We do ask that. The Senate is silly and undemocratic, too, but unfortunately we’re stuck with that.
No, we’d be giving the first 100 million citizens the same amount of power as the next 100 million citizens.
And yes, the needs and interests of city-dwellers are different than those of rural folks. And the interests of doctors are different from those of ditch-diggers, and the interests of left-handers are different from those of right-handers. Why don’t we divide up our political system under any of those other lines?
Doctors, teachers and ditch diggers live in similar proportions all over the country. Their perspectives will be reflected in proportion to their numbers in every district in every state. But zero farmers live in the city, and zero city-dwellers live in a town with a population of 250.
All politics is local, and “local” is a geographical term. Geography matters in politics in a way your job title or hobbies never will. This is why we don’t have a one-world government, this is why the Chechens and Slavs and Uighurs and Serbians of the world fight for independence, this is why colonialism failed. “There’s more of us” is simply not a good argument for any policy, ever. Government and politics must be tailored to a particular locality. This is why nations are geographic entities. It’s why there’s no “government for doctors”, and another “government for teachers”, et cetera, but there are plenty of “governments for this piece of land right here”.
Writing off geography as just another marketing demographic like “libertarian entrepreneurs” or “middle-class gay couples” is writing off the entirety of politics.
I don’t think slavery is given enough recognition for the electoral college. Without something like the electoral college the slave states either don’t get the additional influence from the three-fifths compromise or they have to allow slaves to vote. Both were non-starters.
And if we went with one “district” for the entire nation, then farmers and city-dwellers would also be represented in proportion to their numbers. But right now, they’re not.
Incidentally, you might also be surprised to learn that there are actually quite a few farmers living in big cities.
Not to mention quite a few farmers in “urban” states, and “urban” dwellers in “rural” states, both of which do not matter in the national election. If we went to popular vote, their votes would count more than they do now.
Arguing that our system is “undemocratic” misses the point that the Founding Fathers, for better or worse, did not want a strict democracy. The rules they developed and codified were largely a result of the failings of the the US under the Articles of Confederation, where a lack of consensus and the ability of states to readily disobey or withdraw from the confederation demonstrated a need for a nation that was well-unified from an external perspective but in which each individual sovereign subdivision had substantial input and authority over modification of what became the Constitution, ratification of interstate and external treaties, and the means to oppose a purely representative effort to impose legislation upon a minority or eject an unpopular president or justice. Senators, of course, were appointed by the state legislature or governor prior to the 17th Amendment, and so up to that point they were a direct representation of the interests of their state rather than being elected by the population within. Note that Switzerland has a similar system where the Council of States has two representatives from every major canton and one from each demi-canton, and it works just fine for them.
The Electoral College, however, was a ‘fix’ to give the Southern states a greater degree of direct representation based upon their slave population (the infamous “Three-Fifths Compromise”) which was purely to give those states an incentive to remain with the federation and not be outvoted by the more populous (in terms of free landowners) Northern states. The notion that it exists to prevent some kind of radical imbalance due to a populist strongman grasping the public imagination by the balls is a purely ad hoc rationalization; it was crafted to ensure that the tradition of slavery was not under immediate threat from an abolitionist movement in the North. As it was, the business engagement in the slave trade by US citizens was restricted by the Slave Trade Act of 1794, and the Slave Trade Act of 1800 outlawed investment or joint venture in foreign flag trade enterprises. The importation of slaves was prohibited by the 9th Congress in 1807, and the industrialization of the North, so the Electoral College failed to do what was intended (thankfully) and has been an anachronism that has resulted in a variety of ad hoc measures to try to fix ever since.
