The fathers wanted all areas rural and urban of the country to have a voice . The principals and the way of looking at life is different and influence your voting reasons depending on your roots and residence and looking back at the time of the constitution this is very advance thinking for founders.
1st we intentionally were never meant to be a democracy, we are a Republic. The college was never created to make it easier to vote or have the votes counted. The college was also not created because the founder found the average person to ignorant to properly vote. It was created so that ALL of the people have a voice, not just those in the big cities and big states. Look at California for example. The majority of the state is red, but the huge population hubs drown out the voices of those in the valley and the foothills. These two groups do NOT have the same needs. Both voices need to be heard or we simply have two wolves and one sheep voting on what is for dinner.
1 Like
That’s an absurd misrepresentation of what we have versus what you want.
I don’t see how replacing that with “You don’t really have any say in who is President” is a viable tradeoff that would somehow make people less miserable.
You make this argument based on what?
What do base this claim on?
Consider the recent Senate Majority Leader election where even without ‘random chance’, the Senate Republicans still went an elected a Senate Majority Leader that was not desired by the people who voted for said Senators.
Now consider if you added random chance into the mix.
Then also consider how adding random chance into the mix would arguably render every single president a lame duck. Presidents would have no reason to appeal to US Citizens, they would only need to appeal to the randomly selected people who are voting for said President.
I’m not taking this further here. We’ve already been over this elsewhere.
I first responded here because I am in opposition to attempts to eliminate the Electoral College. My position is that the standard justifications for the Electoral College are incorrect; the Founders explained their reasoning, and it had nothing to do with urban-rural divide. It had everything to do with their understanding the dangers of mob rule, their trust in republics, and their assessment of the complex task of choosing a president.
We talk about the Electoral College as if the goal was the balance of power between states. However, the balance of power was determined separately, in the construction of the legislature. Indeed, the balance of power they had previously agreed upon could be respected in many ways without electors. The concept of the electors having agency was the whole point of the particular system.
I do not apologize for promoting ideas to enhance the agency of electors. That was the original intent. Our failure to implement the founders’ intent is a significant reason why people want to get rid of the Electoral College in the first place. Our ballots inherently promote a false narrative about the nature and rationale for presidential elections.
1 Like
I searched for the word ‘random’ in that text and it presented 0 results.
I similarly searched for ‘secret’ and as far as I can tell none of the 15 results suggested that the electors vote be secret.
And the electors votes should be public so that they can be held accountable if they act against the will of the people who voted for them.
Its the same reason why the votes of legislators are public.
It’s why people are upset that the Senate Republicans held a secret ballot for who the new Senate Majority Leader is.
And I see no reason to apologize for arguing against your desire to randomize the selection of the President with a system I see as terrible, nor will I cease arguing against your ‘random elector vote for President in secret’ idea any time I see it.
You’re never going to win an argument by deciding “I don’t want to debate this any more” and insisting it’s the other side’s fault for not agreeing with your biased opinion that you’re right and that if the other guy doesn’t agree with you he must be wrong.
Drop the hypocrisy. You’re trying to argue about the founders intent while pushing for a concept that is not in line with the founders intent.
Legislators perform a distinct function from the president (and by extension, presidential electors). The president is an administrator, not a representative. Putting the name of president on the ballot has given people false ideas about what his job is. Too many think of him as a representative, who will champion their personal views. This is why individual citizens should not have direct leverage over presidential selection; only indirect influence.
Here is a little piece of the Founders’ intent, clearly stated in Federalist No. 68, by Alexander Hamilton:
“It was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice.”
Do electors “analyze the qualities adapted to the station”?
Do electors “act under circumstances to deliberation”?
Is the way electors vote truly “their choice”?
Or are electors merely puppets installed for partisan advantage, who exercise zero judgement, engage in zero deliberation, and are - in many cases - compelled by law to vote a particular way?
Whether you disagree with my proposals, it remains that the Electoral College does not operate as the Founders intended. Can we agree on that much?
On what basis do you make this claim?
Why haven’t you tried applying the same argument to the likes of Governors and Mayors?
