Should the Electoral College be abolished?

100% absolutely. The wrong person has been elected president too many times. Think how differently America if bush was never president and never suggested we destabilizing the entire Middle East.

I also don't think the Electoral college has anything to do with smaller state representation. Electoral college votes are based on how many congressmen your state has. When you consider that house reps are based on population, electoral college votes are allocated according to a states population.

I have several issues with the electoral college. For one it's not mathematically democratic. A person who gets less votes shouldn't be elected president. This voting system is from the same system that alllowed only white men with property to vote and viewed black people as 3/5ths of a person. Secondly it makes it impossible for a third party to win. Once two parties control the country completely, there is nothing holding them accountable. The electoral college needs to go but so does money in politics, and the majority requirement. We should also ranked-choice voting to prevent the electing of "the lesser of the evils".

 

Yes. Then again, I think that the whole system should be overhauled. I've never liked the voting system of the U.S. I think systems similar to Germany and the Netherlands are way fairer.

And let's not even get started about the whole gerrymandering thing.. Yuck.

 

As someone from California, I definitely agree. I would suspect it decreases voter turnout. I almost left the president section blank on my ballot -- it doesn't matter anyway in California. It would be nice if my vote actually felt like it mattered. But anyway, enough complaining about my own experiences. I don't really see how it makes sense. First, if they want it as a safeguard to the "unwashed masses" electing the "wrong" person... imagine the uproar if the electoral college went against popular vote (how was it in 2000? I was 8... But even then, that was a close margin. Let's say the electoral college went against the popular vote significantly). Second, why would smaller states care? Isn't electoral college number based on population size? Not sure what it would matter to them. Their vote counts the same in the overall pool.

 

Odd you'd say that given that Trump will win the popular vote in this one with impressive numbers, something even George Soros knows, but looking back at Al Gore vs. Bush, traditional Republicans need the electoral college to win an election as they are a slowly dying breed and some states swing traditionally red. Some states are so red or blue that your vote is practically pointless unless you live in swing states.

Republicans don't need it so much this time as the candidate they have is one who attracts independents and democrats.

But given the current climate, no I am not in favour, for now.

 

I think what the world needs like now is more platforms and to break away from the two-party ideology. The same left and right concept is old and unexciting. The momentum Trump and to some extent Sanders had was the charisma, and the idea that someone had sabotaged a major party to go along with them.

In my country the Five Star Movement has been gaining a lot of popularity, and they're the far-right group over here. However the enthusiasm may dissipate after our referendum. By the looks of things Renzi is going down David Cameron-style.

 

Yes it should be abolished. There is no reason, in today's world that individula votes cannot be cast and counted electronically. With an UNMANNED computer, inaccessible except to ONE certified, vetted technician doing the counting. Machines don't miscount, they don't change the results and, they don't lie.

 

I've come to like it for the following reason: imagine how painfully boring election night would be if we were sitting here watching 100,000,000 votes trickle in instead of the individual states going one way or the other.

 

And voting should be exciting because..? Entertainment is completely unimportant to me when it comes to voting.

Having said that, the Netherlands has a different voting system and when the results slowly come in, it's still exciting. I don't know why it'd be "painfully boring" in your opinion, but I really think that wouldn't be the case (nor should it matter if it were the case).

 

I'm not sure if eliminating the electoral college immediately would be a good idea. I think a reform of the electoral college would be a better move, starting out at least.

Only two states actually divide their electoral votes evenly depending on the popular vote. Every other state uses winner-take-all. The winner-take-all that most states use is the exact reason why the two-party system is so strong, and the person who wins the popular vote can lose the election in the end. If every other state switched to diving their electoral votes based on the popular vote, it would promote growth of third parties, and it would be more representative of the popular vote.

The elimination of the electoral college is something that I believe we can do eventually, but for now we should ease into it by modifying the system to make it more balanced.

