Kerry or Bush,who are you voting for?

[JansenFan]

Large population centers almost always go to the democratic candidate. As an example, in 2000 Gore won the popular vote while only winning 20 states. That means, by popular vote, the voices of 20 states would have overruled the voices of 30 states, including Virginia.

[JansenFan]

Oh, Gore also carried the District of Columbia, which is afforded the same number of electoral college votes (3) as Alaska.

[doroshjt]

Gore
50,996,116 48% 21 States 266 EV
Bush
50,456,169 48% 30 States 271 EV

So I guess gore supports are just living in the wrong states.

[doroshjt]

Florida was worth 25 EV, so those 930 people decided the election, while almost a half million more people nationwide wanted Gore.

[JansenFan]

You have that backwards. Bush won 9 more states and yet lost the popular vote. That is my point. He won CA and NY, two of the most populous states in the union. So basically, without the electoral college, those two states would have taken precidence over the other 9 states that voted for Bush.

[Texas Hog]

A whopping 24 votes! How's that for voter turnout? I wonder how many who haven't voted or choose not to vote will be whining when it's all over?

[doroshjt]

So I guess it comes down to what you view as more important. States or Population. I for one think the popular vote is more important. If you take out the boundaries of states and just look at the numbers, the simple majority of people voted for gore. His problem is they were too concentrated in area to win. I think you need to treat each vote equal and not look at geographic area.

I love debates. Time for lunch, man I'm working hard today:)

[JansenFan]

Yep, the electoral college is certainly a system that has come under fire. IMHO, it gives each state a say in who wins the election, where as the popular vote does the opposite.

I think most Gore supporters are against the electoral college for obvious reasons -- it cost their candidate the election. I just think it is the fairest way to handle things. That way people in Iowa have their proportional say in the election, rather than the candidates campaigning only in large population centers because that's where the election would be won and lost.

I like intelligent debates like this one as well. Enjoy your lunch.

[cvillehog]

My point, and I think JansenFan's as well, isn't that there is nothing wrong with the Electoral College system. The point is, that switching to popular vote would not fix anything, it would just create a different set of problems.

There is a ballot initiative in Colorado this year to proportion out the EC votes, which is serving as a kind of test case for election reform. So, it will be interesting to see if it passes. The only silly thing is, if the initiative passes, it will apply to the current election, which I think isn't the right way to go about it.

At any rate, as much as I complain about my vote having already been counted, I'm personally more comfortable with being over-rulled my the majority of virginia than I am with ceeding power over the White House to NYC and LA.

[JansenFan]

That is exactly the point I was trying to make, cville. The initiative in CO maybe a good fix, I'm not sure because I have looked at it specifically.

I don't think there is a perfect solution though. Someone can always find a problem with anything.

[joebagadonuts]

Your vote would be worthless in popular vote. Virginia is a small state. As stated previously, the candidate winning in large population centers would win the election. While Nrthern Virginia is a populated area, it is far from New York City or Los Angeles.

i think saying that your vote in virginia would be worthless is misleading. i mean, we're still talking about one person-one vote here, right? so your vote in virgina counts as much as the vote of a person in new york city or l.a. it's virginia's vote as a state that doesn't count as much. the state, not it's residents.

i could argue that under the current system a vote for george bush in massachusetts is worthless. i could even argue that a vote for kerry in mass. is almost worthless. i voted for gore in 2000 while living in mass., and i did feel a certain sense of apathy about it. what difference did i make in the overall election? i feel much better now, being able to impact the outcome of a 'swing state'. i feel like my vote will count more, if that's possible.

i understand the argument that the states won't 'count' as much in a popular vote, but if you look at it as simply as one person-one vote, it seems to make some sense.

[patrickg68]

Why do electoral votes have to be involved at all? Just count up all of the votes in the country and whichever candidate has the most votes wins. I don't know, maybe that just makes to much sense.

[Irn-Bru]

Why do electoral votes have to be involved at all? Just count up all of the votes in the country and whichever candidate has the most votes wins. I don't know, maybe that just makes to much sense.

And while we're at it, what's with this whole bill of rights thing, anyway? If the majority of Americans don't want racist speech to be allowed in this country, then it shouldn't be allowed. If the people of America (or, at least, 51% of them) want something, why should anything really stand in their way, since it's what they want?

In my opinion, going the popular vote route is just another step towards having a pure democracy in this country, which inevitably leads to a tyranny of the majority. We need checks and balances.

[JansenFan]

Why do electoral votes have to be involved at all? Just count up all of the votes in the country and whichever candidate has the most votes wins. I don't know, maybe that just makes to much sense.

If you read ANY of the other posts you would see the reasons some of us think the electoral college matters.

[patrickg68]

But if you rely on the popular vote, then it doesn't matter where you are located, your vote one vote counts the same in New York as someone's in Rhode Island. With the electoral college, someone's vote in New York, California, or Texas does indeed mean much more than someones vote in Rhode Island.

And I agree that the majority should not always rule, but there is a difference between protecting the rights of the minority, and the election of the president. The minority has no right to have their choice be elected president.

