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Do you approve or reject an amendment to end the Electoral College? (Poll Closed)

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Total Votes: 2,094
38 Comments

  • ben - 11 years ago

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wC42HgLA4k&feature=youtube_gdata_player

  • Benjamin Camacho - 11 years ago

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wC42HgLA4k&feature=youtube_gdata_player

    If y'all watch this, you'll understand a little more about the flaws of the electoral college.

  • Vincent Inman - 11 years ago

    Modern day Americans are simply too stupid to understand the brilliance of the Electoral College or even it's purpose.

  • HenryC - 11 years ago

    The framers wish the states to play a role in the election, allowing the different states to vary the methods of choosing electors. Decentralization of power is a good thing, and 1% should not necessary win an election if it hurts the majority of states.

  • Kate - 11 years ago

    The framers of the constitution had days of horseback riding to get the votes from all the states delivered. I think we can all agree times have changed enough to stop using a system designed for the speed of a horse

  • Mike D - 11 years ago

    The framers knew exactly what they were doing and to undo their work in this manner would be a mistake. It would allow the large states to run rough-shod over the small ones. That might seem counter-intuitive, but it's true. It's the same principle that is behind our bi-cameral legislative system where one body gives more power to large states (the House) and the other (the Senate) equal representation to each state. It is a brilliant compromise. Similarly, the electoral vote equals each state's Congressional representation; each state has two votes which matches the number of Senators they send to Washington and an electoral vote for each member they have in the House.

    When a president is elected despite not winning the popular vote, that is a sign that the system works, not that it doesn't.

  • Dave - 11 years ago

    Agree with all the comments about making each state proportional. May help that I was born in Maine and now live in Nebraska. Maybe the candidates would spend more time in states where they could gain a few delegates instead of knowing the whole state was a lost cause. And people might think their votes counted for more if their district was in play. Need to keep the focus somewhat local, since large parts of the electorate are pretty much clueless on major national / international issues.

  • Don Hartman - 11 years ago

    There is a lot of ignorance about our form of government by 73% of the people voting in this poll. The electoral college exists for two reasons. 1) To protect the minority from the majority, and 2) to protect smaller, less populated states from the larger, more urban states.

    These reasons still exist. However, I would support a change in the electoral college by making each state's delegates proportional to the votes in that state. As it stands now, with winner take all, 45% of the voters in AZ have no voice, 40% of CA voters have no choice, and in OH, 83 of 88 counties voted one way, and had no voice.

  • Bldob - 11 years ago

    The Senate is far less representative than the electoral college.

  • Randy - 11 years ago

    The framers of our constitution did a damn good job setting up this country and every time we stray from what they set up we suffer over time. The only change I would make is to give congressional legislation a shelf life, whereby federal laws expire after a certain time and must be reratified every decade by a national referendum subject to electoral college rules just like the presidency. To exist as a nation state instead of an amalgamation of neighborhoods, the electoral college is necessary to preserve stability.

  • violet atkins - 11 years ago

    It is time that the citizens elect the president and vice president. Electoral College does not agree with the time we are living in.

  • Roy Brooks - 11 years ago

    Get rid of the college, use the popular vote and at the same time vote in a one term system. Two terms are two long as politicians lose their integrity, honesty and common sense. Being in congress too long
    and the job becomes all about them and the people are forgotten.

  • Brock - 11 years ago

    An amendment to the constitution is not necessary to elect the president by popular vote. It is up to the states how they select their electors. States would simply have to change state law to elect electors by national popular vote rather than state wide vote. Similar bills have already been passed by some states and would take effect once enought states enact such laws to elect a majority of electors (the 50%+1 need to be elected).

  • William Wagner - 11 years ago

    Make it like Maine and Nebraska. Each state gets two statewide electoral votes representing the Senators' districts, and each House district gets one electoral vote. This plan gets rid of the winner take all formula of the big states and more closely preserves the principle of one person, one vote. It makes each part of the country equally important. It would change campaign strategy, making each close electoral district important. The 2000 debacle in Florida wouldn't be repeated. Only districts with close results would get recounted and close statewide results would only be for two votes at most, hopefully eliminating some of the fraud.

  • Dixie - 11 years ago

    the popular vote for the president is essential now that partisan politics plays a big role in how states allocate the electoral votes. In most states the popular vote winner gets all the electoral votes but some have or have proposed electoral votes be awarded to the candidate who wins in gerrymandered congressional districts. The popular vote is the only reasonable method to keep partisan politics in the States from usurping the will of the people.

