Thread: Electoral vote

We should have vote for vote. No matter what angle you take you just cant beat vote for vote.
This was created back in the late 1800's. As civilaztion changes there needs to be adjustments to the laws to accommodate the here and now.

im assuming we are talking about popular vote over electoral vote, in which i would agree. I think the person who gets the most votes should win, not the guy who gets the most votes from the electoral college.

At the time it was a good idea to protect people from...well their own stupidity but now its easy enough for someone to get educated in what is going on that they have no excuse for being ignorant.

Without doing ANY research and just thinking back to my last American History class, wasn't the electoral college designed to give less populous states a say in the election? Otherwise, all the populous centers of the US would basically decide the election while the rural parts would get fewer votes.

Great - now I have to go look it up.

Yep - it's to allow smaller states to have power in the election rather than allowing the biggest most populated states to decide the whole thing.

Originally Posted by Consultant

Without doing ANY research and just thinking back to my last American History class, wasn't the electoral college designed to give less populous states a say in the election? Otherwise, all the populous centers of the US would basically decide the election while the rural parts would get fewer votes.

Great - now I have to go look it up.

Yep - it's to allow smaller states to have power in the election rather than allowing the biggest most populated states to decide the whole thing.

It does not sound valid. Does not matter if you live in a big city or small city your vote will still be a vote.
Your vote for Harry Potter in Houston will be just as effective even if you were to live and vote in New Amsterdam, Indiana.

I understand what you are saying - Im just saying, that's the theory behind the system.

If you are comfortable with the populous masses of NY and LA deciding the president for the rest of the country, then cool - no more electoral college!

I dont know if it's fair or not, but that's how it works.

If you look at the time the rule was made it makes sense. People were more spread out. If you lived on a farm 20 miles from town, and your only mode of transportation was a horse or your feet, it would be difficult to vote. So if NY city and Philly had a large turnout of voters, yet Connecticut didn't because it was more farmland the voting was still "fair". I feel now that just about everyone has the same access to be able to vote, and to the info to decide how they want to vote.

Before i forget, NOTE: I'm using POPULATION, not REGISTERED VOTERS for this example.

it helps small states hae a voice? really? so then why is it if i win the 10 most populated state in America i would receive 256 electoral votes? sounds like it is helping those small states out alot, i'm sure everyone is clamoring for those 3 votes montana is giving.

now if you do it by popular vote those 10 most populated cities make up 46% of the popular vote and that is assumin they all vote EXACTLY the same.

Where as in the college winning those states would give you 94% of the electoral. and out of the total number of electoral they account for 47%.

Don't forget as well the popular vote isn't a winner take all in any state, if 52% of new york voted for Obama, that would be 10,012,407.6 votes for obama out of the 147,929,942 he would have to win

i know it isn't accruate due to rounding and not all the population can vote but my point is the advantage is equal if not larger in the Electoral then Popular. Plus the main point to remember is that most states are winner take all. So even if its 51%-49% the candidate with 51% gets all the electoral votes of that state.

Basically Popular vote says x amount in NY voted for McCain and y amount voted for Obama. the Electoral says well y>x so y gets 31 electoral votes

Yeah, not that it would happen, but one candidate could win some of the large states by 1 votes each, lose all of the small states and some of the medium by a unanimous vote, and still win the election. Odds are slim and none that it would happen, but it could turn out that way.