Should we abolish the electoral college?

Answer 1

The United States of America is classified, by many sources, as a 'republic' or a 'democracy'. The Random House Webster's unabridged dictionary gives this definition of a democracy:

"Government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system."

and this of a republic:

"A state in which the supreme power rests in the body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by representatives chosen directly or indirectly by them."

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Answers.com provides, in part, this description of the United States Electoral College:

"Political Dictionary: Electoral College

A mechanism for the indirect election of public officials. For the purpose of electing the President and Vice President of the United States a 538-member Electoral College is created with each state having as many electors as it has representatives and senators in the national legislature, plus 3 for the District of Columbia. To be elected, a candidate must obtain an absolute majority in the Electoral College, currently 270. If no candidate gains an absolute majority the US House of Representatives makes the choice, with the delegation from each state having one vote.

Most of these arrangements were devised in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 as a compromise between those who proposed a direct popular election of the President and those who preferred to make him subject to election by the legislature. As originally conceived, members of the Electoral College were expected to be prominent state worthies impervious to transient public moods. However, such notions were quickly overtaken by the emergence of parties and the popular election of electors in place of their appointment by state legislatures. The 'winner takes all' rule, or convention, that all of a state's Electoral College votes go to the candidate which wins the highest popular vote, is not in the US Constitution; two states (Maine and Nebraska) assign their electoral votes in proportion to the state vote for each candidate. Occasionally, states elect unpledged electors, or electors break their pledge and vote for a candidate other than the one they said they would. Because of the constitutional origins of the college, electors cannot be punished for this."

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If the validation of a republic or democracy rests upon the premise of supreme power being vested in a nation's citizens, then the American Electoral College is antithetic to such a definition.

Why? Because the President of the United States is elected not by its people but rather by a system, the Electoral College, in which the power of each and every citizen's ballot is first radically altered by changing it into an absolute vote for but one of the two candidates, then skewed even further by now assigning a 'numerical weight' to the alteration, which is determined by the number of representatives and senators each state has in Congress, said number being based upon a particular state's population.

For example, in the 2008 National election, results posted by CNN, http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/president/, showed the following nominal popular vote for the Democratic candidate Obama and for the Republican candidate McCain in the states of New York and Wyoming:

Obama-a total of 4,443,882 popular votes; McCain-a total of 2,736,999 popular votes.

However, when we examine the electoral college significance of these figures, we note that New York state, the more populous of the two and voting predominately for the Democratic candidate, contributes 31 electoral college votes to Obama, while Wyoming, thinly populated, but voting predominately Republican, contributes 3 electoral college votes to McCain. So with 270 college ballots needed to carry the election, New York provides Obama with 11.48% of the required electoral total while Wyoming gives McCain 1.11% of the necessary total despite the fact that the Democratic candidate actually received 62% of the popular vote while the Republican garnered 38%.

Thus Obama exceeds McCain at a ratio of 163% in popular votes, but by a massive 1034% in electoral college ballots in these two states alone.

Looking at the nominal total popular votes for both candidates, we find 66,882,230 cast for Obama; for McCain 58,343,671.

When we consider the electoral college ballots, we have the following: Obama-349. McCain-163.

Translated into ratios, the popular vote for the Democrat's candidate is 53% of the total; for the Republican's candidate 47%; while the electoral college apportions 68% of its total to Obama and 32% to McCain.

In 2008, more than 125 million votes by US citizens were amended, reduced to 538 ballots, then used to appoint the country's head of state.

Moreover, there have been a number of US elections in which the person receiving the majority of popular votes did not become president.

For example, in 2000, the Democrat's candidate, Al Gore, according to the US Federal Election Commission, http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/2000presgeresults.htm, received 50,999,897 votes; while the total for Republican candidate George W. Bush was 50,456,002. Bush was subsequently inaugurated as President of the United States with 271 electoral college votes as compared to Gore's 266.

And in the 1888 election, a similar situation occurred. According to an article at Answers Dot Com, united-states-presidential-election, the Democratic candidate, Grover Cleveland, had 5,537,857 popular votes and 168 college votes. Benjamin Harrison, standing for the Republican party accumulated 5,447,129 popular votes and 233 electoral college votes and was sworn in as the next President.

Make no mistake. The Electoral College, established in 1787, has decided and continues to decide, despite challenge to its methodology, who becomes leader of the American government.

Should we not conclude, therefore, that the United States of America is neither democracy nor republic but rather a construct that confers upon the few great power over the many?

That it is actually an oligarchy? An oligarchy being, as defined by the Random House Webster's unabridged dictionary "a government in which all power is vested in a few persons or in a dominant class or clique; government by the few."

Whether catalogued as "communism", "democracy", "dictatorship", "monarchy", "socialism", "theocracy" or any other name, oligarchy is the sole underlying principle of rule which, as far as I know, has always prevailed throughout the world.

Should the American Electoral College be abolished? That is a fair question. If the political system of America were to become a democracy or republic, an electoral college would have no relevance.

Yet a better question might be this: will a day arrive when those who hold power, be it political or financial, learn adequate compassion and concern for those they steward, to relinquish the privileges they allot themselves? Further still: will such an elite ever evolve sufficiently to promote, for all citizens, the education, knowledge and access necessary for majority rule to set and steer a course wisely?

---lee garret

Answer 2

H. W. Brands, History Professor at UT-Austin, said that the main reason for the electoral college in 1789 was that it was believed most of the country's votors would not know anything about the presidential candidates. We've come a long way since then. The tremendous majority of Americans never even knew what their President's voice sounded like until the 1920s. Today, if the President sneezes, the whole country knows within a half hour (figuratively). Apparently a large majority of the public prefers the idea of direct election of the President. Given all these facts, it is still a matter of opinion, so the question should probably be posted instead at surveys.answers.com.

Answer 3

It really just depends on what you think. I personally think it should, but everyone has their own opinion