The organization National Popular Vote wants to make an end run around the U.S. Constitution to make the Electoral College irrelevant by convincing states to pass laws pledging all their votes to the winners of the popular election.
7 thoughts on “How To Ditch The Electoral College”
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Right. Because tossing out a 200 year old system that mostly works for something new and untried is a really good idea.
Unintended consequences? Whazzat?
Wankers.
Wow. I didn’t know the electoral college inspired such loyalty.
Just want to point out there’s nothing so revolutionary about directly electing the President. What’s so “new and untried” about a national election? And “mostly works” is a matter of debate — it “mostly works” at electing the candidate the majority of the voting population wanted in office, but it really breaks down when you start looking at the ways it distorts campaigning.
Jeremy,
It’s not loyalty to a system, just a general worry about changing something that works for an untried process.
This applies across the board for me. Change is a constant but it is worth keeping an eye on the unintended consequences attending.
The Electoral College protects the smaller and the more rural states from being rendered politically irrelevant by the more-populous states, an effect much like that of the U.S. Senate, where every state has the same level of influence.
It’s one of the checks on the “tyranny of the majority” that the Founders were wise enough to install.
Unless the Electoral College starts giving elections to people who pulled 25% of the popular vote, I say we keep it.
After all, most of the campaigning is done on the coasts anyhow; without the Electoral College, the states between the Cali – Nevada state line and the Mississippi River would lose all influence.
Michael nails the issue quite well. Under a direct vote system, Presidents would be elected by a handful of major metropolitian areas, including those famous for the dead voting early and often.
What would be better is to mandate that House district’s EVs be cast separately from the state as a whole. That way, a heavy blue district in a red state (Austin in Texas) or the reverse could still cast an EV for who they want without dismantling the entire system.
And this would also reduce (the already rare) Florida 2000(tm) type debacles; it’d be much less likely to have enough EVs in doubt to change an election, and even if it did occurr the scope of recounts would likely be limited to districts rather than involve whole states.
under the electoral college we had such proven losers as ronald
reagan and our current Goober-in-chief.