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?
National Recounts and Election Fraud: Welcome to the NPV Titanic
Fraud fraud
The degree to which national parties have become involved in state election machinery obviates this argument. National fraud is already a distinct possibility, and combatting fraud might be easier if the rules were consistent.
Since you mention political machines, a national system would give a voice to all the staunch conservatives in IL that get lost in the volume of the windy city.
Your titanic analogy is graphic, but it has no real strength in this situation.
- Adam Hammond
September 3, 2008 5:01PM
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The geography of fraud
Fraud has to happen somewhere; that is, fraudulent votes come in at a precinct or county level. Thus it is unclear what you really mean by "national fraud." If you mean fraud with national ramifications, that is, election fraud effecting the outcome of a presidential election, then you are correct to say that it is possible. My point was not that it was impossible, but that the Electoral College most often decreases the incentives for "national fraud" and compartmentalizes it within individual states where it is perpetrated. The Electoral College is a firewall, making presidential elections more secure and reliable.
What might 1880 have been like without it?
- Evergreen Freedom Foundation September 8, 2008 3:47PM
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