There is really no debate as to whether the Electoral College should be dismantled or substantially restructured; it is unquestionably an anachronism from the era where concessions needed to be made to a group engaged in a practice which is now almost universally reviled in every developed nation. However, there remains the question of whether direct representation in the election of an extremely powerful chief executive should be purely by representation. Currently, that choice is really governed by a few key swing demographics (albeit ones that have shifted over the years) and the practical function of the popular vote is just to make people feel like they are participating in a process so they have a vested interest to not reject the result. A strict representative vote would give nearly all control to urbanized areas that have very differing interests and concerns than rural citizens. And in neither way is it a hedge against the kind of careless populism that has resulted in a candidate who hijacked one major party and driven by apathy about the other major candidate.
The current issue is really not so much about the Electoral College (the opposite condition where Clinton won the Electoral College and Trump won the popular vote could have almost as easily occurred) as it is about the either/or dichotomy of a two party, winner takes all electoral result, and that is as much codified into our system of governance as it is our culture and way of distributing executive authority. In the case of most parliamentary systems there is sufficient third party representation, from which the executive authority is derived, that the executive head of government is someone who is at least palatable to a majority of representatives (and from thence, presumably to the individual voters). Since the Electoral College doesn’t (generally) divide the votes in any kind of representative fashion third parties literally do not matter, but they wouldn’t matter much more in a purely democratic election unless they drew enough vote from both major parties to create a plurality vote and the volatility that would cause.
But it really isn’t; it is part and parcel of the same thing. The Founders explicitly did not want a straight representative democracy and the inherent faction building that became a ‘feature’ of parliamentary democracies. By and large, they wanted a system that was more stable and that balanced the interests of the states with the need to have a unified front to foreign nations. Unfortunately, it was also deeply flawed from the beginning by the codification of compromise to the slave owning culture of the South, and one significant aspect of that compromise is the Electoral College and the Three-Fifths Compromise. The pressures to maintain that delicate equilibrium fermented for decades until it resulted in the conditions that led directly to the American Civil War. As venerated as the Founding Fathers are in some circles as having crafted a perfect governing document in the United States Constitution, the reality is that the process of getting that agreement involved substantial compromise and resulted in some pretty significant problems that remain with us today, including having long held territories that are denied representation or even default citizenship.
Anyway, as much of a mess as the Electoral College is, it is unlikely to be cast away, and even if it were it would probably be replaced by something worse. Neither party actually wants direct voting for president because of the inherent volatility, and negotiations to come to some kind of acceptable alternative would almost certainly stall along party lines. So, we have what we have and the demographics that have grown up around it. The art of politics is not to wish for a better or fairer system, but make the best out of the system that exists.
That doesn’t make sense. City people have different needs from rural people… therefore we should bias towards what is good for rural people? How does that follow?
Trying to justify the EC based on some higher principles of governance is just revisionism. It was a political compromise to from early in American history.
I was suggesting each state in a proportion, but not 50%+1 necessarily to win. I think right now having only two major parties is hurting us because if you don’t feel R or D represents you, you’re shit out of luck, so shaking it up wouldn’t necessarily be bad. It’s just an interesting thought exercise because it’s never going to change.
And if the electoral college is supposed to keep someone from attaining the office because of a cult of personality and they let him in, HYPOTHETICALLY SPEAKING, of course, they’re not really doing what they’re supposed to be: protecting us from ourselves.
One thing which I don’t get is, a lot of celebs from other countries, from Britain, Canada or South Africa, have been wondering out loud why the US has the electoral college and why it doesn’t just go with the popular vote.
But…none of the aforementioned countries go with the popular vote either, right? Am I missing something?
The only critical difference I can see is that constituencies are usually approximately the same size, population-wise, so don’t boost the voting power of sparsely-populated regions the way the US system might. But most of the criticism / “wondering out loud” has not been so nuanced.
Consider for example, the New Hampshire Republican primary -
Businessman Donald Trump (35.34%)
Governor John Kasich (15.81%),
Senator Ted Cruz (11.68%),
former Governor Jeb Bush (11.02%),
Senator Marco Rubio (10.57%),
Governor Chris Christie (7.42%),
businesswoman Carly Fiorina (4.12%),
retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson (2.29%),
former Governor Jim Gilmore (0.05%)
Trump was head and shoulder above the rest, but only 35% of the vote. In a national election for president, should that be enough to take the office? What if the result had 27% Trump, 25% Kasich?
