You mean countries like Canada:
[ul]
[li]Conservative Party - 126[/li][li]Liberal Party - 94[/li][li]Bloc Québécois - 49[/li][li]New Democratic Party - 30[/li][li]Independent - 4[/li][li]Vacant - 5[/li][/ul]
or the United Kingdom:
[ul]
[li]Labour Party - 352[/li][li]Conservative Party - 193[/li][li]Liberal Democrats - 63[/li][li]Democratic Unionist Party - 9[/li][li]Scottish National Party - 6[/li][li]Sinn Féin - 5[/li][li]Plaid Cymru - 3[/li][li]Social Democratic and Labour Party - 3[/li][li]Independents - 2[/li][li]Independent Conservative - 2[/li][li]Ulster Unionist Party - 1[/li][li]RESPECT The Unity Coalition - 1[/li][li]Health Concern - 1[/li][li]Independent Labour - 1[/li][li]Speaker and Deputies - 4[/li][/ul]
?
In what way are those countries governed less well because they have multiple parties in their lower houses?
Without the Electoral College, or something similar, candidates can easily ignore the 41 smallest States of the Union and direct all of the campaigning, money and resources to the nine most popular states. Using simple math (not accounting for the minimum age requirement for voting), Wikipedia reports the nine most populous states thus:
You are assuming that a candidate would win 100% of the vote in all those states. A candidate that can do that would be winning majorities in most other states, and so would win an electoral college vote.
But without an electoral college, the states no longer matter. So you might find it profitable to campaign in Chicago, and ignore the rest of Illinois … and also campaign in Milwaukee to pick up a lartge chunk of votes in Wisconsin, which is not on your list. Or you might aim your campaign at some other sector of the voting population.
What the electoral college means is that campaigns target the swing states, like Florida and Ohio, and ignore the states that are sure to go one way or the other, like California, Georgia and New York. Is that fair?
So? The Founding Fathers were wrong about a lot of things (why else have we amended the Constitution 27 times?). Maybe this is one of them. Arguments from authority aren’t relevant to this kind of question.
But you could get 50%+ of the electoral college with the 12 or 13 largest states. Is having these decisions made by voters from just an extra three or four states that much better?
Also, if anything, the electoral college would make a ‘go after the largest states’ strategy even more viable. After all, in a popular vote, to be elected president with just the votes from the top 9 states would require winning 100% of the votes there. However, being elected president with the electoral votes of the top 13 states could be done by winning just 51% of the vote in each.
As Giles said, this is a totally unrealistic way to look at the situation. (Even more so since those states almost never all vote the same way!) In a heavily Democratic state, the Republican will probably get 40 percent of the vote. And in a heavily Republican states the Democrat will probably win the large-ish cities and lose in the suburbs and less populated areas.
electoral college - I agree that in this day and age it makes more sense to just go by the popular vote. The electoral college was less an issue of federalism than of intellectualism - the common man wasn’t trusted to vote directly for many of their representatives. What with mandatory education and the wonders of the information age this shouldn’t be an issue any more.
winner takes all - this isn’t actually inherent in the electoral college. States decide how they award electors based on the popular vote and it just so happens that most states decided to award their electors on a winner-takes-all basis. I believe one or two states divide their awarded electors up based on the popular vote.
third party viability - the electoral college itself isn’t inherently detrimental to third parties, it’s the winner-take-all method of awarding electors that does it. Granted, even if electors were awarded piecemeal, you’d still have winner-takes-all if the percentage of voters represented by one elector were less than that than voted for the third party in a particular state, or if they were awarded by region - one elector per district say.
I think a bigger problem for third parties is the “spoiling” aspect - people are afraid to vote for a third party because it causes a situation where they are increasing the chance that a candidate they oppose might get elected rather than their second choice. For example, someone might like the green party, like the democratic party, and hate the republican party. If they knew that the green party couldn’t win they’d vote democrat rather than risking the republican not getting a viable opposing vote from them. A voting system that truly reflected their wishes would take this into account. This could be countered by using a system such as instant runoff voting.
