The argument for keeping the Electoral College has been to stop fringe candidates from gumming up the process, and possibly winning, with 20% of the popular vote. Agreed.

It's a two-party system, and face it, it's going to stay that way.

All we need to do is to mandate that the winner of the popular vote wins the election, with one proviso - that he/she gets at least 200 Electoral Votes. No more Floridas. No more weeks of court fighting. In the nearly-impossible event that one candidate does not get 200, the third place candidate's electors would be set free to vote for whomever they like.

In the end, the winner needs a plurality of American votes - every vote and every state counts - along with support in a significant number of states.

Please explain to me how a "fringe" candidate would garner a plurality of the vote? Wouldn't that move the candidate from the "fringes"?

How on Earth do you believe this system would do away with the possibility of another "Florida". It may in fact complicate the issues significantly, by having two or three "Floridas" at once. A tight margin of the national vote tally could trigger legal contests in several states, or dozens of voting precints with tight races. With the number of absentee ballots that go uncounted every year, it could be days, weeks or even months before a solid hand count could be completed and verified to everyone's satisfaction. It could be a disaster, which most likely need the Supreme Court to intervene with. A close race in a country as large as the United States, will always produce hard feelings, and claims of being robbed.

Besides, smaller and less populated States would be insane to agree to any popular vote scheme. They might as well close up thier State Governments, and resign themselves to being slaves of New York, Illinois, Texas, Florida and California. It is the United STATES of America. What you propose would be one more step towards the tyrany of the majority.

And why? Because one year you did not like the outcome of one election. It could have just as easily gone the other way, and you would have been fine with it.

Boy do I read a lot on this board about the "tyranny of the majority." What a crock of unmitigated bullshit.

Let's just point out for the record the the tyrannical Presidency as it is currently constructed is the creation of a President who originally LOST the popular vote. Eliminating the E.C permits "tyranny" only insofar as we allow a President to get away with it.

The avoidance of "Floridas" in popular vote elections is exceedingly simple: a mandated national standard for Presidential ballots and the means of counting them, including of course a verifiable paper trail. You are of course free to argue that the expense of creating and maintaining such a system is too high and that the need doesn't justify such measures. After the debacle of the 2000 election I disagree. The stakes here are enormous.

{Cross posted from another thread}:

It should come as no surprise that an argument supporting the unjustifiable magnification of rural white votes is made by a conservative.

Wyoming: E.C. votes: 3. Population: ~500,000. So electoral college votes/100,000 voters = 0.6. Votes Republican in Presidential elections.

California: E.C votes: 55. Population: ~36,553,300. So electoral college votes/100,000 voters = 0.15, or one quarter the weight of the voters of Wyoming. California votes Democratic in Presidential elections.

Maybe we should just count Californian votes as 3/5ths as valuable as Wyoming votes? Ironically, they'd be better off.

There is no argument to be made to justify this state of affairs. The principle is "one man (/woman) one vote." The tyranny of the majority is replaced here by the tyranny of the minority, as so ably represented in Dubya's presidency.

{End cross post quote}

A national popular vote would drastically reduce the chance of ever needing a recount, while the current system can frequently cause artificial crises like Florida 2000. With a popular vote system, it would have been irrelevant whether a cnadidate won Florida by a few hundred votes. The closest election in recent years was Kennedy-Nixon 1960, which was still over a 100,000 vote spread. Also, the argument about "tyranny of the majority" is greatly misunderstood. It means that the majority is not allowed to pass unjust laws that victimize minorities. For example, the majority passing a law saying that all members of a minority group should be discriminated against. But when it comes to an election for president, it's not a matter of one side unfairly victimizing another. Someone has to win, and there's nothing inherently unfair about the majority getting its way! In fact, that's the rule in virtually ALL elections except for our presidential election.

tjcerveza,

Why are you asking me to support arguments that I never made? Where is all of this business about Florida coming from? What makes you think that you know how I feel about any elections in Florida?

Here is what I think about the EC:

We shouldn't engage in state by state tinkering with the election laws. The Presidency is a unique federal election. The selection of the President is a matter of Constitutional law. We should amend our Constitution to improve our Presidential election process. We should establish minimum requirements for the various states to follow regarding Presidential elections. These should include a requirement for a paper ballot that is voter-verified in the event of a recount being required in a state due to a close election. To prevent gerrymandering, we should require that each state apportion the statewide vote.

By mandating statewide apportionment, people in non-swing states would still have a reasonable belief that their vote will count for something. That is not currently the case. This disenfranchises many American voters.

I have not seen any evidence to support the argument that small states are harmed by a popular vote for the Presidency. That said, I don't advocate eliminating the Electoral College. I simply want to provide protection from electronic voting machines that are susceptible to fraud, and I would like to mandate proportional allocation of each state's electors. These are non-partisan and sensible enhancements of the process to select the President. The concept of the Electoral College is not harmed by any suggestions that I have put forward.

To prevent gerrymandering, we should require that each state apportion the statewide vote.

That creates problems of its own, especially in states with few electoral votes, because of tipping points for getting an extra electoral vote.

