The electoral college is broken

[randyjohnson]

Why do we still go by the electoral vote? Some people say it's because if it's not broke, don't fix it. Well I'm telling you that it is broken.

Al Gore lost because he didn't get the electoral vote. If we went by the popular vote, he would've won and our country would be in a much better shape.

Thanks to George Bush, we're in a bad recession and in a war as well. We'd be in neither if we didn't have the electoral college.

Barack Obama is now the only hope we have of getting us out of this mess that Bush has gotten us into. That's why I voted for Obama. The electoral college should be dismantled.

[doobs]

Why do we still go by the electoral vote? Some people say it's because if it's not broke, don't fix it. Well I'm telling you that it is broken.

Al Gore lost because he didn't get the electoral vote. If we went by the popular vote, he would've won and our country would be in a much better shape.

Thanks to George Bush, we're in a bad recession and in a war as well. We'd be in neither if we didn't have the electoral college.

Barack Obama is now the only hope we have of getting us out of this mess that Bush has gotten us into. That's why I voted for Obama. The electoral college should be dismantled.

If we didn't have the electoral college, Bush would have run a different campaign in 2000. The electoral college is good. Imagine if what happened in Florida in 2000 had happened with the national popular vote. That would have been an enormous headache. Recount the national vote? Also, the electoral college typically yields clear winnners with mandates. If you win 55% of the national popular vote, you'll probably win the electoral college in a landslide. That's probably a good thing.

[DarkReign]

What part of the Constitution has the line about "protecting the minority from the majority"?

Was that in reference to the two houses of Congress? Cant remember...


Anwyay, thats basically why we have an electoral system...to protect the minority from the majority.

[doobs]

What part of the Constitution has the line about "protecting the minority from the majority"?

Was that in reference to the two houses of Congress? Cant remember...


Anwyay, thats basically why we have an electoral system...to protect the minority from the majority.

There's also the part of the Constitution that explicitly provides for the electoral college . . .

[DarkReign]

There's also the part of the Constitution that explicitly provides for the electoral college . . .

Well yeah, I realize that, but my point was there is a precedent for representative government in general, in that the minority should be protected from the majority.

The use of the phrase, iirc, was derived when hammering out the Legislative branch of government. Small population states (Mass, Conn, NH) didnt want to be dominated by the large population states (Virg, NC, NY), so they negotiated the two houses of Congress, one based on representative population, the other a straight 2 members per state.

My point is, the entire United States government is based on this very principle in almost its entirety. "To protect the minority from the majority."

[fyatuk]

What part of the Constitution has the line about "protecting the minority from the majority"?

I don't recall that at all, and I just skimmed the text and didn't see it...

But back to the electoral college. Considering our federal government was designed to represent both the will of the people and the will of the states, the electoral college does a fairly good job of that. Of course, originally Senators were appointed by each State's legislatures and now they are popularly elected, so I'm not sure that claim is completely valid anymore.

[DarrinS]

Because we are not a true democracy -- we are a republic.