Time to end the Electoral College?

[Snowguy716]

What are these high profile issues in the midwest?

In my state congressional district, we have a middle-left candidate in the DFL running against a far right Evangelical Republican. I'd be surprised if the Republican gets 30% of the vote. His main campaign issues are gay marriage, abortion, and taking Red Lake back from the Red Lake Indians because a guy was fishing in indian waters and had his boat confiscated.

The DFLer is running on a platform of reducing property taxes, increasing local government aid, lowering tuition for college students, conservation, and bringing high tech jobs to the region.

It's obvious that those are hte issues that matter to the voters. You vote for the Republican and you'll get a politician who raises hell a lot and screams and kicks and looks pretty.. but in the end you'll just have a guy fighting for things that will never get passed while ignoring the issues that voters really care about.

I see this happening in national politics as well. Unfortunately people would rather get all fired up in an "us vs. them" battle that ends up being much ado about nothing. I want to get a good job, have a family, have quality cheap medical care, be able to put my kids through college, and hell.. maybe have a little something to retire on maybe even give something to the next guy too. It has become increasingly obvious which brand of politics will deliver that. And it certainly isn't the party of Bush, Bush, Nixon, and Rumsfeld.

[Gusterfell]

You know, the Gore-Bush election margin in the popular vote was razor thin by presidential election standards. IMO, however, I don't think we should banish the Electoral College. If we do, we might as well let the blue states run the country and take voting rights away from everyone else. All a candidate would need to do is make sure he does well in the most populous states and, like Kerry, practically ignore whole regions of the country.

How would blue states run the country if the Electoral College were abolished? Could it be because a majority of the American people actually vote blue? If so, why use a system that deliberately gives disproportionate power to the side the people are voting against?

Every candidate ignores entire regions of the country: states with a paltry couple of electoral votes.

I sense this topic wouldn't be an issue on this board anyway if the results were completely reversed and the electoral college helped a liberal get into office.

It wouldn't be an issue because then the conservatives would be the ones saying the electoral college is an outrage and should be abolished. as is, they only defend it because it gives more power to rural and Southern states, which are heavily conservative. They even resort to misinformation about its original intent to do so.

The system is the way it is, it's almost impossible to change it, you know about the rules going in, play and win within the given context.

The Republican Party has been breaking those rules for at least twenty years, and in the last decade haven't even made an effort to hide that fact. Seperation of powers, to use your example, went out the window the moment the Republicans strong-armed the Congress into being a rubber stamp for Bush administration policy.

[somad]

How would blue states run the country if the Electoral College were abolished? Could it be because a majority of the American people actually vote blue? If so, why use a system that deliberately gives disproportionate power to the side the people are voting against?

Off topic and probably stupid to mention... but I find it annoying that they switched blue and red in y2k... in every other country blue is conservative and red is left wing...

[Snowguy716]

I think it switched more to fit the stereotypes of a "Blue blooded" liberal and a "red blooded" conservative.

If you look at all the old electoral maps, red is blue and blue is red. Kind of weird... but either way, it's just a color.

[MR-2]

I guess we must be pretty lucky to have the strongest economy in the world, a very high standard of living, and to still be a leader on the world stage in terms of innovation.. you know, when you consider how inferior our system is to the rest of the world. If anything, a lot of the perceived problems (outsourcing, trade gaps) over the recent years have to do with us having such a high standard of living and foreign markets with lower wages being opened.... thus seeing them beating us at our own system. Still, this country has the strongest IT sector in the world...

Happy go lucky optimism isn't a counterargument. We are the largest economy in the world by virtue of having the largest population of any first world country. That doesn't make us the most affluent or innovative country per capita. It's a function of quantity, not quality.

Furthermore, it's counterproductive to say at any given point, what you have is the best situation you can possibly get. That you should stifle progress to new types of government or economic systems simply because what you have is "good enough for you" is a dangerous line of thought.

[somad]

Happy go lucky optimism isn't a counterargument. We are the largest economy in the world by virtue of having the largest population of any first world country. That doesn't make us the most affluent or innovative country per capita. It's a function of quantity, not quality.