[doroshjt]

But if you rely on the popular vote, then it doesn't matter where you are located, your vote one vote counts the same in New York as someone's in Rhode Island. With the electoral college, someone's vote in New York, California, or Texas does indeed mean much more than someones vote in Rhode Island.

And I agree that the majority should not always rule, but there is a difference between protecting the rights of the minority, and the election of the president. The minority has no right to have their choice be elected president.

They have the right, but not the means.

[JansenFan]

But if you rely on the popular vote, then it doesn't matter where you are located, your vote one vote counts the same in New York as someone's in Rhode Island. With the electoral college, someone's vote in New York, California, or Texas does indeed mean much more than someones vote in Rhode Island.

And I agree that the majority should not always rule, but there is a difference between protecting the rights of the minority, and the election of the president. The minority has no right to have their choice be elected president.

That's not true. Yes your vote equals someone elses vote, but NYC, LA, Chicago, DC, etc would count for the majoprity of the votes, so unless the entire rest of the country voted as one, than the major cites would decide every election.

[doroshjt]

The last election had a difference of around 500,000 votes. Those 500,000 votes came from all around the country not just from the major cities. Basically your discounting a large population because of they way they vote. In the future, politics will shift, maybe major cities will not be slanted one way or the other. If in my hypothetical world, NY went 51% Republican 49% Dem, your arguement that major cities decide elections would be invalid and my argument that large 49% of NY is now no longer counted. The current climate is insignificant.

I think all the colorado technique is doing is reducing the overall population. Why not just go with the total votes wins.

[JansenFan]

My point isn't that the cities usually vote democrat and I probably shouldn't have even mentioned it. I just think if we went strictly on popular vote, the large cities would have most of the say in who wins.

CA
Gore: 5,861,203
Bush: 4,567,429
Diff: 1,293,774 votes

NY
Gore: 4,107,697
Bush: 2,403,374
Diff: 1,704,323

Total CA and NY
Gore: 9,968,900
Bush: 6,970,803
Diff: 2,998,097


Total Votes
Gore: 50,999,897
Bush: 50,456,002
Diff: 543,895

As you can see, take away CA and NY and Bush wins by 2,500,000 votes. With the electoral college, CA and NY are given more of a say than say RI or MD, but it's done in a way in which the larger states don't have all of the say.

[cvillehog]

If anyone is interested, here is a pdf doc detailing the history of the Electoral College and the Pro's and Con's of the system:

http://www.fec.gov/pdf/eleccoll.pdf

Small excerpt:

A third idea was to have the president elected by a direct popular vote.
Direct election was rejected not because the Framers of the Constitution
doubted public intelligence but rather because they feared that without
sufficient information about candidates from outside their State, people
would naturally vote for a "favorite son" from their own State or region. At
worst, no president would emerge with a popular majority sufficient to
govern the whole country. At best, the choice of president would always be
decided by the largest, most populous States with little regard for the
smaller ones.[emphasis mine]

[doroshjt]

I was making the point that over time political shifts will occur, remember there was a time where the south was a democratic corner stone, not any more, so too will cities shift.

When this shift occurs, the overall popular vote could once again lose to the electoral college by the allignment of voters and states. Where as an all out popular vote makes no distinction.

[patrickg68]

First, not everyone in a large city votes the same. So this idea that the large cities would control everything is false. Also, what does location have to do with anything if electoral votes are not in the equation? If you have 50 million voting democrats in America, it doesn't matter whether you put them all in one location or spread them out all over the country, they still would count for 50 million popular votes.

Second, the minority as of now has the means, but not the right. There is a difference between a right and a power. You have no right to put your candidate in the whitehouse, you only have the means to put him there.

[JansenFan]

It may matter though, if a president is elected by 21 states, as Al Gore would have been in 2000. Then there are 30 other states wondering why the majority of the country was overpowered by the minority of the most populous states.

[cvillehog]

Pat,
I suggest you read the doc I linked to above, at least starting on page 12ish where it talks about the pros and cons of the Electoral College.

No one is saying that the Electoral College is perfect, but what it does do is favor the distribution of support over the absolute number.

Because of the way the population is unevenly distributed in the U.S., it would be possible to win election by just concentrating all of your campaigning on a relatively small number of population centers.

In 1988, 3,119,000 people of voting age lived in Alaska, Delaware, the District of Columbia, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming combined. While 9,614,000 people of voting age lived in Florida. What the electoral college does, and does well, is make sure that the citizens of those small states (and 1 district) get consideration in the process.

[joebagadonuts]

from the little i remember from high school history class, there was a much larger emphasis placed on the sovereignty of the individual states during the 1700s and 1800s than perhaps there is today. thus, people from the smaller states feared being unrepresented somehow. while people seem to still have pride in their hoem state, i wonder if they're are large differences in policy state to state that would really make a state an outcast (having radically different ideas than the rest of the country).

also, times have changed. have any of us NOT heard of john kerry? back in the olden days, i'm sure a major candidate could go unknown due to little or no communication systems. now? i'm sure many of you have seen too much of kerry (*cough*scooter*cough).

finally, how is a state voting for its favorite 'son' any different than it is nowadays? texas goes to bush. mass will go to kerry. arkansas went to clinton. tennessee went to gor-oops, well, it almost always works.