New York Times calls for the end of Electoral College

[Keevan_Colton]

Secondly, do we really want this 1 man one vote proportional representation?

Look how well that's worked in Italy, which has gone through 50 governments in 40 years.

Or Israel, where any serious attempt at peace keeps getting sidelined
by the hardline religious fundies who have a vote because of their
fucked up parlimentary system that gives them power.

Ah, some tartar sauce with those herrings sir?

[Iceberg]

You involve the voters, think of it as a non-binding referendum.

Because of course, heaven forbid the people should decide anything in a democratic republic.

We are not a democratic republic, we are a constitutional republic. Get it right. Mob rule is probably the most dangerous thing in human history.

A "constitutional republic" is a vague term that covers everything from the United States of America to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. All "constitutional republic" means is that the nation (a) has a constitution and (b) has a political governing council which acts in a legislative capacity, rather than in an advisory capacity to the head of state.

The methods of choosing the legislative council of the United States (that is, Congress) are democratic, so the United States is a democratic republic.

[Keevan_Colton]

We are not a democratic republic, we are a constitutional republic. Get it right. Mob rule is probably the most dangerous thing in human history.

Hm, better not smoke around all these strawmen....

[MKSheppard]

Ah, some tartar sauce with those herrings sir?

Take a damn good look at Israeli politics; it's so damned splintered
that you have to appease every little whackaloon party to keep your
government from collapsing and having to run new elections.

Or Germany, where the Green party is effectively holding both
major German parties hostage to their quite frankly whackaloon
political agenda.

the EC winner takes all system forces American politics towards the
center, instead of fracturing it to every little party that gains the
moron vote.

[Alyrium Denryle]

And according to that constitution(keyword) that head of state is supposed to be selected by a system of representative democracy. They are to take the voters will into account, much like our legistlature, but the voters do NOT make the decision. Because that is a dangerous form of mob rule.

[Iceberg]

And according to that constitution(keyword) that head of state is supposed to be selected by a system of representative democracy. They are to take the voters will into account, much like our legistlature, but the voters do NOT make the decision. Because that is a dangerous form of mob rule.

Oh yes? Prove it.

Our constitution also has a method of amendment, and that method has already been used once to give the people greater power in selecting their government (direct popular election of Senators).

[Keevan_Colton]

And according to that constitution(keyword) that head of state is supposed to be selected by a system of representative democracy. They are to take the voters will into account, much like our legistlature, but the voters do NOT make the decision. Because that is a dangerous form of mob rule.

So, the people really have no power in that choice as their choice only counts if other (smarter/richer/more important/better) people decide they have chosen correctly.

[Glocksman]

You really ought to move, Shep.

Here in Indiana, the Democrats (with a few exceptions for nutcases in Gary and Indianapolis) are more conservative than most East Coast Republicans.

You'd probably like it here and can own as many guns as you want once you get the Governor of Maryland to issue you a pardon expunging your conviction.

Another appeal to motive fallacy, is the VRWC shop running a special on them this week?

It was speculation, asshole, not a statement of fact.
And given the simple fact that the Times hasn't endorsed a Republican for President in decades, I'd say it's a reasonable question to ask.

[Iceberg]

"I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind as that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change. With the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors." -Thomas Jefferson

[Keevan_Colton]

Take a damn good look at Israeli politics; it's so damned splintered
that you have to appease every little whackaloon party to keep your
government from collapsing and having to run new elections.

Or Germany, where the Green party is effectively holding both
major German parties hostage to their quite frankly whackaloon
political agenda.

the EC winner takes all system forces American politics towards the
center, instead of fracturing it to every little party that gains the
moron vote.

Except, you've got some lovely deep red herring with all this shit about proportional representation and other crap. You cant have a shared presidency...someone wins and everyone else looses. Also, the US doesnt have a parlimentary system like any of the above...well done, you're an idiot.

[MKSheppard]

"I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind as that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change. With the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors." -Thomas Jefferson

That's a nice quote. Too bad the abolishment of the EC has as
much chance of happening as a paper cat chasing an abestos mice
through hell and catching it.

There's a reason the founders made it so damnably hard to alter the
constitution; they did not want it to be changed on a whim.

[Iceberg]

Just so you know, in every poll that's ever been done on the subject during the 20th century, a clear majority (65-81%) of Americans favor direct popular election of the president over the electoral college.

[MKSheppard]

Also, the US doesnt have a parlimentary system like any of the above...well done, you're an idiot.

If we go to proportional 1=1 vote, then that gives the idiot parties power.

[MKSheppard]

Just so you know, in every poll that's ever been done on the subject during the 20th century, a clear majority (65-81%) of Americans favor direct popular election of the president over the electoral college.

That's also lovely. Shame it has to be ratified by so many state legislatures and signed by their governors that well, I probably
have as much chance of fucking Lucy Liu than your Abolishment
fo the EC has.

