Better Election System: Popular Vote or Electoral College?
If presidential elections were decided by popular vote instead of the Electoral College, Al Gore would have been elected president in 2000. How we choose a president profoundly impacts how campaigns are run, the importance of swing states and an election’s outcome. It’s certainly no surprise that the Electoral College vs. popular vote controversy has sparked considerable debate. As the issue surfaces heading into November, is it time to graduate from the Founding Father's Electoral College concept, or are popularity contests no way to choose a president?
Popular Election Ensures that the Winner will Win
- From Common Cause
By Common Cause - Holding Power Accountable
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You contradict yourself
You say: "The notion that some voters count more than others in choosing our President undermines the very principle of one-person, one-vote that our democracy is built upon."
But if we dismantle the electoral college system, then effectively the only votes that count are the votes from large urban areas. Presidential candidates would only have to appeal to the large population centers and could easily ignore the voters -- and the needs -- of outlying areas. This is a recipe for socialism... and disaster.
Further, you forget the fact that we are not a pure democracy: we are a representative democracy; we are a republic. And just as we have representatives in Congress, the Electoral College are our representatives in selecting a President. They are a check and balance against a pure popular vote, in the same way that Senators check and balance Representatives in Congress.
- FiveBoxes
August 26, 2008 5:19AM
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Side: Electoral College
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Reality
When presidential candidates campaign to win the electoral votes of closely divided battleground states, such as in Ohio and Florida, the big cities in those battleground states do not receive all the attention, much less control the outcome. Cleveland and Miami certainly did not receive all the attention or control the outcome in Ohio and Florida in 2000 and 2004.
Likewise, under a national popular vote , every vote everywhere will be equally important politically. There will be nothing special about a vote cast in a big city or big state. When every vote is equal, candidates of both parties will seek out voters in small, medium, and large towns throughout the states in order to win. A vote cast in a big city or state will be equal to a vote cast in a small state, town, or rural area.
Another way to look at this is that there are approximately 300 million Americans . The population of the top five cities (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Philadelphia) is only 6% of the population of the United States and the population of the top 50 cities is only 19% of the population of the United States. Even if one makes the far-fetched assumption that a candidate could win 100% of the votes in the nation's top five cities, he would only have won 6% of the national vote.
Further evidence of the way a nationwide presidential campaign would be run comes from the way that national advertisers conduct nationwide sales campaigns. National advertisers seek out customers in small, medium, and large towns of every small, medium, and large state. National advertisers do not advertise only in big cities. Instead, they go after every single possible customer, regardless of where the customer is located. National advertisers do not write off Indiana or Illinois merely because their competitor has an 8% lead in sales in those states. And, a national advertiser with an 8%-edge over its competitor does not stop trying to make additional sales in Indiana or Illinois merely because they are in the lead.
- mvymvy
December 23, 2009 11:38AM
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Read some history
First, we are a REPUBLIC. Contrary to popular belief, we are a REPUBLIC. Go look up the difference between the two. I'll wait.
Now, WHY are we a Republic instead of a Democracy? Go read some history, like the founders did, and you will find that pure democracies have been not just failures, but EPIC FAILURES.
James Madison said: "In a pure democracy , a common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert results from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths ."
Alexander Hamilton said: "The ancient democracies, in which the people themselves deliberated, never possessed one feature of good government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure, deformity."
John Adams said: "Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide ."
I could go on and on, but allow me to sum everything up with this: We are a union of individual states, not a democratic nation. As such, we are a republic, not a democracy; and we are not a democracy because democracies not only violently fail, but because they threaten the liberties of We the People.
You people think you're so enlightened and so much smarter than the Founders, and you continually try to push your egalitarian "solutions" to problems that do not exist. The entire time you do this, you're neatly ignoring the lessons of history that our Founders learned before constructing the framework for the greatest nation the world has ever seen. Your ignorance -- and the ignorance of those who have proceeded you -- is the fault for our current state of turmoil in this nation, and your continued efforts to pervert the Constitution will not only lead to the demise of this nation, but also the imposition of tyranny from sea to shining sea.
- FiveBoxes
December 23, 2009 12:12PM
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Argument Logically Lacking
The author said, "Four times in our history, most recently in 2000, the candidate who received the most votes lost the presidency."
This statement is emotionally powerful, but it assumes what is to be proven. Four times the candidate who received the most -popular- votes did not win the presidency. At no point has the person with the most electoral votes lost.
"When our nation selects a leader that does not have the support of the majority of its citizens," ignores how few people actually vote.
"undermines the very principle of one-person, one-vote that our democracy is built upon."
We don't have a democracy. We have a republic.
I'm not arguing against your position. It's just your argument is full of gaping holes and circular logic.
- ChrisB
April 26, 2009 7:39AM
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Republic
The United States has a "republican" form of government regardless of whether popular votes for presidential electors are tallied at the state-level (as is currently the case in 48 states) or at district-level (as is currently the case in Maine and Nebraska) or at 50-state-level (as under the National Popular Vote bill).
- mvymvy
December 23, 2009 11:36AM
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