But my first question...why is it called a college? Are there dorms and empty pizza boxes in the EC?
My real issue though isn't the name. It's that it exists at all. The EC, to give a very brief history, came into being as a compromise amongst our founding fathers, who acceded to the smaller, southern, states who felt they'd be shut out if the POTUS (President of the United States) was decided by popular vote. The founding fathers also felt that this momentous decision should not be left up to a popular vote but rather should be decided by the wise, officially elected "electors", appointed by the even wiser Congress. There are a number of problems with this argument.
1: Following the train of thought here, we have allegedly unqualified voters electing people to Congress.
2: These people, elected by unqualified (read "stupid") voters are somehow smart enough to appoint even smarter people to legally elect the POTUS. Who in theory should be smarter than everyone. And this is true, except that the First Lady is, as we know, always smarter than the husband.
This is what happens in a society rampant with snuff, rum, and opium. But that's another story.
Back to the EC.
Every state gets at least 3 electoral votes. It's the two senators plus however many congressional districts there are. Mathematically speaking, someone from, say, Wyoming or Vermont has more power in their vote than someone from California. Fortunately, people from Wyoming and Vermont cancel each other much like matter and anti-matter colliding, producing a spillage of beef and maple syrup. What we have today, as we look at the impending election, is a system where 38 states are shut out of the process because their vote, based on polls, has already been determined. The 12 remaining "swing" states get all the presidential attention while the other 38 get none.
We need to dump the EC. There have been 4 elections, mostly recently 2000, where the person with the most popular votes did not win the election. We're the only country in the world that has such a labyrinth, nonsensical system of electing a president. I'm open to being convinced that there's value in the EC. But no one has given me a good reason yet.
There's a good site that's already making a lot of progress. It's www.nationalpopularvote.com. You'd be amazed how many mainstream lawmakers, even entire states, are in favor of running elections this way. The benefits:
- All votes count equally.
- The campaign finance system, already a travesty, would be turned on its head, because there would be infinitely more "swing" areas. This could conceivably pump in even more money, I guess. But it could also get us to rethink how campaigns are run.
- The candidates would be visiting your state. Perhaps not next door. But almost certainly not too far away. (Is that really a good thing? I guess that one is mixed.)
- It would encourage people to vote.
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