# Electoral College- time to get rid of it? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [July 5, 2011, 11:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886 "2011-07-05T11:22:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Recovering\_Republican](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@Recovering\_Republican](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Recovering_Republican)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2011, 11:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/1 "2011-07-05T11:22:22Z")
Should we get rid of the electoral college. I say yes. Besides the possibility of electing someone who lost the popular vote (which has happened four times since the current system was set up by the 12th Amendment) it distorts our democracy. It puts too much emphasis on “Swing states” while ignoring the rest of the country. For instance, if you live in IL, you can pretty much expect to be ignored this election. President Obama is from IL, and if he’s really seriously worried about losign that state, his re-election is a lost cause. So he won’t spend any time here and neither will his inevitable Republican opponent. But they will spend a lot of time in Iowa. Talking about Ethanol which nearly everyone agrees now is a bad idea. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2011, 11:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/2 "2011-07-05T11:28:57Z")
I’ve been saying the electoral college should be scrapped since before I could vote. Someone’s got to listen to reason one of these years, right? Right? ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2011, 11:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/3 "2011-07-05T11:40:25Z")
It can be disestablished once people stop showing loyalty to their state. It’s pretty much a demonstration of the concept of federalism, with the states having power, not just the people. Anyways, removing it is overkill. You’ll remove much of the problems if you just vote via apportionment rather than winner-take-all. But I believe that’s would have to be done on a state by state basis. ---
**Author:** ![Recovering\_Republican](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@Recovering\_Republican](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Recovering_Republican)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2011, 11:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/4 "2011-07-05T11:42:48Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > I’ve been saying the electoral college should be scrapped since before I could vote. Someone’s got to listen to reason one of these years, right? > > Right? Never bet on Reason unless it’s a horse at Arlington. My guess is that it won’t be gotten rid of because you need 38 states to ratify an amendment to the constitution. A lot of these smaller states that only have 3-5 electoral votes have a lot more influence than they would otherwise. There’s also the question of, what do you replace it with. The Two-Party system largely exists because there’s an electoral college. I think the best solution might be a system like France has, and a lot of cities. Open election, and if no one gets 50%+1, you have a run off between the top two vote getters. I think it would do a lot to move politics in this country back to the middle. ---
**Author:** ![amanset](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8dc957/32.png) [@amanset](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amanset)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2011, 11:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/5 "2011-07-05T11:46:48Z")
Speaking as a foreigner, I can’t for the life of me understand why you ever had it. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2011, 11:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/6 "2011-07-05T11:52:08Z")
> [@Recovering\_Republican](#): > > Never bet on Reason unless it’s a horse at Arlington. > > My guess is that it won’t be gotten rid of because you need 38 states to ratify an amendment to the constitution. > > A lot of these smaller states that only have 3-5 electoral votes have a lot more influence than they would otherwise. I agree with you. It’s a bad system, but to get rid of it, you would need a significant number of people to vote against their own interests. The heavy emphasis on Iowa and New Hampshire in the primaries has the same distorting effect on politics and I think people in those states would admit their states just go first because of tradition. But they’re not going to get rid of that system either. ---
**Author:** ![Recovering\_Republican](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@Recovering\_Republican](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Recovering_Republican)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2011, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/7 "2011-07-05T12:14:39Z")
> [@amanset](#): > > Speaking as a foreigner, I can’t for the life of me understand why you ever had it. I think the concern was that they didn’t want America to be like Europe. A country like France or England that is dominated by one big city. So a lot of the rules put in there was to make sure everyone had kind of an equal say in things. For instance, the President and Vice President can’t be from the same state. So Darth Cheney had to pretend he was from Wyoming even though he was living in Texas at the time. They put in a Senate to balance against the House. I also think they really thought Congress would pick the president most of the time. That idea came to an end in the 1800 election, when Aaron Burr tried to pull a fast one and get Congress to make him President. You have to keep in mind, at that time, the franchise was limited to property owning white males. ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_Door](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@Bill\_Door](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_Door)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2011, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/8 "2011-07-05T12:36:23Z")
[Here’s what I think about that.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=8697274&postcount=5) ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2011, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/9 "2011-07-05T12:39:31Z")