If a state has only three electoral votes, then whoever gets a bare majority would get two of them, and it would be a tough haul to get all three (probably requiring over 70% of the vote in that state). But in states that have four electoral votes, candidates would be almost certain to split them; the threshold for getting a 3-1 split would be over the 60% mark. This odd-even effect seems like a pretty random factor to throw into the election of the chief executive. And it also means that voters in states with four or six electoral votes are unlikely to influence the outcome, since it would take a hefty majority to prevent anything other than an electoral vote split.

Trying to reduce the chances for fraud is fine. But why protect the electoral college in the meantime, if it's really a separate issue? If we really want every vote to matter equally, why not just go for a national vote total?

Let me weigh in with what I think a traditional Federalist would say (modified to account for the size of the country).

The US is a big and diverse place. If you accept that it's not too big to be governed by one federal government, then the Electoral College is one of perhaps several rational ways to allocate the vote for President. In fact, under our Constitutional form of government, it's the most consistent and rational. Here's why:

The key thing you have to remember is that we never intended for you to elect the President. It is the States that elect the President. And the States can choose their Electors any way that they want.

We were very concerned that the less populous states -- which would be the farming States including Jefferson's Virginia -- would not want to stay for long in a majoritarian system because their interests would be outvoted by the more populous States -- like Hamilton's New York -- every time.

The divisions between urban and agrarian States were already clear to us back then. We knew that we were giving an added measure of power in the Electoral College and in the Senate to agrarian States and therefore to political interests and views that those States tended to have.

But the key, I repeat, is that the Constitution was not a compact between you and me. It was a compact between 13 sovereign States. It was a bit stronger compact than the Articles, but one between sovereign States nonetheless.

So, if you take away the Electoral College, you break with the fundamental idea we had of how to govern such a large and diverse place. Sure, you "restore" power to the "people," but you run right into the problem of seriously divesting power from agricultural regions and those regions have never agreed to and would never have agreed to that deal.

If you bought a Cadillac, and on the day of delivery they told you they had unilaterally decided to give it a Volkswagen engine, would you want out of the deal? Think of the claims to rescission or succession you will have from the red belt of States. That didn't work out well for you the last time, do you have a better plan this time?

And if you take away the Electoral College, shouldn't you take away the Senate as well, where the disproportionality of citizens to Senators is far greater? How many more Senators does California have than Iowa?

The mistake that you have made, ladies and gentlemen, is in allowing far too much power to reside in the Presidency over time. If it were the Presidency that we had created for you, you would care far less about the fact that, yes, those red farm states picked a President you didn't like. You could largely ignore him.

On a related note, we are pleased to see that even today's SCOTUS realizes that your current President has usurped powers that the Constitution we drafted denies him. Go read the Beaumedien decision. It will make you feel a bit better.

Well said Ron.

dsimon:

To prevent gerrymandering, we should require that each state apportion the statewide vote.

That creates problems of its own, especially in states with few electoral votes, because of tipping points for getting an extra electoral vote.

That beats giving every elector to the candidate that won 50.001% of the vote. My proposal is a compromise. I don't pretend that it is perfect.

Trying to reduce the chances for fraud is fine. But why protect the electoral college in the meantime, if it's really a separate issue? If we really want every vote to matter equally, why not just go for a national vote total?

Because the states would never agree to it. Why not improve the process with a reasonable, non-partisan compromise, rather than bitching about it and doing nothing?

Thanks, tj. I always do my best work when I have writer's block for the brief I'm supposed to be writing.

A couple of years ago I moved from Florida to California. I moved from one of the most significant battleground states to one which everyone knows will vote blue. Back in FL, my vote was important (unless there was a hanging chad), but here in CA I might as well stay home because my vote is next to worthless. Additionally, caddies have not visited my state, except to raise money, and not adequately addressed its needs. Is that a fair system?

One of the great myths being perpetrated is that if we do away with the electoral college, the small population states will be ignore.

The truth is, there are already being ignored BECAUSE of the electoral college.

Question: What states get the most attention from the media and the campaigns? The answer is, the big batteground states like PA, OH, FL, MI.

Now, compare that to Wyoming. How much attention does Wyoming get during the presidential race? That's right, virtually none. Why? Because it's only 3 electoral votes and there's no suspense where those votes are going. In other words, no one gives a crap about Wyoming's electoral votes.

But in a way you're missing a huge point. If Wyoming's 3 electoral votes are soundly in one camp (I could look it up, I presume it's R), those votes are counting. They are a part of the calculus of victory. In 2000, had there been no Wyoming, Gore would be President.

In a popular vote system, the people of Wyoming could be exterminated from the face of the Earth and what difference would it make? Not one little eetsy bitsy bit. Zip. Nada. Never.

It has been known since 1789 that Virginia would tend to vote differently from New York. The question is not which way will NY go and which way will VA go and when. The question is, what weight will be given to those votes.

California? And you're complaining? You have the House Majority Leader! Let me have some of that bacon! Some of those spare ribs! You have exactly the compensation that the Constitutional Convention meant for you to have.

What difference does it make if the candidates visit your State during the campaign, unless you own a media company?