# 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:** 2
**Author:** ![Critical1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/3e96dc/32.png) [@Critical1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Critical1)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2011, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/21 "2011-07-05T18:36:12Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > 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. QFT ---
**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, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/22 "2011-07-05T18:37:26Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > 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. Let’s see: NY State has 19.4 million people, and the NYC metro area has 18.9 million people. Admittedly, several million of those live in CT and NJ, but still: _of course_ NYC should dominate state politics. > [@](#): > > 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. [Restating](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Senators_from_New_York): “With the exception of _everyone who’s occupied one of our two U.S. Senate seats for the past 1/3 of a century_, and to a lesser extent _the guy who’s occupied the other one for the past dozen years_, upstate largely gets ignored by New York Senators.” Cry me a river, dude! > [@](#): > > People in rural and smaller areas need a voice, and a system that only cares about population will deny them that. Everyone should have an equal voice, and a system that systematically overrepresents certain groups undermines that principle. People in rural and smaller areas need a voice proportionate to their population, just like everyone else. In the states that actually happens, because of one-person, one-vote decisions by the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, these decisions don’t apply to the U.S. Senate or the Electoral College. FWIW, if we did away with the EC, the U.S. Senate would still ensure the overrepresentation of the poor, helpless residents of rural America in our politics. Personally, I think abolishing the Senate is the right initial move, and dicking around with the EC is just dealing with a symptom. (For all the inspiration we supposedly provide to the spread of democracy around the world, you notice that essentially nobody else in the world has followed us into bicameralism. There’s a reason for that.) Of course, I’m also quite aware that we’re stuck with the Senate, but there’s some minute chance that we might free ourselves from the EC. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2011, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/23 "2011-07-05T18:45:38Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Quoth **BobLibDem** :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. I would like to believe that but I can’t. A national winner-take-all vote means that every vote would be challenged in any election except for the very rare landslide. Every friggin’ vote. Obama took 54% of the vote, which is normally sizable, but 4% is small enough to be within margin of error. That means that states that normally tilt hugely Republican or Democrat would be in play for the tiny fractions of their votes that now are too small to make any difference. The only way to have a national election is to have a perfect system of national i.d. and address verification. That would require procedures that would send half the country into a frenzy. I wouldn’t even attempt such a system without implanting chips into all Americans at birth or maybe tattooing bar codes on their foreheads. Whether you like the Electoral College or not, it will not be changed in my lifetime. The upside is that people will get to start these futile threads several times a year forever. 😃 ---
**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, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/24 "2011-07-05T19:03:02Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > I would like to believe that but I can’t. A national winner-take-all vote means that every vote would be challenged in any election except for the very rare landslide. Every friggin’ vote. … The French manage to do it\*, with a population of 66 million. Is that because the French are a lot more clever at running elections than Americans? Or is because the French are much less likely to squabble about political matters? * * * - Actually, they do it twice, if the first ballot does not produce a winner with more than 50% of the vote, since they then have a run-off ballot between the two leading candidates. ---
**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, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/25 "2011-07-05T19:11:56Z")
Parties would only challenge the vote total if they had a chance of reversing 4% of all of the votes cast in the entire nation. Even Bush vs. Gore was still a margin of over half a percent, or over half a million votes. By contrast, Florida was down at the hundredth of a percent level, being decided by a mere 537 votes. The national popular vote would _never_ be decided by a margin that small, or even by a margin 50 times that size. Again, the mathematicians who proclaim the superiority of the Electoral College acknowledge this, and it is in fact the core of their argument. ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Feldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lord_feldon/32/341_2.png) [@Lord\_Feldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Feldon)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2011, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/26 "2011-07-05T20:01:22Z")
I don’t understand how the electoral college guarantees that the government will care about rural issues. Look at [this map.](http://i56.tinypic.com/x22pht.png) Just about half of the states got no attention at all from the campaigns in 2008. Without the electoral college, a pretty big chunk of the populations of those states would become relevant. Democrats would be worrying about how many votes they would be getting from Oklahoma, and Republicans would be doing the same about New York. Right now, they’re electoral flyover states. > [@Recovering\_Republican](#): > > For instance, the President and Vice President can’t be from the same state. This isn’t true. Electors can’t vote for two people from their own state. Having both the president and vice president be from one state would run a risk of throwing the VP’s election to the Senate, but it would be constitutionally permissible. ---
