# The U.S. Electoral College - What Should Be Done? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [October 22, 2018, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-u-s-electoral-college-what-should-be-done/823357 "2018-10-22T22:11:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Doctor\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doctor_jackson/32/32_2.png) [@Doctor\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doctor_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2018, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-u-s-electoral-college-what-should-be-done/823357/81 "2018-10-24T13:54:13Z")
> [@Lord\_Feldon](#): > > 😕 That’s how the electoral college works, though. The president is whoever wins the bigger chunk of votes from the small number of large and close states. > > [Here](https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/assets/4834794/Ad_spending_map_mod.png) is a map of ad spending in the 2012 election. It shows…a handful of (mostly) large states making all the decisions for the country as a whole. The way to empower the small states is to let them vote in the same election as the voters in Florida and Ohio. The EC was a compromise that, in part, gave small states a bigger representation in the Presidential election in order to help get the Constitution ratified. It’s the same reason that we have equal representation in the Senate and population based representation in the House. See [here](https://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/electoral-college) for one account: > [@](#): > > This plan, which met with widespread approval by the delegates, was incorporated into the final document with only minor changes. It sought to reconcile differing state and federal interests, provide a degree of popular participation in the election, give the less populous states some additional leverage in the process by providing “senatorial” electors, preserve the presidency as independent of Congress, and generally insulate the election process from political manipulation. That last point is debatable… > [@Icarus](#): > > So, instead we have smaller states making all of the decisions for the country as a whole. How is that “better”, especially for the people in the larger states? I’m sorry, but I fail to see where I said anything at all about better or worse. I only stated that it was designed that way for a reason. Trying to change or abolish something when you don’t know the original reasoning is usually a bad idea. Again, the US was framed as a union of independent governments, not as one central government. It’s the difference between the EU of today versus the British or Roman empires of yesteryear. When one considers that only 15 states exceed the mean population (6.44 million per state in 2016) and 30 would be required to ratify a change, I’d say the small states would likely - for better or worse - kill it. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2018, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-u-s-electoral-college-what-should-be-done/823357/82 "2018-10-24T15:30:34Z")
> [@Thing\_Fish](#): > > I’ll see Puerto Rico and raise you Washington, DC. Maybe Guam, too. How much do you know about the people living on Guam? ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2018, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-u-s-electoral-college-what-should-be-done/823357/83 "2018-10-24T15:39:47Z")
> [@Doctor\_Jackson](#): > > The EC was a compromise that, in part, gave small states a bigger representation in the Presidential election in order to help get the Constitution ratified. It’s the same reason that we have equal representation in the Senate and population based representation in the House. See [here](https://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/electoral-college) for one account: > > That last point is debatable… > I’m sorry, but I fail to see where I said anything at all about better or worse. I only stated that it was designed that way for a reason. Trying to change or abolish something when you don’t know the original reasoning is usually a bad idea. > > Again, the US was framed as a union of independent governments, not as one central government. It’s the difference between the EU of today versus the British or Roman empires of yesteryear. When one considers that only 15 states exceed the mean population (6.44 million per state in 2016) and 30 would be required to ratify a change, I’d say the small states would likely - for better or worse - kill it. How quickly would that change if a democrat won the EC and lost the popular? ---
**Author:** ![Ashtura](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ashtura/32/2963_2.png) [@Ashtura](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ashtura)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2018, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-u-s-electoral-college-what-should-be-done/823357/84 "2018-10-24T16:03:29Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > How quickly would that change if a democrat won the EC and lost the popular? There’d be rioting on the streets! Burning cars! Broken windows! Nah. A few republicans would be mumbling at the water cooler the next day and people would get back to work. Ya win some, ya lose some. I personally would lay the blame squarely at the feet of the campaign for playing the game as if the popular vote mattered. I would absolutely _excoriate_ the candidate if they virtually ignored a swing state thinking they had it in the bag. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2018, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-u-s-electoral-college-what-should-be-done/823357/85 "2018-10-24T16:20:20Z")
> [@Ashtura](#): > > There’d be rioting on the streets! Burning cars! Broken windows! > > Nah. A few republicans would be mumbling at the water cooler the next day and people would get back to work. So, about the same same. Unless you are guaranteeing that not a single republican anywhere on any message board would be talking about the benefits of maybe changing the system to better reflect the consent of the governed. > [@](#): > > Ya win some, ya lose some. I personally would lay the blame squarely at the feet of the campaign for playing the game as if the popular vote mattered. I would absolutely _excoriate_ the candidate if they virtually ignored a swing state thinking they had it in the bag. I would too, as it would be odd to, well, first, think about how we guide the future of our country as a “game”, as that is a rather infantile way of considering the responsibilities and obligations that come with such a high office, but also to not know that it is currently not based on popular vote, but rather, and aggregate of arbitrary states that mean that only a handful of states have a voice in the presidency. I too would excoriate (though not so much that it would need italicizing) someone who ignored one of those handful of states that actually mattered in the presidential election. OTOH, I also would not respect someone who won who ignored the states that didn’t matter, even the states that they can’t win. In the end, the president is the president of all the people of the United States, not just hate people that voted for him. Would you excoriate a candidate of yours who won and then forgot about that? ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2018, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-u-s-electoral-college-what-should-be-done/823357/86 "2018-10-24T16:30:44Z")
Mumbling at the water cooler? Hell, when it looked like Obama was going to win the popular vote, you’ve got Republicans warning of [a thousand years of darkness](https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/chuck-norris-warns-1000-years-darkness-obama-elected/story?id=17152039). And you think that if Clinton had won the EC but lost the popular vote, we would’ve seen a muted reaction? Yeah, no. The Electoral College made more sense when we were a loose conglomeration of slavers and bankers and homesteaders who needed days to communicate with one another along muddy roads and coastal ship paths. But there’s nothing loose about the United States today; it’s easier for me to travel to the furthest part of our nation than it was for my eighteenth-century ancestors to travel across the state, and I can communicate with a friend in Alaska more easily than those ancestors could talk with their next-door neighbor. Back then, geography bounded one’s interests to a huge degree; nowadays I’ve got far more in common with public teachers across the nation than I have with the electrician one county over. I know why our system was designed the way it was. As a solution for the problems of a particular set of not-very-good wealthy people a couple centuries ago, it was brilliant; as a solution for the problems of our modern citizenry, its main merit is inertia. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2018, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-u-s-electoral-college-what-should-be-done/823357/87 "2018-10-24T16:37:32Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > That’s my main complaint about the EC. It doesn’t give any representation to 90% of the states. > > It really comes down to just a handful of states that determine the winner, and if you are not in one of those states, then your vote really doesn’t matter. > > That the EC has favored republicans, and given them presidential wins against the popular vote is why the republicans are defending the EC so strongly, they think it will work in their future as well. they don’t care that it weakens the vote of the people in their own party as well, they only care that they think that it gives them an electoral advantage. > > There was concern that Hillary may end up winning the EC, while losing the popular vote, and that, while still a win, would give her a weak mandate, making it harder to get legislation and policy worked on. > > I ask those who are staunch defenders of the EC, had Hillary won the EC while losing the popular, would you be so strongly defending it at this point? I will admit that I would find that situation to be amusing, but I would still be advocating to get rid of it. > > I was in junior high when I first found out about the EC, and at that time, it hadn’t given such mixed results in over a century. I thought it was a silly system then, I thought that we ought to fix it then, but thought that at the least the first time that it gave such mixed results again, we would fix it. I wouldn’t have had a problem with the EC if Clinton won. That’s the rules, every voter should know them, process matters, and as I learned as a 4 year old the universe isn’t and will never be perfectly fair. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2018, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-u-s-electoral-college-what-should-be-done/823357/88 "2018-10-24T17:06:12Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > I wouldn’t have had a problem with the EC if Clinton won. You didn’t qualify your statement. If Clinton had won the EC, but lost the popular… > [@](#): > > That’s the rules, every voter should know them, Yes, ever voter knows them. How many times do we have to go over that everyone in the thread knows the rules, we aren’t confused in any way, and that sport metaphors are a poor analogy to explain, once again, that you are using a different system than the one that we are advocating. Do you not understand this? It is very simple. We are advocating a different system. By advocating a different system, we obviously know that the system we currently have is not the system we are advocating for. To continue to remind us that the system we currently have is not the system that we are advocating for informs me that you are unwilling or unable to follow this most basic concept. > [@](#): > > process matters, and as I learned as a 4 year old the universe isn’t and will never be perfectly fair. Who said anything about perfectly? ---