If it’s a question of intent, the Founding Fathers’ motivations for the EC have long since bitten the dust.
One reason for the EC was that it provided a mechanism for the slave-v.-free balancing act of the Constitution. How would they have counted each slave as 3/5 of a vote for slavery, without electoral votes? Needless to say, that’s been obsolete since Fort Sumter. And the other rationale - that the people would elect wise electors, who would in turn wisely confer amongst themselves and wisely choose a President for us (sounds like a coven of Broders!) probably didn’t survive the 18th century.
The EC as it is has nothing, in spirit, to do with the FFs. It is the empty husk of their design, rather than their design. Be for or against it as you will, but don’t invoke the FFs in its defense.
The reason that doesn’t usually happen is that lots of those big states are sure winners for one candidate or another. The Republicans are going to win Texas, the Democrats are going to win New York, and all the campaigning in the world isn’t going to change that. So rather than concentrating only on big states, the candidates concentrate on swing states. Of course, some swing states are also big states, and those states are in for a heaping helping of campaigning.
My take on 2000’s effect is that, in the short-to-medium term, it’s solidified the opposition to changing the EC. Maybe whoever succeeds Hillary or Obama can push for that change; no point in trying it sooner.
Because it’s emotionally invested GOP partisans in the fundamental rightness of the means by which the 2000 election was decided - which includes the popular vote’s taking a backseat to the EC.
I’d say there’s no point in pressing for abolishing the EC until the issue can be emotionally separated from re-fighting the 2000 election.
I’m aware as a practical matter that if you’ve got Texas and New York voting for the same candidate, you’ve got a blow-out going along the lines of Reagan in 84 or LBJ in 64. I was merely pointing out that Duckster’s complaint about the top 9 states potentially dominating a popular vote really isn’t a compelling argument in favor of the Electoral College.
You are correct. The point I was trying to make is identical to yours. Without the EC, candidates need to merely campaign in geographic areas where they can obtain the biggest vote count for the fewest bucks. So they will pander their rhetoric just to those areas and the hell with the rest of the country.
I still support the EC, although I would make some changes to it. Specifically, a candidate only “wins” an elector when they take a majority vote in that congressional district. The two senate electors from each state go to the candidate that takes a majority of the congressional districts for that state and a actual majority of votes for the state. So it’s possible to win the majority of congressional districts but not the total vote count in any one state.
I didn’t mention the founding fathers or the constitution, I was not making an appeal to authority, I clearly laid out in my post why I think it can be a good idea to use the electoral college.
Pretty much the same thing I said to BrainGlutton. You cut out a very small part of my post where I used the word “intended”, I’ve already explained why I think the electoral college is a fine system, and why I don’t believe all decision making in a democracy has to be totally democratic.
If there’s any ambiguity, my opinion is the electoral college is a key component of Federalism, and it’s a fine way of choosing a leader. No fundamentally better or worse than other ways, it is less democratic, but true democracy is not a viable form of running a country of 300 million. So we already accept that on some level, we aren’t a totally democratic society. Sure, a popular vote for President is entirely feasible, I simply don’t feel that it’s the best route to go. Is this the most “democratic” method? Not at all, and I’m perfectly fine with that. I think sometimes the less democratic method is the superior one.
I’d like to see a modified electoral college system. In the presidential general election, the top vote-getter in each congressional district would get one “Representative” electoral vote, and the top vote-getter in each state would win the state’s two “Senatorial” electoral votes.
I think Maine and maybe Nebraska pick their Electors like this now (but without the “Senatorial” votes).
It also occurs to me that we could switch over to what is essentially a popular vote system anytime we (the collective ‘we’ of the 50 States) want to. No Constitutional Amendment or act of Congress or somesuch would be needed.
Every state could simply simultaneously decide to divide their pool of Electors along the percentage breakdown of the popular vote. For example, if a state has 37 EV then the Prez candidate who got 44% of that state’s votes would get 44% of the state’s 37 Electors (rounded to 16 in this case.)