  • Patrick Bauer - 11 years ago

    The electoral college still serves a vital function. When the nation is divided evenly but the distribution of that division is not; then the College moderates the partisanship that is created (like it is right now in the US). It prevent secessionism.

    And while we've had a two party system so far; there's nothing to prevent the development of a third party. Should that happen the EC would be far superior to having a non-plurality President.

  • Robert Jansen - 11 years ago

    The historical reasons for the existence of the electoral college, including the long delays in the dissemination of news and documents that existed before industrialization beginning in the 1850's, then analogue electronics, television and eventually digital electronics, have long been rendered irrelevant. One of the maxims of jurisprudence is relevant: when the reason of a rule ceases, so should the rule itself (California Civil Code 3510). It's high time that our system of representative democracy reflected the present state of affairs.

    The counter argument has historical roots as well: one of the reasons for the Electoral College was to prevent an uninformed (and, implicitly, uneducated and ignorant) electorate from electing an unfit candidate by interposing the judgement of a (supposedly) better educated and informed representative to act in his stead (note that at the time of ratification, only white, male freeholders were possessed of the franchise). Of course, modernly this argument cuts both ways.

  • shylok - 11 years ago

    The electoral college was beneficial during the days of the pony express, we are a little past that...I think it's an insult to win the popular vote and not win the election..That is not democracy..get rid of the electoral college and its secret vote, its a joke..Let the states take care of state issues and let the country vote as a whole.

  • Ivan Miller - 11 years ago

    In presidential elections I've never felt my vote truly counted, more than once the elected president hasn't carried the popular vote. This must end!

  • ED HOMER - 11 years ago

    With the fact that most voters today live at home with mom and dad and think that hip-hop and drugs are their only salvation I find it hard to believe what is best..I feel our country is ran by drug lords and those with money,It will always be the person with what makes Americans go ooohhh that will get what they want,The votes are bought and payed for by promises to stoned voters who want more,Illegals who want more,Minorities who want more,But it is not determined by those who have to live in the middle of their decisions..At this point I could care less...

  • Skip Hill - 11 years ago

    In many states your vote does not count if the other party is in the majority. Also, depending on the population of your state not all votes count the same. An election vote in Wyoming with 3 electoral votes has more impact than the same election vote in New York with 45 electoral votes. Per capita there is a discrepancy. Let's elect our national leaders based upon one man, one vote, and all count the same regardless of which state the votes are cast. Also, this gives an opportunity to third party candidates that now have no chance. Big money controls the elections and the rest of us have little to say.

  • clara nease - 11 years ago

    The electoral is bought and paid for by those doing the work on a one world system which will be the down fall of our wonderful country, as many faults as she has America is still a wonderful country. Perhaps the more the public is involved the more we can get back to the constitution. The way it is only the rich have their way because they pay for it.

  • Roger S. Linson - 11 years ago

    The gentlemen which originally wrote our constitution believed that those who could not read or write should not determine who ran this country. Subsequently, they set up the electoral college supposedly so that literate citizens could determine our presidents. In reality it limited the field to only one or two political parties and those parties' candidates being selected by the rich.

    Were the electoral college to be disbanded, we would still be left with only two powerful political parties and those parties will still be ran by the rich. I for one see no advantage. Even were we to eliminate the political parties as well as the electoral college poor people could not afford to compete in the political process. Politics will continue to be ran by the rich regardless of how the process evolves.

  • gilles M - 11 years ago

    Requesting elected official to have one term is not addressing the complexity of the job.
    To be effective leader, people running for office should have a required set of knowledge about how the internal mechanism of our government and voting .
    They should have a salary based on a formula based on the deficiency of our society, such as x time minimum wages, insurance coverage equal to the lowest coverage, vacations as defined by the lowest state law ....

  • Paul W - 11 years ago

    Reduce headcount to one Senator and one Representative per state. Seat the House and Senate alphabetically rather than in party blocks.

    Limit service to one term per position. Holding government office is a privilege, not a profession.

  • Endoxa52 - 11 years ago

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2013/09/08/100-years-after-woodrow-wilson-mark-levin-pens-a-brilliant-response/

  • Randy - 11 years ago

    How would political influence and power be improved by the elimination? Under the current system influence and power is centralized enough to allow a decisive and obvious victor while at the same time preserving the value of small states to be able to influence the outcome. The strength of the constitution is not that it allows majority opinion to rule but that it preserves the ability of minority opinion to influence that rule. Compare the attempt that the Muslim Brotherhood had at creating a system of governance. The system they created and continue to agitate for is essentially the bully method known as "my way or the highway." Differences in opinion, belief, custom, or culture were not desired or tolerated to be able to influence any issue that the brotherhood had stuck its finger in. The problem with the parliamentary method is that absent overriding majority opinion the victor must incorporate ideological rivals within itself in order to govern. This gives far to much power and influence to minority views that would otherwise be considered questionable at best.

