Split Electoral College Votes or ...?

[Pan]

Colorado Considers Splitting Its 9 Electoral-College Votes

What do you think about splitting electoral college votes. I know this old news, but I was wandering do you think we should have electoral votes or just use the popular vote?

[Dameon Angell]

the Electoral votes of a state go to the one who won the popular vote. Each state gets 1 vote per member of congress (all representatives + 2 senators). This should stay, because the popular vote is still being used per state, but the electoral votes make it so that it's a percentage of states that you win, not having the popular vote in certain areas over others. You get a better concensus of the total voting population with the electorals over the 50 state wide popular vote.

Should they be able to split the votes? I dunno, I think it would be alright if all 50 states split their votes or none of them do it at all, cause again, that screws up the percentage. So, no, Colorado shouldn't split their votes unless everyone does it.

[Saturn V]

Ditch the Electoral College. As long as it exists my vote doesn't *really* matter (unless I'm one of the electors).

[Sleepy Weasel]

The electoral college is an antiquated system that has no relevance in our modern election process. It's kept because it makes for more exciting election day tv as we get to color in the states blue or red. It should be completely removed. Splitting is a good start

[PUNK rock]

I don't like television very much, but I honestly don't think lawmakers have failed to change the electorial system because of TV.

My thoughts on the system: it gives a "magnified" view of how a state votes. that's not always accurate but it shows which candidate the majority of a state has chosen. The split voting seems a bit stupid though.

[Sleepy Weasel]

Let's go with it's kept because of nostalgic purposes only then.

[Jeansi]

what's an electoral vote?

[Saturn V]

what's an electoral vote?

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

An electoral college is a set of electors who are empowered as a deliberative body to elect someone to a particular office. Often these electors represent different organizations or entities with each organization or entity represented by a particular number of electors or with votes weighted in a particular way. Many times, though, the electors are simply important persons whose wisdom, it is hoped, would provide a better choice than a larger body.

Basically, it takes away the idea of "power to the people" and makes it "power to a few people that we choose." I guess voting is just to try to tell the Electoral College who to put in office.

So if here in Texas the popular vote was 60% Bush and 40% Kerry, the Electoral College here in Texas will vote all Bush (which sucks).

[za gophar]

that definition wasnt that enlightening..

there are 50 states in the united states. each state has a certain ammount of electoral votes in presidential elections. the one rule is that all of a state's electoral votes must go to one candidate. so if a state has a million people, and 3 electoral votes, and 500,001 people vote for candidate A and 499,999 vote for candidate B, candidate A will get all 3 electoral votes.

the number of electoral votes is made by the number of congressmen that state has, which is mainly determined by population. even if, theoretically, a state had one person, though, that state would get 3 electoral votes just because each state has at least 2 senators and 1 representative. in this way it kind of puts a little more power in the hands of the smaller states. it also makes it possible for the candidate who got fewer votes in the country to win by getting more electoral votes. this has happened a couple times.

[za gophar]

say there are 2 states, A and B. A has 15 electoral votes, B has 10. candidate 1 wins state A, 500,001 votes to 499,999. candidate 2 wins state B, 500,000 votes to 1.

so candidate 1 gets 15 electoral votes for winning A
and candidate 2 gets 10 electoral votes for winning B

B has a smaller population than A, so it has fewer electoral votes.

candidate A wins the election.

candidate B wins the popular vote, but not the election.

Candidate A got 500,002 votes

Candidate B got 999,999 votes.

[Jeansi]

so the person that gets the most votes doesn't neccessarily become president? Confusing.

[Dameon Angell]

You people are still pissed over Gore? gg

[PUNK rock]

Za Gophar explained it just fine, but what people have failed to mention is how many times the winner of the popular vote failed to win the election. The last time it happened was in 2000 and before that it hadn't happened since 1888. That's twice in the 50+ elections we've had. So unless you're really picky about things, it's not that big of a deal.

[Dameon Angell]

exactly. if it happens again this year, then maybe its something to start to look at, but if thats just some fluke every many years, why?

[Troll King]

It's reassuring that people are okay with giving the highest power in the free world to someone on a fluke.