I've long been a proponent of eliminating the Electoral College, seeing it as an antiquated system long outdated, but it won't happen unless the party that last benefited from it wants to make the change, and I don't think that either party will ever look past its own immediate interests to do so. Had the situation been reversed in 2000, had Gore won the EC and bush the popular vote, it would be a Republican wanting the change, and the Democrats stopping it.
Since it is highly unlikely that we will ever have the situation in which a president loses the popular vote while getting the electoral vote and the opposing party has a veto-proof majority in both Houses of Congress, any such bill that even passes both houses will not get signed by the president. That will be the end of it.
Nelson's complaint about the Florida delegate situation has nothing to do with either the EC or one man/one vote; it has everything to do with ome member of a group deciding that it can ignore the rules that the groups has agreed to and not be penalized. Democrats in Florida need to look within their own organization to affix blame.
Posts: 17506 | Location: Lincoln Place, Granite City, IL, USA | Registered: 06-03-02
At this point I would have my doubts. At the very least it certainly won't take place this year.
Considering how long it has been since the Constitution has been amended, it certainly is not an easy thing to do in this day & age.
But let's look to see who would really lose the most by doing away with the Electorial College. That would be the states with the smaller population, the very reason the Electorial College exists. Without the Electorial College, the votes from the smaller states would be practically meaningless, they woul get very little if any attention from the Presidential campaigns. When the people in these states are made fully aware of this, they would not want to lose that influence the Electorial College gives them.
Posts: 2277 | Location: Martinsville, IL | Registered: 06-03-02
"But let's look to see who would really lose the most by doing away with the Electorial College. That would be the states with the smaller population, the very reason the Electorial College exists. Without the Electorial College, the votes from the smaller states would be practically meaningless, they woul get very little if any attention from the Presidential campaigns. When the people in these states are made fully aware of this, they would not want to lose that influence the Electorial College gives them."
Not at all. If the EC were eliminated, every vote would have the same weight. As it is now, a voter in Wyoming has more influence on the winner of a presidential election than a voter in California or Texas. I do agree with you that, once voters in the smaller states understood this, that they would not be willing to give it up.
The entire EC system ws designed to appease and to protect the interests of the states with smaller populations, in 1789. Surely the country is more of a single unit than it was 220 years ago. Didn't the Civil War establish that we are one country, not a collection of individual countries joined together? Why should a voter in a smaller state get more of a voice then a voter in a larger state? Smaller states get 2 senators, which is how the "problem" was addressed 220 years ago. California, with one senator for each 17.5 million people, seems to me to be at a disadvantage when compared to Wyoming, with one senator for every 400,000 people. It is in the legislative body that the so-called disadvantage of the smaller states should be address, not in the country's choice of president. As it stands not, in the presidential elections, the US does most certainly not have a one man/one vote policy.
The EC is an idea which was mis-applied to solve a problem that ceased to exist a very long time ago.
Posts: 17506 | Location: Lincoln Place, Granite City, IL, USA | Registered: 06-03-02
California, with one senator for each 17.5 million people, seems to me to be at a disadvantage when compared to Wyoming, with one senator for every 400,000 people.
How can you, in practice, address that problem? Does it apply to your lower House too?
If you change the voter/Senator ratio to produce a parity, Wyoming could end up with just one Senator and you would end up with a great many more Senators. Are you radically proposing that the whole country be divided into constituencies with electorates of similar size, as in Britain ?
[What you have described seems like the position in Britain before the Reform Act of 1832 Reform Act]
You really can't address it, Fred; that's how the Constitution set the two houses up. The House of Representatives, currently 435 members, each represents a district of approximately the same population as every other district. The Senate, however, allots two senators to each state. Thus, Wyoming, with a population of 493,782, has the same number of senators as California, with its 36,553,215 people. Obviously, since the the Electors in the EC are based on the number of Representatives in each states plus the number of Senators, a voter in Wyoming has more voice in the EC than does one in California. (In the current situation, a candidate could win (about) 10 states by one vote each, and lose the other states by overwhelming margins and still get elected. That simply makes no sense. But if there were one election, one tally, for the entire country, a candidate would have to appeal across the country in order to get a simple majority or plurality of votes.)
The Constitution calls for a bicameral legislature as a compromise between the Virginia Plan,which proposed a legislative branch consisting of two chambers, in each of which the states would be represented in proportion to their “Quotas of contribution, or to the number of free inhabitants” (i.e. white males). States with a large population, like Virginia (which was the most populous state at the time), would thus have more representatives than smaller states. Large states supported this plan, and smaller states, which feared losing substantial power in the national government, generally opposed it, preferring an alternative put forward by the New Jersey delegation, cleverly called the New Jersey Plan, which proposed that the organization of the legislature was similar to that of the modern day United Nations and other like institutions. This position reflected the belief that the states were independent entities, and, as they entered the United States of America freely and individually, so they remained. The New Jersey plan also gave power to regulate trade and to raise money by taxing foreign goods. In the end, they decided to make everyone happy, or at least, equally unhappy. Again, being clever gentlemen, they named it after a state. The Connecticut Compromise (or "Great Compromise") was constructed, in which the New Jersey Plan's legislative body was used as the model for the United States Senate, while membership in the lower house, as in the Virginia Plan, was to be allocated in proportion to state population and candidates were to be nominated and elected by the people of each state. (There were some other finer details, but they really don't pertain to this discussion.)
