Pew: Majority of Americans continue to favor moving away from Electoral College
“More than six-in-ten Americans (63%) would instead prefer to see the winner of the presidential election be the person who wins the most votes nationally. Roughly a third (35%) favor retaining the Electoral College system.” - Pew
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Americans are no longer educated in federalism and republicanism. Sad. The idea was that (1) we are a nation of states, and (2) we need layers of representation to buffer/filter the voice of the masses. The founders did not believe pure democracy was a safe thing to do.
They had good reasons for those convictions and those reasons still hold true.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
Ironically, the results of the poll remind me of precisely why the Electoral College was instituted; the Founders did not want majority rule. Perhaps the results would be different if the question were posed differently:
Given that sufficient votes exist to elect a President in about the top ten states in terms of population, do you want to have a system where your President will be elected by high population states, and can thus in his policies ignore the smaller states?
Or: do you want to give California an additional six electoral votes, in effect?
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
One major reason the authors of the Constitution designed an Electoral College was to keep a few large cities from deciding the election. The Electoral College forces candidates to seek votes from other parts of the country. Although not perfect, it's a good system.
Wally Morris
Huntington, IN
Thankfully the only way to abolish the Electoral College is by amending the Constitution, not a vote of Congress. Amending the Constitution would take many years.
Wally Morris
Huntington, IN
Most people who want to get rid of the Electoral college have no clue what they are talking about.
The first argument that I often here is that we are the only country to use an outdate model like the electoral college, we need to use majority vote. Little do they realize that practically no country leverages the citizen to vote for the leader of their country. The prime minister of the UK is not voted upon by the citizens. The citizens vote on seats in parliament and based on the population of the seats those parties negotiate amongst themselves to elect a prime minister. The citizens don't even know who the prime minister will be when they are voting on the seats of parliament, because parliament was negotiate coalitions to get enough votes to vote for the prime minster.
In the US, the citizens vote for the leader of the country. The founders of the country were very wise in setting up the electoral college and given the absolute lack of education in this country, most people have no clue as to the brilliance of the model. Without the model we would have California and New York setting the president every year.
Want to change it? Constitutional amendment process.
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