The concern of the smaller states was ameliorated because most delegates firmly believed that the Electoral College would rarely produce a President; that election would ultimately be thrown to the House of Representatives where the power of the small states was guaranteed because each state, regardless of size, would have one vote.

Direct election of the President by the people never received much consideration, probably for two reasons. First, direct election would not have safeguarded the power of the small states. Second, most delegates doubted the capacity of the people to evaluate talented and capable leaders beyond the borders of their own states.

First, direct election would not have safeguarded the power of the small states.

Second, most delegates doubted the capacity of the people to evaluate talented and capable leaders beyond the borders of their own states.

Question:
Should we keep our electoral college system or not?  Or should we change it?

Today, all states except Maine and Nebraska use this at-large, winner-take-all system.

Instant runoff voting allows for better voter choice and wider voter participation by accommodating multiple candidates in single seat races and assuring that a "spoiler"-effect will not result in undemocratic outcomes. Instant runoff voting allows all voters to vote for their favorite candidate without fear of helping elect their least favorite candidate, and it ensures that the winner enjoys true support from a majority of the voters.

The IRV works basically as follows:  Instead of just casting one vote for one candidate, voters rank the candidates: 1,2,3, etc. (hence, the motto, "it's as easy as 1-2-3.").  If no candidate receives a majority of the #1 votes, the candidate with the least total of #1 votes is eliminated. The second choice votes from these ballots are then transferred to the other candidates. The ballots are recounted, and candidates are eliminated in this fashion until 1 winner emerges with a majority of the vote.

snip (benefits)

*When there are more than 2 candidates, it ensures the winner has a majority.  Without IRV, the winner can win with less than 50% of the vote.  How do we really know they have a mandate?

*It will allow more candidates, including independents and third-parties, to get involved in a race, without being accused of "spoiling" the elections.  Even if your favorite candidate comes in last, at least IRV allows your next favorite candidate to be counted.  No more wasting your vote, and no more spoilers.

*It will decrease negative campaigning.  To win, candidates need to get some 2nd and 3rd place votes, as well as 1st place votes.  They'll be less likely to "go negative" if they need their opponent's voters, too.

*IRV saves money.  Some states and local elections hold runoffs weeks later to pick the winner.  IRV holds the runoff all in one election--saving money.

First, direct election would not have safeguarded the power of the small states.

Second, most delegates doubted the capacity of the people to evaluate talented and capable leaders beyond the borders of their own states.

Should we keep our electoral college system or not? Or should we change it?

Compare Wyoming to California. California's population is over 33 million, while Wyoming's is 480,000. Thus, California has 69 times more people than Wyoming. California has 54 Electoral College votes (since it has 52 congressmen and two senators), while Wyoming has three votes. In terms of the Electoral College, California has only 18 times as many votes as Wyoming. The Electoral College forces presidential candidates to appeal to voters in states with small populations.

We should scrap the EC in favor of one person, one vote. This will enfranchise all the people who vote the minority in any particular state, whether Rep, Demo or third party. I'm certain that this will lead to more political interest in people who have given up due to all the state delegates going for one or the other of the Big Two, and rarely for a third party.

A 1969 Maine law provides for this method, and similar legislation has been considered in several other states. Alternatively, the office of elector could be eliminated and the electoral votes of a state simply assigned to candidates on the basis of the popular vote each receives.

Former Senator Birch Bayh repeatedly introduced a constitutional amendment providing for direct election of the president and the vice president. Under the Bayh plan, candidates for president and vice president would be required to run together in each state and the District of Columbia, and voters would make their choices directly, without any intervening slate of electors. If the candidate team with the most votes received at least 40 percent of the nationwide popular vote, that pair would be declared elected; if no pair received that amount there would be a runoff election between the two top pairs.

I would love to see the electoral significantly altered in some way-either Bayh's proposal or the Maine solution would be adequate. We truly need to smack this 18th century bastion of elitism down.

....Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector. ....

The best part is that enacting Maine's system would not require a constitutional amendment.

Article II, Section 1:

(bold to stand out)

With this clause a state may put up a merit system to elect the president...
(i.e let the office find the man)
This can also let the enacting of IRV by district.
But this may make it easer for the selection of the president to be thrown to the House.

But I do not want direct elections; wich that there will be more of a chance of the two coasts squeezing us in the middle.

The best part is that enacting Maine's system would not require a constitutional amendment.

