Comments on: The Electoral College Survival Guide

By: Tyler Garwood

Tyler Garwood — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 23:22:00 +0000

the system should just go with simple majority this is a country of the PEOPLE and not the Electoral College

By: Tyler Garwood

Tyler Garwood — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 22:48:00 +0000

I believe that we should have a simple system where the popular vote decides the next president of the United States, this country is FOR, OF, and BY the PEOPLE not the Electoral College and the founding fathers should have put it in the constitution if they didn’t trust us to vote for presidency. In this manner everyone’s individual vote would count and wouldn’t depend on unloyal politics.

By: GTT

GTT — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 14:44:00 +0000

The electoral college is a disgace… How could you have a system where a president could potentially be elceted WITHOUT the mayority of popular votes? Sorry, but that negates the “all votes are equal” premise. Like BassMan said, itÂ´s an elitist institution that absolutely has to go.

By: Charlotte Brant

Charlotte Brant — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 18:55:00 +0000

We elect a President of the United STATES of America. As citizens of our respective states, we have a voice in selecting the candidate for whom our state casts its vote for its president. We could have 1 state, 1 vote, but recognizing that some states are more populated than others, the electoral college system is used to give the larger states more votes … but not so many that a small number of heavily populated states could nullify the votes of the smaller states. This seems to be compromise. After all, we do not elect a President of the People of the United States!

By: susan

susan — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:29:00 +0000

Faithless electors are not a practical problem under the current system. Presidential electors are committed party activists who are nominated by their political party to cast a pre-determined vote when the Electoral College meets. Of the 21,915 electoral votes cast for President in the nationâ€™s 55 presidential elections between 1789 and 2004, only 11 were cast in an unexpected way. Moreover, among these 11 cases in 217 years, the unexpected vote of Samuel Miles for Thomas Jefferson in 1796 is the only instance of a true faithless elector (that is, a situation where the elector might have thought, at the time he voted, that his vote might affect the national outcome). Nine of the other 11 cases were simply post-election grand-standing votes cast by publicity-seeking electors who knew, at the time they voted, that their vote definitely would not affect the outcome in the Electoral College. One electoral vote was accidentally and unintentionally cast by a presidential elector who mistakenly voted for his partyâ€™s vice-presidential candidate for both President and Vice President.

Second, if faithless electors are perceived by anyone to be a real problem, the states already have ample authority to remedy the problem by means of state law. For example, Pennsylvania law empowers each presidential nominee to directly nominate the elector candidates who run under his name in Pennsylvania. North Carolina law declares vacant the position of any contrary-voting elector and empowers the stateâ€™s remaining electors to immediately replace the contrary-voting elector with a loyal elector. Either the Pennsylvania approach or the North Carolina approach, or a combination of the two, would be an effective remedy against this perceived problem. The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld state laws guaranteeing faithful voting by presidential electors (because the states have plenary power over presidential electors).

By: susan

susan — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:26:00 +0000

BASIC INFO , TIES
The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).

Every vote would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections.

The bill would take effect only when enacted, in identical form, by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes-that is, enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538). When the bill comes into effect, all the electoral votes from those states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).

So there would never be a tie in the electoral vote, because the compact always represents a bloc consisting of a majority of the electoral votes. Thus, an election for President would never be thrown into the House of Representatives (with each state casting one vote) and an election for Vice President would never be thrown into the Senate (with each Senator casting one vote).

The National Popular Vote bill has passed 21 state legislative chambers, including one house in Arkansas, Colorado, Maine, North Carolina, and Washington, and both houses in California, Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont. The bill has been enacted by Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, and Maryland. These four states possess 50 electoral votes – 19% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect.

See NationalPopularVote.com

By: BassMan

BassMan — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 16:46:00 +0000

The electoral college exists because the elites who led our revolution didn’t have faith in ‘the people’ (aka white, male, property owners)to make the right decision.
The fact that Gee Dubyah has swung two terms doesn’t exactly prove them wrong. (Although, there was definitely fraud in 2000. Less certain in ’04.)

Still, the electoral college was obsolete. Sorry, those guys weren’t infallible by a mile.

By: Marty

Marty — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 23:57:00 +0000

there is a book called the people’s choice that i had to read for a polisci class in college that like is all about a hypothetical situation where the president-elect dies before the electorate votes and craziness ensues. A good read.
i put a link to it on amazon as my link, but if you can’t find it try searching: The People’s Choice: A Novel (Paperback)
by Jeff Greenfield

By: Das

Das — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 20:43:00 +0000

Check our website and play the game “We the Decider at mypakragames.com/games/we-the-decided/

If you register after that, you can track an objective analysis of how positions of each candidates are swaying the potential voter.

Track by states — electoral college is good for those who wins. Only losers complains

By: J.D.

J.D. — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 18:06:00 +0000

I also seem to recall, according to Wikipedia, that in the 2004 election one of Minnesota’s electoral votes ended up going for “John Ewards” by mistake. Confirm/deny?