The Electoral College

[Cortopassi]

I understand there are differences of opinion, but maybe we can agree on one aspect of this that ending up sucking, IMO.

Wisconsin, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan, Iowa, for example.

That we almost always focus on a very small subset of states every four years sucks. Why should a national election come down to a few thousand votes, for example, in Pennsylvania?

For red voters in blue states and vice versa, your vote basically means nothing. This seems wrong.

Flame away.

[Cortopassi]

Proportional makes a lot of sense.

[yankees60]

Proportional makes a lot of sense.

If so, then what purpose does the Electoral College serve that just going by the popular vote does not?

Vinny

[I Shrugged]

Proportional makes a lot of sense.

If so, then what purpose does the Electoral College serve that just going by the popular vote does not?

Vinny

Proportional does not allow the EC to have the intended benefits. In a popular vote, only the big states would matter, practically speaking.

[Libertarian666]

Proportional makes a lot of sense.

If so, then what purpose does the Electoral College serve that just going by the popular vote does not?

Vinny

Proportional does not allow the EC to have the intended benefits. In a popular vote, only the big states would matter, practically speaking.

There's nothing wrong with awarding electoral votes proportionally. In fact, there is no specification at all in the Constitution as to how they are to be awarded. I'm sure the Framers didn't omit that by accident; they just didn't think it was necessary to specify because the state legislatures would be able to handle it.

[pp4me]

I understand there are differences of opinion, but maybe we can agree on one aspect of this that ending up sucking, IMO.

Wisconsin, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan, Iowa, for example.

That we almost always focus on a very small subset of states every four years sucks. Why should a national election come down to a few thousand votes, for example, in Pennsylvania?

For red voters in blue states and vice versa, your vote basically means nothing. This seems wrong.

Flame away.

I still like the idea of the electoral college for the reasons commonly given but you bring up a good point. It is said that Hillary won the popular vote by some fairly small margin and we all assume that means she would have won the election if it had been decided solely on the popular vote. That can't be stated with certainty however because there is an unknown in the equation.

The unknown X factor is how many people in states that were decidedly red or blue didn't bother to vote because experience taught them that their vote wasn't going to matter?