The BEST Reason for the Electoral College

[ReadyontheRight]

A friend and I were talking about the electoral college before the election and he brought up an excellent point. The electoral college LIMITS the effects any one corrupt state could have on the ONE national election - US President (and VP).

So...if it ends up that all 12 million people in Illinois vote for the Democrat candidate (or even if they dig up 15 million votes), the state can only cast a limited number of electoral votes.

Maybe I've been living under a rock, but I had never heard this reason before and I thought I'd share it as the post-election 'Red vs. Blue' discussions pop up with your compatriots.

Man -- those Founding Father guys were smart.

 

[Ivy Mike]

This was the original intent.

Unfortunatley, the republicans and Democrats have managed to keep such a stranglehold on the electoral process that the Electoral college doesn't really matter anymore.

Other than a few states that swing this way or that, you can guarantee the outcome of each election every four years.
Either a Democrat or a Republican will win...it doesn't matter who they are, only that they fit under one of these titles. Our system is broken and no one cares.

 

[jason10mm]

That still won't matter. A state with a high population will have more electoral votes. Your argument would only apply if every state had a fixed amount of votes, but it changes. One reason Bush won this go round with so little fuss is that the South gained electoral college votes, allwing him to get to 269 without the other undeclared states (assuming Ohio was for Bush), effectively locking Kerry out. If this was 2000, Kerry could have fought on, hoping New Mexico and Nevada would go his way, giving him the win. As it stands, that would be a 269/269 split, and with Congress firmly republican, he would lose there.

Think about how hot this election was, and still ONLY 60% of the available voters turned out. If every repub voted, we would have swept the map (except perhaps in the Northeast). If every woman would vote, Martha Stewart could be the next president. The issue isn't so much how to massage the EC, but how to increase voter turn-out so a dedicated minority can out-vote an apathetic majority.

 

[Yowza]

That still won't matter. A state with a high population will have more electoral votes.

It doesn't matter how many electoral votes we're talking about in this instance. If every voter in just New York had cast their vote for Kerry (the "one corrupt state" in this theoretical scenario) and we were going by popular vote, Kerry would have won. But the electoral college would have prevented that. It doesn't matter how many people voted for Kerry in New York, just that more of them voted for him than for Bush.

Rick

 

[2nd Amendment]

Flip-side of the argument on the EC(Devils Advocate): Look at how tiny the blue areas are on the county maps. Those tiny areas gave Kerry all those EC votes. In other words, those tiny areas almost elected the president of the United States, thx to the EC, in direct conflict to 90%+ of the US in area and almost 4 million individual votes.. Without the EC it would have never even been close.

 

[geekWithA.45]

I've said it before, but PA is such a great model for why the electoral college works.

More than 1/2 of the Kerry votes from the entire state, > 450k of them came from ONE precinct: philadelphia and its surrounds, and Kerry won PA by a narrower margin than Bush won Ohio.

At the level of State government, that means that PHL could easily rule the whole state, and turn it into a hellhole like NJ if it's influence weren't firewalled off by our winner takes the whole precinct system.

PA shows up on state maps as blue, but the county map tells the true story.

 

[BigG]

The electoral college is a safeguard against tyranny of sheer numbers. The founding fathers knew what the masses would do if given the chance. Karl Marx did too.

 

[saltydog452]

 

[Jeff White]

The only way the electoral college would work as the founding fathers envisioned it would be to do away with the winner takes all system in most states and let each elector vote the way the congressional district he/she represents voted. This would end the practice of the battleground states deciding the election. It's exactly what is happening now that the founding fathers were seeking to avoid when they created the electoral college system.

Unfortunately we'll never see a reform like that because it's in the interest of the political parties, not the American people, to keep things as they are.

As things are, the large urban areas speak for the rest of the country in most cases.

Jeff

 

[Standing Wolf]

The founding fathers knew what the masses would do if given the chance. Karl Marx did too.

Well said!