ELECTORAL COLLEGE or Straight POPULAR VOTE?

Would you prefer to continue with the present electoral college system, or would you prefer to go to a straight one person/one vote system?

nt

We'll get rid of Gerrymandering by switching the House over to proportional representation. Time to take the partisanship out of districting by doing away with districting altogether.

We'll change the Senate as well. Each senate race will have run-off races if no one gains a majority of the vote. This should encourage people to vote as it encourages more choice.

Together, both should help to finally remove the two-party duopoly in government. No single party should ever have control over three branches of government. If anything, it would force government to adopt a more consensus-building method to governing vs. a simple majoritarian method of governing.

If a candidate can't even gain one more than 50% of the vote, then there must be a run-off between the top two candidates to determine who gets the majority of the vote. If such a system were in place in 2000, Gore would have won as Nader's voters would've chosen Gore after making their point in the first round of voting, or they wouldn't have voted in the 2nd round.

I'd also recommend a clean elections law. If you vow to forgo all private contributions, vow to abide by spending limitations, and are able to garner a particular number of 5 dollar donations from your district to prove viability, then you should be subsidized by a public election system run by taxpayer dollars, and if your opponent outspends you, then you should be given the option of accepting more public dollars to defend yourself.

...'01 interview by Kent Worcester with Daniel Lazare where he speaks to the electoral college question:

http://www.wpunj.edu/newpol/issue30/lazare30.htm

<snip>

KW: Some people have suggested that the Electoral College be reformed, that it be constituted on the basis of House of Representatives membership, thus doing away with the automatic two votes for the Senate. Is that the kind of reform that would make the Electoral College more responsive to the will of the majority?

DL: It would certainly be a step in the right direction, only a small step though. The important point is that it's unreformable. If at least seventeen states have their clout in presidential elections significantly magnified by the Electoral College, you can assume that at least thirteen states will veto any effort to do away with this undemocratic provision. It's unchangeable. You have a situation where a mechanism will simply not do the bidding of the democratic majority. A majority of the U.S. population lives in just nine states, believe it or not, and there's no way that those nine states can make their feelings known through these ancient, Madisonian mechanisms.

KW: Federalism implies that each state offers a distinctive political environment or political culture. Was that argument once true but is no longer true? And aren't there advantages to federalism in that it allows states to go in different directions and experiment with different kinds of policies?

DL: Well, I've never been much of a fan of pluralism. But first of all, to put this on a realistic footing, the question of each state having its own distinctive brand of politics was obviously a very self-serving argument from the point of view of those southern states in 1787 which already felt beleaguered and hemmed in by the more dynamic economies of the northern states. "Distinctive political cultures" was obviously a euphemism for the right to hold slaves in perpetuity. I'm all in favor of the concept of states as laboratories of democracy, but I'm not in favor of the idea of American-style federalism when it becomes a mechanism for fragmenting and atomizing the popular will and impeding the emergence of any kind of coherent, democratic point of view.

KW: Critics of constitutional reform say that if you give equal weight to all votes, if you nationalize the vote system, you will increase the scope for ballot fraud, and the scope for challenges to each and every vote.

DL: That's untrue -- if you nationalize the voting system, you nationalize the election system, which means first and foremost creating a nonpartisan, honest, federal mechanism for the conduct and oversight of elections. Americans would demand and presumably receive an honest, efficient mechanism for the conduct of elections from coast to coast. This is what other countries take for granted, but America is stuck with a nineteenth-century system based on an incredible fragmentation, a localist system of stupendous inefficiency just ripe for abuses and foul-ups. These people couldn't organize a two-car funeral, much less put together a coherent, meaningful, honest election.

KW: What about Nader? Although constitutional issues weren't at the heart of his campaign, he certainly raised democratic reforms, such as same-day registration, longer hours for voting, public financing of elections, and so on. Why didn't Nader get your vote as somebody who believes in constitutional and political reform?

DL: Well, I'm not a green, I'm a socialist, I'm a red, and I don't especially like Nader either personally or politically. I don't like the Green Party platform very much. I don't believe in decentralization. I think this election has shown the horrors of decentralization. I'm a democratic centralist who believes we have to put together efficient, centralized, democratic mechanisms for running society. Green talk about community control is really just pernicious nonsense, as I believe this election has shown.