In their election, if the leading candidate has less than 50%, the French have a run-off a week later. Could you tolerate two election nights?
The difference is that the party picks their chief (prime minister). Recall that when Margaret Thatcher was getting a bit too “out there” for her own party, they dumped her. It may not have helped them, but it is a limit on the leader. if the leader does not listen to their own people, they can be deposed any time (think House Leader for an American example…) If they insult too many parliament members of their own party, those people can walk away and decline to support the leader in parliament, which could cause an election. So the leader has to please the party rather than usurp it, and is subject to recall at any time.
OK but that’s a different point to what I was talking about.
I was talking about TV pundits or whatever saying essentially: “Hillary won the popular vote but because of this weird ‘electoral college’ system, she lost. Why do you have this crazy system?”
When that’s actually possible in most democracies. A party winning a minority of the popular vote might form the government, indeed if we also include coalitions, the party that got the most votes and the most seats might nevertheless not be the party that forms the goverment.
The original intention of the Founding Fathers was to keep women from voting and slaves to be counted a certain way. The Constitution can be changed if the will is there. Again, look how fast Prohibition was repealed.
I’ll ask for a cite here for your statement which I’ve bolded. Slavery was not under the threat of immediate of abolition in the North at the time when the constitution was drafted.
As per my earlier post, there were a number of reasons for the creation of the Electoral College, including obtaining the support of smaller Northern states as well.
It was not a simple matter of slavery as you are portraying here.
It follows because there would be no union without it. The US only exists because of these compromises, and if they hadn’t made them, we would just be 13 States continuously fighting over prime North American territory, if we hadn’t been reconquered by the British, or some other 19th century world power.
The question isn’t “Electoral College or popular vote?”, the question is “Electoral College or no USA at all?”.
That *was *the question in the 1770s. No doubt you’re right in that.
Agree with the many posters who say that, practically speaking, we’re stuck with it UFN due to the political dynamics today. So further discussion is fun but pointless.
But that doesn’t mean the question of “Electoral College or popular vote?” isn’t a perfectly good one to debate today as to whether it’s beneficial today or would be invented *today *if we were starting over.
I would argue the real problem isn’t the EC or the rural/urban divide but instead a union of supposedly equal states who differ so widely in every respect.
If California wanted to dominate the Federal government it’d simply subdivide itself into 60 states each of whom had Wyoming’s population and 3-person congressional delegation.
In my view dirt doesn’t vote. People do. Continuing to permit the historical accidents then of the various state boundaries have such a driving influence on our nation now is dumb. With predictably dumb consequences.
[QUOTE=Siam Sam]
The original intention of the Founding Fathers was to keep women from voting and slaves to be counted a certain way.
[/QUOTE]
You’re implying here that “Keep women from voting” was something the Founding Fathers has a primary goal in the manner in which they designed the United States. That is an entirely ahistorical claim. It would never have occurred to anyone but the most extreme and unusual radical in the late eighteenth century that women voting was even a thing to think about, or a serious political movement of any sort that had to be considered and worked against. Women’s suffrage as a movement wasn’t really an organized or semi-serious force in the United States until after almost all the Fathers were long dead.
The notion of counting slaves a certain way absolutely WAS something that was specifically worked out. “Keeping women from voting” was not. Women had not voted before (note: I am sure someone will now trot out a case where there was this colony this one time that allowed voting blah blah blah; c’mon, you know what I mean) and no one in 1789 thought women were going to vote anytime soon or, in all likelihood, gave even a moment’s thought to it.
That’s really the issue at hand here; the US system was founded as, and remains that loose confederation of otherwise sovereign states. However, a rather large number seem to think it acts like, or should act like other unitary democracies.