[grand_master_d]

This is the first time I have agreed with every single thing Jerry said!

Look at that map Akshay. I believe 4% of all the counties in the U.S. contain over half the population. To these areas would the bulk of a politician's interest go. To these areas would the bulk of federal dollars go. The electoral college was created for a reason that still works today.

[smhatahy]

That is your problem, plain and simple. The majority of the US lives in these few, high populated areas. Middle America then, if you will, would not have a say in anything, no matter how little benefits they received. Besides, who ever said nobody wanted to live in Nebraska. It's just not as populated

So your logic is to give areas of high population density less voting power?

Points 2, 3, 4, and 5 were already discussed by many people, myself included. Besides, point 2 seems very contingent upon point 1 being true. In point 2 you discuss how poor little Texas would go overlooked becuase they always go Republican. You then fail to realize how poor little Montana, Wyoming, Colorodo, Kansas, et cetera would go overlooked since they are obviously not needed to win the race. Your hypocrisy is horrible.

okay lets look at your hypocripsy. You say poor Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas goes over looked.. but you ignore the fact that Texas will go overlooked.

Did you even look at the map I attached? I asked you plenty of questions that you failed to address...

What's to see? Elections aren't based on counties anyway aren't they based on congressional districts?

The 2000 election is exactly why we have the Electoral College. Maybe Florida was controversial, but *you* cannot say Bush stole the election simply because of the popular vote.

i have yet to make that claim

I'm not clear what you mean be "even up". Do you mean "remove the limit on the imnimum number of electoral college votes"? (you do know that there are differing numbers of votes based on population?)

yes removing the minimum number of votes is a start (you do know that because every state gets two free ones that means that it favors smaller states)

I don't see the direct relevence... which right do you feel is being violated and how?

The fact that my vote isn't equal to the vote of a person from wyoming

Because the descrimination is not based on race. Do you feel it's wrong that Californian's cannot vote one Florida state laws? Is it wrong that only electid officials can vote in congress? It's very easy to say "descrimination is bad", but it's not particularly true.

strawman...? i don't have a problem with representative governments as long as it is fair representation.

A person living in Azbekistan is just as much a member of he world as one in China.

Yeah but it is completly voluntary to be part of the UN

But you are thinking of yourself as simply a member of the US. The reality is that the US is a confederation of once independant states... much as the EU is once independant countries, and the UN is. Each state has it's own laws, government, and election methods indepandant of the others. The election of a president is not, then, an act of the people of the US... it is an act by the states themselves. You and I don't elect a president, California and Florida do.

i thought we were a federation? in a confederation a state has the option to leave.

The people living in Oregon (more to the point, the less populus of the original colonies) found the idea that one or two states would be able to dictate to the others at will unacceptable. Had that been the standard, states like Oregon would not even be in the union.

which is why the senate is in existence

BTW, don't forget to complain about the senate while you are at it... each state only gets 2 votes there, regardless of population... much like the UN.

Yes but the president should represent the majority of the US

It's not relevent how the numbers come out. If a thrid party ran pure popular and got 20%, they still loose. IF a third party can get a majority in a state, they win the whole state. Heck, the electoral college should make it easier for a third party candidate to win... instead of winning half of all the people, he only needs half of all the people in states with half of all the population.

what incentive is there to vote for a third party candidate with no electoral votes? would you really want to waste your vote on someone that got 0% of the vote?

Of course, how often has a state electoral college voted in knowing violation of that states popular vote?

155 times

2. Is not a federal requirement, but again gives a state greater power. Because of this, California is very powerful. If Cali were to split it's votes then it would represent only a few points to give in to Cal's needs, rather than the more than a score it represents now. In short, no state in their right mind would split the vote because it weakens their position.

Originally Posted by Mike

Maine and Nebraska, as I recall.

[Mike Graham]

Originally Posted by Akshay626

what incentive is there to vote for a third party candidate with no electoral votes? would you really want to waste your vote on someone that got 0% of the vote?

A vote is not wasted just because a candidate loses.

Originally Posted by Akshay626

155 times

Actually, in the early US, there was no state popular vote to determine the state's choice of electors, but rather they were chosen by the state legislatures.

Originally Posted by Akshay626

Btw, in case anyone is interested, these states allow two votes in a winner-take-all fashion (the two theoretically representing the Senate seats) and the rest by each congressional district (representing the House seats, in a way.)