Should we keep our electoral college system or not? Or should we change it?

I think that the electoral college system is long outdated.  Let's examine some of the concerns of the original framers of the Constitution:



I don't see this one as a massive problem. In fact, I would think that if all the people are voting as one unit, then states become irrelevant in that sense. And doesn't the electoral college really take away the power of the small states? I mean, no candidate is really going to waste that much time on Wyoming with it's three electoral votes. The electoral college really seems to take away from the smaller states to me.

James Madison’s famous Federalist No. 10 makes clear that the Founders fashioned a republic, not a pure democracy. To be sure, they knew that the consent of the governed was the ultimate basis of government, but the Founders denied that such consent could be reduced to simple majority or plurality rule. In fact, nothing could be more alien to the spirit of American constitutionalism than equating democracy will the direct, unrefined will of the people.

Recall the ways our constitution puts limits on any unchecked power, including the arbitrary will of the people. Power at the national level is divided among the three branches, each reflecting a different constituency. Power is divided yet again between the national government and the states. Madison noted that these twofold divisions -- the separation of powers and federalism -- provided a “double security” for the rights of the people.

What about the democratic principle of one person, one vote? Isn’t that principle essential to our form of government? The Founders’ handiwork says otherwise. Neither the Senate, nor the Supreme Court, nor the president is elected on the basis of one person, one vote. That’s why a state like Montana, with 883,000 residents, gets the same number of Senators as California, with 33 million people. Consistency would require that if we abolish the Electoral College, we rid ourselves of the Senate as well. Are we ready to do that?

The filtering of the popular will through the Electoral College is an affirmation, rather than a betrayal, of the American republic. Doing away with the Electoral College would breach our fidelity to the spirit of the Constitution, a document expressly written to thwart the excesses of majoritarianism. Nonetheless, such fidelity will strike some as blind adherence to the past. For those skeptics, I would point out two other advantages the Electoral College offers.

First, we must keep in mind the likely effects of direct popular election of the president. We would probably see elections dominated by the most populous regions of the country or by several large metropolitan areas. In the 2000 election, for example, Vice President Gore could have put together a plurality or majority in the Northeast, parts of the Midwest, and California.

The victims in such elections would be those regions too sparsely populated to merit the attention of presidential candidates. Pure democrats would hardly regret that diminished status, but I wonder if a large and diverse nation should write off whole parts of its territory. We should keep in mind the regional conflicts that have plagued large and diverse nations like India, China, and Russia. The Electoral College is a good antidote to the poison of regionalism because it forces presidential candidates to seek support throughout the nation. By making sure no state will be left behind, it provides a measure of coherence to our nation.

Second, the Electoral College makes sure that the states count in presidential elections. As such, it is an important part of our federalist system -- a system worth preserving. Historically, federalism is central to our grand constitutional effort to restrain power, but even in our own time we have found that devolving power to the states leads to important policy innovations (welfare reform).

If the Founders had wished to create a pure democracy, they would have done so. Those who now wish to do away with the Electoral College are welcome to amend the Constitution, but if they succeed, they will be taking America further away from its roots as a constitutional republic.

That’s why a state like Montana, with 883,000 residents, gets the same number of Senators as California, with 33 million people. Consistency would require that if we abolish the Electoral College, we rid ourselves of the Senate as well. Are we ready to do that?

In fact, nothing could be more alien to the spirit of American constitutionalism than equating democracy will the direct, unrefined will of the people.

The filtering of the popular will through the Electoral College is an affirmation, rather than a betrayal, of the American republic. Doing away with the Electoral College would breach our fidelity to the spirit of the Constitution, a document expressly written to thwart the excesses of majoritarianism.

First, we must keep in mind the likely effects of direct popular election of the president. We would probably see elections dominated by the most populous regions of the country or by several large metropolitan areas. In the 2000 election, for example, Vice President Gore could have put together a plurality or majority in the Northeast, parts of the Midwest, and California.

Second, the Electoral College makes sure that the states count in presidential elections. As such, it is an important part of our federalist system -- a system worth preserving. Historically, federalism is central to our grand constitutional effort to restrain power, but even in our own time we have found that devolving power to the states leads to important policy innovations (welfare reform).

If the Founders had wished to create a pure democracy, they would have done so.

In addition the EC provides a firewall against nation-wide recounts.
(imagine the Florida fiasco nation-wide)

I'll admit Aquilla, that's the most valid argument for not doing away with the EC I've seen. Minus the 'small states voice' bit.