Furthermore, it's counterproductive to say at any given point, what you have is the best situation you can possibly get. That you should stifle progress to new types of government or economic systems simply because what you have is "good enough for you" is a dangerous line of thought.

One could also say it's dangerous to mess with a good thing. The economic system that we use is working around the world, despite some regressiveness at home. Another thing that keeps us ahead is that we still have some of the best Universities in the world. How would you measure which country is the most innovative? I'd say patents, but countries like Japan are known to file patents for trivial things. The best way to measure it in my book is to look at what's keeping our economy on top right now: Our dominance in the tech sector.

I notice you say that being the largest doesn't make us the most affluenet... but look at the GDPs and populations of some selected (from the cia world factbook) trillion dollar world economies... Per capita, we are still #1.

usa

298,000,000

gdp (purchasing power parity): $12.36 trillion

gdp (official exchange rate): 12.49

uk

60,600,000

ppp: 1.83

exc: 2.23

france

60,900,000

ppp: 1.82

exc: 2.05

canada

33,100,000

ppp: 1.11

exc: 1.04

japan

127,500,000

ppp: 4.02

exc: 4.67

germany

82,422,000

ppp: 2.5

exc: 2.73

italy

58,134,000

ppp: 1.7

exc: 1.71

[MR-2]

I notice you say that being the largest doesn't make us the most affluenet... but look at the GDPs and populations of some selected (from the cia world factbook) trillion dollar world economies... Per capita, we are still #1.

I have severe reservations about Purchasing Power Parity's constraints for measuring the overall quality of life for a region. If you compare it to Nominal GDP per capita, you get a completely different list. The latter simply adjusts the currencies for their trade rates, while the former looks at the cost of living. Cost of living is very difficult to quantify, particularly when comparing countries with very different economic structures.

None of this is relevant anyway. Other countries are still ahead of us in GNI/per capita, most notably the scandinavian countries. That's to say nothing of NNI as well. It's understandible, when our median household income still hasn't surpassed $45,000.

We got rich due to the massive government projects of the 30s through the 60s, building infrastructure to speed up all the local economies. The interstate system, the power grid, subsidized farms, state colleges, huge innovations that made private companies quite rich in the process. This isn't exactly laissez faire we have. We stayed rich by cutting corners, instead of continually upgrading our infrastructure. We've grown accustomed to an inefficient government that doesn't represent us. If you look at the federal/state spending that goes on, the amount of pork is amazing. It makes perfect sense; companies write and pass our laws specifically to give them a leg up against competitors. They got the idea that it was okay not to be competitive, as long as they had uncle sam's charity. Look at our auto industry, our petroleum industry, our telecom companies, the MPAA and the RIAA: all of them have a lot of government support keeping them afloat, keeping them in charge of their respective industries.

This is to say nothing of the massive debt we're running to do all of this. Perhaps the true size of our economy can only be estimated when we aren't paying for things with other peoples' money.

When you defend our PPP statistics, be very careful about what you're defending. There's a lot of idealism about the free market thrown about, but when you get down to it, that's not what we have.

[gvsusean]

about the whole electoral college thing (hopefully noone else said this already and if so im sorry)...... The reason why total votes doesnt always win is because it protects the smaller more rural places from massive city or urban rural. for example: Calif. weight in NATIONAL politics is lessened thanks to the college because Cali. does not know whats going on in the rest of the nation so why should they have such high power. once again im lazy, so if you want me to better explain i will but if you get it then sweet.

[MR-2]

Wyoming is no more worldly than California. They don't have any special insight that distinguishes them into deserving extra electoral representation.

We also have things called television, newspaper, and internet service that allow the message of politicians to get to everyone, regardless of geographic location. We've sort of grandfathered out the need for countering geographic tyranny though improvements in technology.

[JDC]

If you believe the electoral college is the reason Bush "won" in 2000, you're not paying attention.

Just watch THIS

[MR-2]

True, dat. Although, if the Electoral College had not been around, that would've prevented any tampering of the system to be effective enough to work, since the other states would cancel it out. Gore did win the popular vote, despite Florida, afterall.