[grand_master_d]

Originally Posted by Akshay626

So your logic is to give areas of high population density less voting power?

Did you not already digress from this point?

"Okay fine i can live with Californian residents having less voting power but how about the rest of my points?"

You always argue like this! Are you not willing to accept that you might be wrong in your assumptions?

Originally Posted by Akshay626

okay lets look at your hypocripsy. You say poor Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas goes over looked.. but you ignore the fact that Texas will go overlooked.

Your Texas example was not only bad, it was already addressed. Even if your Texas example was true, take the bad and multiply it by 50 for states like Montana, Wyoming, Colorodo, Nebraska, Kansas and et cetera.

Here is what I do find particularly interesting, though. Nebraska does not get visited by Clinton, at all, in his eight years. Next election, every single county goes for Bush. If it looks like you don't care about a certain area/people, what incentive do they have to vote for you? Yet, why would any politician spend a penny in Nebraska when they do not need it to win!?!? However, with the elecotral college, Nebraska could be the difference in the election. If Clinton had "cared" about Nebraska, Gore could have won it! Gore would be president right now.

Originally Posted by Akshay626

What's to see? Elections aren't based on counties anyway aren't they based on congressional districts?

What's to see?!?! Gore wins popular vote, yet blue areas are few and far between! These smaller, more populated areas would control the country and attract all the politicans interest!

Originally Posted by Akshay626

i have yet to make that claim

Hence why I made it a seperate paragraph and said "*you*". I wasn't talking to Akshay.

[grand_master_d]

Originally Posted by Akshay626

I am sure Jerry realizes this, as well as what Colorado is doing right now. Of course, what he said was "in their right mind". Doing this hurts the states. That is, unless every state pro-rates their electorals. Even then, I'm not sure what would happen.

[JerryLove]

So your logic is to give areas of high population density less voting power?

That's a pretty ambiguious turn of phrase.. the electoral college gives high-population areas less power relative to what they would have in a purely popular vote. It does not give them less voting power relative to, say, an area of lower population.

okay lets look at your hypocripsy. You say poor Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas goes over looked.. but you ignore the fact that Texas will go overlooked.

Texas is overlooked? I'm really doubting that.

yes removing the minimum number of votes is a start (you do know that because every state gets two free ones that means that it favors smaller states)

So any state with under a half-million people gets no votes at all? This is precisely what the electorl college was ment to address... and precisely what we wanted to avoid in calling ourselves a "union of states"... consolodate power.

The fact that my vote isn't equal to the vote of a person from wyoming

I'm not finding "equal individual weight in representation" as a right... it's not in the passage you cited. Can you point me to where that right is established?

strawman...? i don't have a problem with representative governments as long as it is fair representation.

But you are making up a definition of fair. You seem to feel that population of a state should decide how influential that state is.... but you've got no real backing for why. Could we not just as easily base the number of electoral college votes on square footage?

You have the preconception that you vote for the president... you do not. Your representatives do... now your complaint is that the number of representatives is not in a 1-for-1 ratio with population... but I fail to see where we have established that it should be.

Your vote is worth just as much as mine... but you don't vote for president... and California's vote is the biggest of any state.

Yeah but it is completly voluntary to be part of the UN

I don't remember voulenteering to be part of the UN.

Oh you mean the countries voulenteered? So did the states (even the ones that left and were taken back by force origingally voulenteered).

i thought we were a federation? in a confederation a state has the option to leave.

I may have mis-used the word. The point is that we are 50-states in a union, not simply a country broken into 50 regions.

which is why the senate is in existence

Yes, that is *another* check/balance for state's rights.

Yes but the president should represent the majority of the US

Says whom? The President's job is to reside over the enforcement of policies of a union of states. Why not a majority of member states?

The simple answer is that the little staes wanted every state equal, the big states wanted a vote purely by population, and they compromised.

what incentive is there to vote for a third party candidate with no electoral votes? would you really want to waste your vote on someone that got 0% of the vote?

I don't want to vote for anyone that doesn't win. What difference does it make how much he lost by?

155 times

Not quite correct... 155 individuals in over 20,000 individual votes... or (rounding in your favor) 1%.