What part of randomly selecting electors and what part of secret elector ballots apply to that?
As much as I may sound like a broken record, the recent Senate Majority Leader elections make clear that the secret ballot concept does not work the way you insist it would work.
The intent of the electoral college was equality and equal representation between the states. Just like, each state has 2 Senators for equal representation. The Senators are supposed to represent the state legislatures, but this was stopped with the 17th amendment.
The people were not meant to pick the President, it was the states that selected the President. The peoples vote is just a tool used for decision making.
The people were given representation in The House. The state legislatures were represented by the Senate. This was part of the checks and balances, but again, the 17th amendment upset this balance and gave the Senate to the people also. Imagine if your Senators had to come home, stand in front of the state legislature and explain why they voted a certain way.
So if the electoral college is done away with there would no longer be representation of state legislatures at any level in our federal government. Then you get a bigger federal government than what it is now and it becomes a tyranical threat to its citizens.
The states in the middle of the country would not matter. The only states that would matter are New York and California. Candidates would only need to campaign in those 2 states
1 Like
The electoral college is designed to stop mob rule. Without it California, NY and Illonise would win every election and smaller states would not have voice. Keep the system in place because it also is one less barrier to cheating by stuffing ballots
So the people in the cities will run the nation and everyone outside the cities that actually keep the nation running will have no voice and be reduced to a slave population of the city.
That doesn’t sound like a good plan.
The whole point of the electoral is to prevent dictatorship. New York and California deciding for everyone pretty much under majority.
I posted an idea earlier about States and Federal being required to budget and not be in debt. To enforce it any State thats in debt will have representatives still for a voice but would lose the right to vote on bills or federal policy until they are out of debt. This would force States like California to avoid liberal ideals that bankrupt them and thinking they should have a large say in things over States that do it right. We need to change the culture of government. Its not okay to over spend and put Americans generations in debt.
I have no problem adopting the position the methods of selecting Mayors, Governors, and the President should inherently be different from City Councilmen, Representatives, and Congressmen. Heck - I think Senators should be selected differently from Representatives, both at the state and federal level.
States joined the union under a contract that granted them significant sovereignty and weighted their voting power accordingly. Elimination of the electoral college would essentially be a breach of contract with the states. This discussion is essentially a moot point, as there’s no possibility of getting anywhere close to the required number of states necessary to ratify a constitutional amendment that wouldeliminate the electoral college. A large number of states have already signed a compact where they agree to award their state electoral votes to the national popular vote winner. States do have the right to decide how their electoral votes are allocated. I wonder how many states that have signed this compact would be willing to award their electoral votes to president elect Trump.
2 Likes
Do your research as to why we have this as only an ill-informed person would suggest this. In short, we don’t want mob rule in this country.
Civics lesson 101: Our Founders in their infinite wisdom created the Electoral College to ensure STATES were fairly represented. Why should one or two densely populated areas (metropolitan cities) speak for the whole of the nation?
- Electoral College can only be changed by amendment to the Constitution.
- Amendment would have to be proposed by a super-majority of 2/3rds US House AND Senate, then…
- To be ratified, it would have to be agreed upon by 38 out of 50 states.
The Electoral College is here to stay! Why you might ask? Simplest answer: 38 states are NOT giving up their voice in the presidential election.
If America was going to entertain a change to the constitution for electoral college to be a more popular vote based, while retaining the balance of the states vote we could use the majority popular vote in each county to determine each counties vote, the majority of the counties within a state determining each states electoral vote. And just let each state have one electoral vote. That protects both the popular vote at the local level, equal county and states representation and might actually get the politicians on the road to more voters instead of a half dozen swing states.
As a bonus point Historically a democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a law dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage.
To save America from this future that we seem to be on the express lane to we must act to change the paradigm. We need to change the voting laws so that if you’re receiving government handout money, food stamps, housing, or other unearned handouts you must give up your right to vote while you’re on the program and for as many years after as you received them.
Individuals proposing, voting for, signing into effect anything attempting to end run enumerated constitutional mandates and federal law should be punished for sedition or treason.