Another approach that is in the works is the so-called States Compact whereby each state would assign all its electors to the candidate that gets the most votes <i>nationwide</i>. This has the advantage that no change to the Constitution is needed. Currently, several States have agreed to this, and the Compact will be activated once enough States sign on that provide more than the 270 electoral votes required to win the election.
I wish these sorts of suggestions were less on the end of "here's what would be better" and more on the end of "here's how it would be possible". Anything that requires a magic wand to enact is a bit of a waste of energy. Would love to see more actual action plans on how to enact the change though.
I still can't support changing the electoral college. A few cities deciding the election for everyone feels horribly unfair, and undemocratic. Maybe the EC isn't perfect, but it certainly forces politicians to at least care what people in Iowa, Vermont, and Nevada have to say. It works because of the state system.
James Madison wrote: There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections.<p>They have been trying to reform the electoral college for as long as there has been an electoral college, and all attempts have foundered for the simple reason that those that benefit from the power it gives them will block attempts at reform.<p>In any event, in this election the point is moot.
There are a few concerns about the electoral college, but I don’t consider it broken in any meaningful sense. After all, the Constitution has survived over 200 years with it in place, which makes it the longest-serving constitution in force today. We cannot say for sure that it would have survived so long under any proposed alternative.<p>The first issue I would aim to address is the variance in voting power from district to district. In Wyoming, voters have a significantly lower constituent to elector ratio, ie greater voting power, than those in e.g. California.<p>This issue is a recent development due to the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929, which fixed the number of reps in the House. As the population has grown, the distance between the average population vs the minimum population of a district has increased.<p>The remedy is to simply uncap the size of the house and increase the number of representatives. This would quantize the population over a greater number of electors thus reducing the remainder, resulting in relatively more equivalent voter power.<p>As an added benefit, it would increase the amount of access each voter has to their Representative in the House, and make it practically more difficult to corrupt a majority of the House members.<p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/UncapTheHouse/comments/lklp4h/the_uncap_the_house_starter_guide/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/UncapTheHouse/comments/lklp4h/the_u...</a><p><a href="https://thirty-thousand.org/" rel="nofollow">https://thirty-thousand.org/</a><p><a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/435-representatives/" rel="nofollow">https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/435-representatives/</a>
Depending who is in office, one party will never go for this. The reason is states like California and maybe Florida/Texas will never allow this, it removes their advantage in the current electoral collage. Also it does not fix the population skewing for smaller states. Per voter, Wyoming voters have more power that people in Calif and Texas.<p>The better options is this, which will bring back the original intent of the US Constitution:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming_Rule" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming_Rule</a><p>or the States Compact Option suggested by litoE above.
We need to solve the problem where the system breaks when there are more than two parties: the "spoiler vote".[1] It is the single largest problem facing American democracy.
Dump the electoral college system and start from scratch. Look to real democracies like Europe where they use ranked choice voting - also called instant runoff voting.[2]<p>[1] <a href="https://fairvote.org/defining-the-spoiler-effect/" rel="nofollow">https://fairvote.org/defining-the-spoiler-effect/</a>
[2] <a href="https://electionlab.mit.edu/research/instant-runoff-voting" rel="nofollow">https://electionlab.mit.edu/research/instant-runoff-voting</a>
Lived through clinton, bush, obama, trump, biden, and now trump again. I've voted for three parties in my lifetime.<p>I oppose any change to the electoral college, including interstate collusion agreements.<p>The people I see get upset with it are hardcore Dem and Rep, depending on the year, who blame the failure to get elected on anyone except themselves.
Although we are often taught that it is slavery slavery slavery, the electoral college is also an attempt to prevent the tyranny of the majority - something the founding fathers were worried about.<p>It is also easy to forget that we are called the United States for a reason. We were more like the EU than we are like France...
Just get rid of it. Either go full on popular vote like everyone else with a president or go parlamentarian like everyone else with a prime minister. This system isn't truly democratic and should be abolished yesterday.
Historically the electoral college was a compromise that allowed for the counting of slaves as 3/5 of a person for the purpose of taxation and voting without having them vote. Consider a state like South Carolina which at the time had about 50% of its population as black. How could the 3/5 of the 50% of the people get added to the total otherwise? Any method would be a hack, but this one had the benefit of being able to create a justification that it protected small states from being dominated by large states.<p>If you're American living in one of the majority of states that aren't "swing" states, I don't think you can escape the feeling when you vote for president that you're going through a kind of charade since the winner is going to be determined by some small number of voters in 6 states.
Hello, here is my proposal to improve the Electoral College. The basic idea is to allocate electors proportionally in each state with the Jefferson method (aka d'Hondt method) rather than using a "winner-take-all" system.<p>What do you think about it?<p>PS: I'm not from the US, so an American perspective on that would be extremely appreciated :)