I say keep it, for a few reasons. The first is that it’s tradition. We’ve had it since the beginning, and it’s part of what makes the country what it is. Second, the electoral college system (and the Senate) means that the government has to at least pretend to care about issues affecting rural people and rural areas. Get rid of it, and politicians are going to spend a lot of time dealing with stuff that affects big city dwellers, but not very much time worrying about issues that don’t, which is fine if you live in New York City, but not so much if you live in Boise, Cheyenne or Montpelier. Finally, even though this is farfetched and will probably never happen, it provides a safeguard. In the most prosaic sense, if a candidate dies between election day and the day the college votes, there’s a nice and easy way to deal with that. I could probably come up with more fantastic scenarios regarding some demagogue winning popular support and the electoral college being the only thing stopping him from becoming President, but, while it would be fun to write, it’s not too likely to happen. > [@amanset](#): > > Speaking as a foreigner, I can’t for the life of me understand why you ever had it. Like so much that’s confusing about American government, it’s the result of a compromise. When the Constitution was being written, there were those delegates who said, “The President should be picked by popular vote. We’re a Republic who fought for the right to choose our own leaders.” Then the other side said, “Please, have you SEEN some of the population? They can’t be trusted to decide what to have for dinner. Let Congress choose the President.” So somebody said “Look, lets just have each state choose electors, based on their population, to decide who should be President, and however the states want to pick the electors, that’s fine. If a majority of electors can’t come up with one person, Congress will just do it. That sound good to everyone?”, and the rest of the Convention came back with, “Eh, ok.”, “Sounds good”, and “What about my plan of having candidates fight to the death?”. So, they came up with a compromise that everyone could agree with, except of course for Rufus King, who was even more miffed when they turned down his idea for a third House of Congress to be called, “The House of Slaughter.” Anyway, that story is mostly true, except for the parts about Rufus King being an inhuman monster who loved blood sports. He was actually a humble, intelligent and peaceful man who was committed to diplomacy during his time as Ambassador to Great Britain and a fierce and tireless opponent of slavery and advocate for independence of the colonies of Central and South America. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2011, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/10 "2011-07-05T13:07:49Z")
> [@Recovering\_Republican](#): > > My guess is that it won’t be gotten rid of because you need 38 states to ratify an amendment to the constitution. Not really. There’s currently a law passed in eight states to have their electoral votes go to the winner of the popular vote _if_ states representing more then half the electoral vote total pass similar legislation. While technically this doesn’t abolish the electoral college, it would make it meaningless. The winner of the popular vote would always win the electoral college vote. New York and CA, with their 84 electoral votes seem like they’ll pass the same law soon, which would put it more then half-way to the total it needs, so I actually suspect we’ll see the end of the electoral college as a meaningful institution within my life time. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2011, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/11 "2011-07-05T13:15:48Z")
> [@Recovering\_Republican](#): > > I think the concern was that they didn’t want America to be like Europe. A country like France or England that is dominated by one big city. So a lot of the rules put in there was to make sure everyone had kind of an equal say in things. Right. Not only were the founders infallible, they also possessed the ability to see the future. They could tell that Europe would one day fall to socialism, so the only way to nip it in the bud was to as little like Europe as possible. Even though the French Revolution was still years away, they knew that IF the French commoners ever got a say in their government, then Paris would have a disproportionate say and that would be a VERY BAD THING. Back to the matter at hand, I’m opposed to a change. I don’t want states that use shenanigans to prevent certain people from voting to have any effect on a national popular vote total that means something. No matter how corrupt a Blackwell was, the worst he could do was foul up Ohio’s electoral votes. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2011, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/12 "2011-07-05T13:26:38Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > I say keep it, for a few reasons. The first is that it’s tradition. We’ve had it since the beginning, and it’s part of what makes the country what it is. This is the least compelling reason I could imagine. The Constitution provides for some “traditions” that we find very distasteful today. I hope I don’t have to name them. It’s worth understanding why the electoral college exists, as you discussed, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessary today. > [@](#): > > Second, the electoral college system (and the Senate) means that the government has to at least pretend to care about issues affecting rural people and rural areas. Get rid of it, and politicians are going to spend a lot of time dealing with stuff that affects big city dwellers, but not very much time worrying about issues that don’t, which is fine if you live in New York City, but not so much if you live in Boise, Cheyenne or Montpelier. I think the electoral college causes politicians to pay less attention to cities relative to their importance. How is that a good thing? The truth is that most people live in cities and suburbs - depending on how you define them, it can be a big majority or an overwhelming majority - and the electoral college system undervalues their votes. If you don’t believe me, consider farm subsidies or ethanol. And if one party consistently ignored all the rural areas, they’d be giving away votes over time. Politicians generally don’t want to do that. They’ll go where the contested votes are. > [@](#): > > Finally, even though this is farfetched and will probably never happen, it provides a safeguard. In the most prosaic sense, if a candidate dies between election day and the day the college votes, there’s a nice and easy way to deal with that. This is a silly argument. It would be easy to pass a law that would deal with that situation. ---
**Author:** ![Gedd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gedd/32/4938_2.png) [@Gedd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gedd)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2011, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/13 "2011-07-05T14:35:28Z")
I think the best alternative that makes it “more fair” while staying with the Electoral College layout would be to change it to where votes are cast based on the popular vote in each House of Representatives district. You drop 100 votes in the EC because you ignore the Senators (make that 102 votes with the District of Columbia) and have 436. Each state (and DC) gets at least one, with California at the top having 55. Each vote is still “worth” about the same percentage of the population, and you still have a group of electors casting the votes for other people. You would still have the possibility of wining the popular voting and losing the election, but it is a lot less likely to happen. With the votes directly representing each congressional district you don’t win the state as a whole. You will still have candidates skipping the Dakotas and Montana on their trips though; you simply reach more people when you give a talk in Ohio. They will still need to consider where in the state to visit though. Looking back to 2008, with this system Ohio would have gone 10 to McCain and 8 to Obama, even though Obama had the popular vote. [(Cite)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_in_Ohio,_2008) Hmm . . . may direct popular vote is the way to go. ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2011, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/14 "2011-07-05T14:48:09Z")