KW: On the other hand, the Nader phenomenon went way beyond the actual Green platform. It opened up space for debate on all kinds of issues that the two parties were intent on keeping out of the political process.

DL: It represented a small opening-up, I agree, but I think it's still very important to cast a vote for the socialist alternative and to emphasize, as schismatic or sectarian as it sounds, the difference between a green and red critique of the American democratic process.

KW: So as a quote red, rather than a quote green, you would support the establishment of a parliamentary system? Can you do that within the framework of the Constitution, and are there voices on the political spectrum that now support a parliamentary system?

DL: The answer is no, you cannot move to a parliamentary system within the current framework. A parliamentary system rests on a completely different philosophy, a completely different concept of democracy. I would say rather that it rests upon democracy period, whereas the U.S. Constitution is a pre-democratic document that only incompletely, and contradictorily, incorporates democratic ideas. The Founders were living both on the edge of the modern era and on the edge of the modern world. People have argued as to whether they were conservative or radical; I think they were an extremely heterogeneous body, and I think in some ways they were very progressive in fighting for national unification. By the same token, they just lived in a different ideological world from our own. All sides of political debate in 1787 regarded democracy as a variant of mob rule, that democracy equaled anarchy equaled disorder. There was simply no concept of a democratic order emerging. This is a nineteenth century concept that derives from the Jacobins, the Utilitarians, and the Marxists, who in the 1870s in Germany invented the concept of the mass party. Any modern notion of parliamentarianism rests upon the principle of the demos establishing a coherent, rational order, something that the American system holds is the last thing democracy is capable of achieving.

Popular doesn't always equal good- just popular.
If every voter made an educated vote, then I would support the doing away with the electoral college. Unfortunately, many voters don't vote this way and we could actually end up with someone worse than Bush voting popular only. I suppose you could say the electoral college is suppose to work like an insurance policy assuring the best candidate takes office. Obviously, its not 100% fool-proof.

...the popular vote of the SCOTUS, Bush won 5-4.

Its the people's decision, nobody should make it for them. As if elites dont make bad decisions all the time.

The elctoral college was set up when the local folks didn't actually vote on the President.

The senete is represented equally amount the states. Each Seneter represents and area. Serve that area's people and that area's intrests.

Congress is made up of 435 seats, dived amoung the states based upon population. But each congressperson also represents an area. Serves that area's people and that area's intrests.

We need the President to be elected totaly by the people. People are no longer tied to the area that they are born. They move around. They don't always have perment intrests in the area. But they have a broad intrests in the whole USA. Their vote for President should equal the same, no matter what state they live in when they vote.

Straight popular vote for President would solve alot of problems that we have now. States out west and HI, etc.. hae long complained that there is no reason to vote for President, because it's like their vote don't count. Before their polls are closed, the electoral college votes are all ready being totalled up. Straight popular vote, that would be harder to do. Electoral votes are called, when it is assumed a canidate has gotten over 50% of that states popular vote. Straight popular vote, every vote really would count. Even if a voter is a minority in their area.

Areas where there are few electroal votes would get more attention then they do now. once vist might make a difference in those areas. It would change a whole lot of things about compaigns.

We really should go to straight popular vote for President.

Right now, who cares if votes are purged in Utah? Open it up to every vote counts the same and suddenly the low tech theft is nationwide. The GOP would be rejoicing. A few hundred here and a few thousand there. They have the cash, and the theft would be financed and concealed everywhere, tiny precincts losing or switching tiny percentages. It might not mean the election every time, but we would be forfeiting maybe 1 or 2% smack off the top.

It's incredibly pathetic we have the problems we have now, considering we KNOW the locations. Ohio was isolated as the most vital state immediately after 2000. Yet we still allowed Blackwell to screw with everything.

If every state is the same, you have Blackwell clones everywhere. The GOP would ruthlessly prioritize winning the secretary of state or head of elections positions. This is not being cynical. You know damn well that's their mindset. Think of that nationwide map with all the middle america red. Now give the Republicans incentive to nip votes everywhere. I think we're better off with the electoral college.

I wish I had read all the responses before voting :(