Again, show me where the fine states of North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana have a voice like that of Texas, and then we can talk.

As for the 'Pandora's Box' scenario, I think that is one that can be sealed with a slow transition, ensuring that there are methods in place, to deal with such issues.

I'd rather have that than a system where a small percentage of the country decides and election.

Adding a voice of pragmatism to this debate. I voted "No" in this poll for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that the Electoral College does give the smaller states something of a voice in a national election. Maybe some don't think that's terribly important, but I do. But, I also have a more practical reason and we need only look at the controversy surrounding Florida and the 2000 election. Take away the Electoral College and you can multiply that controversy by 50 or even more. In a close election like 2000, each party would be mining for votes all across the country. Precinct by precinct, a few hundred votes here, a few thousand there and so on and so on. Court challenges that could have tied the process up for years. With the Electoral College system you can at least minimize the controversy to just a few states, even in a close election. If you start opening the pure popular vote in a nation of hundreds of millions of potential voters, I fear you are really opening a Pandora's box.

No, of course not, there will still be a few areas that candidates will avoid; it will, however, enable more candidate exposure to people all over the country.

Can we agree on one thing first? The tradition of the "Winner Take All" (candidate that gets a majority in a state gets all electorial votes in that state) in the electorial college needs to go.

Let's implement the Maine-Nebraska system (two electorial votes state wide; the rest by congressional district) nation wide and see if it works before we attempt to scrap the electorial college.

The more Natapoff looked into the nitty-gritty of real elections, the more parallels he found with another American institution that stirs up wild passions in the populace. The same logic that governs our electoral system, he saw, also applies to many sports--which Americans do, intuitively, understand. In baseball’s World Series, for example, the team that scores the most runs overall is like a candidate who gets the most votes. But to become champion, that team must win the most games. In 1960, during a World Series as nail-bitingly close as that year’s presidential battle between Kennedy and Nixon, the New York Yankees, with the awesome slugging combination of Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, and Bill "Moose" Skowron, scored more than twice as many total runs as the Pittsburgh Pirates, 55 to 27. Yet the Yankees lost the series, four games to three. Even Natapoff, who grew up in the shadow of Yankee Stadium, conceded that Pittsburgh deserved to win. "Nobody walked away saying it was unfair," he says.

Runs must be grouped in a way that wins games, just as popular votes must be grouped in a way that wins states. The Yankees won three blowouts (16-3, 10-0, 12-0), but they couldn’t come up with the runs they needed in the other four games, which were close. "And that’s exactly how Cleveland lost the series of 1888," Natapoff continues. "Grover Cleveland. He lost the five largest states by a close margin, though he carried Texas, which was a thinly populated state then, by a large margin. So he scored more runs, but he lost the five biggies." And that was fair, too. In sports, we accept that a true champion should be more consistent than the 1960 Yankees. A champion should be able to win at least some of the tough, close contests by every means available--bunting, stealing, brilliant pitching, dazzling plays in the field--and not just smack home runs against second-best pitchers. A presidential candidate worthy of office, by the same logic, should have broad appeal across the whole nation, and not just play strongly on a single issue to isolated blocs of voters.

"Experts, scholars, deep thinkers could make errors on electoral reform," Natapoff decided, "but nine-year-olds could explain to a Martian why the Yankees lost in 1960, and why it was right. And both have the same underlying abstract principle."
. . . . .
Why worry how easily one vote can turn an election, so long as each voter has equal power? One person, one vote--that’s all the math anyone needs to know in a simple, direct election. Natapoff agrees that voters should have equal power. "The idea," he says, "is to give every voter the largest equal share of national voting power possible." Here’s a classic example of equal voting power: under a tyranny, everyone’s power is equal to zero. Clearly, equality alone is not enough. In a democracy, individuals become less vulnerable to tyranny as their voting power increases.

James Madison, chief architect of our nation’s electoral college, wanted to protect each citizen against the most insidious tyranny that arises in democracies: the massed power of fellow citizens banded together in a dominant bloc. As Madison explained in The Federalist Papers (Number X), "a well-constructed Union" must, above all else, "break and control the violence of faction," especially "the superior force of an . . . overbearing majority." In any democracy, a majority’s power threatens minorities. It threatens their rights, their property, and sometimes their lives.