**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, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/27 "2011-07-05T20:16:59Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > but 4% is small enough to be within margin of error. That means that states that normally tilt hugely Republican or Democrat would be in play for the tiny fractions of their votes that now are too small to make any difference. What definition of Margin of Error are you using? 4% is something like 6 million votes, thats a pretty huge number of votes to claim were miscounted. Remember, an election isn’t a poll. There’s no error due to sampling size. The only possible types of error are either fraud or with the actual vote counting systems. I don’t think anyone would find it plausible that 6 million votes were due to some machine glitch (6 million people would be a sizable fraction of the votes in even the largest states), and fraud on that scale would be pretty impossible to perpetrate without someone catching on. Thats actually an argument to do away with the electoral college, IMHO. With the huge number of voters in the popular vote total, a “close” election where things turn on a couple thousand votes is pretty unlikely, while they’re somewhat common when the Presidential election is actually 51 much smaller elections. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2011, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/28 "2011-07-05T22:29:38Z")
> [@Simplicio](#): > > What definition of Margin of Error are you using? 4% is something like 6 million votes, thats a pretty huge number of votes to claim were miscounted. > > Remember, an election isn’t a poll. There’s no error due to sampling size. The only possible types of error are either fraud or with the actual vote counting systems. I don’t think anyone would find it plausible that 6 million votes were due to some machine glitch (6 million people would be a sizable fraction of the votes in even the largest states), and fraud on that scale would be pretty impossible to perpetrate without someone catching on. > > Thats actually an argument to do away with the electoral college, IMHO. With the huge number of voters in the popular vote total, a “close” election where things turn on a couple thousand votes is pretty unlikely, while they’re somewhat common when the Presidential election is actually 51 much smaller elections. You don’t think that the Republican or Democratic Committees could find six million votes to squabble over in the whole of the United States with the presidency at stake? They would. What we’ve saw in Florida and more recently in Minnesota would be sideshows by comparison to a true presidential vote-by-vote measure. Every single vote in every single precinct would be recounted. And by 50 or more sets of laws. And by more than 50 sets of what constitutes a valid ballot. And by 50 sets of who is a valid citizen with valid registration. When I say every ballot would be questioned, I mean every, yours, mine, and theirs. It doesn’t matter that other countries manage to do this. I’m predicting what would happen here to a mathematical certainty. The only way to do would be to nationalize the entire voting system, with one set of ballots, a national database, and universally recognized voting and counting procedures. If you can convince me that we will see those in my lifetime, I’ll grant you the possibility of eliminating the electoral college. But not before. ---
**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, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/29 "2011-07-05T22:42:55Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > You don’t think that the Republican or Democratic Committees could find six million votes to squabble over in the whole of the United States with the presidency at stake? They routinely accept far far smaller margins in the state by state races, so no, I don’t think they’d squabble over six million votes. The optics when a party contests a couple thousand votes are usually pretty bad, trying to convince voters that you think there were six million mistakes in the last election without a good argument as to why, and that we should engage in an expensive nationwide recount on the off chance you’ll find six million extra votes for your party somewhere are bad enough that I don’t think any party would do it. ---
**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, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/30 "2011-07-05T23:07:54Z")
Then why don’t we see that now? If they have the resources to find 6 million challenges in the whole country, then they have the resources to find 120 thousand in each state. Or 240 thousand in each of 25 different states. Flip 240 thousand votes in each of the right 25 states, and I’ll bet you could change the outcome of any presidential election since the Era of Good Feelings. So why is this never done? ---
**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, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/31 "2011-07-05T23:22:13Z")
> [@Simplicio](#): > > 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. Here’s the problem with that. If NY and CA do it, but Texas and Florida don’t, that’s like unilateral disarmerment, isn’t it? Assuming that a third of the districts in those states go GOP, that’s about 30 electoral votes the GOP picks up, but a third of texas won’t go to the Dem… I think it maybe should be done that way, I think that would be more fair, but it only really works if everyone goes along. Two states, (Maine and Nebraska) already do it that way, but they have so few electoral votes, it doesn’t make a difference. ---
**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, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/32 "2011-07-05T23:23:31Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Then why don’t we see that now? If they have the resources to find 6 million challenges in the whole country, then they have the resources to find 120 thousand in each state. Or 240 thousand in each of 25 different states. Flip 240 thousand votes in each of the right 25 states, and I’ll bet you could change the outcome of any presidential election since the Era of Good Feelings. So why is this never done? Did you forget what an insane circus Florida was when Al Gore tried to do just that? ---
**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, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/33 "2011-07-05T23:31:11Z")
> [@Recovering\_Republican](#): > > Did you forget what an insane circus Florida was when Al Gore tried to do just that? Err..Gore tried to flip something like 500 votes. Thats a little more reasonable then 240,000. But thats why just using the winner of the popular vote is less likely to cause recounts, the chances of an electorate of 120 million people in a single election coming within a few hundred votes of each other is a lot smaller then 51 elections in states of a few million. > [@](#): > > Here’s the problem with that. If NY and CA do it, but Texas and Florida don’t, that’s like unilateral disarmerment, isn’t it? Assuming that a third of the districts in those states go GOP, that’s about 30 electoral votes the GOP picks up, but a third of texas won’t go to the Dem… No, the laws only go into effect once states representing half the electoral college adopt them. Once thats true, it doesn’t matter what the other states do, the winner of the popular vote will win the electoral college, regardless. ---
