On 13 December, the Electoral College will get together and cast their votes.

Their votes will make the absolute and FINAL determination as to who WILL be the next President.

As per the US Constitution, they ARE NOT obligated to follow suit as far as their respective states' cast ballots.

It ain't over yet, people.

In my opinion it should be done away with as the original intent of it no longer applies. Keep it simple - popular vote only.

There are still good reasons for the Electoral College...to run a democracy it is necessary to be "informed voters"...with the propoganda, professional liars, and a corporate general media (ABC, NBC, CBS) that have been bought and sold...we have a huge lack of "informed voters". In that case we have an Electoral College that can overcome a bad election outcome. What if before the Electoral College meets...Obama is found not to not only be a natural born citizen but not a citizen of the US period? Then the EC would have to vote on the issue... terrible but true.

1} The electoral college for each state are
people picked by the winning party of that
state,so they will vote for their party
canidate.

2) Someone who doesn't vote the way they are
suppose to are called a "faithless elector"
There are 24 states that have laws to pun-
ish faithless electors.

3) It would take a whole lot of faithless
electors to change the way they are suppose
to in order to change the election.

4) If we voted by popular vote then George W
Bush would have lost to Al Gore

quote:

Originally posted by m551sheridan:
In my opinion it should be done away with as the original intent of it no longer applies. Keep it simple - popular vote only.

Another argument for keeping the electoral college vs going for straight popular vote is that it the electoral sysmtem is weighted for the smaller states. The minimum electoral votes are 3 per state. So small populated states actually have more votes per population than more populated states

quote:

Originally posted by mfdaniels_rph:
Another argument for keeping the electoral college vs going for straight popular vote is that it the electoral sysmtem is weighted for the smaller states. The minimum electoral votes are 3 per state. So small populated states actually have more votes per population than more populated states

The presidential election is not about individual states, it's about a country as a whole. One state should not have more weight than another regardless of size, the total popular vote in absence of the electoral vote will still represent the overall voice of this nation.

I can see your point but I have to disagree with you. We are a nation of individual states. It has been that way from the beginning. With the Electoral system it levels the playing field so that small states can have their voices heard (somewhat).There is also other provisions in the electoral college process in case of the death of President Elect or VP elect and also if there is a tie that would have to be changed. You can't just change to popular vote without changing all that

quote:

Originally posted by mfdaniels_rph:
I can see your point but I have to disagree with you. We are a nation of individual states. It has been that way from the beginning. With the Electoral system it levels the playing field so that small states can have their voices heard (somewhat).There is also other provisions in the electoral college process in case of the death of President Elect or VP elect and also if there is a tie that would have to be changed. You can't just change to popular vote without changing all that

I think from the very beginning the system was started for corrupt underhanded reasons and remains that way. If it was never started to begin with, how would that have REALLY effected the elections up onto now? They would have gone by the popular vote which I think is the fairest process of all.

I may be wrong on this, but I always thought it was set up this way because they thought the populous was not educated enough to be trusted to pick a Pres by popular vote to address the issue of how to deal with ties and deaths of the candidates. You have to admit it is a unique system. Does any other country use a system like this? How do the Parlimentry style of gov do it?

quote:

Originally posted by sethkonigsbergrn:

quote:

Originally posted by mfdaniels_rph:
I can see your point but I have to disagree with you. We are a nation of individual states. It has been that way from the beginning. With the Electoral system it levels the playing field so that small states can have their voices heard (somewhat).There is also other provisions in the electoral college process in case of the death of President Elect or VP elect and also if there is a tie that would have to be changed. You can't just change to popular vote without changing all that

I think from the very beginning the system was started for corrupt underhanded reasons and remains that way. If it was never started to begin with, how would that have REALLY effected the elections up onto now? They would have gone by the popular vote which I think is the fairest process of all.

That's what you may think, but fact is, it was a necessary compromise to smaller (by population) states to get them to sign on to the Constitution. It's the same reason we have both a Senate AND a House. If Popular vote were the only thing that mattered, the only thing we would have is a House, and they could select a Commander in Chief only in the event of a declared war. We also wouldn't need a Supreme Court to rule that laws violate the Constitution, because majority vote should overrule anything. As it is, we have two chambers of Congress specifically to give less populous states as much voice as more populous states. The reason this is ABSOLUTELY necessary is that this is the United States of America, not the United People of America.

