I know there are some existing threads on this topic, but it’s time to ask the question again. Why is there still an Electoral College in 2024?
Who is in favor of the Electoral College and who is successfully keeping it from being replaced? It’s antiquated, and it allows a candidate to be elected President of the United States, they highest office in the land, without having a majority of votes in an election, which to me is undemocratic.
The Electoral College may have made sense in the 18th Century, but it sure doesn’t make sense now, as we have seen repeatedly over the past 20 years. Inertia isn’t a good reason to keep something inherently broken around, so there must be a really, really good reason to keep things the way the are. Someone please enlighten me.
This can only be done by an amendment to the Constitution.
An amendment may be proposed by a two-thirds vote of both Houses of Congress, or, if two-thirds of the States request one, by a convention called for that purpose. The amendment must then be ratified by three-fourths of the State legislatures, or three-fourths of conventions called in each State for ratification.
The state legislatures in the states where the electoral college gives them a higher impact on the vote for President are NOT going to support a proposal which will give them less impact.
Note this has only become a problem in this century: before then the popular vote and electoral vote gave the same result except for Benjamin Harrison in 1888 and Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876.
That’s pretty much it. The electoral college system gives some people a disproportionate amount of political power. And they use that political power to preserve the electoral college system.
It takes a major shift to get people to give up a share of the power they have.
I get all that, but I’m guessing the founders didn’t imagine it could happen where someone with less than a majority can get elected. If they did imagine it, then it’s just plain undemocratic. If they didn’t imagine it, then we know now it’s flawed, and we need to fix it.
I don’t care if some states like the way things are, it’s not a fair system. If we need to change the constitution then let’s change it. It’s not like the constitution has never been changed before. The worst that can happen is the effort fails, but if we never try, the problem will keep happening over and over, and no state should benefit from a mistake in the constitution.
It’s not a “mistake”. The founding fathers knew this might happen. It was established to give all states a voice in the election of the POTUS and not just the most populated ones. Some would say it would be more unfair if whomever the coasts voted for would always win.
I disagree. It’s a mistake when someone who gets less votes than someone else wins an election. I don’t care where the votes come from. Everyone has the same chance of choosing a president, regardless of where they live. The number of House Representatives is based on state population. How is that fair? Bigger states can bully smaller states. Nobody is complaining about that.
The founders didn’t care about the popular vote, or the direct election of the president. Their intention was that the states would somehow* choose a slate of electors, who would then in turn vote for a president.
How else did the founders think states would choose electors? A lottery? Why didn’t the founders not like the idea of a national popular vote? To simple and straightforward?
The last two presidential cycles, the GOP had an electoral college advantage, as compared to a pure popular vote, of maybe 4 percent. But that doesn’t have to happen. With shifts in support in non-swing states – say, a lot more Texas Hispanics voting Republican – in some cycles the skew could go the other way:
Outside Pennsylvania, where we had a greater trust of the people, demagogues were the Founding Fathers’ greatest fear. They thought that indirect elections would reduce the chances of a leader being elected who appealed to fear and distrust.
The particpants in the U.S. Constitutional Convention were, almost all, current or past members of a legislature. They trusted people like themselves to make good decisions.
In many states the legislators choose the electors. It wasn’t standard for popular vote to determine electors until the 1830s. Remember that the suffrage was limited in most states for decades. The “popular vote” was under 10% of the population at first. The legislators, technically open to anybody but mostly comprised by the elite, also choose Senators. The founders’ expectations were wildly different because the country and the times were wildly different.
Thanks for this. ““It wasn’t like the Founders said, ‘Hey, what a great idea! This is the preferred way to select the chief executive, period,’” says Edwards. “They were tired, impatient, frustrated. They cobbled together this plan because they couldn’t agree on anything else.””
Of all the things in the US Constitution they had to decide on, they struggled with the idea of one man, one vote, to elect a person to the highest office in the land. They were tired and frustrated and agreed on an arcane concept that had never been used before by anyone.
I don’t blame them for being cranky, I blame them for not choosing the obvious and best way to elect someone to high office… popular vote.
I understand it was a different time, and things worked differently back then, but it’s been over 200 years and there have already been 27 amendments to the constitution, so why is making this particular change so hard for people to rally behind? The founders made a mistake. It’s not the end of the world.
We need to fix this, because the election of a president, above all else, has to fair, and has to be democratic. The EC system has failed 5 times so far. How many more times does it have to fail before we finally decide to replace it?
Electing a president by popular vote had never been done before either.
They wanted the chief executive to be selected by the states, with the person getting the support of most states winning. They didn’t think the system was flawed, because they weren’t looking for the solution we all favor. It’s like saying baseball is messed up because the team with the most hits doesn’t always win. Well, that’s not how we determine the winner. Same with the popular vote. It’s not how we pick a winner.
BTW, I agree with you, we should switch to popular vote. But don’t blame the founders.