Pickle

I would like to see each have equal representation. i.e. Alaska is worth two ec votes and CA is worth 2 EC votes. If there is to be an inequality let it be much less than it is. Perhaps Ak gets 2 EC votes and CA gets 4.

CA NY and TX have approx 25% of the population. Should they determine who runs the other 47 states? All good questions.

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Kerostasis

On the other hand, should 10 states with a combined population of only 8% of the nation have 20% of the nations votes?

Purely equal representation by state would be a poor plan. Right now we've got a compromise plan with House Representatives by population and Senators at 2 per state. (Electoral College votes are dependant on your Representatives plus your Senators)

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CingularDuality

I think the electoral college still serves its purpose, too, and that's to allow the states determine how to assign electoral votes based on how their citizens vote. I would like the federal government keep their noses out of how the states choose to decide their electoral votes.

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TacticalGamer TX LAN/BBQ Veteran:

snooggums

Clinton got 43% of the vote, no civil war.

As you can see in the above link a third party cannot win in the current voting arrangement, Perot got 18.91 % of the vote, yet not a single electoral college vote. I agree with keeping the electoral college split on impact on the main election, but I would like to see more states split their votes to represent the portions of the state that vote for someone else instead of a winner take all in each state. This would at least show a similar impact to the 12 percent representation in government, although we kind of have that already in the legislative branch. I myself vote for people over parties, but when it comes to the presidential election I just throw my vote away as the state has had the same party win those electoral college votes for twice my lifespan.

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WhiskeySix

I live in Massachusetts. Unless I vote D, my vote just doesn't count. Is that fair?

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El_Gringo_Grande

I say keep the Federal AND State governments out of how MY vote counts.

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JMJ

With a valid ID and proof of citizenship, yes.

Steeler

I agree with Kero's point about doing this piece-meal. If you're going to alter the basic way we tabulate votes, you can't do it state by state. You can criticize the Democrats for only opposing the plan because it hurts them, but that cuts both ways. The Republicans are only championing the plan because it helps them. I doubt you'd see them pushing for it in Texas.

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leejo

That's an interesting position. How do you see that working?

CingularDuality

That's easy. Move somewhere else.

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TacticalGamer TX LAN/BBQ Veteran:

TheBigC

Scrap the entire Electoral college for the actual vote numbers. In today's day and age, there is no reason why we cannot use the votes a person casts. The electoral college would be fine if all the states and all the areas had equal people with similar voting.

Let me throw scenario our there to prove my point. Say in Texas where there is 34 electoral votes and 24 million people (from Google, so do not bash me if it is off). Well what if 10 million people votde for a Democrat and yet due to the sheer number of republicans those voices are not even recorded? There goes 10 million wasted votes. Now let’s look at Rhode island where they have roughly 1 million people. To win those 4 electoral votes, you need allot less people to have your voice heard. It is all jacked up.

Scrap the electoral college system and go simply for the popular vote. This would cause candidates to not forget about certain states, because they have to pay attention to everybody and not just the ones that they know will vote their party.

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Kerostasis

There's another, less obvious aspect of the Electoral College system that I think is fairly valuable -- it dampens the effects of voter fraud.

Imagine this: State number 1 (lets say Texas just for the sake of argument) is weighted 2 to 1 in favor of Republicans, while State number 2 (lets say California) is weighted 2 to 1 in favor of Democrats. They have similar populations (not true, but for the sake of argument lets pretend). Overall, both candidates are running even in popular vote between these two states. But because of the overwhelming Republican majority in Texas, almost all of the officials that run the election system are Republican themselves. If they start cheating to swing the local votes towards the Republican candidate, its less likely anyone will notice. So suppose they manage to steal an extra 2 million votes for the Republican candidate. What happens?

Under purely popular vote, the Republican candidate now has a 2 million vote lead over the Democratic candidate, even though popular support was 50/50. Under the electoral college, the extra 2 million votes are meaningless, because the Republican guy was already getting all of Texas' electoral votes anyway, so he's still dead-even with the Democratic guy.

So the benefit of the Electoral College is that fraud is only worth the effort in states where the popular vote is very close to begin with. And presumably, in those close states, there will be more oversight and its less likely that all of the election officials will be of the same party. Therefore, the Electoral College prevents fraud! Awesome!

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WhiskeySix

Which causes more votes to "not count"?

Maybe I'm naive, but I'd say frequency of voter-fraud/gerrymandering is pretty low compared to the number of people that live in the wrong color state (Red/Blue). In Massachusetts there's no point in voting if you're republican. I assume in Texas there's no point for Dem's to vote either... (The list of hardcore red/blue states is pretty long, so I'd imagine there's a LOT of voters disenfranchised simply because of the EC)

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leejo

yeah if you want to commit voter fraud, I'd recommend doing it in a state that's a toss-up. A few thousand fraudulent votes and you win the whole state.

Kerostasis

To clarify, there's gonna be people trying to commit voter fraud no matter which way you run the election system. But this way, you know where to look for them ahead of time, so you have a better chance of stopping them.

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