Posted on 10/24/2011 9:42:48 AM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
PRINCETON, N.J., Oct. 24 (UPI) -- Most Americans say they would amend the Constitution to swap the Electoral College with a popular-vote system to elect the president, a poll indicates.
Sixty-two percent of Americans prefer replacing the Electoral College and 35 percent would keep the current method for electing presidents, results from a Gallup poll released Monday indicated.
For the first time since the disputed 2000 presidential election, the majority of Republicans said they favor amending the Constitution, the Princeton, N.J., polling agency said.
That year, Democrat Al Gore won the national popular vote but Republican George W. Bush wound up with more electoral votes and was elected.
Those who advocate abolishing the Electoral College said they thought the system puts undue emphasis on a small number of swing states, Gallup said. Americans generally agree that the United States should adopt a system in which the popular vote prevails.
(Excerpt) Read more at upi.com ...
It is sad to learn that 62% of Americans are ignorant of the benefits the founders provided us with the Electoral College. Fortunately, for the nation a constitutional amendment is required to eliminate the Electoral College vote.
The USA Today newspaper provided an interesting perspective on the Electoral College vote for the 2000 and 2004 presidential election
This link allows you to toggle between the 2000 and the 2004 election. The areas of the nation where the popular vote could determine the outcome of a presidential election are obvious. Candidates would only no need to campaign in these locations.
Freedom is arming the sheep with a gun.
It never ceases to amaze me at how intelligent and understanding of human nature those guys were!
Mine says pretty much the same thing.
The age of Bread and Circuses is back in vogue.
Then(original intent) concept of states rights and limited Federal govt. was paramount. Now it isn’t even an after thought.
Fixed it.
And that is exactly why the Left is pushing for this. Because they know they will control the White House until the nation is driven into bankruptcy.
It amazes me how stupid many Americans are on this issue. I got into it with my sister-in-law on this very subject over the summer. She felt that it just made sense to choose the president on the popular vote instead of that "complicated" electoral college.
She lives in Alabama so it was easy to point out to her the flaw in his logic. I stated that if we elected presidents on a direct popular vote, that no future president would care about Alabama or any of the other states that don't have a huge population center.
You can forget about Iowa caucuses and NH primaries. They won't matter anymore. Nobody will care about Cedar Rapids or Nashua or anywhere else with a population under a million. Candidates will focus on NYC, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Boston, Atlanta, etc., and screw the rest of the country and what they might have to say about things.
The founding fathers knew exactly what they were doing when they came up with the Electoral College - they protected the rights of all states by giving them a voice, regardless of geographic size or population. (That is also why each state has exactly two senators each.)
Imagine the voter fraud that would go on!!
Rome started as a Republic. Then certain politicians talked up democracy to get elected. They got a dictator. And never looked back.
...”Sixty-two percent of Americans prefer replacing the Electoral College”....
This poll result illustrates the depths to which the public “education” system has fallen in the USA. The 62% clearly does not understand - or likely has been misinformed about - the elegant role of checks and balances in the US Constitution.
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Eliminating the Electoral College is a step toward eliminating the States as they are or as they should be. They may still call them States, for awhile, but the relationship between the States and the Federal Government will be about the same as the relationship between a county and a State government.
So the vote goes conservative by 10,000 votes in three swing states in a close election. All Illinois has to do is steal 30,001 votes to win the election. With the electoral college, they can only steal their own electoral college votes, but the other three swing states still get their own votes, undiluted. This is why the libs don’t want the electoral college. They don’t want the “Stop-loss” on the ability to steal votes.
We also need to restore the practice of have the state legislatures select the state senators, instead of having them directly elected.
Minnesota would have had more conservative senators had this been the case.
President Comacho, here we come...
Minorities “should” be most aware of the importance of the electoral college and our representative form of governance.
If ‘Americans’ would scrap the Electoral College they are leftists or completely uneducated!
No poll tax just an IQ test!
The irony of polls like this is the US is not a democracy...So, who cares if 62% of the population wants to do away with the EC or legalize drugs or take your pick.
Although, it is a indication that 62% of the overall population should probably not be allowed to vote.
Otherwise, I wish 62% of the population of the US would move to Canada!
Well, maybe more like 42%.
The other 20% are savable.
The poll is BS. I’d like to know how the question was phrased, and who was asked! If the Electoral College were scrapped, then the only states that would have a say in who the President was EVERY four years would be the most populous states. All other states would have zero power in a presidential election. This is the worse political idea in a long history of bad political ideas.
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