currahee506

The Electoral college was the mechanism implemented by the founders to make sure that the vote had a chance to be fair for all of the states and did not succumb to the population centers of a few cities. "Democracy" by itself is "mob rule" whereas a "Republic" ensures that there will be representatives who believe in the rule of law to keep the "mob" in check. This is why the United States is a "Republic" and not a "democracy." If a citizen wants to say "democracy," - fine but know that technically we are a "democratic-republic" with the emphasis on the word "republic."

Tug484

His post was ridiculous.

JoyV

You have to remember, the United States wasn't a nation which was divided into states, but was a group of States which united to form a nation. Each State holds an election to select the president of the central federal government. Each State does so by holding popular elections. To make an analogy, look at the UN. A vote in the UN is made by the member States, NOT by a worldwide popular vote of the populous of all the member States. Unlike with the United Stated of America, there is no requirement in the UN that the individual member States must consult the will of their people through a popular vote. But in both the UN and the USA it is the individual States which vote. The populous of the USA are not applied to the vote of Germany or Greece to take what our media erroneously calls "The Popular Vote". To ensure that though it is each State in the USA votes for our president, the citizens of each State can still have a say; the electoral college was designed. Our constitution calls for popular elections to be held in each State. Then based on the States' popular votes, the electors cast the votes for their State. The one flaw was that it wasn't required under the constitution that the electors follow the will of the voters in their State. SCOTUS has recently solved that flaw.

MStem

Wow. This post shows an incredible level of ignorance about the purpose of the electoral college, the constitution of the United States, and protecting the rights of all citizens.

The Electoral College was designed by the framers of the Constitution deliberately, like the rest of the Constitution, to counteract the worst human impulses and protect the nation from the dangers inherent in democracy. The Electoral College is neither antiquated nor evil; it is an underappreciated institution that helps preserve our constitutional system, and we need to be honest and educated in our discussions of it.
Indeed, if you ever actually ever read the constitution, you would see that nowhere in it, is a direct popular election of a US president ever suggested. In fact, the phrase "one man, one vote" is absent from the Constitution. It is a judicial creation from Gray v. Sanders, a 1963 case in which the Supreme Court stepped in to end Georgia's use of a county-unit system of counting votes on the grounds that it violated the 14th Amendment.

California gave 61.5% of its popular vote to Hillary Clinton, and she collected all 55 of California's electoral votes as a result. But that majority was won in 33 counties, mostly clustered around San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego. The rest of the state — 25 counties — went for Trump. These counties had no say whatsoever in how California's electoral votes were cast, despite making up a solid block of the state north of San Francisco. Is the best solution, to break up the Electoral College? I think not.
In fact, it can be argued that the density of population in a handful of counties in the US, would likely result in the rest of the country being “second class citizens” in a purely popular vote election. Effectively, 300 million people would bear the cost and burden of policies that favor a handful of cities. Hardly democratic, I would say.

On timeon target

The reasoning behind the electoral college is to ensure that all states have a vote that truly counts in the Presidential election. It ensures that the under populated states also have a voice in the election and not just the east and west coasts. Which are heavily populated by dumbocrats and is the reason they don't like it. The electoral college prevents them from dominating every election...