State of the US Electorate

tater · 01-16-11, 11:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Takeda Shingen

So, to understand your point, the electoral college is important so that one party remains viable through minority rule based on districting and policy. Essentially, that's what you're saying.

We're talking about an under 1% difference here. The reality is that urban centers would dominate under a strict popular vote, the EC weights smaller states to have very slightly more impact than they would have just based upon population (the only difference being the 2 senatorial electoral votes per state, regardless of size). The entire point of the republic is for States to matter. Smaller states need to have a say. That's the point of equality in Senatorial power, AND in the EC.

This has been true since the Constitution was written. So arguing against the EC is arguing against the ability of a minority party—any minority party at whatever point in time—from being shut out. This is fundamental to the US system, and always has been.

You prefer single party rule?

Your statement "so that one party remains viable through minority rule based on districting and policy" suggests that this is new. This was true since day one, and is exactly the point. Ideally to many of the Founders there would be less "party" and more "State" allegiance, but the results are much the same. The goal was for the less populous areas to have more of a shot at power than they would have solely based on pop—and the current difference is quite small compared to 200 years ago when the EC was actually more grossly slewed to smaller states due to nationally lower populations. When a State was big with 900,000 people, it would have 5 electoral votes, now that would be a tiny state. So as the country has grown, the +2 votes skewing has become smaller and smaller. Growth will eventually make it noise anyway.

Regardless, you'd have to amend the const. for this to get changed, and that simply will not happen since it is not in the interest of the smaller States, and they'd need 3/4 ratification.