I don’t agree with LP that faithless electors serve any useful purpose as discretionary actors. On the other hand, should it be discovered between election day and inauguration day that the president elect has committed some heinous felony, it’s nice to have a mechanism whereby the national outcry could be served, presumably in favor of his running mate.

The argument against the EC that I find most obnoxious is the “swing-state” thing. Swing states only get to be swing states because other states are predictable. But those states are predictable only to the extent that the candidates are “of” their base. A Republican will not come out for redistribution of wealth, higher taxes on the rich, and other liberal stuff just to get Ohio or Florida’s votes. If he did, he’d lose his base, and with it the election. So those base voters in predictable states “count” very much in the outcome of the election.

Meanwhile, I doubt very much that Utah’s Republicans resent the fact that no one campaigns for their vote. They get a disproportional say in the election and their guy wastes none of his resources on the 23 Democrats in the state. And yet the big-city liberals whine about how the small states are ignored, as if the majority party in the small states cared.

I am also sympathetic to the Maine/Nebraska approach, especially in large states with differing regional interests. Heterogeneous states should use an EC-type method to pick their governors; I’m not sure why it hasn’t happened. But the fact that it has not happened does not suggest to me that it would be a bad idea. In contrast, it’s quite clear why the Maine/Nebraska thing is so uncommon as regards EC allocations: in most states, the majority party sees no point in surrendering electoral votes by abandoning winner-take-all.

At the end of the day, this dispute is between big-city and agrarian interests. The Founders determined that the best way to adjust the political interests of these groups was to give disproportional weight to the agrarians who, by the nature of their work are small in numbers relative to their contribution to the economy and stability of the polis. I have no problem with city folk arguing that this balance should change, but that’s the only anti-EC argument that seem to me to be coherent. All the others are lame non sequiturs aimed at obscuring the raw politics behind them.

I’ve read this terrible baseball analogy out of you twice now, please come up with an actual parallel. American idol even makes as much sense (nearly none since it ends with a popular vote).

I think this detracts from your point as a whole, as it shows an ignorance to both sports and our electoral process. Just a suggestion, it’s not that your thoughts are “baseless”, LOL, but the are lame and debated better by smarter people on both sides of the debate in and out of this spectrum.

Cheers

Which is why we have George W. Bush in power, who’s administration has been one of the, if not the most destructive to the Constitution ever. So, unfortunatley, we’re there, and as long as we still have “Battleground States”, where, say.. five hundred votes statewide versus maybe a million nationally make the diference, and rigged elections, you can bet it will only get worse.

We do have a system where every “state” has the same number of EC votes – Every State has 2 Electoral Votes now. (plus 2 for DC)

Then, we have EC votes based on population. There are 435 population weighted EC votes. (plus 1 more for DC)

This is a good system, to have EC votes based on Statehood and population. They should be allocated under the Maine/New Hampshire system, however.

(Except that DC should be stripped of its EC votes and the populated areas should be returned to Maryland.)

Now, it you want to increase the size of the House of Representatives, resulting in a smaller number of constituents for each House member and a smaller number of voters within each Congressional District and therefore each Electoral College district, that is another matter.

I would actually support such an increase. We could increase the US House to 600, 800, even 1200 members and it would be fine with me. Of course, if we do create such a large body, we should quit paying these House members. They should recieve only a stipend, as they do in New Hampshire, and they should be term limited to only a 3 term maximum in the House and 2 terms in the Senate.

This would give us a much larger Electoral College. However, they must be elected by district and not winner take all. And they must be individuals who can become faithless electors when necessary.

2. Require that electoral votes be allocated among the presidential candidates and among the vice presidential candidates on the basis of the popular vote in each state.

3. Give the States time, place, manner authority subject to an override by Congress.

And if the answer is no, why not give each state a number of electoral votes that is proportionate to its population, with 3 or 4 digits to the right of the decimal point? We can’t have a state with a fractional number of members of the US House, but we could have fractional numbers of electoral votes.

Why should Wyoming have three times as many electoral votes per resident, compared to California? Baseball doesn’t do things like that.

Having 51 elections to determine Electoral Votes is like a baseball season where the key is to win the most games.

Having a nationwide direct election would be like holding the same ballgames, but instead of determining a winner, we would just add up the total runs scored in all the games. The team with the most runs over the whole season would be the champion.

This would result in a total change in strategy and in the players chosen to be on a team.

You would want to wear down your weak opponents and then run up huge rallies of runs, batting for hours and scoring runs in the hundreds in innings that would go on for hours or days.

It would destroy baseball.

Such a Voting system for President would completely change America.

It would destroy the balance between the Federal Government and the States.

It would lead to pandering to large groups with huge fascist-socialist programs of vote buying.

It would lead to massive voter fraud and violence.

The US Government thinks, believes, requires and madates a lot of things. This does NOT in any way mean that the US Government is correct or doing the right thing.

What the FEC tabulates is:

“the aggregate of the total recorded votes cast, in 51 independent State (incl DC) elections, in an effort to win the Electoral Votes of each individual State to determine the Presidential electors whose task it will be to elect the President and Vice President of the United States.”

This is quite a bit different than the popular vote, and especially different than the popular vote would be in a nationwide, direct election.