[Bryan]

Originally Posted by Akshay626

This is a quote from a thread i was following, and through this rather long post I aim to show why the Electoral College sucks and is not a true representation of the majority The aim of which to be to end all comments like the one above

the whole argument is flawed because it is based on a false assumption. That assumption being that the people elect the president. That isn't how it works or how it was designed to work. The truth of the matter is that the president is elected by the states. And the states get to decide in which way to cast their vote. US law only requires that a general election for president be held. So before you can even begin to address the problems with the electoral college (assuming there are some), you have to address the issue of the president being elected by the states.

Also, The United States is not a democracy. A democracy would mean that each individual would vote on every single decision to be made. Congress would only propose laws but they wouldn't vote, the people would. The United States is a representative republic.

1) For my first reason lets take two states, Wyoming and California (i live in cali ) The way Electoral votes works is each state (and washington DC) gets a vote for every member of congress they have.. DC automatically gets 3. Now this seems like a good idea except that this favors small states greatly.

Wyoming has a population of around 500,000 people and has 3 electoral votes, whereas California has a population of about 34,500,000 people and 55 electoral votes. So.. 1 vote in Wyoming represents 166,666 people, but 1 vote in California represents 627,272 people. Not so fair is it?

Lets look at this closer, a city the size of Wyoming in California would have .780 electoral votes while Wyoming has 3. This means that a resident of Wyoming has 3.8 times the voting power of a Californian. Is this really democracy?

well assuming that the president should be elected by the states and not the people, this is the best solution. If you only had electoral votes based on population then the small states like Wyoming would have almost no voice. If you give each state an equal number of electoral votes then the smaller states have too big of a voice. This was an extension of the great compromise in the Constitutional convention. The great compromise was to have two houses of congress, one who's number of representatives was based on population and another where every state had equal an equal number of representatives.

2) Another part of the Electoral College is the winner take all method (i believe a few states don't use this method.. i think) which means the winner of the popular vote in a state takes all the electoral votes of the state. This not only skews the majority vote, but it also means that certain states that are know to vote a certain way are ignored. For example, lets assume that Texas always votes republican (which is not a bad assumption ).. that would mean that texas can be overlooked by politician because it already is a given that republicans will gain control of it. Therefore any issues that Texas has goes overlooked. This also isn't democracy.

the reason this exists is because the president is elected by the states and not the people. futhermore, if you didn't have the electoral college then the middle states and other unpopulated regions would be ignored. Correct me if I am wrong, but something lik 85 - 90 % of America's population lives within 100 miels of the coast. If we have no electoral college then a those 10-15% that live inland would be ignored.

3) In 24 of the 50 states the electoral college is not bound to vote according to the popular vote of the state. In the other 26 states they can often vote for anyone they choose however will face either small fines a misdemeanor or a felony. One that doesn't vote as the state popular votes says is called a faithless elector. You may be thinking that this never happens, however this has happened 156 times (click here ). In the website linked it says at one time an entire state went against the popular vote, that is 23 electoral votes.. that is enough to change an election. Our country's president lies on 538 (?) individuals that may vote any way they choose.

that's because the framers of the constitution wanted the president to be elected by the states and not the people. They let the states decide how to choose their votes.

4) If a majority isn't reached with the electoral college the House of Representatives will decide the president and the senate will decide the vice-president. This means that the decison will most likely be a partisian decision and that we can end up with a president and vice president from opposing parties... Also it is possible that the House or Senate would pick a 3rd party canidate that recieved a very small percentage of the national popular vote. So it would be possible to end up with a president that very few people even voted for.

this isn't a problem with the electoral college though. It is a problem with the backup plan. We could have no electoral college and the same backup plan and still have the same problem.

5) Third Parties get less votes... for example.. in the 2000 election. 4% of the popular vote went to a Third party however none on those votes turned into electoral votes. In a perfect world those should have been 22 electoral votes.

i believe that covers it [/QUOTE]

[smhatahy]

You always argue like this! Are you not willing to accept that you might be wrong in your assumptions?

you always argue strawmans and attack me... therefore i really dont listen to much of what u say.

[smhatahy]

I'm not finding "equal individual weight in representation" as a right... it's not in the passage you cited. Can you point me to where that right is established?

Hmm... i guess i believe it should be and i guess that makes my argument biased

so i concede

[JerryLove]

Hmm... i guess i believe it should be and i guess that makes my argument biased

I do not believe you apply this principle as uniformy as you believe you do... but very well.

[grand_master_d]

Originally Posted by Akshay626

you always argue strawmans and attack me... therefore i really dont listen to much of what u say.

PM TIME!