Why do you we still use the Electoral College?

[Tridiot]

Just a random thought on a lazy Saturday (waiting for MD to play Duke tonight, wishing I had made 2,000 “Phuck Dook” t-shirts).

If you go to the link below, or read the relevant sections I posted from the site, basically the only reason we still use the EC is that Congress has never passed the required Amendment.

Why do you we, as the electors, want to keep using this system? I have thought about it and have found no positives to it, save the fact that making a change in today’s caustic political environment would surely lead to all kinds of claims of some type of gerrymandering (not like that hasn’t been going on for a long time).

Thoughts? I won’t post more of my thoughts on it till after a response or two

http://www.archives.gov/federal_register/electoral_college/faq.html#whyelectoralcollege
Why do we still have the Electoral College?

The Electoral College process is part of the original design of the U.S. Constitution. It would be necessary to pass a Constitutional amendment to change this system.

Note that the 12th Amendment, the expansion of voting rights, and the use of the popular vote in the States as the vehicle for selecting electors has substantially changed the process.

Many different proposals to alter the Presidential election process have been offered over the years, such as direct nation-wide election by the People, but none have been passed by Congress and sent to the States for ratification. Under the most common method for amending the Constitution, an amendment must be proposed by a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress and ratified by three-fourths of the States.

What proposals have been made to change the Electoral College system?

Reference sources indicate that over the past 200 years, over 700 proposals have been introduced in Congress to reform or eliminate the Electoral College. There have been more proposals for Constitutional amendments on changing the Electoral College than on any other subject. The American Bar Association has criticized the Electoral College as “archaic” and “ambiguous” and its polling showed 69 percent of lawyers favored abolishing it in 1987. But surveys of political scientists have supported continuation of the Electoral College. Public opinion polls have shown Americans favored abolishing it by majorities of 58 percent in 1967; 81 percent in 1968; and 75 percent in 1981.

Opinions on the viability of the Electoral College system may be affected by attitudes toward third parties. Third parties have not fared well in the Electoral College system. Candidates with regional appeal such as Governor Thurmond in 1948 and Governor Wallace in 1968 won blocs of electoral votes in the South, which may have affected the outcome, but did not come close to seriously challenging the major party winner. The last third party or splinter party candidate to make a strong showing was Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 (Progressive, also known as the Bull Moose Party). He finished a distant second in electoral and popular votes (taking 88 of the 266 electoral votes needed to win). Although Ross Perot won 19 percent of the popular vote nationwide in 1992, he did not win any electoral votes since he was not particularly strong in any one or several states. Any candidate who wins a majority or plurality of the popular vote has a good chance of winning in the Electoral College, but there are no guarantees (see the results of 1824, 1876, 1888 and 2000 elections).

PS: There was a December 2004 discussion that brushed over the topic of the EC, but never delved into it.

[slowguy]

There are some positives to the EC, although I don’t know that they outweigh the negatives.

The EC forces politicians to at least pay lip service to smaller states and to areas of the country that aren’t big population centers. Without it, they would never campaign outside of the big cities, and wouldn’t endorse issues important to rural populations.

EC, if done correctly, should streamline the electoral process, by breaking it into manageable chunks instead of trying to take it all in one big bite. Rather than trying to count every vote in the country before being able to call a winner, you can do it by states and be able to project a winner almost right away.

EC allows States to retain the right to set their own election laws. If you do it nationally, then everyone would have a reasonable expectation of voting in the same manner and with the same level of confidence as every other person all over the country,…a difficult standard to acheive. National laws would have to be passed to regulate the manner in which voting was conducted, counted, processed, recorded, etc. This, of course, lends itself to partisan problems.

Now, I don’t know that these advantages outweigh the negatives, or even that they are fully realized with the way we conduct voting nowadays. However, they are reasons to at least consider retaining the idea of the EC.

[just_jack]

Due to my incipient ADD, I didn’t read your entire post. But, a college poli sci prof lectured once that the major reason the EC is not abandoned is political … the major parties, Repub. and Dems., would lose significant power and the minor parties – Libertarians, Greens, Clowns for Peace, Lesbian Mothers for Christ, etc – would gain significant power.

Now, it’s a two party game, and by and large if you aren’t in one the major parties, you aren’t playing. Make it a direct vote, and minor parties become swing votes, with political power far above their real-world influence.

[yacope21]

Because then no one would care how ND or SD voted…The candidates would go to New York, California and a couple of other big population centers and ignore the rest of the nation.