Damn, I've been meaning to post about the electoral college for a while but you beat me to it (as usual). I think abolishing it is a reasonable idea. The EC makes protracted fights (as in 2000) more likely, and to it skews the importance of some voters over others, and of some states over others. The only valid reason I can think of to keep it is tradition, which is of course not to be scoffed at.

Wow - I'm agreeeing with Jesse Jackson and disagreeing with you. Could this be happening?

But if you said "Stop holding back the electoral influence of Texas," that might make them reconsider.

Yaron:

Among other things (not all of which I agree with):
* there's a balance between nationwide and per-state power
* there is a "containment" of sorts, with electoral fraud
* there's also the electors, who normally vote as their people of their state say to, but have the option of doing otherwise

Nooooooooooooooooooo. You can't go over to the dark side! What next, make DC a state? Getting rid of the electoral college will insure that none of the smaller states have any voice. Why would anyone ever campaign in Rhode Island or Iowa when they can focus on Texas, Florida, California and New York? The electoral college is the fairest system for a huge country as ours. Representation isn't possible any other way.

What? So because no one wants to live in Wyoming, we've got to prop up their sorry little voting power with 2 unearned electoral college votes? Now, now Karol do you think little mid-West states want to be treated like pets of the big states?
Why don't we just allow everyone to vote, count them up and whoever has the most, wins.

Dawn:

No one's suggesting one-state, one-vote.

It's a balance between national and state-level power, i.e. Federalism.

I just don't see how the concept of state power translates to voting. For legislation, it makes sense, because it represents a decentralization of authority, which is always good. But for voting, it's just sort of an arbitrary aggregation system.

If politicians don't want to campaign in smaller states, that should be their prerogative. If we had bloc voting based on, say, age, then of course it would force candidates to pay more attention to the youth vote or the middle-aged vote or whatever. But surely that's not a sufficient argument for aggregating based on age.

There's a reason our founding fathers chose to make us a Republic instead of a pure democracy (and not just because they somehow knew that someday some of the most populous states would be full of retards). A pure democracy has a greater chance of leading to oppression of the minority while our current system allows a voice for the minority. I'm a big fan of the electoral college. I think it's genius.

Karol, that's why we have a Senate and not just a house of representatives.
For Presidential elections the current system gives bigger states more electoral votes than smaller states, so does it really do much for smaller states?
On a related note.
I am in favor of splitting up each states electoral votes by percentage won by each candidate. I think some states already do it this way. Vermont?

There are some interesting ideas being floated on making the Electoral College more democratic.
My personal favorite is to use the Maine system.
In Maine, the votes are counted by Congressional district and state-wide. There are 2 congressional districts. Bush either almost won, or did win one district. Assuming that he did win the district, Bush got 1 electoral vote from Maine. Gore won the other district overwhelmingly, so he not only won that electoral vote, but having the majority of votes in the state, he also got the 2 state-wide electoral votes.

This system would make all states count. Moreover, 435 of the 537 electoral college members would be allocated roughly according to the votes of the people. 100 electoral college slots would remain allocated at 2 per sate.
The Constitutional virtues of this system are that it maintains the "New Jersey" plan from the Constitutional Convention, can be implimented state-by-state through the legislature,and would return some power to State Legislatures (and the States) that has been lost over time.
At the same time, the Electoral College would be more representative. Finally, the votes of Republicans in New York and Democrats in Texas would count.

Uh oh, RonL...I didn't think of that....

RonL, that's what I wanted to say. Thanks.

One state One vote is the ONLY way to democratically elect a president. Your House and Senate system is superb. I wish we had it over here along with an elected head of state and a written consitution.

however the practical effect of the EC is that the vote of one person in florida is worth more than that in North Dakota. That is stunningly stupid and extremely undemocratic. Take the point about America deliberately being set up as a reupblic not a true democracy.

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