By Request: Why Do We Still Have The Electoral College?
The electoral college started getting a lot of bad press in 2000 when Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the electoral college. From that day forth its been a partisan battle and I've generally sided with the "the electoral college is in the constitution" side. But let's see if we can find out why we still use this 200 year old system...
According to an article written by a Harvard student in 2004, the electoral college was started because of smaller states rights and slavery. Southern states had the most slaves, and slaves were not allowed to vote, leaving the South with minimal population for a popular vote. Then there are states like Rhode Island and Connecticutt which have 3 people living in them a piece. And at the time, probably only 2 of those people were white, land owning males. So thus, the founding fathers created the electoral college, to keep representation between the states equal.
And let's look at what the electoral college actually is. In each state, residents vote for electors. These are the people that are selected to vote for the President for that state. Each state is awarded as many electors as it has Senators and Representatives. So for a state like Massachusetts, who has 10 Representatives in the house, they get 12 electoral votes.
Now, on election day, the people go to the polls in their states. In Massachusetts lets say, 65% of the populace votes for George Bush (haha). The 12 electors now take their 12 votes to Washington and all 12 of them go to George Bush. The same is true in every state around the country.
Of course, this system lends itself to differences between the National popular vote and the Electoral college vote. This has happened 3 different times. Another bad side effect of this system, is that when a 3rd party runs (enter Ralph Nadar) and there is no popular vote in the state, the House of Representatives decides who those votes go to. Each Representative gets one vote a piece, and they decide which candidate will recieve the electoral votes. Thomas Jefferson was elected this way. You can see the problem but here is an example, Massachusetts has 10 Democratic Representatives (go figure). I wonder who their vote will go to?
With all of its problems, the key reason we still use the Electoral college is that a nationwide popular vote would mean Presidential candidates would not visit swing states and would have nationwide ad campaigns (imagine the media bias) and visit New York, Los Angeles, Houston (yeah!) and all the other highly populated areas. Not one soul would visit Iowa, New Hampshire, Florida (maybe), Kansas, Montana ... the list goes on.
Let's reason this out ourselves. The population of the United States is 295,734,134. The population of New York City is 9,937,739) and Boston (600,000) and Chicago (2.8 million). The total population of these three areas is 21,337,739. 21 Million people. 7.2%
To reach 51% of the total population of the U.S. and you need 150,824,408.34 votes. In the 2004 election, George Bush won 62,040,606 of the popular vote, 51% of the entire vote, which happened to be 121, 480,019. Of that total population of the United States, that's 41%.
The list of the top 50 cities listed by population is HERE. But really what we've discovered is that a candidate for President would need to campaign in New York (8 million), L.A. (9.9 million), Chicago (2.8 million), Houston (2 million), Philadelphia (1.4 million), Pheonix (1.4 million), San Diego (1.26), San Antonio (1.23 million), and Dallas (1.2 million). That's a total population of 29,190,000. Hmmm...still not even close. I guess if you consider the suburban populations that are associated with these large cities, that number would be much higher.
As far as I have read, the electoral college has people on both sides. Those that wish it changed say that they can't get that change due to people's fear of the unknown. Meaning, there are people that are not sure how a Presidential election would go without the electoral college. For myself, I see inherit problems with allowing the popular vote to determine elections. Voter fraud being chief among them. Here is a list of Pros and Cons for and against the electoral system.
My own opinion is that the Constitution, while a living document, should still be the rule of the land. The founding fathers intended that the electoral college allow for all people to have a voice, even the 4 people living in Wyoming. It's not a perfect system, as the 2000 election and the 3 other elections who won the electoral vote but not the popular one. My own mathematics show a principle flaw in the idea that only the major population centers would get any attention, though I don't think those are the only considerations. Candidates don't typically spend time in states that "don't matter." Like Wyoming or Hawaii or Alaska. Even with the electoral college. So I believe that argument is flawed. But the argument that the Electoral college gives the election process order and flow is true. Without it candidates wouldn't campaign in New Hampshire or Iowa or Florida. They'd simply buy houses in LA and New York and have national advertisements play every other day on the evening news.
