So politicians would be catering to the majority, while neglecting the minority. Isn’t that what democracy is supposed to be all about? By contrast, in our current position, they cater to those states that happen to have a close-to-even mix of the two parties, and neglect everyone else.
Quoth RealityChuck:
I’m not sure if you were including Montana in the “small states” (there are seven single-Representative states, not five, and six smaller than Montana), but we’re not as solidly red as many folks think (both of our Senators and our Governor are Democrats), and Obama did in fact campaign a little here. Not nearly as much as Iowa or Florida, of course (both of which were more plausible wins and which have more electoral votes), but some. In fact, commentators say that Obama’s “50 state strategy” was one of the key factors in his victory: By making at least some effort to appeal to all 50 states, he forced the Republicans to spread out resources to defend everywhere, too (of course this strategy was dependent on Obama and the Democrats having more money available than McCain and the Republicans).
You can switch terminology quite accurately to make the opposing case. The U.S. isn’t a democracy in any true form and isn’t set up as one. It is a constitutional republic and the electoral college reflects that. I think that is a good thing but that is really more for Great Debates.
I am not sure why the OP thinks few people are aware of the Electoral College either unless he or she is extremely young or foreign. Bad journalism based around it wasted a significant chunk of all our time in 2000. There were some legitimate academic studies done after that fiasco that determined that a system like an electoral college increases individual voter power rather than decreasing it. I could give cites but this thread seems to basic for that level of detail so far.
The United States quite certainly is a democracy. It also happens to be a constitutional republic in which representatives are voted on by the people - one of the many ways you can set up a democracy.
Well then you have never voted in a presidential election. All votes in presidential elections are for one or another slate of electors. True, this is usually hidden from the voters, but it is a fact.
…For some definitions of “power”, at least. When they say that the Electoral College increases the power of voters, what they mean is that it increases the chance that the election will be decided by a single vote, or a very small number of them. We’ve seen what happens when an election is decided by a small number of votes (Florida Bush vs. Gore, Minnesota Franken vs. Coleman), and it’s not pretty. Now picture the chaos that would have ensued if the margin were literally a single vote: That’s what you get when an individual voter “exercises power”.
In 16 elections since 1844 (including three of the last five) no presidential candidate won a majority of the popular vote. Without the EC or some other system that wasn’t pure vote count, we’d wind up with a lot more elections winding up decided by the House of Representatives, the Supreme Court (Bush/Gore), a highly suspect electoral commission (Hayes/Tilden) or something even more nefarious.
And of course Illinoisians were at least partly familiar with him already from his campaign for Senator just a few years before, though that wouldn’t apply to the other solid-color states.
As a matter of fact, if the Electoral College were abolished it would lead to less campaigning, not more. Slightly more than 50% of the population of the United States is concentrated in 6 states (California, Texas, New York, Florida, Pennsylvania and Illinois) (Cite).
Why would a politician care about the paltry .32% of the population in Montana in light of that? They need only focus on the big states and depend on the general political leanings in the small ones to win. As it stands now politicians need to campaign in some of the smaller states, particularly the Republican candidate who typically faces the need to overcome the expected loss of California. A general popular vote will negate that particular situation to a large degree, which means that they won’t have any reason to care about smaller states at all.
It’s not necessarily about the message. People get the impression that a candidate cares about them if the candidate visits their state. Your assertion is correct in every case, so why do candidates even bother campaigning? It’s because of the impression that a visit can make on the voters.
By devoting some of their limited time to a state they appear to care about that state. Since people usually vote based upon their own interests, a candidate demonstrating an interest in their interests can garner more support by campaigning there.
If we went to a national majority vote, why would state boundaries matter at all? It seems to me that the size of your state wouldn’t matter. Other factors, like the population density, might matter.
Everyone hates the Electoral College because it seems intuitively “unfair”.
Turns out our founding fathers were pretty smart guys.
Before anyone weighs in on the evils of the EC I encourage them to read this article on Math Against Tyranny (a bit of mathematical rigor applied to the question).
After reading it you may still decide you hate the EC but at least you will have a more informed take on it. Not to mention it is hard to keep holding the opinion the EC is awful after reading that.
State boundaries would still matter because the interests of New York, let’s say, are different than those of Pennsylvania. Funding is not based on popular vote. If states in general were ignored in favor of population concentration, the people of those states might be inclined to go for a candidate that specifically represents their interests as a whole rather than those of the biggest city.
The political divisions matter. If a politician pandered to Philadelphia and not Pittsburgh, do you think that the voters in Pittsburgh would get excited about the possibility of getting the shaft? However, if a politician visits Pennsylvania, no matter where he goes, people across the state are more likely to appreciate his message and vote for him.
I’m not sure this is true. Given the closeness of the overall popular vote in 1960 and 2000, had there been no EC, then there likely would have been serious pressure for nationwide recounting. There would have been Florida-style procedures all over the country, wherever local returns suggested that one side or the other might be vulnerable.
This would seem to be exactly the problem that Chronos was referring to. A full-country recount would take until the next election. It would paralyze and tear apart the country for months, as the Minnesota recount did.
Even an imaginary magic perfect ballot system wouldn’t help, because then the qualifications of each voter would be torn apart.
Less is more. Electors are known, discrete, and small scale. A proper count is always easy and quick. Faithlessness is the only issue, and that is comparatively trivial.
Nothing scares me more than a nationwide recount. Why would anyone advocate that?