[La Lydia]

Getting rid of the Electoral College is a pet project of George Soros.

[Ev Reeman]

The electoral college is constitutional and as such should be kept and in tact.

[Huck]

The electoral college was phony Federalism from the start. I've never read a single article that makes a case for how the end result differs from direct election.

Isn't the vote for president in each state democratic? And isn't each states electoral power relative to its numbers? Then what's the difference?

We may get the occasional popular/electoral schism, but basically it's the same thing. Defenders base their arguments on tradition and appeal to authority--the founders wanted it, so it must be good.

I don't think it makes a difference either way. The electoral system merely puts federalist lipstick on a nationalist pig.

[shibumi]

The subject of the Electoral College and it’s role in preserving the framework of the Republic is a good and suitable subject for discussion, particularly on this forum.

Why then, do you deny us the chance to read your thoughts in their entirety? Would it not be fitting to post your entire essay here?

[Le Chien Rouge]

So many people are clueless about our system of government.

The USA is a democratically elected Constitutional Republic.

Did anyone take civics in high school???

[Wolfstar]

Anyone who wants to completely kill whatever sovereignty and power the states have over the feds will be on board to eliminate the electoral college. Count me out.

[Liz]

Electoral College 2012

WIKI The constitutional theory behind the indirect election of both the President and Vice President of the United States is that while the Congress is popularly elected by the people, the President and Vice President are elected to be executives of a federation of independent states.

In the Federalist No. 39, James Madison argued that the Constitution was designed to be a mixture of state-based and population-based government. The Congress would have two houses: the state-based Senate and the population-based House of Representatives. Meanwhile, the President would be elected by a mixture of the two modes.

Additionally, in the Federalist No. 10, James Madison argued against "an interested and overbearing majority" and the "mischiefs of faction" in an electoral system. He defined a faction as "a number of citizens whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community."

Republican government (i.e., federalism, as opposed to direct democracy), with its varied distribution of voter rights and powers, would countervail against factions.

Madison further postulated in the Federalist No. 10 that the greater the population and expanse of the Republic, the more difficulty factions would face in organizing due to such issues as sectionalism.

[Will88]

Deciding how to select or elect the president was one of the most difficult decisions the Founding Fathers had to make during the Convention.

That sentence implies that the founders had the power to simply decide how to pick the president. They didn't, since the states formed the union and not the other way around.

The founders had to find a method that was acceptable to the original states (or colonies), or the founding would not have taken place.

[Pearls Before Swine]

Although the author didn’t say it specifically, I think one of the benefits of the electoral college is that it gives smaller states a well-defined role and vote. It has often been observed that if the President were popularly elected, candidates would pay the most attention to the largest centers of population in their campaigning. Worse, the effect of concentrated vote fraud in a couple of areas... say, Chicago and Philadelphia, would have a national effect, rather than “just” a statewide effect. (I’m well aware that Florida and Chicago voting irregularities affected Bush-Gore and Nixon-Kennedy, but they did so in their respective states.)

[humblegunner]

(Excerpt) Read more at whatwouldthefoundersthink.com ...

Why not just post it here?

[so_real]

Terribly bad idea to remove the electoral college. Corrupt Presidential candidates would limit their campaign promises and paybacks to highly populated metropolitan areas (where their investment efforts have the greatest impact). Within a few election cycles the vast majority of the nation's population would be subservient to a handful of large cities where the inhabitants enjoy special rules and privileges. Definitely not the democratic republic our Founders envisioned.

[dforest]

Democrats always want to get rid of the Electoral College when they have a chump loser in at the helm.

It makes the cheatin’ so much easier.

[mvymvy]

State-by-state winner-take-all laws to award electoral college votes were eventually enacted by 48 states AFTER the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution. The Founding Fathers only said in the U.S. Constitution about presidential elections (only after debating among 30 ballots for choosing a method): “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors . . .” The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as “plenary” and “exclusive.” Prior to arriving at the eventual wording of section 1 of Article II, the Constitutional Convention specifically voted against a number of different methods for selecting the President, including ● having state legislatures choose the President, ● having governors choose the President, and ● a national popular vote. After these (and other) methods were debated and rejected, the Constitutional Convention decided to leave the entire matter to the states. The constitutional provision that was eventually adopted does not prohibit any of the methods that were debated and rejected. Indeed, a majority of the states appointed their presidential electors using two of the rejected methods in the nation’s first presidential election in 1789 (i.e., appointment by the legislature and by the governor and his cabinet). Presidential electors were appointed by state legislatures for almost a century (1876 being the last such occasion). Neither of the two most important features of the current system of electing the President (namely, universal suffrage, and the 48 state-by-state winner-take-all method) are in the U.S. Constitution. Neither was the choice of the Founders when they went back to their states to organize the nation’s first presidential election. In 1789, in the nation’s first election, the people had no vote for President in most states, Only men who owned a substantial amount of property could vote. In 1789 only three states used the state-by-state winner-take-all method to award electoral votes. The winner-take-all method is not entitled to any special deference based on history or the historical meaning of the words in the U.S. Constitution. The current 48 state-by-state winner-take-all method (i.e., awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in a particular state) is not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, the debates of the Constitutional Convention, or the Federalist Papers. The actions taken by the Founding Fathers make it clear that they never gave their imprimatur to the winner-take-all method. The constitutional wording does not encourage, discourage, require, or prohibit the use of any particular method for awarding the state’s electoral votes. As a result of changes in state laws enacted since 1789, the people have the right to vote for presidential electors in 100% of the states, there are no property requirements for voting in any state, and the state-by-state winner-take-all method is used by 48 of the 50 states. Maine and Nebraska currently award electoral votes by congressional district — a reminder that an amendment to the U.S. Constitution is not required to change the way the President is elected. The normal process of effecting change in the method of electing the President is specified in the U.S. Constitution, namely action by the state legislatures. This is how the current system was created, and this is the built-in method that the Constitution provides for making changes.