[Iceberg]

Also, the US doesnt have a parlimentary system like any of the above...well done, you're an idiot.

If we go to proportional 1=1 vote, then that gives the idiot parties power.

We're only talking about altering the presidential election, not going to a completely proportional system.

Congressional and Senatorial elections remain first-past-the-post.

[Keevan_Colton]

Also, the US doesnt have a parlimentary system like any of the above...well done, you're an idiot.

If we go to proportional 1=1 vote, then that gives the idiot parties power.

No it doesnt shit for brains.
Since you then need the popular vote you dont get anywhere with a small bunch of loonies....

[Iceberg]

That's also lovely. Shame it has to be ratified by so many state legislatures and signed by their governors that well, I probably
have as much chance of fucking Lucy Liu than your Abolishment
fo the EC has.

Of course. No state government wants to give up power.

[Joe]

The fact that many, many successful, Western democratic republics exist where the head of government and/or head of state is elected in a direct popular election should tell you that this is a pure lie, that direct popular election of the President is possible and will work, and that we are decades overdue for a change in the way the President is elected.

Thought you could get that by, didn't you? There are three democracies in the world that elect their President directly (and Parliamentary democracy is not a valid analogy, so don't bring it up) - Finland, France, and Russia - and of those three, two are not exactly stellar examples of democracy at work, what with France having only ONE candidate with a chance of getting elected on its 2002 ticket and Russia being, well, Russia.

[MKSheppard]

Of course. No state government wants to give up power.

So why are you circle jerking yourself over abolishing the EC?

[Alyrium Denryle]

And according to that constitution(keyword) that head of state is supposed to be selected by a system of representative democracy. They are to take the voters will into account, much like our legistlature, but the voters do NOT make the decision. Because that is a dangerous form of mob rule.

Oh yes? Prove it.

Our constitution also has a method of amendment, and that method has already been used once to give the people greater power in selecting their government (direct popular election of Senators).

Take a look at your history book, or a US Government book

http://www.fec.gov/pdf/eleccoll.pdf

In order to appreciate the reasons for the Electoral College, it is
essential to understand its historical context and the problem that the
Founding Fathers were trying to solve. They faced the difficult question of
how to elect a president in a nation that:

was composed of thirteen large and small States jealous of their own
rights and powers and suspicious of any central national government

contained only 4,000,000 people spread up and down a thousand miles of
Atlantic seaboard barely connected by transportation or communication
(so that national campaigns were impractical even if they had been
thought desirable)

believed, under the influence of such British political thinkers as Henry
St John Bolingbroke, that political parties were mischievous if not
downright evil, and

felt that gentlemen should not campaign for public office (The saying
was "The office should seek the man, the man should not seek the
office.").

How, then, to choose a president without political parties, without
national campaigns, and without upsetting the carefully designed balance
between the presidency and the Congress on one hand and between the
States and the federal government on the other?
Origins of the Electoral College
The Constitutional Convention considered several possible
methods of selecting a president.

One idea was to have the Congress choose the president. This idea
was rejected, however, because some felt that making such a choice would be too divisive an issue and leave too many hard feelings in the Congress.
Others felt that such a procedure would invite unseemly political
bargaining, corruption, and perhaps even interference from foreign
powers. Still others felt that such an arrangement would upset the balance
of power between the legislative and executive branches of the federal
government.

A second idea was to have the State legislatures select the president.
This idea, too, was rejected out of fears that a president so beholden to the
State legislatures might permit them to erode federal authority and thus
undermine the whole idea of a federation.

A third idea was to have the president elected by a direct popular vote.
Direct election was rejected not because the Framers of the Constitution
doubted public intelligence but rather because they feared that without
sufficient information about candidates from outside their State, people
would naturally vote for a "favorite son" from their own State or region. At
worst, no president would emerge with a popular majority sufficient to
govern the whole country. At best, the choice of president would always be decided by the largest, most populous States with little regard for the
smaller ones.

Finally, a so-called "Committee of Eleven" in the Constitutional
Convention proposed an indirect election of the president through a College
of Electors.
The function of the College of Electors in choosing the president can
be likened to that in the Roman Catholic Church of the College of Cardinals
selecting the Pope. The original idea was for the most knowledgeable and
informed individuals from each State to select the president based solely on
merit and without regard to State of origin or political party.
The structure of the Electoral College can be traced to the Centurial
Assembly system of the Roman Republic. Under that system, the adult
male citizens of Rome were divided, according to their wealth, into groups
of 100 (called Centuries). Each group of 100 was entitled to cast only one vote
either in favor or against proposals submitted to them by the Roman Senate.

In the Electoral College system, the States serve as the Centurial groups
(though they are not, of course, based on wealth), and the number of votes
per State is determined by the size of each State's Congressional delegation.
Still, the two systems are similar in design and share many of the same
advantages and disadvantages.
The similarities between the Electoral College and classical
institutions are not accidental. Many of the Founding Fathers were well
schooled in ancient history and its lessons.

