Not to mention... he used to look like this! http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/ec/Seonadancing.jpg

http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/terminal05/2011/12/24/16/enhanced-buzz-32078-1324763887-92.jpg

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>> ^Hastur:

>> ^Asmo:
I don't decide, the abstainer decides... Whether it's apathy (my vote doesn't make a difference), indifference (don't care either way) or a genuine protest about a paucity of good candidates, the abstainer chooses (democratically) not to participate. They lose the right to complain (although most will still do so) about who they wind up with, but it's not like they were disqualified against their wishes...
Here's our disagreement in a nutshell:
You claim the most pure form of democracy represents the majority of voters. I claim the most pure form of democracy represents the majority of people. If your aim is a more pure democracy, which is more desirable?
And your last paragraph simply isn't supported. In a direct election, a candidate must appeal to exactly 50.1% of the electorate, and there is no compulsion to distribute that appeal either demographically or geographically. The college at least forces the candidates to broaden their reach. Look at some of the swing states fought over in the past election: Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Missouri, Nevada. There's a lot of diversity represented there, both geographically and demographically. IMO that's the way it should be in a union of states.


Incorrect, I agree with the assertion that the purest form of democracy represents the majority of the people. But how do you resolve an election where the majority refuses to vote? Either you poll again and again and again, or make the vote compulsory (there goes freedom), or just don't have a head of state.

But your point re: majority of the people undermines EC voting as much as it does direct elections. A state doesn't lose EC votes because people abstain, each state get's it's full quota no matter how many people stay at home.

And how does your statement not support my assertion in the second paragraph? Appealing to swing states with an uneven balance of EC votes is not diversifying, it's focusing their efforts (as demonstrated in the video). Candidates wouldn't waste time on safe seats typically. They certainly wouldn't waste time on safe seats (or alternately seats that are locked down by the opposition) that are severely underrepresented in the EC. The college forces candidates to narrow their focus, not broaden it, in the demographic that actually counts. EC votes to be gained. Demographic and geographic broadening is accidental. If those states were all jammed together in one corner of the country and had similar demographics, would you complain that candidates were narrowing their focus, or just admit they are chasing states that will yield the greatest electoral advantage to them?

The "way it should be" in a union of states is that all men (and women) are equal, not that some states get special attention because of a flawed system set up by people who didn't trust the every day person to make the 'right' choice.

edit: rephrased a sentence for clarity.

>> ^Hastur:


I'm sorry to be pedantic here, but I don't see why you get to decide what an abstainer thinks. I think they don't like any of the candidates, so I say they're casting a vote for "none of the above". However you want to count them, the 69 million popular votes cast for Obama in 2008 represents about 23% of the 300 million residents. It's simply not the will of the majority. It's not even the will of a representative sample, being that it excludes everyone under 18 and everyone not a citizen.
In a country where people seem reasonably satisfied with two senators per state, unelected judges, and all kinds of other "transgressions" against one-person-one-vote that occur in a republic, I just think it's misguided to believe that the electoral college is some huge injustice. The US is called the United States for a reason; it's not conceived to work purely as a direct democracy on the federal level, and there's no prior reason to believe that's a more effective form of governance at that scale.


I don't decide, the abstainer decides... Whether it's apathy (my vote doesn't make a difference), indifference (don't care either way) or a genuine protest about a paucity of good candidates, the abstainer chooses (democratically) not to participate. They lose the right to complain (although most will still do so) about who they wind up with, but it's not like they were disqualified against their wishes...

With that in mind, if Obama wins with 69 million votes in a popular election, it is still a majority of people who voted... EC's basically say that even once you take out the abstainers, a person with less than 50% of the actual voters can win office. Abstainers drop out of both systems, the important metric is total votes accrued per candidate vs total number of people who placed votes.

re: the second paragraph, just because problems aren't getting solved doesn't make them not problems. Essentially the apathy to change a flawed system is a democratic expression in itself, that does not make the system fair. And a popular vote for the president (ie. the executive) has little to do with the day to day running of towns/cities/states. A president might be hamstrung by a hostile congress and/or senate and achieve little during his term/s (see Obama and his great plans which were mostly stymied by the legislative branch of the Fed).

A direct popular vote means that instead of appealing to a few niche states, the candidates have to make a broader appeal to the electorate, and are less prone to pork barrel the power brokers of the electorate. It might not ever change but that doesn't mean we can't point out the inequalities in the current system.

