Electoral College


Emmanuel Goldstein
 Share

Recommended Posts

Yep, it's pretty easy to understand.  Wanna have a country?  You have to find a way to give lower-population-states a say in the government.  Otherwise, like, what's in it for them?  Utah, for example, has better things to do than be ruled by a country where it has absolutely no say in federal matters.

So folks grappled with that issue, and built the Electoral College into the Constitution.  It's there for a reason.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

So folks grappled with that issue, and built the Electoral College into the Constitution.  It's there for a reason.  

When I was in school being taught about the EC, it was explained to us that it was created to cope with the long distances and slow communication issues of the day. 

The idea that it also balanced the scales between urban populations and rural populations was never mentioned, and that's a real problem.  Most of the people I've debated this issue with are squawking about how it isn't needed anymore in the age of instantaneous communication and super fast travel.  It's one of those things that you'd never know if you didn't think about it and look into it on your own.

Or maybe I just went to a substandard school.  I dunno. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, unixknight said:

When I was in school being taught about the EC, it was explained to us that it was created to cope with the long distances and slow communication issues of the day. 

The idea that it also balanced the scales between urban populations and rural populations was never mentioned, and that's a real problem.  Most of the people I've debated this issue with are squawking about how it isn't needed anymore in the age of instantaneous communication and super fast travel.  It's one of those things that you'd never know if you didn't think about it and look into it on your own.

Or maybe I just went to a substandard school.  I dunno. 

I went to school in the Philippines and even I was taught about the 13 States (plus 2 new ones) and how the EC represented each State Government and not their population.  This was in the same lesson that explained why there's no "national election" for the President of the EU.

Edited by anatess2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 minutes ago, unixknight said:

Or maybe I just went to a substandard school.  I dunno. 

Oh, I don't know about your school, but you do seem to have been mis-taught on this one thing.

The number of electors in each state is the sum of its U.S. senators and its U.S. representatives.  If it was only about long distances and bad telegraph technology, and not (at least partially) about more populous vs. less populous states, then the # of electors would have been a percentage of the population.   

Quote

The reason that the Constitution calls for this extra layer, rather than just providing for the direct election of the president, is that most of the nation’s founders were actually rather afraid of democracy. James Madison worried about what he called “factions,” which he defined as groups of citizens who have a common interest in some proposal that would either violate the rights of other citizens or would harm the nation as a whole. Madison’s fear – which Alexis de Tocqueville later dubbed “the tyranny of the majority” – was that a faction could grow to encompass more than 50 percent of the population, at which point it could “sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens.” Madison has a solution for tyranny of the majority: “A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking.”

Source-Factcheck.org

 

So go look up Miss Krankkypantz and demand a better answer from her.

Edited by NeuroTypical
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It is interesting to me how many of the compromises that make up the US constitution are based on this particular problem -- how to balance the representation of small states and large states. The Electoral college is one. The bicameral legislature (with one house's representation based on population and the other house where each state is represented equally. As abhorrent as it is to us, the compromises that allowed slavery to continue and count each slave as 3/5s of a person for population purposes. And, if my memory serves correctly, if the delegates had been too stubborn on any one of these issues, the constitutional convention would have disbanded and who knows what our nation would look like today.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, MrShorty said:

if the delegates had been too stubborn on any one of these issues, the constitutional convention would have disbanded and who knows what our nation would look like today.

Now you know why it was held in a stuffy brick building in June/July in a mid-Atlantic state.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, MrShorty said:

It is interesting to me how many of the compromises that make up the US constitution are based on this particular problem -- how to balance the representation of small states and large states. The Electoral college is one. The bicameral legislature (with one house's representation based on population and the other house where each state is represented equally. As abhorrent as it is to us, the compromises that allowed slavery to continue and count each slave as 3/5s of a person for population purposes. And, if my memory serves correctly, if the delegates had been too stubborn on any one of these issues, the constitutional convention would have disbanded and who knows what our nation would look like today.

Errrm... not to nit-pick but saying 3/5s of a person is a really terrible way of depicting the compromise.  The compromise did not make slaves 3/5s of a person.  They were considered either 100% person by the Northern States or 100% property by the Southern States.  The compromise simply meant that the federal government will only count 3 out of every 5 slaves as taxable or representable not that every slave is now 3/5's of a person - they were still 100% person in the Northern States and 100% property in the Southern States even after the compromise.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, MrShorty said:

It is interesting to me how many of the compromises that make up the US constitution are based on this particular problem -- how to balance the representation of small states and large states. The Electoral college is one. The bicameral legislature (with one house's representation based on population and the other house where each state is represented equally. As abhorrent as it is to us, the compromises that allowed slavery to continue and count each slave as 3/5s of a person for population purposes. And, if my memory serves correctly, if the delegates had been too stubborn on any one of these issues, the constitutional convention would have disbanded and who knows what our nation would look like today.

No insult intended to MrShorty, but I believe this demonstrates a lack of understanding of what was going on. It was the NORTHERN states, not the Southern, who wanted slaves to remain uncounted for population/representation purposes. The South wanted to eat its cake and have it, too, by keeping slaves and then counting them as population to be represented. The North said, in effect, "If you're going to participate in the abhorrent practice of human slavery, you can't double-dip by counting them as population, too." The South would not go for that*, so the "compromise" was reached. But I do get tired of hearing how horrible it is that African slaves were "only counted as 3/5 of a person." That is IMO an ignorant misrepresentation of what was happening.

*I don't really blame the South for not accepting the non-slave-counted population, given that the Southern states were thinly populated (with free people) compared to the Northern states. Refusing to count slaves would have made the South a permanent minority presence in the House.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I like the electoral college for the reasons mentioned already, although I am ok with a slight modification to the system, say dividing it up by the percentage of the vote you win in each state. Right now, there is little incentive to vote if you are a Republican in Massachusettes or a Democrat in Indiana. By following Nebraska and Maine's example, you can get more people out to vote if there is the promise that even if you lose the state you can still bring in a few electoral votes to your candidate if you go out and do your civic duty. At least that's the way it seems to me.

Edited by Midwest LDS
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Midwest LDS said:

I am ok with a slight modification to the system, say dividing it up by the percentage of the vote you win in each state.

This would have the same effect as switching to a popular vote model.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 minutes ago, person0 said:

This would have the same effect as switching to a popular vote model.

Not really. The majority of electoral votes would still go to the winner of the state popular vote. It maintains the difficulty of fixing elections and the voice of small states (especially if you make a certain percentage neccessary to win electoral votes) that is essential to our republic, while encouraging voter turnout in areas that are depressed due to party politics. It also keeps the major parties honest, and forces them to pay attention to voters in states that right now they ignore (either because they know the state is a lock for their party or impossible to win no matter what they do). Now if the question is electoral college as is or popular vote it's electoral college as is hands down, but I think there are ways to improve the college and voter participation while maintaining the integrity of our republic. Just some thoughts from someone who spends way too much time thinking about politics.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest MormonGator
27 minutes ago, Midwest LDS said:

Hey be careful or you will be the first one up against the wall when the revolution comes😉

lol! I can say "Hey, I knew that guy before he was a megalomaniacal dictator!" as they shoot me.   

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Vort said:

Exactly the opposite.

No, it’s not the opposite.  The Northern States consider slaves as PERSONS, the Southern States consider them as PROPERTY.  FACT.  The North wants to count slaves as part of the population for Taxation as they are persons (there was yet no income tax,  Feds calculated a State’s tax by their population size).  The South do not.  So the North said, if you won’t count them as Persons then you can’t count them for representation either, hence the compromise.

 

Edited by anatess2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
 Share