  • Old School - 11 years ago

    A pure democracy can admit no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will be felt by a majority, and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party. Hence it is, that democracies have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. - James Madison, Federalist Paper #10

  • R Morrison - 11 years ago

    We go around the world preaching democracy to everyone, yet on at four occasions the electoral college has overruled the vote of the people and put the loser in the White House. The most recent is the "election" of Geo W Bush, who lost by half a million votes to Al Gore.

    John Quincy Adams who lost by 44,804 votes to Andrew Jackson in 1824
    Rutherford B. Hayes who lost by 264,292 votes to Samuel J. Tilden in 1876
    Benjamin Harrison who lost by 95,713 votes to Grover Cleveland in 1888
    George W. Bush who lost by 543,816 votes to Al Gore in the 2000 election

    The word "democracy" (small d) is supposed to mean "rule of the people." Every American's vote should have equal elective power for the national offices of Pres and VP. The Electoral College may have made some sense in the late 1700s, before fast transportation and communications, but it makes no sense today, if we are to be a truly democratic nation.

    The other major flaw of our system is the Senate, which is patterned after the House of Lords (heredity land estate owners in England; a purely "aristocratic" institution). A voter in Wyoming has about 55 times the representational power as a voter in California. Beyond that serious twisting of the "one person one vote" principle, then the Senate itself requires 60 votes for most matters, further abusing the democratic principle. If you take the 25 lowest population states, their combined population is about 50 million people, or about 16% of the national total (currently estimated between 308 and 314 million.) Yet they elect half of the Senators. Combine that with the 60 vote rule in the Senate, and you have a perfect formula for defacto control by a small voting minority and complete subversion of the democratic principle.

    If the US is ever to become a truly democratic nation, we must abolish the Electoral College, replace it with the direct popular vote, and abolish both the Senate and the House and replace them with a single chamber legislature with strictly proportional representation based on state populations and staggered terms of 4 years each. Until we do these things, we have absolutely no right to claim that the USA is a democratic nation.

  • jim - 11 years ago

    The college system is and always has been ridiculous. In this system many states need not even bother voting for president as their vote does not matter. It should always be a majority vote, that way every vote counts. As it stands it is pointless for many states.

  • James Eldridge - 11 years ago

    The electoral college is arcane. It is also successful - most of the time - in that it assures that a winner is chosen. Lincoln never would have been elected without it, as one outstanding example. It has served the nation well. Lets' keep it intact.

  • Walter Kirk - 11 years ago

    The electoral college should be retained however it should vote by congressional district not by the current winner take all state system. This would eliminate the excessive influence of a few urban areas. The Vice President should be elected separately not as a team with the President.

  • LA Law - 11 years ago

    I think we should eliminate the states and just be one big democracy, majority rules. The top 100 senatorial candidates get those jobs and the top
    435 representatives get those jobs. The entire country votes enmass. A true democracy. The states can remain for state matters. But all federal matters will be done this way.

  • Tom Bingamen - 11 years ago

    I don't want CA and NY sending more voters to the polls so they can have a bigger voice. The state delegates should continue to elect the president.

  • satelliter - 11 years ago

    Our form of government has served us well since it's inception. If it ain't broke, don't fix it!!! Our system is fine as is, it's the crooks, corrupt government officials, fraud and cheating that's the problem. The system doesn't need changing, it's the politicians that need changing.

  • steve s - 11 years ago

    Although there might could be adjustments, simply eliminating the electoral college would be stupid. The states would be useless except as names on a map. Candidates would totally ignore small states and visit only the large metro areas. These areas would also get all of the promises for money. Those people who work hard and supply the money would also get Ignored. More of the same only worse.

    A better idea would be to bring back in the setup where senators are elected by state legislatures. That way, winning candidates would not always be the ones who sell out for support of large banks and corporate entities. It's not perfect, but state legislatures will fight for issues of local importance and not send the guy with the nicest hair and whitest teeth. When they don't vote right, they drop them.

  • John Carlberg - 11 years ago

    As founded, the United States was to be a union of sovereign states. Direct election of the President and Vice-President greatly reduces the importance of the states, and might well render state governments totally irrelevant. Campaigning would boil down to media buys in the top 100 markets, and branding would even more completely replace issues. I also agree that the states need to clean up election procedures and voter rolls.

  • leonard price - 11 years ago

    also take all the dead peoples names off the voting papers

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