Uhhhhh Electoral College :(

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Bush may have actually legitimately re-won the White House.

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.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Night Phoenix

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.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

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.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Night Phoenix

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.

How ya doing, buddy?

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.

I was speaking idiomatically.

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

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.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

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.

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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?

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What Gech said.

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

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Gechmir

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.

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.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

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.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

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.

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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.

I was speaking idiomatically.

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.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

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

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by Bradylama

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.

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.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Quote:

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.

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.

How ya doing, buddy?

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.)

There's nowhere I can't reach.

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.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

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.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

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

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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.

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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.

FELIPE NO

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.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

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.

Jam it back in, in the dark.