Quote:
Originally Posted by IllTestYourGirls
The federal government should have little power so it really should not matter. However, if you go to most votes win we would have Cali, NY and Texas picking all the presidents. Not a very good idea.
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I have to disagree with you. Let's look at the last election in 2004. Here is how those three state broke down.
Cali:
54.6% -Kerry
44.3% -Bush
NY
57.8% - Kerry
40.5% - Bush
TX
38.3% - Kerry
61.2% - Bush
So it was close in Cali, a big win for Kerry in NY and a landslide for Bush in TX. When you add all the total votes for those three states it works out like this
Kerry - around 13.8 million
Bush - around 13.0 million.
There were 122 million votes cast in that election so nothing was decided by those three states.
So contrary to popular belief if there were no electoral college a person would have to win almost 100% of the vote in these big states in order to just win those states and win the election. That is never going to happen. We are too diverse a country for that to occur. However, a person can just win 13 states by 1 vote each, lose the popular vote by 30+million and still win using the electoral college system.
If we go back and compare you could look at these three states and if one guy wins all three by just one vote using a popular vote he would be ahead by 3 votes. Using the electoral college he would be ahead 120-0.
Using the electoral college puts too much emphasis on any one state. The last two elections came down to Florida and Ohio. Whoever won those states won the election. Both states ended up having many instances where something fishy went on. Having a system where the importance of individual states is greatly emphasized leads to there being more temptation for corruption. I'm not saying having a popular vote only wouldn't lead to corruption, but I think it would cause there to be less. Why bend and break rules to eek out an extra few hundred votes in Ohio when you can just go to other states, campaign and get those votes in a legit way.
The electoral college also encourages people to not participate. In the last 2 elections if you are a democrat and you have happen to live in Texas or Oklahoma why bother voting? You know your guy doesn't have a prayer. He has hardly stepped foot into your state because he knows he doesn't have a prayer. The same can be said if you are a republican and you live in Vermont of Massachusetts. Your vote really doesn't matter because your guy is going to lose big in those states and the popular vote doesn't count. If it were a popular vote then your vote goes towards the total. A democrat would campaign more in the south and in places that are traditionally republican strong grounds because he could convince those people that there votes now actually matter and will help and the same would go for the republicans in the traditionally strong democrat areas.