 

Because the 2000 election was so much fun to watch and was totally worth it xD

 

Yes! I've always hated it.

 

Either reformed to remove the state-wide 'winner-takes-all' method, as Maine and Nebraska have done, or at last resort abolished.

Just to demonstrate what's so wrong with 'winner-takes-all', let's consider a hypothetical state of 5 million voters with perfect turnout, with 20 Electoral College votes. The result could be divided 50.1% to 49.9% for the Democrats and the Republicans respectively. Instead of 11 votes going to the Democrats and 10 to the Republicans, all 20 go to the Democrats by that incredibly narrow margin under the 'winner-takes-all' system.

Imagine another state of the same population of active voters, also with 20 votes. The results are 60% to 40%, but the other way around. The Republicans have barnstormed the state and win all 20 votes.

So effectively, the Republicans have won 5,496,000 votes in this scenario to the Democrats' 4,505,000, but the extra million voters don't translate into the deciding factor for the presidency. Almost a million Republican votes go to waste.

That is patently unfair on those voters, and it happens every election in the United States. It's compounded by low turnout fostered by a lack of compulsory voting and restrictions on who can turn up to vote - it means even fewer votes in an election with uneven turnout between states can sway an election by commanding disproportionate numbers in the Electoral College for a particular party unpopular on the national scale.

So what reform options are possible? Maine and Nebraska have a system of votes in the Electoral College being allocated by House seats. That is more proportional in some respects - it helps reflect more diversity within states, serving as a more direct version of how leaders are decided in parliamentary democracies (in which, generally, lower house seats determine who gets the premiership, which is not voted on directly).

It comes with a big problem though. Without independent electoral commissions, gerrymandering could pervert that mechanism's capacity to be representative. Additionally, it would entrench gerrymandering even more - some states, North Carolina in particular, are gerrymandered to death in favour of the Republicans but can swing to the Democrats in the presidential vote because state-wide, 'winner-takes-all' voting can't be gerrymandered. Of course, that means a poorly designed form of democracy is used as an attempt to counter a maliciously crafted perversion of democracy, but it is the best way without reform to balance two evils against each other.

Without a fundamental reform of who sets electoral districts to depoliticise the task, an Electoral College with greater local representation in the form of House districts is unlikely to fix its dearth of democracy.

Given that House districting is probably one of the easier ways for Republicans (and to a lesser extent Democrats in other states) to maintain their legislative power in an increasingly hostile environment on the national scale, you're probably more likely to get rid of the Electoral College than reform it to be representative, given reforms to legislative and presidential elections must come at once to be effective.

 

No, the electoral college system is fine. It exists so that candidates do not put too much focus on only major populated cities/areas. This is because when state votes are counted and not only citizen votes, then lesser populated states get more attention and aren't just ignored during the election process.

 

I think that problem is an institutional weakness of the US presidency and the unaccountability of the Cabinet to anyone but the President. Legislators don't have a regular forum to question the President or other members of the executive directly, which prevents a congressperson from rural Alabama from asking questions about policy as it affects their constituents directly to the executive.

That divide is probably more fairly solvable by having the President (or Vice-President) and Cabinet members face congressional questions on a regular basis, to ensure that regional representation is accomplished by discourse and more accountability, not by fruitless pork-barrelling that distorts the true voting patterns of Americans. The Electoral College and 'winner-takes-all' also doesn't help the most remote and/or disadvantaged unless they can swing the vote for the entire state - that's something that increased executive accountability to the legislature could better accomplish if specific questions can be asked by representatives to those directing policy in a reliable forum.

 

Doesn't it make sense for areas with higher population to be given more attention? The good of the many outweigh the good of the few or the one. Then again, I never felt loyalty to a State; they are just pieces of the country.

 

We need the electoral college this year to stop Trump from winning. After that abolish it- there's no use for it at all.
If your state votes for one candidate and you voted for another, your vote still goes to the one candidate. That's not fair at all.