesn't matter.

Each California elector has to represent about 4.5 times as many people as a Wyoming elector. Each California elector also represents about 10-11 times as much GDP as a Wyoming elector.

I guess my problem isn't with the electoral college so much as the proportion of electors given to each state. I think that the extra two that they give out is a little silly. I mean, we say that population matters, which is why California has 55 and Wyoming has 3, but we're not saying that it matters too much, by value of the ratio above. I'm fine with states getting to decide how their electors vote (it doesn't have to be a winner take all, and the people of Colorado shot that idea down).

But when you consider how many more people are in California and how much more important their economy (among other things) is...Wyoming sure has a lot of weight in the presidential election.

Additional Spam:
Your vote matters more than all of ours, though. You vote in the first primaries. :P

(Which is more absurd.)

Well, I wasn't really griping about me, myself, and I. I realize that my political clout is better than most because of the caucuses here. And believe me, I think there is plenty wrong with the primaries and caucuses as well.

Additional Spam:
The only thing good about the caucus in Iowa is that it actually brings the candidates here. I fear they wouldn't even bother if it weren't for that fact. I do enjoy being able to go to an event and see what they're talking about, and hear about the issues pertinent to the region in which I live. In a country this big, that is definitely a luxury.

noot zo. Again it comes down to campaign finances. Focusing the primaries on Iowa and New Hampshire allows candidates with very small finances to focus their money and time on a few states so that their candidacy has the potential to snowball. Imagine what it would be like if all states had their primaries at the same time. Grassroots candidates wouldn't have a chance.

Tom Harkin took 76% of the Iowa democratic caucus vote in 1992. Bill Clinton only took 2%, but he still became the President.

It's better than nothing.

Why? The men who put together the Constitution obviously didn't think so.

They also thought black people sucked.

The men who put together the Constitution also didn't have a problem with slavery or sexism. If the electoral college is not supposed to represent (albeit not exactly) the people, what entity's will does it represent? The states don't have opinions, only citizens living there that do.

Basically, to your why: why not?

The Electoral College isn't supposed to represent people, it's supposed to represent states. State delegates only represent the people in states where votes are split up proportionally. In winner-take-all states, the voters determine which candidate represents their state, not themselves.

Wouldn't a person in New Hampshire be more likely to sway the balance of their state's voting turnout than a person in California? So a single vote in NH ought to have more weight than one in CA (even more so with BM's comparison of the number of people each electoral college person has to represent in CA versus WY).

There's a few states that have set up their electoral colleges that way.

Personally, I have no problem with the electoral college system, but I would prefer more states move away from the winner-takes-all format and closer to a proportionality.

Nonsense. States with larger populations pay more taxes, which gives the politicians the capital with which to do what they do that keeps them in power. That fact alone makes their opinion more valuable.

It sucks, yes, but that's just the harsh reality of the situation.

Theoretically, yes. But they have a lot of influence over what is ultimately less influence (being the electoral votes coming out of New Hampshire). So what's worse: having little influence over a lot of power, or having a lot of influence over little power?

Consider that there are some states that have closely split voting percentages and a relatively high number of electoral votes. That's more the issue I have with the winner-take-all situation.

Then it's not the electoral college you dislike, but the way that states handle it. =\/

(Also I'd rather be in the small state with more power for our size than we should have.)

I'd rather be in the state that has higher proportional representation since it gives my vote more weight. =\/

Of course, I also wish we had enough members of the House for every 50,000 people each. Talk about a headache.