Replies

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 I believe that the EC is outdated and a handicap.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.

I argued this same issue with a friend of mine (one who voted for Nader in 2000!). The argument I used was:
Lets say you have 1 big state with 10 million people, and they all vote for Kerry.
And you also have 9 small 'insignificant' states, each with 1 million people, and they all vote for Bush.
Going by the popular vote, Kerry would have beat Bush soundly, but since the electoral college represents the interests of the STATE (which our founding fathers had the insight to understand), and not the INDIVIDUAL, Bush would win in a landslide. Our Constitution never would have been approved by all 13 original states if the smaller states knew New York and Virginia alone would really control things, thanks to their huge population.
Incidentally, that's also the reason we have 2 houses in Congress.

I would, IF THAT WAS THE WAY IT WAS DONE. However, there can be only two opponents in a baseball game and we are not talking baseball. Also, when the EC was set up, there were 65 representatives and 26 senators (2.5:1) and it was a good idea. But now there are 100 senators and 435 representatives (4.35:1)where the votes of just a very few states pretty much determine the whole outcome.

Reduce the ratio back to 2.5:1 so that the smaller states aren't completely overshadowed by the larger ones and I'll get back on board.

Either that or change the way that the US is represented to equal sized land areas instead of population.