[Blood of Tyrants]

I'm going to go against the grain here. I believe that the EC is outdated and a handicap. Candidates currently don't have to fight for every vote in every state. They can just ignore the states that they feel they can either easily win or badly lose.

The EC also virtually guarantees that a third party vote is totally wasted, which is EXACTLY the way the top two parties want it.

Don't give me crap about how the EC saved us from Gore, the EC also gave us clinton.

Since no candidate had received a majority of the popular vote, a runoff would have been between the top two candidates, GHW Bush and clinton. George the Elder would have mopped up the floor with clinton.

[pete anderson]

You are right on target. It would appear that some here are still fighting yesterday's was and have all forgotten about 1992.

Additionally, the EC may not be as kind to Bush in 2004 as it was in 2000. This year it is quite possible that Bush may win the popular vore but lose the EC.

[StoneFury]

I don't think having multi-party government systems (ie. more than two parties) is such a great idea. Look at the stagnation that occurs in the European governments anytime they want to get some kind of major legislation passed. Their majority party need to make concessions and promises to other parties in exchange for their votes, then they have years of reports and committees to study the environmental/social/whatever impact of the bill, so that the least number of people are offended.

I won't deny it happens here also, but you'll just be multiplying the red tape you need to wade through. In the end you get a watered-down version that few are really happy with.

[visualops]

No no no! lol
You don't fully understand how the EC works. There is no national election per se, only separate state elections. For a candidate to become president, they must win enough state elections to get the majority of electoral votes. The vote in each state then determines a slate of electors who make the actual choice of president and vice president. Please remember we are a Republic (of states).
The fact that the EC gave us Clinton simply means that, as a whole, that's whom the country chose. Bad choice, yes, but the country's choice. The EC does not prevent what may be in retrospect bad choices.
Candidates don't "ignore" states. If a group of people are already in your camp, and in fact may be doing what they can to convince those that aren't, that's fine. I don't have a problem when Bush spends his time in the "battleground states". I want him to win.

I've included this snippet here, since it's a really great explanation of one aspect of the EC:

IV. Does my vote count?

Yes, your vote counts. Some people have complained since 2000 that if the winner of the popular vote doesn't become president, their vote doesn't really count, so why vote at all? But every vote does count; it just counts in a more complicated way. When you vote for president, remember that you're voting in a state election, not a national election. So your vote counts just as much as anyone else's in your state — but it may count more or less than that of someone living in another state!

What's a vote worth?

Why does the actual weight of your vote vary by state? Remember that every state gets a number of electors that is the total of all of its representatives in Congress, both in the House of Representatives and in the Senate. The House of Representatives is divided approximately by population — big states have the most representatives, small states have the fewest — but every state has exactly two senators, regardless of size. That means that while big states have more electors than small states, they don't have as many more as they would based on population alone.

Consider three states: California (the state with the biggest population), North Carolina (a medium-sized state), and Alaska (with one of the smallest populations). This table shows their population and number of electoral votes in 2000. The fourth column shows the number of residents per elector (population divided by electoral votes), and the last column shows the weight of an individual vote in the given state — that is, how the number of residents per elector compares to the national average.

	Population	Electoral votes	Residents per elector	Weight of vote
California	33,871,648	54	627,253	0.83
North Carolina	8,049,313	14	574,951	0.91
Alaska	626,932	3	208,977	2.50
United States	281,421,906	538	523,089	1.00

As you can see, Alaska, a very small state, has far fewer residents per electoral vote than the national average, so individual votes cast in Alaska count more than the national average — twice as much, in fact! A voter in California has a little less influence than the average American, about 83% as much. A voter in North Carolina has about 91% the influence of the average American. (You can calculate weight of vote in a given state by dividing the national average of residents per elector by that state's residents per elector. Since we're comparing each state to the national average, the weight of vote for the entire United States is exactly 1. Don't get it? Read more about the math.)

A paradox

While every American's vote counts, then, your vote counts more if you live in a small state like Alaska than it does if you live in a big state like California. This seems like a paradox, because clearly a big state as a whole has more influence than a small state. If you're running for president, you are more concerned about winning California, with its 54 electoral votes, than you are about winning Alaska with its 3 electoral votes. As a matter of strategy, you'd probably spend more time and money campaigning in the big states than in smaller states. As a result, residents of big states tend to get more attention in presidential elections than residents of small states, and so small-staters may feel left out and unimportant. Yet in reality, each individual voter has less influence in a big state than in a small state.

But is it fair?

Ah, that's the question! It certainly doesn't seem fair that a voter in Alaska effectively has more say about who becomes president than a voter in California. But Alaska is a perfect example of why the electoral college was created. Because it's such a big state geographically, and because it is so far from the 48 contiguous states, Alaska has unique interests that, many would argue, deserve representation equal to the interests of New York or California. Other big western states with small populations, such as Montana and North Dakota, would make similar arguments. Of course, it's hard to argue that Delaware, which had 3 electors and only 783,600 residents in 2000 (for a weight of vote of 2.00), really has unique interests that deserve special consideration. The fairness of the electoral system has been debated for more than 200 years, and it doesn't appear that the debate is going to die down anytime soon.

http://www.learnnc.org/learnnc/lessonp.nsf/fe2012df70f2d67585256b6100661f61/7b7a254e241f9c5185256e44004abea5/$FILE/electoralcollege.html

[X-FID]

Then the fraudulent votes in the dem areas can really be cranked out and used nationally instead of just to win a state.

Not a good idea IMHO.

[Arkinsaw]

I'm going to go against the grain here. I believe that the EC is outdated and a handicap.

Lets say that the Yankees and Red Sox play a World Series. The Yankees get 25 runs in game one. They never get another run during the series and the Red Sox win games 2, 3, 4, and 5 by a score of one to nothing.

Do you believe that the Yankees should be the winners because they got "more overall runs". Do you believe that this is somehow unfair to the Yankees? If you made the change to reflect this you would not have baseball. Baseball would be dead.

The fact is that we have a federal union of 50 states. The President is selected by the people ACTING AS CITIZENS OF A CONSTITUENT state.

This is EXACTLY how the Constitution was ratified. By the people ACTING AS STATES. Do you believe that the Constitution should have been ratified for all of the States including Maine and Georgia if 100% of the people in Philadelphia and New York had voted for it but Georgians and Mainers didn't? Was allowing all States to ratify for themselves fair?

This is how our Constitutional Amendment process works. Through the States. Suppose all of the people (100%) in urban areas want a Constitutional Amendment requiring farmers to give free food to cities. Would it be fair to pass that amendment because the majority of people wanted it? Or would it be more fair to have the majority of States, both urban and rural to want it?

Its the exact same thing for the Presidential election. Is it fairer for the majority to choose, or is it more fair to have the raw majority of geographic, cultural, and political entities across the breadth of the country to choose it.

If we get rid of the Electoral College, the Presidency as we know it will die. We will instead have something that I am afraid would be unacceptable and a symbol of derision for anyone outside of urban areas.