I’ve heard your reasons. But I asked for good reasons and none of those have been produced yet.
The reasons I’ve been given aren’t good enough. Here’s what I’ve heard so far:
- Because.
- We’ve always done it that way.
- City people don’t vote right.
I’m sorry you’re unsatisfied, but we’re probably going to keep doing things the way the Constitution says to, regardless of whether you think that’s a “good enough” reason or not.
ETA: do you understand the historical context for how we arrived at this present situation?
It’s one held by a lot of uninformed people. As DSYoungEsq took considerable pains to inform you, it isn’t a matter of majority vs. minority rule as determined by the United States’ electorate as an entity. Such a notion doesn’t even come into play. Rather it’s a matter of 50 independent states plus the District of Columbia all having their own elections and arriving at their own decisions as to who should be president, with the ultimate result reflecting their decisions as combined with all the other states’ decisions.
In other words, the popular vote means nothing! It’s just a number! It plays no role in determining the outcome of presidential elections and it was never intended to. It’s pretty much a sign of ignorance and naivety to think the popular vote determines or should determine who gets elected president, and it marks the speaker as unsophisticated in terms of how a republic such as ours is designed to function.
You might as well be sticking your fingers in your ears and yelling “LALALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!!!” as to keep coming back to your assertions about fairness and majority/minority rule, because the electorate as a whole doesn’t govern, it was never intended to govern, and it can’t govern. Thus it’s impossible for this entity that exists only as a number to govern some other part of itself in an unfair way.
There’s serious equivocation here. If someone thinks that our system is set up to award the presidency to the winner of the popular vote, you’re correct that that stems from ignorance. If someone thinks it SHOULD be set up that way, that’s a very reasonable position. Claiming people hold it only to benefit their own candidate is a scurrilous charge unfounded by evidence.
IMO, the electoral college was sensible in a day of slavery and denying the vote to women and non-landowners. It was reasonable in a time when community and communication were constricted by travel times, and it took more than a week to travel from New York to North Carolina. In those days, community was far more geographically bounded than it is today.
DSYoung, I’m sure that there are some differences in thinking between South Carolinians and Californians. But there are also differences between black Tarheels and white Tarheels, and there are also differences between folks with postgrad education and those who drop out of high school, and there are also differences between nerds and jocks. I share much more in common with a third-grade teacher in Washington State than I do with a pawn shop owner who lives down the street. The electoral college no longer represents accurate subsectors of our country.
The system is clearly no longer serving us: consider who divided our country has become over the last decade. Recognizing that we’ve become larger and more interconnected than we were two and a half centuries ago is key, and abolishing the EC would help with that.
Then tell your Alpha Male Leader to ignore the popular vote. Didn’t he Tweet that those millions of votes must have been cast illegally? *He *definitely thinks it matters. He knows that there will always be an asterisk beside his name in the list of Presidents. So the Electors will no doubt install him–but we won’t shut up. About this or anything else.
This *Washington Post *article traces the Electoral college back to Medieval roots:
Now the USA has the last Electoral college. But the others were abolished in times of emergency–so ours will probably not disappear so easily.
Oh, and don’t call us “unsophisticated”–while you pose as the representative of the rural, salt of the earth voters.
That’s how it works. City folk have to take care of farmers. And in fact they do. The farm bill keeps family farms going. Otherwise corporations would buy all the land and just rent it to rural folk.
Farm bill and 2014 law
But many think it already IS set up that way, or at least unless with the exception of those rare occasions when it’s for some reason countermanded by the electoral college.
I haven’t made such a claim. What I’ve said people want to do is eliminate the EC so as to benefit their own side by making the popular vote the deciding factor.
It’s serving us perfectly well in terms of allowing each state in the federation to participate in the country’s governance. What it isn’t serving well is liberal politics, which would always win in a popular vote scenario due to big cities voting liberal. Do you really think a system that allows one side always to win is one that serves the country best?
That sentence is incoherent, both grammatically and conceptually.
Big cities don’t vote liberal. Big cities don’t have votes. People have votes, regardless of where they live. One of our current parties finds that they can win the presidency by courting the people who live outside of big cities, even when more people don’t want them in power.
It’s a messed up system, and it should change.
And the most successful and longest lasting democracy in the world.
I just call 'em as I see 'em. If you think the popular vote is supposed to win presidential elections in the U.S., you’re unsophisticated as to how presidential elections take place. Period. People you like to think of as rubes can be well-informed on the matter and people you like to think of as big city sophisticates (to the degree that anyone can be considered a sophisticate in today’s society) can be completely ignorant of the matter. And vice-versa. So you see, your insistence upon making the question a rural vs. big city issue is rather unsophisticated itself.
Translation = It doesn’t work to my advantage so I want it changed.
Please.
It’s possible that there’s legitimate disagreement on the electoral college. Do you really believe that it’s a perfect system, and any criticism is sour grapes?
This is a true statement. Right now, votes in Iowa and Ohio count way, way more for presidential elections than votes in NYC, LA, and Houston. Why should voters in one place have so much more influence than voters in another place on a person-by-person basis? Isn’t there at least a reasonable argument that every single vote in America should have the same influence and power to affect a presidential race?
I’m headed out the door but the answer to your question lies in the excellent posts by DSYoungEsq in posts 51 and 93 in this thread.
Those might be reasonable arguments, but they aren’t the only reasonable argument. I think there’s also a reasonable argument that a single voter in NYC, for example, ought to have as much influence on a presidential election as a single voter in NH or IA or any other state. I was objecting to your rote dismissal, as if there couldn’t possibly be a reasonable discussion and reasonable criticism of the electoral college.
Yes, I fully understand it. And I’m aware it would take an amendment to change the law. That’s what I think should be done.
Just a question to the stalwart defenders of the electoral college: other than the fact that it is, and has been, the law for a long time, why do you believe it is important to continue this method of electing presidents?
Literally every other office in the country is decided by popular vote (in most jurisdictions, a mere plurality will do; in some, a majority is required). Why is the office of the President deserving of a process that is unlike any other office in the country?
(I’m not particularly interested in arguments that have to do with appeals to tradition. The Framers made their fair share of poor decisions in drafting the Constitution, so the fact that the Constitution says something, and has continued to do so for a long time, is not proof that it is a good and justified provision on its merits.)
You’re just repeating the same thing with exclamation points and capital letters. It appears to me you realize how weak your argument is.
If you are unable to address what I actually say, I can certainly see how it’s simpler to make up words that I say and then address them. That’s not actually a debate, though, and it makes no sense for me to address your actual words if you’re not addressing mine.
I hope you get pleasure out of debating with the fictional version of me that you’ve created, because otherwise it’s truly a pointless exercise you’ve engaged in.