I write this today in the hope to raise interest, as well as to right a wrong of these United States. It has always been the belief of the people that their vote decides on who becomes president of the United States. I am sure that many of you are aware of the electoral college. This is the creation that keeps us from having the power to pick the president and that which keeps our nation firmly implanted in a two party system, destroying the people's ability to vote for a third party, if it was their wish.
In the last election, George W. Bush was elected President despite suffering a loss in the popular vote. How can it be that a man can be elected when a majority of the people voted for another person? Does this, in any shape or form, make any sense?
Sadly, it is possible, that a person, receiving no votes could potentially become president, if they found a way to sway the members of the college. Now, granted that the masses in such a case would openly rebel against such an election, but the possibility remains.
As well, this makes the majority of the states useless as if you win a large portion of the major states, one is almost guaranteed the presidency.
So now I say to you all that it is time for the people to demand a popular vote. I myself write regularly to demand an overthrow of the college system. Each voter deserves to have their vote count. For the future of our nation as a truly democratic nation, we need a vote to make us truly a government elected by the people and for the people.
Johivin Ryson
Those who watch rarely speak up. Those who speak rarely hear all. But those who listen see all there is.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Sure....whenever we get a foolproof vote counting system that can't be manipulated....
There is a difference between a representitive democracy and an actual one, and as someone who lives in NE and has sat in on functioning town meetings, I prefer this system.
It takes a while,but at least something gets decided on this way....
Kwea
Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
The electoral college was one of the compromises necessary to unite states of different sizes into one country, and is written into the constitution. Unlike parties, which I think are the real problem.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
It's almost impossible to get rid of, because more than half the states benefit from it, and 3/4 of the states are needed to change it.
Dagonee Edit: And Adam, if you want to accuse someone of corruption, something more than innuendo would be nice. Luckily Ohio is polling for Bush, anyway.
[ September 14, 2004, 07:00 PM: Message edited by: Dagonee ]
Posted by saxon75 (Member # 4589) on :
I'm not completely clear on how any of the states benefit from it. Each state gets the same number of electoral votes as it has Congressmen and Senators, right? That basically amounts to electoral votes being apportioned according to population, since every state has the same number of Senators. The difference between a popular vote and an electoral vote is that in an electoral vote, each state's electors vote in a block. It'd be like if every citizen in the state voted for the same candidate in a popular vote.
Now, I see how this influences the campaigns because instead of focusing on the entire population or even the highly populous states, they focus on the ones that could go either way. No point in campaigning in California if you're sure that the Democrats will win there anyway. Meanwhile, a popular vote would mean that states like California and New York would get more attention in campaigns because even if you don't get the majority within the state there are still enough people there to make getting a large minority significant.
But I don't see precisely where that helps smaller states because bigger states still get more electoral votes.
Posted by saxon75 (Member # 4589) on :
The news coverage about that lawsuit here in California indicates that the suit is over the machines' susceptibility to hacking, not because of the CEO tampering with the votes.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
Every state has two senators and at least one representative. This means each state is guaranteed 3 votes, no matter how small it is.
This site http://supak.com/election_2000/ has a good table of numbers to illustrate, although the legal analysis comes from a crack pipe.
Dagonee
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Dag, you might do a bit of reading at blackboxvoting. While its certainly biased, the examples of elections polling heavily for one participant going to the other participant (who happens to have close ties to the company making the newly implemented e-voting products) are certainly disturbing, particularly as there is no audit trail.
Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
Everything else aside, can you imagine recounting the whole country instead of just 3 counties in florida?
We'd STILL be counting today!
Posted by saxon75 (Member # 4589) on :
Interesting. I hadn't realized how many states had only 3 electoral votes. Nor did I realize how many more electoral votes California has than any other state. I knew it had the most, just not by how much.
Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
quote: Now, I see how this influences the campaigns because instead of focusing on the entire population or even the highly populous states, they focus on the ones that could go either way.
I don't know if you are raising this as a pro or a con, but of as a con the situation would be much worse with a straight plebiscite (don't know if I spelled that correctly). We would have campaigners promising to use the rural states as landfills and nuclear waste dumsites.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
fugu, I am by no means comfortable with the Deibold situation. I do think it's irresponsible to be claiming fraud by the CEO yet.
Dagonee
Posted by Avatar300 (Member # 5108) on :
The electoral college is designed to give each state an important position in voting for the president.
Without the electoral college the candidates would only need to campaign in states like California and New York. Remember, in the 2000 election Al Gore could have flown a straight line from New York to California without flying over a single state that voted for him.
The electoral college assures that states and regions cannot be ignored. Thus Bush won because even though Gore had a slightly higher number of total votes (not a majority, however), Bush won many more states than did Gore and was able to overcome Gore's advantage in some of the states with higher individual college votes.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
It wasn't meant as exactly supporting his particular statement, but its also more than just innuendo, its a fairly significant bit of circumstantial evidence.
Not enough to convict the person, but enough to strongly suggest we should move away from e-voting (and possibly investigate the persons involved).
Posted by dabbler (Member # 6443) on :
Do you think a change to popular vote would increase/decrease/no-change the voting percentage?
Posted by James Tiberius Kirk (Member # 2832) on :
It's been said that the College was established since the general populace was seen as uneducated-- but I think that the average American knows a lot more now about politics than he/she did back in the 18th century. Another cheif complaint is the fact that by winning the largest states, one could win the election by having a small minority of the popular vote.
I guess this could be a justification to remove this system altogther, but the electoral college does have some benefits:
First, they wanted to prevent someone from becoming president if they were not suited for that capacity. If this was the case, the electors could cast votes for another canidate, and/or make it impossible them to get the necessary electoral votes required.
Obviously, this doesn't always work-- the 'faithless elector', who casts a ballot for a canidate other than the one that his/her state has chosen has been all but phased out. I can think of only one recent instance, in 2000, where a DC elector (Lett-Simmons?) cast a blank ballot to protest the district's congressional voting rights, which gave Al Gore 2 electoral votes instead of 3.
Second, canidates would be forced to campaign in states rather than toward specific groups of people. If I remember correctly, they were trying to prevent factionalism: farmers against businessmen (or the 18th century equivalent), rich against poor, majority opinion against minority opinions, etc. Since the goal was to win as many state-votes as possible, a canidate would find it beneficial to convince as many groups within a state as possible to vote for him. The goal was variety and compromise-- something that I find seems to have disappeared. :/
But rather than being divided along class lines, we now are divided into so-called "red" states and "blue" states. (So I have to agree with pooka in the sense that parties are part of the problem, part of the reason why I liked Barak Obama's speech.)
Because of this, I'm under the impression that a sort of composite system would be best-- on nationstates, I play a nation that has a provincial electoral system, but one has to win both the popular vote and the electoral vote to win. If not, it's thrown out to the legislature, in the same way it would be if no majority was found.
This is all coming from my apgov class last year, so you'll have to forgive me if I mixed something up .
But anyway. My point-oh-two.
--j_k
[edited] to add a paragraph that I forgot to put in
[ September 15, 2004, 12:06 AM: Message edited by: James Tiberius Kirk ]
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
![[Angst]](graemlins/angst.gif)
. ![[Wall Bash]](graemlins/wallbash.gif)