The First Design
In the first design of the Electoral College (described in Article II,
Section 1 of the Constitution):
Each State was allocated a number of Electors equal to the number of its
U.S. Senators (always 2) plus the number of its U.S. Representatives (which
may change each decade according to the size of each State's population as
determined in the decennial census). This arrangement built upon an
earlier compromise in the design of the Congress itself and thus satisfied
both large and small States.
n The manner of choosing the Electors was left to the individual State
legislatures, thereby pacifying States suspicious of a central national
government.
n Members of Congress and employees of the federal government were
specifically prohibited from serving as an Elector in order to maintain
the balance between the legislative and executive branches of the federal
government.
n Each State's Electors were required to meet in their respective States
rather than all together in one great meeting. This arrangement, it was
thought, would prevent bribery, corruption, secret dealing, and foreign
influence.
n In order to prevent Electors from voting only for a "favorite son" of their
own State, each Elector was required to cast two votes for president, at
least one of which had to be for someone outside their home State. The
idea, presumably, was that the winner would likely be everyone's second
favorite choice.
n The electoral votes were to be sealed and transmitted from each of the
States to the President of the Senate who would then open them before
both houses of the Congress and read the results.
n The person with the most electoral votes, provided that it was an absolute
majority (at least one over half of the total), became president. Whoever
obtained the next greatest number of electoral votes became vice
president -- an office which they seem to have invented for the occasion
since it had not been mentioned previously in the Constitutional
Convention.
n In the event that no one obtained an absolute majority in the Electoral
College or in the event of a tie vote, the U.S. House of Representatives, as
the chamber closest to the people, would choose the president from
among the top five contenders. They would do this (as a further
concession to the small States) by allowing each State to cast only one
vote with an absolute majority of the States being required to elect a
president. The vice presidency would go to whatever remaining
contender had the greatest number of electoral votes. If that, too, was
tied, the U.S. Senate would break the tie by deciding between the two.
In all, this was quite an elaborate design. But it was also a very
clever one when you consider that the whole operation was supposed to
work without political parties and without national campaigns while
maintaining the balances and satisfying the fears in play at the time.
Indeed, it is probably because the Electoral College was originally designed
to operate in an environment so totally different from our own that many
people think it is anachronistic and fail to appreciate the new purposes it
now serves. But of that, more later.

I am right on some issues, wrong on others.

[Iceberg]

Aaaaand this is the sound of the point missing completely.

I am asking you to prove that direct popular election of the President will result automatically in mob rule.

[Pu-239]

Dispense with popular vote altogether and have state legislatures decide how votes are allocated. Better would be some method to mesh this in with the popular vote as a check against widespread political corruption (would this even be feasible with so many state legislatures to buy?). Ok, maybe a little extreme. Anyway, I agree as stated before that the EC ensures the interests of all areas are met- keeps those in high population areas from monopolizing the benefits of political attention- a politician has to ensure the interests of all area, and simply because a state is loyally Republican or Democratic now does not mean it will remain so if voters are displeased. But the way state lines are arbitrarily drawn with varying population... it doesn't work too well- also geographic location does not necessarily correspond to a specific interest group. I would accept the first proposal listed above since it complies with my belief that the US is a union of independent states, and the idea of protection against "mob rule", but I'm not comfortable with the second for reasons stated.

Since the first will never be implemented, I'm in favor of dispensing with the EC, since as stated before it's merely a rubber stamp with errors for the popular vote.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Aaaaand this is the sound of the point missing completely.

I am asking you to prove that direct popular election of the President will result automatically in mob rule.

By definition. 51% wins, 49% loses. ANd unlike a jury, which needs more than a majority to convict, an electorate needs only 51%. That means that a savy politician need only bamboozle 51% of the population in order to become president. That is not hard to do. With a representative system, it would be possible to avoid this. You get a panel of economists, political scientists, and other social scientists together, and you have them work it out.

You put the very people on the jury that neither attourney wants, the educted ones that know the subject matter.

[Aeolus]

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."

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.

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.

The electoral College is by definition constitutional and can only be changed by a constitutional amendment....and I can assure you that will never happen...The small states will never permit it.

[Keevan_Colton]

By definition. 51% wins, 49% loses. ANd unlike a jury, which needs more than a majority to convict, an electorate needs only 51%. That means that a savy politician need only bamboozle 51% of the population in order to become president. That is not hard to do. With a representative system, it would be possible to avoid this. You get a panel of economists, political scientists, and other social scientists together, and you have them work it out.

You put the very people on the jury that neither attourney wants, the educted ones that know the subject matter.

Get rid of the voters. Gotcha. Didnt we already have this conversation here and you called it a strawman?
Dont worry, your betters will decide if you chose right and if not they'll choose for you....it's a nice benevolent little oligarchy with regards to the executive branch then....charming.