Isee nothing wrong with this compromise. The smaller states did, at that time, need "protection" from the potential tyranny of the larger ones; maybe they still do. But that protection is a legislative situation. There is no reason, especially today, that the smaller states should get more weight in deciding who the Chief Executive should be. In 1789, the news traveled slowly, and it made a certain amount of sense for citizens in the individual states to vote for someone whose judgment they knew and trusted to cast their votes for president. The electors then were generally the legislators themselves; they were known to the "people at home."
But today, we often see news as it happens; we hear speeches as they are being given. We do not need the judgment of people who may know the candidates better than we do. Voters can choose the favorite candidate based on what they have seen and read, and really don't need "professional help" (although after the last two elections, I'm not so sure of that as I once was).
Further, we are no longer (if, indeed we ever were) a collection of individual states (in the national sense) but a single state, unified. The individual states in the United States don't get to have a foreign policy (with the exception of a few mayors in California now and then). They don't really command an army. The Untied States is not a collection of loosely-bound entities. It is a single country. National law supersedes state laws, as it should. It's long past time that we stop having to deal with these silly issues of states' rights and unreasonable favoritism to smaller states. The people deserve to all have an equal voice in selecting the president. Right now, we don't. Right now, states like Wyoming get a louder voice, and than is certainly how what this country purports itself to be.
Posts: 17506 | Location: Lincoln Place, Granite City, IL, USA | Registered: 06-03-02
Thanks, DG. In France, the President is elected by the national popular vote. They have the strange idea that the President represents everyone with a vote, he or she is the president of the nation. A rule that 'All animals people are equal but some animals people are more equal than others' would not appeal to them (They also employ a system of proportional representation, which we do only in electing our Members of the European Parliament,but that's going too far )
As it happens, in Britain it is possible for the winning party to poll fewer votes nationally than the principal losing one does. In fact that has sometimes happened in the past, simply because each MP is elected on a 'first past the post' system, so a candidate who wins, or loses,in a constituency by one vote is in the same position as one who wins, or loses, by 20,000.The total national vote could reflect that. The electoral 'boundaries commission' not only constantly redraws constituency boundaries to make their electorate the same size everywhere but also attempts to create a good mix of electors, as far as it can, in order to minimize or remove such anomalies.This causes grief to some sitting MPs, who find that their existing constituency no longer has the same demographic that it had when it elected them.Indeed, their constituency may cease to exist, to be replaced by a new one created out of bits of other constituencies.When that happens they may rush to the door of their party's leadership, to plead to be placed in a more favourable place at the next election
Hippo, I'm all for the 10th Amendment. I think there are certain situations that call for it. Not allowing anacondas and pythons to be brought into Florida seems to be a good idea for a law that Florida should have adopted several years back. I am sure that there are sound agricultural reasons for some other states' rights issues (Certain plant life moved from state to state, for example.) But, just as slavery was outlawed on a federal level, by amendment, so should the one man/one vote concept be put into practice by the federal government. All it would take is an amendment, just as all it took to grant blacks and women the right to vote was an amendment. The Constitution isn't a final product; it's a working document, a work in progress. Surely you don't have complaints that blacks and women can now vote, or that, once again, we can buy alcohol, do you? Those all took amendments. So did limiting a president to two terms in office (not more than 10 years). So did stopping Congress from giving itself raises. (Raises now do not take effect until after a new Congress is elected.)
Since the 10th Amendment was ratified in 1791, we've had 17 further amendments. In the last 217 years, we have amended the Constitution 17 times, an average of (about) once every 13 years. Times change; laws needs to be brought in tune with the times. It's no longer necessary to dismount from your motor carriage and announce that you are about to drive through an area congested with horses, is it? Or do you think it should still be permissible for a man to beat his wife is she doesn't keep a good house?
Posts: 17506 | Location: Lincoln Place, Granite City, IL, USA | Registered: 06-03-02
Political oddity, it certainly is. While election by the popular vote sounds good to many people, I think once this makes its way to the state legislatures, the smaller states will shoot it down. This is one bit of power they will refuse to give up. I think it will dig down deeper than just Presidential election politics. The smaller states would fear losing stature in many of the powerful positions their elected officials presently enjoy.
Posts: 2277 | Location: Martinsville, IL | Registered: 06-03-02
In 1824, John Quincy Adams received neither the majority of electoral votes nor the majority of popular votes! Because he did not have an electoral majority, the race was decided by the House of Representatives.
The following Presidents received a majority of electoral votes while losing the popular vote:
Rutherford B. Hayes, 1876 Benjamin Harrison, 1888 George W. Bush, 2000
Posts: 8087 | Location: in the backwoods of North Carolina | Registered: 06-07-02
I've always believed that the popular votes should be the ones that elect the president. As it stands, it could be written that we are voting for the Representatives.
Posts: 6717 | Location: Land of Lincoln, USA | Registered: 07-04-02
And whether we like it or not, the constitution means whatever the majority of the Supreme Court Justices say it means - and that can evolve along with everything else.
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