Obama winning seems to be one optimistic news from USA recently. Congratulations
The Duchess of Zeon wrote:Why I support the electoral college:
It prevents a regional fanaticism from dictating control of the entire nation, like in the days when the Dixiecrat pro-segregation party was popular in the south. If southern whites turn out, to take an extreme example, 90% for a candidate who wants to reenslave blacks while marching under confederate banners, should we bow to their candidate being elected?
Conversely if a regional political movement like the Progressives in Wisconsin with LaFollette's paramilitary guards with fixed bayonets at the start of his campaign in the 1930s were to completely dominate the sympathies of a regional part of the electorate, should that be allowed to dictate the direction of the nation?
Basically the Electoral College prevents a movement which excites total lockstep sympathy in a small part of the US from dominating the whole nation. People hate it when it means their candidate loses and love it when they win, but when you get down to it, it does its job.
Wrong. Right now, Electoral College
lets someone with 16% of the votes become the President of the United States. Plurality would make it impossible. It's precisely EV that allows regional nutjob to screw 4/5 majority.
Also, there is the 'small' issue of 3rd party candidate with 5% support in just 4 states, just like the regional political movement you mentioned, easily deciding the whole course of presidency by nudging them to the otherwise loser, just like that idiot Nader did. Take a guess, how long it will take Republicans to remember that, find a left-leaning guy for 2016/2020, give him nice PAC in swing states, and run him as interference to Democratic candidate mostly in swing states to win? Yeah, great system
We still have nine states that hold over 50% of the total American population and that's going to get worse over the next ten years. If we switched to a popular vote only method only ten states would be payed attention to, if we keep our current system only ten states will be payed attention to. Take your pick, either way forty states do not matter.
Why is it a better idea to have a purely popular vote?
First, I'd have thought 10 most populous states deciding is more democratic than 10 random ones...
But anyway, plurality vote doesn't work that way. Let's suppose Guy A focuses on these 10 states and wins them... So what? There is no stupid 'winner takes all' clause of EC. He still needs the votes of 40 others to clinch the vote. He ignored them? Oops, he lost. In reality, with majority vote, candidates would need to pay attention to
all states, not safely ignore every stronghold as if people there were non-voting slaves.
That's why popular vote is better - because your vote actually matters, because regional nutjobs and fringes have no chance of winning, and most importantly, because it's
crushing blow to the two party system hold. Read, it's actually democratic.
The majority of the nation doesn't vote, I'll remind you.
Because of the EC, not the other way around.
Jogurt, you have to look at the fact that the East Coast Megalopolis, Chicago, and LA are basically a huge chunk of the population. There's no point to campaign in Maine or Montana or Alabama or even in a place like Rockford, IL because they are so unimportant compared to New York City or Boston. The Electoral College isn't a very good system to be sure but at least it makes people campaign in Ohio or Pennsylvania as opposed to simply campaigning in the few major cities that have some giant percentage of the US populace.
Big chunk? Not really. Seriously, watch the video - really unfair way to win (by ignoring big cities) lies with EC
No, you spend NO resources on small amounts of population. So, for example, the people of Los Angeles want to dump toxic sewage into your rivers....too bad, so sad, you should have lived in a place that matters.
A) wrong (which I say as someone actually living in place were President is picked by majority); B) Since when majority voting for president leads to dumping of sewage?
This is really grasping at straws, and actually false seeing EC leads to situation where these are ways for nutjobs to win with less than 22% of support to really harm you by repealing healthcare or gays rights, too bad, so sad, you should have lived in a place with actually sane elections
1) Sometimes the electoral college winner wins with 1% or so less of the popular vote than their rival.
Only because US political system leads to two-party clinch. Have plurality vote and more candidates emerge, people stop voting 'against X' except in second round, etc. And even if he wins by 1%, so what? Remember how clear majority that voted for Gore was shafted? Was that democratic? We got Bush and 2 major wars instead, thank you very much.
Go to national popular vote, and they will pay the most attention to places with a large population density, and ignore places where it takes more dollars per person to win hearts and minds. The result is that (for example) New York City and its metropolitan area gets a lot more attention than a swath of rural America with a similar-sized population, because you get more bang for your buck by visiting New York 30 times than you do by visiting 30 rural cities of 40000 people each and trying to appeal to all the people who live scattered around them.
Diminishing returns, and it's false, anyway, our last elections saw candidate take an election bus trip through more than 2 hundred meetings. That was in country with ~size and population of Texas, in USA it would be far more work than just visiting NYC. As it is, EC causes them to visit swing states only while pissing all over actually decided ones.
Oh- one side effect: suppressing voter turnout becomes more important. Suppose you're worried about the Orange Party suppressing voter turnout to favor itself over the Lemon Party by passing discriminatory laws.
Nope. In current EC system you can win presidency by suppressing, say, 10.000 voters in Ohio. Or, as in 2000, 1.500 votes in Floride. An
microscopically tiny % of the population. Switch to majority and it becomes utterly meaningless gesture not worth bothering, in fact, trying to suppress 10.000 somewhere might just lead to 50.000 who wouldn't otherwise going voting making the system
far more fraud-resistant.