The popular vote isn't fair to the people, but rather it's fair to the states.

Look at it this way: if a majority of voters in 3/4 of the states want to do away with the electoral college, they can. It's called an Amendment to the Constitution. Matter of fact, they could legalize states' rights of secession while they were at it. After all, why make states stay in the USA if they don't want to?

Good info. Now I always thought the House/Senate thing was taken from the House of commons/House of Lord thing?

The history I was taught was the electoral representatives would be able to make the very lenghty trip to DC for presidential elections where every voter from every state could not. The reps were supposedly sellected by the voting citizenry based on how each presented his political leaning and his perceived prowess. They were not obliged to vote the way they had projected to the electorate because many times things came up between selecting the electoral reps and the voting of the electoral college. Again, supposedly, the electorate expected the college reps to vote the electorate's will or have a damn good reason why they didn't...but they didn't HAVE to.

Technically they don't have to vote the way they are suppose to, but 24 states have laws to punish those that are faithless electors. I have no idea what the punishment is. Can jwr6 shed some light on this. Also the electors are selected by the winning party of that state so the chance they would vote the other way is next to zero

quote:

Originally posted by mfdaniels_rph:
Good info. Now I always thought the House/Senate thing was taken from the House of commons/House of Lord thing?

I suspect the idea of two chambers probably came from Parliament but if you look a bit closer they are very different. For example it's actually expected them ministers will be members of the Commons (MPs) or the Lords (Peers) whereas to join a US government it seems one has to resign one's seat. In Britain this means that ministers proposing legislation must do so in Parliament and are also subject to questioning by their whole House rather than a committee. On the other hand the US executive is kept very separate from the legislature which has distinct advantages of it's own.
another major difference these days is that the Commons is in theory the proposing chamber while the upper House revises and is ultimately subject to the Commons whereas the Representatives and the Senate have a more equal weighting.



One thing that's always struck me as somewhat undemocratic about the electoral college system is the way that winning a state even by the slimmest of majorities gives a candidate all of that state's votes. This doesn't seem entirely a good idea, not least because it would seem to potentially provide a very big pay off for a relatively small amount of fiddling (as the 2000 election rightly or wrongly appeared to demonstrate). It also I think, further strengthens the hegemony of the two main parties which has In my opinion lead to the apparent polarisation of American politics.
While I would not advocate a straight majority as M551sheriden does - that would actually be even more susceptible to fraud and suffers from the "tyranny of the majority" problems other posters have highlighted - I would say that either an allocation of each state's seats by proportion of the vote in that state (thus in a theoretical state with 10 seats and a 50/40/10% R/D/I split the seats would be allocated 5/4/1) or the direct selection for each seat would give a more accurate representation.

There are in fact 2 states that split the electoral vote and don't go winner take all. I know Nebraska is one but I'm not sure who the other is

quote:

Originally posted by mfdaniels_rph:
There are in fact 2 states that split the electoral vote and don't go winner take all. I know Nebraska is one but I'm not sure who the other is

I believe it's a New England one.
If enough states went that way I think that you might see a profound change in how the parties fought elections, you might see the end of "Red" states and "Blue" states for a start but if candidates couldn't take the whole of any one state for granted it would certainly have a large effect on campaigning which seems to be largely concentrated on the so-called "battleground" states.

I live near one of the battleground states and our tv and papers are from Cincinnati. I am so glad the election is over so I don't have to hear all those ads.

quote:

Originally posted by mfdaniels_rph:
I live near one of the battleground states and our tv and papers are from Cincinnati. I am so glad the election is over so I don't have to hear all those ads.

Perhaps the thing that I'm really thankful for about our system over yours is the fact that political advertising on the telly is banned apart from a certain number of "Party Political Broadcasts" which each party with number of candidates or Commons seats is entitled to.
They're limited to a certain amount of time for each party on the major terrestrial channels and have to be listed in TV guides, so when the continuity announcer says something like "There now follows a Party Political Broadcast by the Monster Raving Loony Party." most people have turned over by the "...pol..."

I just use the mute button