Posted on 10/06/2004 10:14:55 PM PDT by Libloather
Electoral College? It's antiquated
Rosemary Roberts
10-1-04
News & Record
When I was in college years ago, I was on the debate team and the national collegiate debate topic was:
"Resolved that the Electoral College should be abolished.''
What goes around comes around, because the Electoral College is back in the news.
On Nov. 2, when Americans go to the polls, the voters of Colorado will decide whether to change that state's winner-take-all electoral system to a proportional distribution of electoral votes.
If the measure (called Amendment 36) is approved, it will apply to the Nov. 2 election in Colorado. The national implications are significant. What starts in the West often migrates to the East and elsewhere in the nation.
Here's how the system currently works:
The U.S. Constitution stipulates that the U.S. president be chosen by electors who make up the Electoral College. We voters don't actually cast our ballots for the candidate but for his party's electors whose names and faces you don't even know.
The Electoral College is composed of 538 electors, and the winning candidate must get a majority of electoral votes.
A state's electoral votes are determined by the size of that state's congressional delegation -- two U.S. senators and a minimum of one House member.
Colorado, which traditionally votes Republican, has nine electoral votes. If, say, 60 percent of its votes go to George W. Bush, he will get all of Colorado's nine electoral votes. The 40 percent who cast their ballot for Sen. John Kerry are essentially disenfranchised. Thus, every vote is not equal.
But if Colorado approves Amendment 36, there would be a proportional distribution of electoral votes. In the above scenario, Bush would win 60 percent of the nine electoral votes, and Kerry would get 40 percent. Amendment 36 stipulates that fractions be rounded off.
If you're on the Bush bandwagon, you'll hope Amendment 36 fails. But think again.
New York state historically goes Democratic, and all of its whopping 31 electoral votes will likely go for Kerry.
Voters in rural and less populous Upstate New York, who traditionally vote GOP, will find their votes to be valueless. Is this fair?
What's more, the current system discourages voter turnout. Why bother to vote if your state always goes for the party you don't support?
And here's another troubling aspect about the current system: What if a presidential candidate wins the popular vote in a state by a one-vote majority. The winner still gets all of that state's electoral votes.
The Electoral College is a ridiculously antiquated system that is patently unfair. The founding fathers, for all their genius, devised the Electoral College because they did not trust the masses who might be swayed by demagogues and the tumult of mobs.
They also assumed that no candidate would get a majority of electoral votes and that the "capable'' House of Representatives would choose the president. (The Constitution states that if no candidate receives a majority of electoral votes, the House will elect the president.)
My personal preference had been to abolish the Electoral College altogether and let the president of the United States be elected by the direct vote of the people. Four presidential candidates -- in 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000 -- won the popular votes but lost the White House. (Al Gore won about 500,000 more popular votes than Bush in the 2000 election.)
But for practical reasons, I'm no longer an advocate of electing the president by direct vote of the people because it would involve amending the U.S. Constitution, a long, tedious process that often goes nowhere.
The founding fathers, however, gave states a loophole. The Constitution mandates an Electoral College but does not specify how states distribute electoral votes.
Thus, Colorado (or any state) has the right to adopt a system whereby a candidate receives a proportion of electoral votes based on the popular votes he receives.
The current winner-take-all system is fraught with many flaws aside from disenfranchising voters. It enables Bush and Kerry not to campaign in their "safe states.'' Thus, Bush doesn't waste time stumping in Texas or Alabama, nor does Kerry show up much in New York state.
Both men focus, instead, on swing states whose electoral votes could put them over the top but whose populations may be far smaller than other states.
If Americans could put partisanship aside for a moment, I suspect most of us would prefer to elect the president by direct vote of the people or by a proportional distribution of electoral votes.
On Nov. 2, Colorado may show us the way. If so, the winner-take-all system would be scrapped and every vote in Colorado would count.
Rosemary Roberts is a News & Record columnist. Her columns run on Fridays.
Wyoming 2003 population - 501,242.
California 2003 population - 35,484,453.
Each state has only two U.S. Senators. Doesn't seem very fair either...
Ralph Rossum has a great book which identifies the liberal's hatred of forms that are designed to maintain the integrity of systems.
Liberals are FOR the tyranny of the majority. Don't let them trash the EC.
And a clueless person with no concept of what the Electoral College is yet is commenting on it anyway.
The socialists whine when the "Big City" ant colonies cannot over-rule 90%+ of this free Republic.
Too F'n kerry bad!
Life isn't fair.
Greater power for the smaller States was the price that the larger States paid for the smaller States ever agreeing to join the Union.
It may not be fair, but a state with a low population (or high) should be free to secede without any warfare by vote.
Might as well let the House of Reps vote on the President.
That is representative Democracy.
The E.C. works. Nuff said.
"but a state with a low population (or high) should be free to secede without any warfare by vote."
or divide. A North Texas, Eastern California, and Southern Illinois would do wonders for the senate.
The USA is a Republic of free states, hence -- The United States". It was never a "democracy". It was never intended to be a "democracy". States which would prefer to leave the republic have a mechanism for doing so. Wyoming agreed to join the Republic. The citizens of Wyoming can eitherleave by due process, relocate to Cuba, or whatever.
Discover Magazine | Sept. 30, 2004 | Math Against Tyranny
Ignoring any other aspect of the issue, why are Coloradans allowing a Californian to try and rewrite their laws?
Over my dead body. The Founders set up the Electoral College so that ALL regions of the country would be represented, not just NY and Cal. If not for the equity, we would have mob rule and our politicians chosen by California, New York and Seattle. The rest of us would have our vote trampled by the Democratic cities. There would be no point on us even going to the polls.
I dunno about Texas, we're very hardcore conservative.
I wouldn't want to break us up too much.. Unless we just cut off the border region. And, if we did that, I'd say let those be Mexican lands, inlcuding el paso.
Every time someone says the want to get rid of the EC, ask them if they want to get rid of the senate too. The senate is based on the same premis. Why should RI, NH, VT have the same number of senators as Texas?
It won't take them long to realize that they would have no voice in national politics if the senate was gone.
It just demonstrates why the US Constitution specifies the legislature and not referena as the body with the authority to determine the method by which a state's electors are selected.
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