**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, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/34 "2011-07-05T23:51:34Z")
> [@](#): > > Did you forget what an insane circus Florida was when Al Gore tried to do just that? Of course I didn’t forget; that’s what I’m basing my argument on. Situations like that are much more common with an electoral college than they would be without it. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2011, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/35 "2011-07-06T00:05:25Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Then why don’t we see that now? If they have the resources to find 6 million challenges in the whole country, then they have the resources to find 120 thousand in each state. Or 240 thousand in each of 25 different states. Flip 240 thousand votes in each of the right 25 states, and I’ll bet you could change the outcome of any presidential election since the Era of Good Feelings. So why is this never done? Can you show me an election in which 25 states were decidable by that margin? The closeness of a total election is not dependent on the closeness of individual states. [This site](http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/) breaks out state-by-state results. For the 2000 election, 28 states and DC had margins of more than 10%. Five were really close. It’s an oddity that the states are increasingly polarized but the population as a whole is split very closely. The Electoral College hides that. An individual vote count wouldn’t. And the psychology would be hugely different. To nitpick myself. Obama won 54% of the big two vote. He won 53% of the total vote when the smaller parties are counted. ---
**Author:** ![Icarus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icarus/32/72_2.png) [@Icarus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icarus)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2011, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/36 "2011-07-06T00:31:34Z")
IMHO - eliminating the EC could improve voter turnout, and I think this would be a good thing. Consider - a rational voter in say, California or Illinois, might surmise that the state will go Democratic in the Presidential election because of the EC. If they are a Republican voter they might not vote at all for the Presidential candidate - as it would be a “wasted” vote. Eliminate the EC and now every vote everywhere counts. If you are in the minority party in a state, your vote is still valuable for the overall count. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2011, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/37 "2011-07-06T01:16:24Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > 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. Not even close. Only 61 million Americans live in cities with populations over 200,000. It goes up to 84 million if you include cities \> 100,000. Because of the hard to comprehend way the census defines things it is easy to get confused about this. It is absolutely true that something like 80% live within a “metropolitan area” but a much, much smaller percent actually live in what the census deems the “central city.” Additionally many, many areas most people would consider extremely rural are classified as urban by the census, any census designated place with a population over 2,500 is considered urban. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2011, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/38 "2011-07-06T01:22:47Z")
[Cite](http://sheet.zoho.com/public/martin.hyde/city-summary) for above. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2011, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/39 "2011-07-06T02:56:07Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > Not even close. Only 61 million Americans live in cities with populations over 200,000. It goes up to 84 million if you include cities \> 100,000. > > Because of the hard to comprehend way the census defines things it is easy to get confused about this. > > It is absolutely true that something like 80% live within a “metropolitan area” but a much, much smaller percent actually live in what the census deems the “central city.” Additionally many, many areas most people would consider extremely rural are classified as urban by the census, any census designated place with a population over 2,500 is considered urban. > [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > [Cite](http://sheet.zoho.com/public/martin.hyde/city-summary) for above. It’s true that the census definitions for urban and the way people live are often at odds. Metro areas can be very large and include farming regions and what might otherwise be considered rural areas. Metro Los Angeles is actually more densely populated than metro New York City according to one chart I saw recently in a magazine (and can’t remember where). However, your cite is for central cities only and that is simply the worst way to define urban areas. Central cities, especially in the older areas of the country, are almost totally artificial boundaries of urban life. Most of those areas have suburbs that would otherwise qualify on their own for this list. Only in the sunbelt, where annexation is still possible, is there any semblance of correlation between a central city and metro area. The 80% who live in metro areas are different from the other 20% even if they live on farms. They get the same television stations and newspapers as the downtown folk. They root for the same sports teams. They have the same malls. They suffer from the same pollution, congestion, and traffic. They share representatives at the local, state, country, and national levels. The major employers impact them and the major layoffs impact them. Using central cities as you guide is a guarantee that even major issue of social or political dimension will be misrepresented. For all the census faults, metro areas are mandatory groupings. In fact, Consolidated Areas are even better for many analyses because they are larger. I don’t know why [this site](http://www.demographia.com/db-metro2003.pdf) goes only to 2003, but it gives a total population in the 56 CAa as 177,510,088 but a core city population of only 43,350,520. That latter number is ludicrous as a measure of urbanization. I’d go with the former in 99 of 100 specifics. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2011, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886/40 "2011-07-06T03:41:17Z")
The problem with the EC is that states are not creative in how to divide up the electors and except for 2 have a winner take all system. Let’s just say California with its 55 electoral votes decides on the folowing breakdown Winner gets 50-52.5% of the state vote: Winner 30 EV, Loser 25 EV Winner gets 52.5-55% of the state vote: Winner 40 EV, Loser 15 EV Winner gets 55-57.5% of the state vote: Winner 50 EV, Loser 5 EV Winner gets more than 57.5% of the state vote: Winner 55 EV, Loser 0 EV All of the sudden, California is relevant again because a swing of less than 10 million votes is worth up to 25 electoral votes. And while we’re at it, any candidate gets 2 EV for breaking 2% of the vote. Not saying that’s the best way to deal with electoral votes, but it is certainly better than a winner take all system. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-college-time-to-get-rid-of-it/587886.md?page=3)