If you think it matters...

[Tommycat]

The electoral college is the house and senate Nothing more. So it falls back to which party is in charge in office at that moment as to who wins.

Negative. The number of electoral college members are determined by the number of representatives and senators, but the actual college members are different people.

[machievelli]

You appear to be confirming my perspective. It didn't happen because the modern electoral college doesn't operate the way you are suggesting that it does. The electoral college votes based on the popular vote of their constituencies. Hence why the scenario above didn't happen and why it wasn't suggested.

 

The election came down to Florida and Florida was undecided.

 

The parties did not want to risk what happened again, that is why it did not go to the electoral college. Read the Wikipedia article about how the college operates if you don't believe me.

 

As for Florida, the difference when they called for a recount was one half of one percent, but the way it was done organized and blocked were all based on party politics.

 

The Florida Supreme Court has 15 members, fourteen dem one independant, so of course they agreed to the recount, and allowed the democrats to set the method, using only four counties. The fact that those four are the main democratic strongholds is of course incidental.

 

When the necessary votes did not appear, the Florida Supreme court decided to set aside Florida law in aid of the party. Under Florida ELection Law, a chad counts as a vote only if it is hanging by one corner. They changed it to the RUles in Texas where if two corners are loose it counts. At that point the Federal Supreme Court rescinded the Florida decision.

 

Then the Florida court again ordered they could recount, this time using the California 'Dimpled Chad' ruling. Again the Federal Court stopped the recount.

 

All of those decisions were politicall motivated except for the first Federal Supreme court decision, because they stated in their decision you cannot change a state law to match another state's for your own convenience.

[machievelli]

Negative. The number of electoral college members are determined by the number of representatives and senators, but the actual college members are different people.

 

'Should no candidate for President win a majority of the electoral votes, the choice is referred to the House of Representatives'

 

Quote from the wikipedia. If I need the Encyclopedia Brittanica, I'll get it.

 

That is 270 electoral votes. The primary reason the parties don't want competition

[Web Rider]

No matter how you reformat the system, the basic concept is that you need a majority of the voters to win. It doesn't matter if there are electoral votes in the middle or anything else.

 

Candidates will go where the population is, New York, Florida, California, ect... Regardless of the number of electoral votes, regardless of the sway they have, but simply for the sheer number of people in those locations.

 

South Dakota, with a population of only a fraction more than Kern County in California(750k ish, to 700kish), is unimportant. If you with the population in California, you've made up for what you lost in SD in spades.

 

Maybe you could solve this with a proportional representation system and allow people to vote for several people, but that's STILL going to leave bigger locations with more sway than smaller locations.

 

The whole reason our two-house system was developed to give BIG states more say because there are more people there. Why should Wyoming have an equal say as California, clearly they are not equal states.

[Tommycat]

The parties did not want to risk what happened again, that is why it did not go to the electoral college. Read the Wikipedia article about how the college operates if you don't believe me.

So Sayeth Wiki:

Some nations with complex regional electorates elect a head of state by means of an electoral college rather than a direct popular election. The United States is the only current example of an indirectly elected executive president, with an electoral college comprising electors representing the 50 states and one federal district. Each state has a number of electors equal to its total Congressional representation (in both houses), with the non-state District of Columbia receiving three electors and other non-state territories having no electors. The electors generally cast their votes for the winner of the popular vote in their respective states, but are not required by law to do so.

 

[Achilles]

The electoral college is the house and senate Nothing more.

'Should no candidate for President win a majority of the electoral votes, the choice is referred to the House of Representatives'

Cookies for the first person that spots the contradiction.

 

Also, machievelli, please tone it down with the ninja edits.

[machievelli]

No matter how you reformat the system, the basic concept is that you need a majority of the voters to win. It doesn't matter if there are electoral votes in the middle or anything else.

 

Candidates will go where the population is, New York, Florida, California, ect... Regardless of the number of electoral votes, regardless of the sway they have, but simply for the sheer number of people in those locations.

 

South Dakota, with a population of only a fraction more than Kern County in California(750k ish, to 700kish), is unimportant. If you with the population in California, you've made up for what you lost in SD in spades.

 

Maybe you could solve this with a proportional representation system and allow people to vote for several people, but that's STILL going to leave bigger locations with more sway than smaller locations.

 

The whole reason our two-house system was developed to give BIG states more say because there are more people there. Why should Wyoming have an equal say as California, clearly they are not equal states.

 

I agree the majority must rule, but the idea that 43 percdent of Californians are ignored because of the electoral college rules bothers me. I did not vote for GOreor Kerry yet according to the electoral college I did.

[machievelli]

Cookies for the first person that spots the contradiction.

 

Also, machievelli, please tone it down with the ninja edits.

Sorry, I wrote it and needed to edit. sorry.

 

I choose Macadamia nut. The electoral colllege is counted as another body, only falling to the congress when there is no clear majority.

 

My bad

[Achilles]

I agree the majority must rule, but the idea that 43 percdent of Californians are ignored because of the electoral college rules bothers me. I did not vote for GOreor Kerry yet according to the electoral college I did.

Translation: I agree with majority rule but I don't agree with majority rule because majority rule means that the minority candidate (i.e. the guy I voted for) doesn't win.

 

Hint: that is majority rule.

 

Sorry, I wrote it and needed to edit. sorry.

 

I choose Macadamia nut. The electoral colllege is counted as another body, only falling to the congress when there is no clear majority.

 

My bad

The contradiction is that you first said that the House was electoral college and then you said that the vote went to the House if a majority could not be reached. Unless you're arguing that the House essentially gets to vote twice, there is a problem with one of these statements.

 

And my quick, one sentence response to your lengthy post about Florida, which entirely missed the point: Neither party had a clear majority because the popular vote was undetermined and therefore the electoral votes could not be assigned.

