We use an electoral college which was inducted to make voting “fair” when it was pen/paper by county in each state. With the current technology, we could actually hold a “popular vote” in which every vote would actually matter.
Technology has pushed us over the edge of needing a county-to-county vote, state vote or even electoral college voting on our behalf.
Time for every man to count?
meh
The problem is the small states would never vote for an amendment for it since they have a disproportionally large influence in the electoral college, and an amendment would need their support. There’s actually a way to win the Electoral College with only 22% of the popular vote. A vote in Wyoming counts 4 times as much toward the EC as one in California. 83,000 votes gets you electoral votes there, whereas 18 million in california gets you nothing.
The stopgap solution is to get states with over 50% of the electoral votes to sign an agreement to award their electors based on the nationwide popular vote. Then the EC becomes irrelevant. They can award their electors however they want.
exactly my point. They need to get rid of the current system and make everyone count equally.
then there could also be more than 2 people who will end up as the president as individuals could form their own presidential fight and perhaps win over the two candidates.
It would make things a lot more interesting and the actual person who the most people want would end up in the white house.
I think this explains it well:
Article 2 of the Constitution and its 12th Amendment stipulate that the President is chosen by electors, who are themselves chosen by the state, “in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct … equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress.” A state is allotted as many electors as it has representatives in both houses of Congress. The Founders actually vested these electors with the authority to choose the President of the United States. The states, by means of the state legislature, choose the electors; and the electors choose the President and Vice President. While candidates must win the popular election of a state in order to get its electors, the electoral college is a barrier against a national popular election. Why? Because (except in Maine) the states have a winner-take-all arrangement. All of the electors of a particular state are awarded to the candidate who wins the popular vote of that state. There is, therefore, proportional representation in Presidential elections, but it is parceled out by the states, not within the states (again, except in Maine). This means, among other things, that the runner-up candidate in an election often is much closer in the national popular election than he is in the electoral college, and that in very close elections (as in 1876 and 2000) the runner-up may actually win the national popular vote. But the electoral college means, more importantly, that a candidate must win the election within states, and not the greatest number of votes in the nation, in order to be elected. This arrangement obliges candidates to make a much wider appeal than they would if they simply were required to win the popular national election.
The purpose of a republic over a democracy is to protect the greatest minority, the individual from the majority.
There is a reason we are a republic and not a democracy.
Ya this comes up every year in elections. It might actually encourage more people to vote. I know a lot of people who will not vote in national elections becuase of this in NY. With 11 million people in NYC, a vote in upstate NY is pretty much worthless since our state is already going to be Democrat and the individual vote counts for nothing in the national election.
A similar form of this came up on Shredd and Ragan too about how to make NY a swing state so we can get more national attention and money from all the campaigning visits.
^
exactly why I didn’t vote today. What’s the point? :tdown:
Q:What is the United States Of America?
A: It is a chunk of land between Mexico and Canada (and the AK and HI).
Solution: Let only people who actually own the USA vote. The rest of you might as well be considered visitors, you have no stake in this country.
this is not american idol… the popular vote is not the best idea for the same reason popular vote does not choose a party’s candidate.
voting is showing that you buy into the system. it’s a symbolic gesture that you respect and understand that you are fortunate enough to be in a country that you are lucky enough to vote. Just like jury duty it’s one of the most important tasks that you can do to protect our way of life. It doesn’t matter if your vote won’t change the results… the number shows candidates they must work hard to win.
So, if I design a video game where you are fortunate enough to play for free but when you log in you are in a small cube-like room, would you waste the time to even log in knowing that you did it “just because you could”? You can tell everyone “I played it” and feel proud of yourself for participating, but nothing actually happened and in the end you were just wasting your time.
That’s kinda how I feel about voting in NY. I could care less about saying “I voted” to people. In the end, I’m just wasting my time anyways.
because the united states should be more important to you than a video game?
Going to the popular vote would switch the campaigning from small towns in swing states to big cities nationwide. Places like New York, LA, Houston, Chicago, and even Buffalo would get much more attention, and Bumfuck, Ohio would get much less. I think that’s a better way to do it. These small towns get an insanely disproportional amount of attention on them because of what state they happen to be in. Winning the Presidency should be about getting the most Americans to vote for you.
If there is a flaw its the lack of a unified voting system.
god I’ll be so glad when this is over in ~12 hours and you crawl back in your hole with these retarded comments.
SO WAIT, I don’t own land but run two businesses … yet, that means I have no stake? FUCK YOU
AGREED. RE: voting, I think the issue is less the electorate but more so the lack of standardization and of a good system. its too much of a mish-mash and most of the systems suck. I for one would rather it all just be paper/pencil so there was a physical record, call me a luddite, but in doing a lot of web/database shit, I see how easy it is to cheat/hack/change/manipulate data when its just a set of bits - hell, I don’t even like the pull-a-lever machines, its like the magic fucking box, and I have NO record. Give me a paper ballot w/ something like a scantron and a CARBON COPY to take with me …
Were you at the beach today?
IT WAS FUCKING JOKE!
Edit: Buy some land bitch.
I agree. Voting should be reserved for white males who own land.
and people
Do you support English as the official language of this fine country?
Oops, my bad.