Bad idea
SHSE
The EC was set up to protect us from demagogues.
I think Perseus or Achilles would have been good leaders, though.
This is an excellent idea (from your post):
There is another way, though. Ten states plus Washington, D.C., have enacted legislation that could lead to a system that leaves the Electoral College intact but ensures that it deliver the presidency to the popular vote winner. This national compact stipulates that as soon as states comprising a majority of the Electoral College — 270 votes — sign on, each will award its electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. The Constitution allows states to allocate their electors as they choose — the winner-take-all system is not in the Constitution, and Maine and Nebraska have already abandoned it, choosing to split their electoral votes based on who wins in each congressional district.
I’m still trying to figure out the Electoral College thing, but the Maine Nebraska systems seem to be the easiest way to get closer to a Democracy.
I have seen several people mention that the EC was set up to appease Southern Slave Owning Aristocracies, not sure but that makes some sense.
I have read this in several places as well. It certainly was set up to protect the landowners, at the very least.
What about the other two votes? Each state (I thought) got one for each rep (district) and one for each senator. That extra two is what gives the extra weight to the less populous states.
I don’t really know how the math would work, but it seems those two votes would just go to whichever party is represented by the elected senator.
I also believe there should be a system that allows electors from third parties.
There is also this petition, nearing 3,000,000 signatures already.
Not all states HAVE to give their votes to a single candidate. Half of them are allowed, by their state constitutions, to divvy up the vote.
your ignorance of the system and hatred for it are a real challenge to understand.
you remind me of a child who hates the taste of steamers, and has never tried one.
seriously.
Why do you care Joe, you don’t even own slaves.
link?
That piece clearly states the the electors are supposed to cast votes. Not that the electors are just counted and thrown in the blue or red columns. They are allowed to VOTE. They don’t have to be counted in favor of the candidate our stupid maps tells us is the one that has been anointed in their state. For instance, if Philadelphia overwhelmingly voted for Clinton, the elector from that region should be able to cast a vote for Clinton. And so on. We are not doing it the way the Constitution spells it out. We have jumped the shark with this shit.
EDIT: That was supposed to be a response to Joe’s post. Sorry.)
I suspect they would just change the campaign strategy then. I’d be more in favor of abolishing parties.
I don’t know why this is so difficult…
Assign a seat to a certain population. Whichever person wins that seat counts as a vote towards the leadership. You count the votes and whichever party has the most gets their leader in the White House.
That’s true. CONs would do even more gerrymandering than they already do. Anyway, as the law currently stands, electors in half the states are allowed to vote the way they choose. IT’s interesting that almost no one knows thiS, and that with all the thousands of hours the corporate media devote to campaigns, THEY NEVER MENTION IT.
^^^^ Yeah. Right back atcha, @joseph .
When the founders of the U.S. Constitution in 1787 considered whether America should let the people elect their president through a popular vote, James Madison said that “Negroes” in the South presented a “difficulty … of a serious nature.”
During that same speech on Thursday, July 19, Madison instead proposed a prototype for the same Electoral College system the country uses today. Each state has a number of electoral votes roughly proportioned to population and the candidate who wins the majority of votes wins the election.
Since then, the Electoral College system has cost four candidates the race after they received the popular vote — most recently in 2000, when Al Gore lost to George W. Bush. Such anomalies and other criticisms have pushed 10 Democratic states to enroll in a popular vote system. And while there are many grievances about the Electoral College, one that’s rarely addressed is one dug up by an academic of the Constitution: that it was created to protect slavery, planting the roots of a system that’s still oppressive today.
“It’s embarrassing,” said Paul Finkelman, visiting law professor at University of Saskatchewan in Canada. “I think if most Americans knew what the origins of the Electoral College is, they would be disgusted.”
Madison, now known as the “Father of the Constitution,” was a slave-owner in Virginia, which at the time was the most populous of the 13 states if the count included slaves, who comprised about 40 percent of its population.
So it allowed them to count slaves to boost numbers, but not to let the slaves cast their own vote.
If memory serves, I think it was the same deal with Indians, who weren’t even Citizens till 1924.