Electoral College

Actually, only a few states really matter in regards to the electoral college. These are the "battleground states" like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, etc. The rest of the states are pretty clear in who they are voting for.

 

The electoral college is silly if you ask me. Imo every persons vote should be worth the same value, period.

 

The electoral.college is a horrible system.

Lets say you have 49% of the biggest state vote for Gary Johnson.

Well sorry you 49% but your votes go to Romney. And your also the biggest state so yea, Romney gets a lot of your Gary Johnson.votes.

Lets say a few small states vote Gary Johnson. He even wins the popular vote.

Sorry Romney is Tue new president.

And to the ops comment. Your wrong. It has not been forever since the electoral vote beet the popular vote.

George w lost the election but still became president because of the electoral college

 

[quote name='"dudeindistress3"']

What would you tell the small states? Granted they still don't have very much say but they have more than the popular vote would afford them[/quote]

What's there to tell? In a direct election each individual's vote for a candidate counts as a vote towards that candidate. In the 2000 election the people did not decide the election. Florida did. (Boy I was angry when it was announced Bush won). 2000 is an example of how undemocratic the election system can be.

 

Really? Breaking out the "small states" argument? What year is this?

Small states are over-represented via the Electoral College system, while larger states are underrepresented. A state like Wyoming or Vermont gets 3 EC votes each when their entire state population does not exceed 630,000 people. Meanwhile, a state like California or Florida, both of which are continually growing in population size (California has about 35 million people), have more total EC delegates, but they also have a significantly higher population. So each delegate in Wyoming represents about 135,000 people; each delegate in Florida represents about 480,000 people. Wyoming voters thus have ~3.5x more voting power than Florida voters do in a Presidential race.

How is that fair? How is that true representative democracy? It's certainly not "one person, one vote".

 

As has been stated previously, at this point, the majority of states not considered to be "swing states" are pretty firmly entrenched in their leanings on which party they end up voting for. Very rarely is there a switch like that which occurred in Vermont in 1992, when they went from voting strictly Republican to strictly Democrat.

Ex: Indiana has voted Democrat two times since 1940; Wyoming has voted Republican in all but one election since 1952. Same applies to Idaho and Kansas. Alaska has only voted Democrat once in its history, that being the 1964 election. North Dakota has voted Republican in every election since 1940 with the exception of 1964. Oklahoma hasn't switched the party it votes for since 1964. Utah has voted Republican in every election since 1952 with the exception of 1964.


For many of these states, the only times they voted Democrat were when there was a Southern-born Democrat on the ticket (Jimmy Carter and/or Bill Clinton). This applies to Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Georgia, Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama, Texas, and South Carolina.

The other notable exception was in the 1964 landslide victory of Lyndon Johnson over Barry Goldwater, primarily because Goldwater was too staunch and too ingrained in his views. The 1964 vote had the largest margin of victory in terms of the popular vote in American history, so it stands as an outlier.

I don't see in what sense you can argue that the popular vote would be more "undemocratic" than the Electoral College system. The EC worked when it was 1800 and there were a small number of states, all of which had a pretty concentrated population. Hell, if slavery had not been the #1 thing on the minds of the Southern states' representatives at the 1787 Convention, we wouldn't have even had the Electoral College to begin with...several Founding Fathers were in favor of direct election via the popular vote, such as James Madison.

 

No one really cares about the electoral college when it agrees with the popular vote. But then in 2000 when it doesn't agree with the popular vote, there is an outrage and the electoral college process comes into question. Honestly, when it agrees with the popular vote, it's a superfluous process, and when it doesn't it's an undemocratic process. Either way it's bad.

 

This..

 

The electoral college was implemented by federalist(free masons)

And its a very flawed system because it allows for heavy corruption within the college

 

Source?

 

The rules on who the delegates vote for varies by state. In some states, delegates are required by law to vote for which ever candidate wins the popular vote in their state; in other states delegates have a bit more leeway and can vote for whoever they want, even if that candidate didn't win the popular vote in their state.

 

I know they usually don't. Just because they don't doesn't mean they can't.

 

No he won't. Making that argument is exactly what will make people not vote for him. Voting for Gary Johnson is not because he is going to be president, but because as more and more people make a statement by not voting for a republican or Democrat, real, positive change will have to happen one way or another. Either one of the two parties (most likely Republican) will have to adopt more Libertarian views or the Libertarian party will grow into a viable third party.