It's good to hear the NYT talking about was is really in my mind one of the most important issues facing us today. Put simply, Democracy is threatened by the continued existance of the Electoral College and until it is abolished, there will be no such thing as truly equal representation in America.Yahoo News wrote:NEW YORK (Reuters) - The United States should abolish its electoral college because it creates the possibility that the president will be a candidate who loses the popular vote, the New York Times said on Sunday.
he electoral college "thwarts the will of the majority, distorts presidential campaigning and has the potential to produce a true constitutional crisis," the paper said in an editorial.
In the last presidential election in 2000, Republican George W. Bush won the presidency despite losing the popular vote to Democrat Al Gore (news - web sites) by more than 500,000 votes.
"Most people realized then for the first time that we have a system in which the president is chosen not by the voters themselves, but by 538 electors," the editorial said. "It's a ridiculous setup."
The paper, one of the most respected in the United States, said "there should be a bipartisan movement for direct election of the president."
"The main problem with the electoral college is that it builds into every election the possibility, which has been a reality three times since the Civil War, that the president will be a candidate who lost the popular vote," the editorial said.
It said the system unfairly favored small states, which were awarded a minimum of three electoral votes regardless of how many residents they had.
"The majority does not rule, and every vote is not equal -- those are reasons enough to scrap the system," the Times said.
It cited other factors: "A few swing states take on oversized importance, leading candidates to focus their attention, money and promises on a small slice of the electorate.
"We are hearing far more this year about the issue of storing hazardous waste at Yucca Mountain, an important one for Nevada's 2.2 million residents, than about securing ports against terrorism, a vital concern for 19.2 million New Yorkers."
The Electoral College's benefits were always dubious, but today especially so and its continued existance along with the new wave of more accurate polling means that small groups of people are given enormous amounts of consideration and power merely based on their location. It is my hope that the public will become more aware of the problem (how many people do you suppose even understand the electoral college system?) and push for reform in this area.
Even if they don't, I think the electoral college is inevitably doomed for the simple reason that it is a Constitutional paradox as the article mentions. Although entities in the Judicial Branch have never been faced with on of these before, it is possible to imagine a scenario where the electoral college is ruled to be unconstitutional despite actually being a part of the Constituition because it is an internal paradox that is not supported by the rest of the document.
