Are we close to a tipping point for a Constitutional Amendment to end the Electoral College?

[Ted King]

swampy wrote:
[quote=Ted King]
[quote=swampy]
A good argument might be that it's the Constitutional way we do things. Until there is an amendment to the Constitution it will be the way we continue to do it.

I don't see how any Congressional bill can just up and change the Constitution. It may be a popular aspiration of the liberal elite, but I doubt it can pass in Congress.

There is nothing unConstitutional about the National Popular Vote bill(s) and those bills are passed by states not Congress.
Agree, nothing unConstitutional about it, but the Constitution is pretty clear about how we elect Presidents and the electoral college is only used in presidential elections. No vote by Congress alone can change that.

Obama may try to change that by Executive Order like he's changing so many things with the swipe of his pen. /sarc
Under the National Popular vote system, it would still be the Electoral College that decides who becomes president - it's just that enough states would agree to cast their votes in the Electoral College in a manner to assure that the person with the plurality of votes nationwide gets enough Electoral College votes to become president.

I have no idea what you are referring to in relation to the Electoral College with your comment about Obama and an executive order.

[davester]

swampy wrote: Obama may try to change that by Executive Order like he's changing so many things with the swipe of his pen. /sarc

Complete non sequitur.

[Ted King]

$tevie wrote:
[quote=Ted King]
Can anyone provide a good argument for retaining the Electoral College?

The argument is that we are not a democracy, but a Constitutional Republic, which the Founding Fathers created on purpose in an effort to have small low population areas have at least some of the clout of large highly populated areas. Also, as billb pointed out, to make an election taking place in multiple states manageable.

"Hence it is that democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general have been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths... A republic, by which I mean a government in which a scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect and promises the cure for which we are seeking." ~~James Madison
Essentially all of these "arguments" say that it was a good idea at the beginning so we should keep doing it. Well, they came to a compromise allowing slave states to count each slave as 3/5's of a person for purposes of giving slave states more Electoral College votes even though slaves couldn't vote. That lasted 90 years. I guess 90 years isn't long enough to become sacrosanct. Women didn't have the right to vote originally either. That lasted 140 years. I guess that wasn't long enough to become sacrosanct either. Maybe if the misogynists could have held on for just another 10 years, then maybe 150 years would have been enough to make women not voting a sacrosanct part of the Constitution.

Can anyone name one example in the last 150 years where having the Electoral College resulted in the U.S. having a clearly better person elected president than the person who would have been president under a "plurality of the popular vote wins the presidency" way of doing things? (I can definitely think of an example within the last 11 years where we ended up with someone worse as president because of the Electoral College.)

[davester]

billb wrote:
It's a good compromise system that has served us well since its inception.

Throwing the election to GW Bush (with a little help from a corrupt supreme court) despite the popular vote being clearly against him and thus causing us to dive deeply into deficit spending, unjustified wars, and thousands of deaths is not what I would call "served us well".

"We've always done it this way so we should keep doing it" is a refrain I often hear, and it is seldom valid, so arguments that use that line of reasoning are bogus IMHO.

$tevie wrote: The argument is that we are not a democracy, but a Constitutional Republic, which the Founding Fathers created on purpose in an effort to have small low population areas have at least some of the clout of large highly populated areas.

Actually it's large low population areas and small highly populated areas. However, that's beside the point. Why should a single person who lives in a low population density state have much more political power than a single person who lives (potentially just a couple of miles away) in a high population density state?

[rjmacs]

Ted King wrote:
Can anyone name one example in the last 150 years where having the Electoral College resulted in the U.S. having a clearly better person elected president than the person who would have been president under a "plurality of the popular vote wins the presidency" way of doing things?

Why limit us to the last 150 years?

Oh, right - because if you go back much further you have to say that John Quincy Adams ought to have lost to Andrew Jackson.

[Carnos Jax]

$tevie wrote:
[quote=Ted King]
Can anyone provide a good argument for retaining the Electoral College?

The argument is that we are not a democracy, but a Constitutional Republic, which the Founding Fathers created on purpose in an effort to have small low population areas have at least some of the clout of large highly populated areas. Also, as billb pointed out, to make an election taking place in multiple states manageable.

"Hence it is that democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general have been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths... A republic, by which I mean a government in which a scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect and promises the cure for which we are seeking." ~~James Madison
In reference to both you and Bill's posts, I thought the reason the Electoral College came about was as a comprimise between Congress and the people. The people wanted the right to elect the President. Congress wanted the right to elect the president. This coupled with another reason historically referenced (the only other one I can find) is the logistics of running a pure popular vote (whatever that may mean).

In modern times, that shouldn't be an issue. And recounts of every state/county shouldn't be required unless the margin was required for a victory was within the statistical possibility of error (for that precinct?).

[Ted King]

rjmacs wrote:
[quote=Ted King]
Can anyone name one example in the last 150 years where having the Electoral College resulted in the U.S. having a clearly better person elected president than the person who would have been president under a "plurality of the popular vote wins the presidency" way of doing things?

Why limit us to the last 150 years?

Oh, right - because if you go back much further you have to say that John Quincy Adams ought to have lost to Andrew Jackson.
No. Unless someone wants to argue that the Constitution was perfect at the beginning, then there comes a time when what made sense then doesn't make sense any more. I had just mentioned the 150 year number just prior and it sounded like a good number of years away from the beginning where there was presumably a good rationale for what ended up in the Constitution but also a good number of years from the present so that people wouldn't think I'm trying to advocate something based strictly on recent history. Besides, do you really think that Andrew Jackson would have been significantly worse as a president if elected then? And that election happened over 180 years ago anyway.

[$tevie]

The Constitution is filled with compromises. If we are going to start second guessing the Constitution, this country is going to go to hell in a handbasket. If it hasn't already.

As for W being elected by the Electoral College: W was elected by the Supreme Court. Are we going to get rid of the Supreme Court because of it?

[davester]

As far as I'm concerned, the electoral college has only one function...to make the votes of one group of people have less worth than the votes of another group of people. A vote in Wyoming has 3.7 times the power of a vote in California. (http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/against...-citizens/ ). That is absolutely ridiculous and even worse than the original constitution's apportioning of a worth of 3/5ths of personhood to slaves.

We have second-guessed and changed many aspects of the constitution since it was originally drafted and the country has not gone to hell in a handbasket. Do you really think that we should have kept the constitution intact (which would mean that women and blacks would not be able to vote today)?

[Ted King]

$tevie wrote:
The Constitution is filled with compromises. If we are going to start second guessing the Constitution, this country is going to go to hell in a handbasket. If it hasn't already.

As for W being elected by the Electoral College: W was elected by the Supreme Court. Are we going to get rid of the Supreme Court because of it?

The Constitution was made to be "second guessed"; it not, they wouldn't have put in rules for making amendments to it. Aren't you glad that we second guessed the Constitution and changed it so that women could vote?

If we had election by popular vote instead of the Electoral College, the issue never would have gone to the Supreme Court.