> [@Gedd](#): > > I think the best alternative that makes it “more fair” while staying with the Electoral College layout would be to change it to where votes are cast based on the popular vote in each House of Representatives district. … Then why not make the House of Representatives the electoral college? It’s chosen by popular vote in each district: you don’t need to hold a separate vote for the Electoral College. (Yes, it would make the system look a lot more like the Westminster system – but not the same, because the President would not be a member of the House.) ---
**Author:** ![Gedd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gedd/32/4938_2.png) [@Gedd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gedd)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2011, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/15 "2011-07-05T16:31:25Z")
> [@Giles](#): > > Then why not make the House of Representatives the electoral college? It’s chosen by popular vote in each district: you don’t need to hold a separate vote for the Electoral College. > > (Yes, it would make the system look a lot more like the Westminster system – but not the same, because the President would not be a member of the House.) That works for me. You just need to add someone for the District of Columbia since they don’t have a Representative but still get 3 Electoral College votes. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2011, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/16 "2011-07-05T17:03:47Z")
If we didn’t have the Electoral College in the first place, who in their right mind would propose such an idiotic device as an improvement? Yeah, of _course_ we should scrap the damned thing. The difficulty is in actually _doing_ so. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2011, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/17 "2011-07-05T17:13:59Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > I think the electoral college causes politicians to pay less attention to cities relative to their importance. How is that a good thing? The truth is that most people live in cities and suburbs - depending on how you define them, it can be a big majority or an overwhelming majority - and the electoral college system undervalues their votes. If you don’t believe me, consider farm subsidies or ethanol. And if one party consistently ignored all the rural areas, they’d be giving away votes over time. Politicians generally don’t want to do that. They’ll go where the contested votes are. Because cities tend to get over represented in our system as it is. I grew up in and have recently moved back to Upstate NY, and the city dominates New York State politics, and New York State statewide elections. We’re lucky that we have Gilibrand now, who’s from up here and cares about the area, but with the exception of her, Moynahan, Clinton, and to a lesser extent Schumer, upstate largely gets ignored by New York Senators. You know the last time somebody from upstate was elected governor? Nathan Miller, in 1921. People in rural and smaller areas need a voice, and a system that only cares about population will deny them that. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2011, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/18 "2011-07-05T17:19:27Z")
[Discover Magazine](http://discovermagazine.com/2004/sep/math-against-tyranny)had a pretty good article about it. We make fun of the EC, but the alternative is chaos. Remember Florida 2000? Suppose we had a repeat but on the national scale. Then you’ve got 50 different states + DC recounting all of their votes, some of which are a little more scrupulous than others. What the EC does is take all these potential elections that might be within the margin of error and give a result that is well outside the margin of error. That being said, I would favor a system whereby the two EVs that represent the senators go to the statewide winner and those that represent the House are awarded to the candidate carrying that House district. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2011, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/19 "2011-07-05T17:45:16Z")
Quoth **Recovering Republican** : > [@](#): > > I think the concern was that they didn’t want America to be like Europe. A country like France or England that is dominated by one big city. So a lot of the rules put in there was to make sure everyone had kind of an equal say in things. The reason London dominates the UK is precisely _because_ everyone has an equal voice. Try to change that, and you’re trying to give every _place_ an equal voice instead. Quoth **BobLibDem** : > [@](#): > > Discover Magazinehad a pretty good article about it. We make fun of the EC, but the alternative is chaos. Remember Florida 2000? Suppose we had a repeat but on the national scale. Then you’ve got 50 different states + DC recounting all of their votes, some of which are a little more scrupulous than others. What the EC does is take all these potential elections that might be within the margin of error and give a result that is well outside the margin of error. Florida 2000 _was_ that on a national scale. As a direct result of our system, we had a situation where dispute over the votes in a couple of counties swung the entire national election. If we went by the national popular vote total instead, problems like that would be so rare as to be practically nonexistent. When mathematicians extol the virtues of the Electoral College as giving everyone more power, what they really mean is that the EC makes situations like Florida 2000 more likely-- It’s a flawed definition. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2011, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/20 "2011-07-05T17:48:36Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > Because cities tend to get over represented in our system as it is. I don’t see it. Something like 60 percent of the U.S. population lives in a city of more than 200,000 people, and 80 percent of the population lives in or near an urban area (city of at least 50,000 people or the suburbs, etc.), but farm subsidies and ethanol subsidies are sacrosanct while U.S. infrastructure is in terrible shape, and in the language of current politics, rural America is “the real America.” If the electoral college were gone, maybe you’d see fewer politicians hunting in front of the cameras. I’m not seeing the downside here. > [@](#): > > You know the last time somebody from upstate was elected governor? Nathan Miller, in 1921. I don’t really care where the governor is _from_, but if Carl Palladino is anything to go by, it might be another 90 years before civilization takes hold. 😉 Seriously, how much of the New York State population lives in the city and the suburbs around it? I don’t think it’s proportionate to its influence on state politics, although I think that’s more a factor of the individuals in the legislature and their voting blocs than anything else. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886.md?page=2)