**Author:** ![Ashtura](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ashtura/32/2963_2.png) [@Ashtura](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ashtura)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2018, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-u-s-electoral-college-what-should-be-done/823357/89 "2018-10-24T17:24:17Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Mumbling at the water cooler? > > Hell, when it looked like Obama was going to win the popular vote, you’ve got Republicans warning of [a thousand years of darkness](https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/chuck-norris-warns-1000-years-darkness-obama-elected/story?id=17152039). And you think that if Clinton had won the EC but lost the popular vote, we would’ve seen a muted reaction? > > Yeah, no. LOL, yes, all Repulicans agreed with Chuck Norris. They had to, or he’d roundhouse ALL of them with ONE kick. I could come up with a list a mile long of celebrities talking shit about Trump. Let’s see, scary black man and secret Muslim born in Kenya, Barack Hussein Obama, that terrified ALL republicans, won twice in a row. Did we see anything [like this](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/01/22/us/22MARCH18/22MARCH18-superJumbo.jpg)hanging outside his house? No? Then yeah. It’s going to be muted. At best you’ll have some losers with too much time on their hands bitching and moaning about something they have no control over. 38 states won’t ratify. You would literally need to light the Constitution on fire and start a civil war. That’s more likely than abolishing the EC. Why is that not an option on this poll? ---
**Author:** ![Wolf333](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolf333/32/3460_2.png) [@Wolf333](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wolf333)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2018, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-u-s-electoral-college-what-should-be-done/823357/90 "2018-10-24T17:36:28Z")
“The electoral college is a disaster for democracy.” - Trump, 2012. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2018, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-u-s-electoral-college-what-should-be-done/823357/91 "2018-10-24T17:41:52Z")
> [@Ashtura](#): > > LOL, yes, all Repulicans agreed with Chuck Norris. They had to, or he’d roundhouse ALL of them with ONE kick. I could come up with a list a mile long of celebrities talking shit about Trump. > > Let’s see, scary black man and secret Muslim born in Kenya, Barack Hussein Obama, that terrified ALL republicans, won twice in a row. Did we see anything [like this](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/01/22/us/22MARCH18/22MARCH18-superJumbo.jpg)hanging outside his house? > > No? Then yeah. It’s going to be muted. At best you’ll have some losers with too much time on their hands bitching and moaning about something they have no control over. 38 states won’t ratify. You would literally need to light the Constitution on fire and start a civil war. That’s more likely than abolishing the EC. Why is that not an option on this poll? Why are you so certain that 38 states won’t ratify an amendment that would give their voters an opportunity to participate in the presidential elections? The states that wouldn’t ratify would be Ohio and Florida, as the may like all the attention that they get every 4 years. But, why would Utah, say, wish to stay irrelevant in the process of picking a president? ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2018, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-u-s-electoral-college-what-should-be-done/823357/92 "2018-10-24T17:42:14Z")
> [@Wolf333](#): > > “The electoral college is a disaster for democracy.” - Trump, 2012. “See, I told you so” - Trump, 2016 ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2018, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-u-s-electoral-college-what-should-be-done/823357/93 "2018-10-24T17:53:30Z")
Kind of off topic, but maybe the Electoral College is not the problem. Why do we have a president in the first place? How is the office useful? In '93, Clinton walked in and swapped stuff around; in '01, W came in and swapped it all around; in '09, Obama flipped things around; in '17, this guy came in and overturned the tables; the next D in the WH will do a hard turn. Anybody think this regular-interval top-down spoils system situation might be doing us more harm than good? ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2018, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-u-s-electoral-college-what-should-be-done/823357/94 "2018-10-24T18:07:44Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > Kind of off topic, but maybe the Electoral College is not the problem. Why do we have a president in the first place? How is the office useful? In '93, Clinton walked in and swapped stuff around; in '01, W came in and swapped it all around; in '09, Obama flipped things around; in '17, this guy came in and overturned the tables; the next D in the WH will do a hard turn. Anybody think this regular-interval top-down spoils system situation might be doing us more harm than good? What’s the alternative? Let the Speaker of the House run all those things? There would still be a massive shift in appointed officials and political direction of the government when control switched from one party to the other. ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2018, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-u-s-electoral-college-what-should-be-done/823357/95 "2018-10-24T18:12:24Z")
