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Question: The Electoral College

Bamaro

Bamaro

TideFans Legend
Oct 19, 2001
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Jacksonville, Md USA
The following is a proposal that would keep the EC (so no constitutional amendment needed) but the candidate who wins the most popular votes is elected president

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) is an agreement among a group of U.S. states and the District of Columbia to award all their respective electoral votes to whichever presidential candidate wins the overall popular vote in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The compact is designed to ensure that the candidate who wins the most popular votes is elected president, and it will come into effect only when it will guarantee that outcome.

As of 2016, it has been adopted by ten states and the District of Columbia, whose 165 combined electoral votes represent 30.7% of the total Electoral College vote, and 61.1% of the 270 votes needed for it to have legal force.
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Sounds like a good idea to me. What say you?
 
I am reluctant to change. But on the other hand, Hillary won the popular vote by some 2 million. Might be a good idea?
 
Be careful what you wish for. Democrats are benefitting from the fact that it's much easier to vote in urban areas. Who is to say that the people in red states who see it as a lock, might now actually have a reason to go vote.
 
I suggest only taxpayers and retirees get to vote. If you are currently on government assistance such as welfare, housing, food stamps or benefiting from health care susidies, you are not allowed to vote.
 
Displaced Bama Fan said:
I suggest only taxpayers and retirees get to vote. If you are currently on government assistance such as welfare, housing, food stamps or benefiting from health care susidies, you are not allowed to vote.
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How bout if you legally avoid paying taxes? That would leave me and Trump out. I assume you mean income tax rather than the host of other taxes welfare/entitlement leeches pay? How bout if you get a healthcare subsidy from your employer? I feel like 1986 asking all theses questions!:)
 
I posted this in "The Donald Wins" thread. It discusses this pact.

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/11/12/four-theses-on-the-electoral-college/

A marginally more realistic path to reform is the “National Popular Vote Interstate Compact,” an agreement between states to allocate all of their electors to whichever candidate wins a plurality of the national popular vote. Thus far, this Constitutional workaround has been approved by ten deep blue states and Washington, D.C., which together control 165 electoral votes. Once states controlling 270 electoral votes sign the compact, it is theoretically put in place, and whoever wins the popular vote will automatically also win an electoral majority. The first problem with this scheme is that, as Nate Silver has shown, the creators of the compact have already scored the easy victories in high electoral vote states like California and New York. It will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for them to reach the 270 electoral vote threshold needed to activate the compact.

And even if the compact were activated, as the law professor William G. Ross has argued, it might not survive constitutional scrutiny. For one thing, the Constitution requires congressional approval for any interstate compact that infringes on federal power or the power of other states. While the advocates of the NPVIC claim this compact would be exempt from this command, it would certainly be challenged, meaning that unless Congress approved the scheme, the election outcome would likely be decided by the United States Supreme Court the next time the electoral and popular votes are split (hardly a more “democratic” outcome). Finally, there is no enforcement mechanism for the compact, meaning that individual state governments could pull out of it as soon as it became clear that it no longer served their partisan interest in a given election. They could even pull out after the votes were counted and before the electors were allocated. This will likely be fatal to the whole project.
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The same reasons for the electoral college being instituted still exist today. That one or two populous states can dictate to the smaller states how they should live. We condemn bullying in our lives but want it in our government? Uhh no ! We are the United STATES of America and I don't want 3 or 4 states dictating what the other 46 or 47 are going to have to live with. If we went strictly by the popular vote we also need to disband the Senate, leaving those 3 or 4 states telling us what tyranny they have chose for us to live under.

I don't enjoy, but can live with, what is being forced onto me now. Besides, I can move to another state easier than I can move to Costa Rica. :-)
 
1 week and 5 days ago I could walk into a grocery store after work without prior planning and pick up a few things which I could carry out in a bag or 3. The next day I had to bring my own bag or buy one. I don't think folks in the red states want this kind of stupidity at the federal level with no real way to counter it. Heck, why not just make all senators nationally elected since they represent all of us? That's about how dumb doing away with the EC is.
 
Bubbaloo said:
We are the United STATES of America and I don't want 3 or 4 states dictating what the other 46 or 47 are going to have to live with.
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Doesn't that already happen, though? This year, those states were called FL, PA, MI, and WI.
 
CharminTide said:
Doesn't that already happen, though? This year, those states were called FL, PA, MI, and WI.
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This is the common argument, but in no way as unfair as allowing California, New York, and Texas to control the election. California and newyork are clear liberal states while Florida and Ohio lean one way or another. The only way to overturn a majority in both California and New York is to get an overwhelming lion share in Texas along with every Midwest and southern state.


Fwiw I think it's funny we only talk about popular vote when the democrats lose. We haven't talked about it for 8 years because the democrats won the EC pretty handily.
 
81usaf92 said:
This is the common argument, but in no way as unfair as allowing California, New York, and Texas to control the election. California and newyork are clear liberal states while Florida and Ohio lean one way or another.
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Sure, but you know that argument cuts both ways. The interests and priorities of voters in FL do not necessarily mirror those of voters in CA or NY. Why is it okay for certain states to hold so much more electoral power over the others?

We see every election that fewer than half of Americans vote. I'd wager much of that is because the electoral college renders (presidential) voting in the majority of states irrelevant. I suspect that a popular vote would greatly increase voter participation. Even something as simple as a more representative electoral college could increase voter participation.
 
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