01-06-2008, 12:14 PM
Seems like a fair assessment to me.
Lots of Americans (including myself) consider the Electoral College to be irrational,
inane and anti-democratic. Its entire purpose is to permit the occasional anomaly
of an electoral college majority going to a candidate who did not get the most actual
votes (e.g. GW Bush in 2000), somehow allowing geography, history and the
idiosyncratic decisions of individual states (regarding how they allocate their electors)
weigh in on top of actual vote count. I say its entire purpose is this because if this
could not happen, then the presidency would always go to the candidate who gets
the most votes, making the Electoral College system pointless other than creating
some drama on election night and giving the winning party a vague idea of the
geographical spread of their majority.
America is very conservative about changing its Constitution (a good thing for
the most part), and both major parties would throw up huge obstacles to eliminating
the Electoral College tradition if somehow there was a true political push to streamline
and modernize our presidential election system, as this peculiar American tradition
has worked to each party's advantage on different occasions.
Lots of Americans (including myself) consider the Electoral College to be irrational,
inane and anti-democratic. Its entire purpose is to permit the occasional anomaly
of an electoral college majority going to a candidate who did not get the most actual
votes (e.g. GW Bush in 2000), somehow allowing geography, history and the
idiosyncratic decisions of individual states (regarding how they allocate their electors)
weigh in on top of actual vote count. I say its entire purpose is this because if this
could not happen, then the presidency would always go to the candidate who gets
the most votes, making the Electoral College system pointless other than creating
some drama on election night and giving the winning party a vague idea of the
geographical spread of their majority.
America is very conservative about changing its Constitution (a good thing for
the most part), and both major parties would throw up huge obstacles to eliminating
the Electoral College tradition if somehow there was a true political push to streamline
and modernize our presidential election system, as this peculiar American tradition
has worked to each party's advantage on different occasions.