>> ^Hastur:

>> ^Asmo:

Umm, isn't that the very definition of democracy? Getting the most votes, one person one vote.
So is the UK not a democracy? Canada? Australia? Germany? France? All have a head of government who is not elected by one person, one vote. In any of those cases, it's quite possible to choose a prime minister not favored by a majority. There are different flavors of democracy, some of them pre-dating the US, many of which do not directly elect their executives by one-person, one-vote.
The philosophical point of democracy is to best represent the will of the majority. In the US, we have the additional task of doing so while protecting the rights of the minority. The best way to do that is not always one-person, one-vote.
And like I said: even if you abolish the electoral college you still don't get the will of the majority, since there are many people who cannot legally vote and many others who choose not to.


Yes, they are democratic systems built on the principle of democracy. However, "equality and freedom have both been identified as important characteristics of democracy since ancient times" (from the Wiki). Most modern democratic systems are not equal.

Btw, a person who chooses not to vote does in fact cast a vote, a vote to abstain. Because they choose to exclude themselves from the process does not mean they weren't given their democratic right to have their say.

As an Australian, I'd prefer a Prime Minister voted in by popular vote. During the last term, the sitting PM Kevin Rudd was deposed and replaced by Julia Gillard in an internal coup due to his poor polling results (ie. it was looking like Rudd was riding the Labor party in to the ground). They replaced him as party leader which also meant he was no longer PM. That was not democratic in the slightest. At the following election, Julia Gillard won government by securing the votes of independents/crossbenchers, but achieved less of the popular vote than Tony Abbott from the Liberal party. Incidentally, voting in Australia is compulsory and you're fined if you don't show up (so much for that 'freedom' principle)

Our system is built on democratic principles, and is a form of democracy, but it's far removed from the method used by the Greeks who coined the term (Demos = "people", kratos "people"). The US electoral college is in the same boat. Someone said it earlier, the founding fathers didn't trust the average moron to get it right and put in a system to leave the true voting to 'wiser' minds.

When you can achieve 50+% of the EC votes for less than 20% of the popular vote, the system is broken, end of story. Keeping the EC seems more a matter of convenience (eg. "there will be too much rorting", it'll be too hard, waaah etc) than a matter of fairness.

Shenanigans are certainly a problem when they crop up. In 2000 it seemed all of it had to do with attempts to not count ballots by valid voters, and none of it to do with people voting under false names, so voter ID wouldn't protect us from that.

But I don't understand your claim that the electoral college lessens the problem of shenanigans, it actually amplifies it. Because a truly massive scale of fraud is required to sway an election by popular vote when there are 100 million voters, but a much smaller scale is needed when it comes down to a few counties in a single swing state.

Honestly, the absolute biggest problem with the electoral college is the fact that entire states are forced to vote as a block. Even if we were to keep the electoral college in place, complete with enhanced voting power for small states, we could still improve it tremendously by just having each state distribute it's electoral votes by the proportion that went to each candidate. Then you still wouldn't see legal battles that could sway entire states, but you would see third party candidates like Ron Paul or Ralph Nader actually pick up some votes.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

Anyone that thinks the popular vote is a better system than the electoral college needs to have a serious re-think. Did you like the 2000 election? Hope so, because if you nuke the EC then that's what you'll have EVERY election. There is so much fraud, inaccuracy, abuse, and shenanigans that happen with the popular vote that it is quite impossible - just from simple logistics - to have a clean popular vote. Unless you set up a voter ID system that require photo ID and several other methods to ensure there isn't ballot shenanigans, then it would be a complete fiasco.
The brass tacks are that the federal government has become too powerful. It was never meant to be as big, as expensive, and as influential as it currently is. The primary governance was supposed to be at the state and local level. The electoral college is only important now because the federal government has exploded into a monster that the FFs never envisioned. If you want to fix all this, then cut the federal government across the board by 50%. Butcher it like a hog and return power to the states. Then you can vote in your state and local elections and make a difference, and just elect some pathetic loser to the federal office and ignore them because they have little or no power to do anything.

Anyone that thinks the popular vote is a better system than the electoral college needs to have a serious re-think. Did you like the 2000 election? Hope so, because if you nuke the EC then that's what you'll have EVERY election. There is so much fraud, inaccuracy, abuse, and shenanigans that happen with the popular vote that it is quite impossible - just from simple logistics - to have a clean popular vote. Unless you set up a voter ID system that require photo ID and several other methods to ensure there isn't ballot shenanigans, then it would be a complete fiasco.

The brass tacks are that the federal government has become too powerful. It was never meant to be as big, as expensive, and as influential as it currently is. The primary governance was supposed to be at the state and local level. The electoral college is only important now because the federal government has exploded into a monster that the FFs never envisioned. If you want to fix all this, then cut the federal government across the board by 50%. Butcher it like a hog and return power to the states. Then you can vote in your state and local elections and make a difference, and just elect some pathetic loser to the federal office and ignore them because they have little or no power to do anything.

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