A well-designed electoral system might include obstacles to thwart an overbearing majority. But direct, national voting has none. Under raw voting, a candidate has every incentive to woo only the largest bloc-- say, Serbs in Yugoslavia. If a Serb party wins national power, minorities have no prospect of throwing them out; 49 percent will never beat 51 percent. Knowing this, the majority can do as it pleases (lacking other effective checks and balances). But in a districted election, no one becomes president without winning a large number of districts, or "states"- -say, two of the following three: Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia. Candidates thus have an incentive to campaign for non-Serb votes in at least some of those states and to tone down extreme positions--in short, to make elections less risky events for the losers. The result, as George Wallace used to say, may often be a race without "a dime’s worth of difference" between two main candidates, which he viewed as a weakness but others view as a strength of our system.

The idea of the underlined part scares me!  This senario could allow a dictator to take over.

So even though districting doesn’t help in an ideal, dead-even contest, with voters acting the same all over the country, it does help, Natapoff saw, in a realistic, uneven contest. Sports fans, again, vaguely understand the underlying principle. In a championship series, the contest becomes more equal, and the underdog has a better chance, when a team has to win more games, not just score more points. Similarly, when contesting 50 states, the leading candidate has more ways to lose than when running in a large, raw national election--there are more ways for votes to cluster in harmless blowouts, just as there are more ways for runs or goals to cluster in the seven games of the World Series or the Stanley Cup play-offs. In a big, raw national contest, those clusters wouldn’t matter.

The degree to which districting helps, Natapoff found, depends on just how close a contest is. Take as an illustration our model nation of 135, divided into, say, three states of 45 citizens each. When the race is dead even, of course, no districting scheme helps: voting power starts off at 6.9 percent in a direct election versus 6.0 percent in a districted election. But when candidate A jumps ahead with a lead of 54.5 percent, individual voting power is roughly the same whether the nation uses districts or not. And as the contest becomes more lopsided, voting power shrinks faster in the direct-voting nation than it does in the districted nation. If candidate A grabs a 61.1 percent share of voter preference, voters in the districted nation have twice as much power as those in the direct-voting nation. If A’s share reaches 64.8 percent, voters in the districted nation have four times as much power, and so on. The advantage of districting over direct voting keeps growing quickly as the contest becomes more lopsided.
....
Ideally, too, no bloc should dominate any district. This consideration, by itself, probably makes the 50 states a grid that’s closer to ideal for electoral voting than, say, the 435 congressional districts. For example, in heavily black districts, no single white or black person’s vote would be likely to change the outcome, if blacks in that district tend to vote as a bloc. Each of those voters, black and white, would have more national power in a districting scheme more closely balanced between black and white. For this reason, Natapoff says, gerrymandering can be counterproductive even when undertaken with the intention of boosting some national minority’s power. The gerrymandered district might guarantee one seat in Congress to this minority, but those voters might actually wield more national bargaining power with no seat in Congress if representatives from, say, three separate districts viewed their votes as potentially swinging an election. Anyway, Natapoff says, the point of districting is to reduce the death grip of blocs on the outcome. "This is a nonpartisan proposition," he says. "The idea is to be sure all votes in a district have power." Ideally no single party, race, ethnic group, or other bloc, nationally large or nationally small, will dominate any of the districts-- which for now happen to be the 50 states plus Washington, D.C.

Natapoff concedes that the Madisonian system does contain within it one small, unavoidable paradox. Every once in a while, if we use districting to jack up individual voting power, we’ll have an electoral "anomaly"--a loser like Harrison will nudge out a slightly more popular Cleveland. He sees those anomalies, as well as the more frequent close calls, not as defects but as signs that the system is working. It is protecting individual voting power by preserving the threat that small numbers of votes in this or that district can turn the election. "We were blinded by its minor vices," he says. "All that happens is someone with fewer votes gets elected," temporarily. What doesn’t happen may be far more important. In 1888, victorious Republicans didn’t celebrate by jailing or killing Democrats, and Democrats didn’t find Harrison so intolerable that they took up arms. Cleveland came back to win four years later, beating Harrison under the same rules as before. The republic survived.