[machievelli]

Translation: I agree with majority rule but I don't agree with majority rule because majority rule means that the minority candidate (i.e. the guy I voted for) doesn't win.

 

Hint: that is majority rule.

 

The contradiction is that you first said that the House was electoral college and then you said that the vote went to the House if a majority could not be reached. Unless you're arguing that the House essentially gets to vote twice, there is a problem with one of these statements.

 

And my quick, one sentence response to your lengthy post about Florida, which entirely missed the point: Neither party had a clear majority because the popular vote was undetermined and therefore the electoral votes could not be assigned.

 

Actually as a test for myself, I did the figures after the federal election of 200 I broke down the electoral votes as I suggested. It turned out that Bush would have won by exactly one vote. A lote better than the 4 of the normal one. That is what I want, proper representation.

[Achilles]

There are 538 of them and you feel better losing by 1 point than 4.

 

I really think you should stop while you're ahead.

 

EDIT: btw, ET Warrior and I made (what I feel are) some sound arguments against changing the current system way back in post 45 and 46. Would you mind taking a stab and addressing those in one of your next posts? I think we've allowed ourselves to get distracted by some minutiae whereas getting back to the "meat and potatoes" might allow us to cover more ground. Thanks.

[EnderWiggin]

I don't know about Kansas, but Nebraska does, I am pretty sure 1 of the Nebraska electoral votes is going to Obama.

 

The other one is Maine

 

_EW_

[Achilles]

^^^^

 

Ah yes. Thanks to you and ET Warrior for the Kansas/Nebraska correction. I was trying to visualize the electoral map I saw and was one state off

[Jae Onasi]

Also, machievelli, please tone it down with the ninja edits.

Just to clarify, only admins have the ability to make edits that won't show a 'last edited by:' notation, and machievelli is not an admin, and therefore does not have that ability. If there's no edit note at the bottom of his posts, he hasn't changed them. However, it would make it a lot easier to follow, machievelli, if when you made a change you made a little note on what you changed (e.g. 'fixed grammar/spelling', or 'clarified a point') so the rest of us can keep up. Thanks.

[Achilles]

That has nothing to do with what I was asking, but thank you for the reminder.

[ET Warrior]

I agree the majority must rule, but the idea that 43 percdent of Californians are ignored because of the electoral college rules bothers me. I did not vote for GOreor Kerry yet according to the electoral college I did.

And this year 46% of Americans did not vote for Barack Obama but according to the results of the election they did.

[Web Rider]

I agree the majority must rule, but the idea that 43 percdent of Californians are ignored because of the electoral college rules bothers me. I did not vote for GOreor Kerry yet according to the electoral college I did.

 

At the same time, those 43% ignored are often made up by ignoring others in other states. Colorado, for example, which is very 50/50, often makes up partly by going republican.

 

There's a balancing effect here, and no, I don't believe in complete majority rule, just because 51% of the people want something does not mean it's a good thing to have.

[Det. Bart Lasiter]

 

Just to clarify, only admins have the ability to make edits that won't show a 'last edited by:' notation, and machievelli is not an admin, and therefore does not have that ability. If there's no edit note at the bottom of his posts, he hasn't changed them. However, it would make it a lot easier to follow, machievelli, if when you made a change you made a little note on what you changed (e.g. 'fixed grammar/spelling', or 'clarified a point') so the rest of us can keep up. Thanks.

if you edit your post within a certain amount of time it won't show that it's been edited.

 

This is true--there's a 10 minute window. I forgot about that. --Jae

[Q]

Shush! You're not supposed to tell anybody that. I take advantage of it all the time.

[Achilles]

There's a balancing effect here, and no, I don't believe in complete majority rule, just because 51% of the people want something does not mean it's a good thing to have.

Another great argument against election by popular vote.

[Samuel Dravis]

The smallest amount of electoral votes a state has is 3. Washington D.C. has as many electoral votes as the smallest state does.

 

As it stands with Texas' winner-takes-all rule:

 

1. I was not represented at all in the state's 34 electoral votes, which means my vote did not affect the presidential election whatsoever;

 

2. My state was mostly ignored during the campaign.

 

What I would like is the assignment of electoral voters by percentage of the popular vote here. If Obama got 43.72% of the Texas vote, then he should get ~15 of the electoral voters, and Barr, who got .70%, should get ~2.

 

What this would do is force candidates to spend time in states that are generally considered to be strongly Republican or Democrat in order to win enough of the electoral vote. It does not remove the electoral college's function on the national level, but it does provide better representation to the people within the state. Although people will still fall through the cracks if they have a very small percentage of votes, it would be better than the winner takes all system. That system literally ignores millions of votes - in this case 3,577,562 plus - and is far too coarse to be called a representative system except in the loosest possible sense.

[Achilles]

Post

 

*shrugs*

 

FWIW, I live in AZ (McCain!!!) and I still voted for Obama.

 

P.S. Look at how many "red" states went "blue" this election. The reality is that all states are in constant flux.

 

EDIT: P.P.S. I addressed your other arguments in post 45.

[Samuel Dravis]

I did vote for the very reason that the video proposed.

 

Still, that doesn't change the fact of what I said in my previous post. I was not represented when I could have easily been. Why not? Because that's the way it is. I am not happy with the status quo on this subject.

[Achilles]

Neither was I. And neither was I in the 2004 election. Majority rule is majority rule regardless of how you choose to divvy up the votes. There will always be at least one group that does not get the candidate they want in office.

[Samuel Dravis]

Don't get me wrong. I'm not worried about whether or not a single person gets elected to office. However, I am annoyed that the Texas electoral votes which are supposed to represent Texas nationally do not actually represent Texans.