TAM,The Annoyed Man wrote:Nope. That is a horrible idea. There is a VERY GOOD REASON for the existence of the electoral college.der Teufel wrote:OTOH, the electors do have the authority to vote for whomever they please according to whatever principles or beliefs they may hold. Otherwise, why do we have the Electoral College? Why not just automatically assign the electoral vote of the the state to the winning candidate and skip the Electoral College vote completely?
Personally, that's my preference. Skip the Electoral College shenanigans and just declare that the winning candidate gets the votes. Done!
Consider a parallel example........... Think of it as a sports analogy using major league baseball's world series. The world series consists of 7 separate games, of which the winning team must win 4 or more to win the championship. Let's say that it's a 7 game series, and it goes like this:
AL / NL score
Game 1: 15 / 3
Game 2: 14 / 5
Game 3: 10 / 2
Game 4: 0 / 2
Game 5: 2 / 5
Game 6: 5 / 6
Game 7: 3 / 4
In that situation, the NL team won the series, because it won 4 of the 7 games. That's analogous to electoral college vote. But the losing AL team scored a total of 48 points in the series to the winning team's 27 points. How can a team score MORE points in the series and still lose? It's because it isn't total points that matter, it is games won.
In this analogy, winning or losing a game is the same as winning or losing a state. Total points scored is the same as the popular vote. Go read your copy of the Constitution. The people don't elect a president. The STATES elect the president. The popular vote in each state serves to determine how the state will vote, but it's the state that votes, not the people. There's only 50 states plus DC, and they each have a number of electors equal to their congressional representation. So winning the general election means putting together the combination of states you can win in, with enough electoral votes between them to meet or exceed 270 votes.
This system exists SPECIFICALLY to protect the interests of states with lower populations when it comes to selecting a president who is supposed to represent all the people. Without the electoral college, states with smaller populations become unimportant. California's voters outnumber Texas' voters. Add in the leftist northeaster states with their high populations, and you can kiss the Constitution goodbye if the electoral college is ever abolished.
If that's what you want, then keep advocating for an elimination of the electoral college. OTH, if you love the Constitution and place a high value on its protections of your rights - particularly your 1st and 2nd amendment rights - you MUST support the electoral college. There are TWO kinds of tyranny: the tyranny of the majority, and the tyranny of the minority. The electoral college exists EXACTLY to prevent either kinds of tyranny.
I could be wrong here, but I don't think he was suggesting to get rid of the Electoral College (from a distribution of votes per state perspective). I THINK (and I could be wrong) that he was suggesting that the distribution of votes to the states should be the same, but the assignment of those votes by the states should be an automatic thing, rather than relying on the manual practice of sending people to actually cast votes.
I don't necessarily agree with the idea, but if I'm reading it right, it was not the same as what you responded to.
VT