One other benefit attributed by Natapoff to our electoral college seems almost aesthetic. As usual, it’s easier to appreciate in sports. In 1960, under simpler rules, the Yankees might have been champions. They might have won, for instance, if there were no World Series but only the scheduled 154-game season, with one large baseball nation of 16 teams instead of two separate leagues. The team winning the most games all year long would simply pick up its prize in October. Instead, here is what happened. By the ninth inning in game seven of the series, the Yankees and Pirates had fought to a standstill--the ultimate deadlock. Each team had won three games. The Yankees had led throughout much of game seven, but Pittsburgh astonished everyone by scoring five runs in the eighth inning, after a Yankee fielding error, to go ahead 9-7. They couldn’t, of course, hold their lead. The Yankees answered with two more runs in the top of the ninth to tie the score at 9-9.

Then, in the bottom of the ninth, Bill Mazeroski, an average hitter without much power, stepped to the plate for Pittsburgh. He seemed a mere placeholder--until his long fly ball just cleared the left-field wall. Rounding second base, halfway home, Mazeroski was leaping for joy, and Pittsburgh fans were pouring from their seats, racing to meet him at the plate. The Yankees had finally toppled. There they were, ahead in the polls, piling up votes like nobody’s business, until one last swing of one player’s bat turned the whole season around. "Everybody regarded it as one of the most glorious World Series ever," Natapoff says. "To do it any other way would totally destroy the degree of competition and excitement that’s essential to all sports."

Ideally no single party, race, ethnic group, or other bloc, nationally large or nationally small, will dominate any of the districts-- which for now happen to be the 50 states plus Washington, D.C.

The idea of the underlined part scares me! This senario could allow a dictator to take over.

One thing I remember about the Florida fiasco, is that to continue the recount would have disobeyed Florida law that the votes had to be certified on a certain day. What about the rule of law?????

I think getting rid of the electoral college is a very bad idea. As lederuvdapac said, a small number of cities (when compared to the rest of the United States) would be in control. Without giving the lesser populated states more of an equal say, the issues important to them would go unnoticed. For example, if almost all the votes were in the big cities of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, etc, why would anybody give a crap about the farming industry?

No, the popular vote is a ridiculous way to elect a president. One must look no further than Canada to see why. The cities dominate the country which is why the country is now a socialist state.
This is the true great divide of this country...rural v. urban. The rural people learn self-reliance and want less gov't interference in their lives. The more urban areas want the gov't to keep handing out the checks....cuz they rely totally on the government.

No, the popular vote is a ridiculous way to elect a president. One must look no further than Canada to see why. The cities dominate the country which is why the country is now a socialist state.

I think in America, the electoral college is a good and a valuable system. It would not make sense for a federal republic of the size and nature of the USA to elect a President on simple majority voting.

Indeed, I think that the EU could learn a thing or two from the USA in this regard (in selecting the EU commissioners, perhaps).

However, I think it could be improved further by obliging electors to reflect their state's views by voting roughly in proportion to the popular vote in their state, as happened in Maine this time around (and the other state which I've forgotten at the moment. Sorry  .)

No, the Electoral College should stay.  However, as Crashfourit said, the rest of the country should follow Maine and Nebraska's lead and make the electoral votes more represenatative of it's people.  States should divide their electoral votes based on population within themselves, but don't dump the whole system.

CP 

"Let me put it to you this way: I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it,"

<snip>

After a long campaign, he said, "there is a feeling that the people have spoken and embraced your point of view, and that's what I intend to tell the Congress."

Source: Bush vows to use 'political capital', a Friday, November 5, 2004 reprint in the Seattle Intelligencer of a story by Richard W. Stevenson of  THE NEW YORK TIMES.

Franklin County's unofficial results had Bush receiving 4,258 votes to Democrat John Kerry's 260 votes in a precinct in Gahanna. Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct.

Ohio? Voting machine error gives Bush 3,893 extra votes in Ohio is a major story all of a sudden.

That's enough of an error that I think the nation has a right to call for a recount of Ohio's votes, and the 20 Electoral College Votes that were awarded to GWB.

Ok, so on to the topic at hand. The electoral college system was originally put in place to ensure that the fledling democracy that the founding fathers were toying with could be moderated in cases of dangerous voting patterns. The electors, while selected by the people, could in theory vote contrary to their electorate's wishes. In fact, they can still do just that. Now, what purpose do they serve at present? Well you could argue that they protect rural voters from domination by the city, but in truth they do no such thing. Florida has a very strong urban presence, yet it voted for Bush. At the same time California, which is predominantly urban, voted for Kerry, and has voted Democrat for a while; ignoring the wishes of that State's rural population.