Yuck.
According to an article written by a Harvard student in 2004, the electoral college was started because of smaller states rights and slavery. Southern states had the most slaves, and slaves were not allowed to vote, leaving the South with minimal population for a popular vote. Then there are states like Rhode Island and Connecticutt which have 3 people living in them a piece. And at the time, probably only 2 of those people were white, land owning males. So thus, the founding fathers created the electoral college, to keep representation between the states equal.
And let's look at what the electoral college actually is. In each state, residents vote for electors. These are the people that are selected to vote for the President for that state. Each state is awarded as many electors as it has Senators and Representatives. So for a state like Massachusetts, who has 10 Representatives in the house, they get 12 electoral votes.
Now, on election day, the people go to the polls in their states. In Massachusetts lets say, 65% of the populace votes for George Bush (haha). The 12 electors now take their 12 votes to Washington and all 12 of them go to George Bush. The same is true in every state around the country.
Of course, this system lends itself to differences between the National popular vote and the Electoral college vote. This has happened 3 different times. Another bad side effect of this system, is that when a 3rd party runs (enter Ralph Nadar) and there is no popular vote in the state, the House of Representatives decides who those votes go to. Each Representative gets one vote a piece, and they decide which candidate will recieve the electoral votes. Thomas Jefferson was elected this way. You can see the problem but here is an example, Massachusetts has 10 Democratic Representatives (go figure). I wonder who their vote will go to?
With all of its problems, the key reason we still use the Electoral college is that a nationwide popular vote would mean Presidential candidates would not visit swing states and would have nationwide ad campaigns (imagine the media bias) and visit New York, Los Angeles, Houston (yeah!) and all the other highly populated areas. Not one soul would visit Iowa, New Hampshire, Florida (maybe), Kansas, Montana ... the list goes on.
Let's reason this out ourselves. The population of the United States is 295,734,134. The population of New York City is 9,937,739) and Boston (600,000) and Chicago (2.8 million). The total population of these three areas is 21,337,739. 21 Million people. 7.2%
To reach 51% of the total population of the U.S. and you need 150,824,408.34 votes. In the 2004 election, George Bush won 62,040,606 of the popular vote, 51% of the entire vote, which happened to be 121, 480,019. Of that total population of the United States, that's 41%.
The list of the top 50 cities listed by population is HERE. But really what we've discovered is that a candidate for President would need to campaign in New York (8 million), L.A. (9.9 million), Chicago (2.8 million), Houston (2 million), Philadelphia (1.4 million), Pheonix (1.4 million), San Diego (1.26), San Antonio (1.23 million), and Dallas (1.2 million). That's a total population of 29,190,000. Hmmm...still not even close. I guess if you consider the suburban populations that are associated with these large cities, that number would be much higher.
As far as I have read, the electoral college has people on both sides. Those that wish it changed say that they can't get that change due to people's fear of the unknown. Meaning, there are people that are not sure how a Presidential election would go without the electoral college. For myself, I see inherit problems with allowing the popular vote to determine elections. Voter fraud being chief among them. Here is a list of Pros and Cons for and against the electoral system.
My own opinion is that the Constitution, while a living document, should still be the rule of the land. The founding fathers intended that the electoral college allow for all people to have a voice, even the 4 people living in Wyoming. It's not a perfect system, as the 2000 election and the 3 other elections who won the electoral vote but not the popular one. My own mathematics show a principle flaw in the idea that only the major population centers would get any attention, though I don't think those are the only considerations. Candidates don't typically spend time in states that "don't matter." Like Wyoming or Hawaii or Alaska. Even with the electoral college. So I believe that argument is flawed. But the argument that the Electoral college gives the election process order and flow is true. Without it candidates wouldn't campaign in New Hampshire or Iowa or Florida. They'd simply buy houses in LA and New York and have national advertisements play every other day on the evening news.
Yuck.
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