Or you could have a President for life. That would eliminate all the swapping, flipping and turning of tables. ---
**Author:** ![Ashtura](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ashtura/32/2963_2.png) [@Ashtura](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ashtura)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2018, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-u-s-electoral-college-what-should-be-done/823357/96 "2018-10-24T18:13:17Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > Why are you so certain that 38 states won’t ratify an amendment that would give their voters an opportunity to participate in the presidential elections? > > The states that wouldn’t ratify would be Ohio and Florida, as the may like all the attention that they get every 4 years. But, why would Utah, say, wish to stay irrelevant in the process of picking a president? LOL, almost my whole family’s from Utah. I’m pretty sure most Utahn’s aren’t fretting about the EC that much. The thing about the EC is, at least you need to pay _some_ lip service to Utah. Without it, you wouldn’t even need to do that. “Relevancy” is a point of view. When I vote in Delaware, and _know_ the State is going Democrat, I may feel “irrelevant” as an _individual_ when it comes to my presidential vote, but not as a _Delawarean_. If I really,\* really\* was upset about that, I, _as an individual_, would move 14 miles to Pennsylvania. That’s the nice thing about the U.S. You don’t like where you are, you can do like the Mormons did and move, with the nice modern convenience of not dying on the way. Just like I occasionally want to do when I can’t buy cool fireworks, or exotic reptiles without a permit. Will I do that? No, not likely. See, they have cool stuff here too, like no sales tax, which takes the edge off. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2018, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-u-s-electoral-college-what-should-be-done/823357/97 "2018-10-24T18:15:35Z")
eschereal, if I understand your post correctly, you’re complaining that our government changes things up periodically. Personally, I think that’s one of it’s greatest strengths: the ability for the people, through elected officials, to steer it in a new direction. I don’t _want_ a government that’s locked into its way of doing things and totally ignores what the citizenry wants. ---
**Author:** ![OldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/3bc359/32.png) [@OldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldGuy)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2018, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-u-s-electoral-college-what-should-be-done/823357/98 "2018-10-24T18:39:15Z")
I really don’t understand everyone who points back to the “original intent” when discussing the Electoral College. The original intent was not that states’ electoral votes would be given in block to one candidate or the other. Nor was it that each Congressional district would get one electoral vote (with a couple left over in each state). It is sometimes claimed that the original intent was that mass of people really wouldn’t know how to select a good President and that they would instead chose people they thought would do a good job at doing so. But I believe the original intent was to help the South (to get them to agree to the Constitution). In a popular vote election, slaves would not have counted at all. But with the Electoral College, slaves effectively got 3/5 of a vote each – or in reality, the other residents in the state got to vote for them and have it count as 3/5. The Electoral College should be eliminated if for no other reason than its racist heritage. ---
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2018, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-u-s-electoral-college-what-should-be-done/823357/99 "2018-10-24T18:47:09Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > In the end, the president is the president of all the people of the United States, not just hate people that voted for him. Would you excoriate a candidate of yours who won and then forgot about that? That’s the problem we have now. Our current president doesn’t really think of himself as the president of _all_ the people of the US but instead the people in the state that voted for him (i.e., the people who live in “real” America). That’s why, for example, [Trump keeps throwing shade at California](https://theweek.com/articles/802590/how-california-became-trumps-toughest-foe?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark). The voters there overwhelmingly rejected him in 2016 and he knows his supporters in flyover country love it when he sticks it to those godless, America-hating, PC freaks from the Golden State. At least the presidents who won the electoral but lost the popular vote made an effort to be the leader of all the people who lived in all the states instead of adopting an attitude of “fuck 'em, they won’t vote for me anyway.” If there was no Electoral College or it was modified so votes were awarded according to the percentage of vote received rather than “winner take all”, a president would be more likely to govern for the benefit of the entire nation rather than just the states that voted for him or her. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2018, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-u-s-electoral-college-what-should-be-done/823357/100 "2018-10-24T18:47:57Z")
> [@Ashtura](#): > > LOL, yes, all Repulicans agreed with Chuck Norris. LOL, yes, it’s easy to make fun of someone when you pretend like they said something they didn’t say. LOLOLOL [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-u-s-electoral-college-what-should-be-done/823357.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-u-s-electoral-college-what-should-be-done/823357.md?page=6)