Thread: The Electoral College

Originally Posted by Atmosfear

Well I disagree that a simple majority ought to win the election. All this does is mean a geographic region with high population density (and, therefore, relatively similar views) can rule the system to the detriment of the entire rest of the country.

Exactly, so if more people have similar views, then why shouldn't this count as a majority? America is made up of people, not land mass. What I mean by that is just because a population is more spread out such as parts of the south and the west, doesn't mean they should be given more power to compensate for their lack of population. The fact is that if 51% of Americans, regardless of location, share certain views, than so be it.

Regardless of which party wins, all laws & regulations made still need to fall within the confines of the constitution, I fail to see why lots of people in a small area devalues their vote any.

Also, why do you believe having the majority of the population rule be detrimental to the rest of the country?

Originally Posted by coqauvin

Not necessarily - I mean a simple majority is all it takes to win in the current FPTP system. I would say that the win percentage should be 50% of the total votes. It's not necessarily an easy thing to achieve, and I think an absolutely stupid amounts of recounts and voting again would probably have to be done, but a majority based on less than 20% of the actual population is no majority and it's foolish to say that it is.

There really isn't any such thing as perfect representation of all interests, as much as we would like there to be, but so long as the inefficiencies can be held to a minimum, the system should be able to function over the long term without have those who voted being enraged at their leaders.

I do agree that a high population density doesn't mean that area should hold more clout, although it tends to translate that way. Unfortunately, I can't offer any real alternative to that system. High density is really just more and more demand for resources to be brought in from outlying areas, but without offering any real cost to those who actuall produce/refine the resources brought in. Is there a balance between the two that would make the system work better? Probably. Part of dealing with an issue like this is having those who are benefiting from the imbalance relinquish their perks, and there are surprisingly few people who would be willing to do so. As a wise man once said, it is surprisingly easy to live in hypocrisy.

In the United States Presidential Election, there are only 2 viable candidates, therefore we avoid the problem of 3 candidates with 2 of them being similar splitting the vote. The last time the United States had a 3rd party take any notable amount of votes was in 1968 with Republican Nixon, Democratic Humphrey and 3rd party "American Independent" taking almost 10 million votes and 46 Electoral. In a 2 party system I think straight majority is the best way as the winner is almost guaranteed to be at 50% or slightly over counting the maybe 1% that all of the other 3rd party candidates get, if they are even on the ballot.

Sources: http://www.270towin.com/

Originally Posted by Atmosfear

Well I disagree that a simple majority ought to win the election. All this does is mean a geographic region with high population density (and, therefore, relatively similar views) can rule the system to the detriment of the entire rest of the country.

Considering that states like California, New York, Florida and Texas have far more electoral votes than Nebraska or New Jersey what you said doesn't really hold up. Cities will generally always have a higher say in matters since they are cultural and economic centers whereas rural regions aren't. In this case electoral votes should be all equal if you want industrialized/populous regions to not skew the results at the detriment to rural/low-population regions.

I'm also critical of the Canadian system (and, well, the Westminster system in general) since if we want more democracy then the federal and legislative branches should both be elected by popular vote, as opposed to the people elect parliament, parliament elects federal government, etc. Though at least the Westminster system tends to help third-parties gain more prominence. I'm surprised that it's so widespread though as even the DPRK uses a variant of it.

Originally Posted by Atmosfear

Well I disagree that a simple majority ought to win the election. All this does is mean a geographic region with high population density (and, therefore, relatively similar views) can rule the system to the detriment of the entire rest of the country.

Yeah, this makes no sense whatsoever. The electoral college is set up to bear some proportionality of electors to each states' population, just like the number of representatives in the House allotted to each state rises

And it's obvious what you mean by this: you're saying that as the system stands now, it makes it more likely that the liberal and more highly populated east and west coasts can't have the largest effect on the presidential election "to the detriment of the rest of the country." Har har.

Well, arguably there was only one election where the electoral college clearly elected the candidate into office that did not win the popular vote, which happened in 1888 when the memorable Benjamin Harrison won the election in between Grover Cleveland's two non-consecutive terms in office.

