I stumbled across an interesting piece in the USA Today. According to a Gallop poll, 62% of Americans want to get rid of the electoral college, including a majority of Republicans. What do you think?
Originally, the President was decided by vote of the members of the US Senate. This was later scrapped and replaced by our Founders with the Electoral College. The idea was to allow voters to choose between 2 sets of electors, and the number of electors is based upon the total number of representatives each state has, both in the House and Senate.
The idea was to try to prevent the most populous states from deciding everything, and giving smaller less populous states more say in the process then they would otherwise have. However, as our nation has grown, this means that the most populous states are not getting anywhere close as much representation in the electoral college than they deserve. For instance, California has 55 electoral college votes, a population of 37,253,956. North Dakota has 3 electoral college votes, and a population of 672,591. This means that each electoral college vote in North Dakota represents 224,197 people while in California each electoral college vote represents 667,344, nearly 3 times as many people. I hardly see this as democratic.
Yet, the electoral college has failed to prevent what it was intended to prevent. While it's certainly true Presidential candidates don't spend all their time campaigning in California, New York, and Texas, they do spend almost all their time campaigning in a few select swing states like Florida and Ohio.
I don't think the values and the political positions of Floridians should be any more important than any other American living in any other state. I also don't think Californians and New Yorkers should determine the outcome of Presidential elections.
What to do about this, I don't know, but I know the Electoral College is not the answer. What say you?
I think you arrived at the wrong conclusion regarding Ohio and Florida as places where politicians spend a lot of time. Actually, they do that because by and large those two States and a few others seem to be the only place where voters actually pay much attention to what they say and then vote accordingly. Most States's voters don't give a shit what they say and who they are.... they only care about the label attached to them and then like robots, they pull the switch for repub, or dem.. just like somebody told them to do.
I think what you are referring to is the rule that it takes 60 Senators to break a filibuster. But this is just a Senate Rule, and not in the Constitution. The Senate could change it, or eliminate the filibuster completely.
I was not referring to the filibuster rule, which was put in place long after the Framers were dead and buried. I am referring to the Framers' conscious choice to give small states an equal representation in the Senate with large states as a way of avoiding a tyranny of the majority. This was actually cited by them as a big reason for doing this.
Those chosen to cast their votes in the Electoral College are not bound by the results of the election. They are free to cast a ballot for anyone they wish. This rarely happens because the parties choose electors from their most loyal members. But it has happened.
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