In the other 3 cases where the candidate who did not win the popular vote got into office, the electoral college did not truly ultimately determine the outcome. The first was in 1824 when John Quincy Adams got in due to a vote by the House of Representatives, as no candidate got a solid majority of electors as required (he actually also lost the electoral vote.) The second was in the close presidential election of 1876, where technically Hayes did win the electoral vote by a 1 vote. In reality, many of the electoral votes were contested, and the election was truly determined by back-door deals between the Democratic and Republican parties. The third is one that is in all of our recent memories, in 2000, when the Supreme Court essentially determined who the winner was.

Originally Posted by Syme

This is a good point; it's probably important to bear in mind that a direct presidential election would decrease the voting power of thinly populated states, which tend to be conservative, in comparison to that of the less conservative high-population states.

Yes, but why is it fair to dramatically increase the voting power of these smaller percentage of populations? If America is liberal and wants to vote liberal, then so be it.

Originally Posted by Syme

This is a good point; it's probably important to bear in mind that a direct presidential election would decrease the voting power of thinly populated states, which tend to be conservative, in comparison to that of the less conservative high-population states.

Again, however, almost every presidential election follows the popular vote. The only example after the 19th century in which this wasn't the case was in 2000, though even then Gore only had a slim margin of 0.5% thanks to motherfucking Nader. But I mustn't dwell on it lest I have a heart attack...

If this weren't the case, there would be a far louder outcry against the electoral college. And to be quite frank, at this point there is little to no reason for it. Every reason I've heard for its existence is specious. The arguements I've heard for it are so convoluted I can't even recall them, aside from Atmosfear essentially saying here that he approves of the electoral college only because its existence along with the Supreme Court ruling got Bush into the White House in 2000.

Originally Posted by Atmosfear

The point is that California can only count for X percentage of the total outcome. If all 36 million California voters turned out in an election that totaled 50 million votes, they could elect a candidate who serves only their own agenda. As it is now, even if the voters from a single state total a majority of the overall election, their influence on the outcome is limited by their actual size. Fortunately, we don't usually see a major skew in voter turnout (most states have roughly the same turnout as a percentage of registered voters), but it could happen and the system shouldn't be exploitable by that.

I actually disagree with this. In principle, yes, it would be great to have the system be immune to any sort of exploitation, but since the practical upshot of defending against this particular exploitation is that some votes count more than others, I think the cure is worse than the disease--especially since the disease is probably never going to actually be a problem. I don't think we should be distorting the value of the vote in order to guard against a form of exploitation that is frankly unrealistic and implausible. I would rather have a system a system that gives equal value to all votes but can theoretically be exploited by unrealistic state-to-state voter turnout disparities, than a system that can't be exploited in this way but means that a Californian's vote only matters half as much as a Montanan's vote.

EDIT: Actually, we could address both these problems by retaining the electoral college, but changing the system by which states are given electors; instead of a state having a number of electors equal to it's combined number of senators and reps, they would only have electors equal to their number of reps, and therefore based on population. This would require amending the Constitution, though.

Originally Posted by Atmosfear

Actually, what I'm saying is that the total number of votes in the election should not be the major factor in deciding the influence of any one region. My issue with the simple majority is that it allows the 51% majority to abuse the 49%.

In terms of general governance in a democracy, I absolutely agree, and it is also one of the major reasons why we have our systems of representative government.

But we're not talking about representative democracy in general. We're talking about electing a president. Unfortunately, there can only be one winner, and if it comes down to a 1% spread, then the candidate that got 1% of the vote should win. Of course, we could go back to having the winner with the 2nd highest total be the vice-president, but that's obviously a different discussion.

The point is that California can only count for X percentage of the total outcome. If all 36 million California voters turned out in an election that totaled 50 million votes, they could elect a candidate who serves only their own agenda. As it is now, even if the voters from a single state total a majority of the overall election, their influence on the outcome is limited by their actual size. Fortunately, we don't usually see a major skew in voter turnout (most states have roughly the same turnout as a percentage of registered voters), but it could happen and the system shouldn't be exploitable by that.

That's not preventing the other Americans from turning out to vote, though I see what you're saying, and to be honest of all the arguements I've heard for an electoral college, this is the probably the best I've heard thus far.

Nonetheless, I feel like there is even more danger of this in sweetheart deals to buy support from officials on the federal level, namely among senators and representatives that include kickbacks to their states in bills in order to secure their vote. I seriously doubt that such kickback deals for certain states or regions could be easily sold to individual voters.