Talk:Electoral college

Please someone put a link on the main page of the article to separate the various 'electoral colleges' in the world/history. --Kensai 19:28, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

See also: Talk:U.S. Electoral College

I understand why someone might want to put Nader's vote totals on the page. I myself am a Libertarian, and would like to place my parties vote totals on the page as well. But these totals are not useful for the discussion, because:

a) No one (I've heard from) disputes that Nader's supporters (Left) would overwhelmingly vote for Gore (Center-Left) if Nader wasn't in the game. This would be useful if the problem was that Gore didn't win the majority of votes, and Nader swung the election in this matter. But that isn't the problem at all, Gore won the majority of votes with or without Nader.

b) Nader didn't receive *ANY* electoral college votes. No single elector defections (ala the Libertarian Party in 1972), or enough electors to go to a second round (as in some elections in the far past - can't remember right now, not enough coffee). So inserting him in the entry is pointless on this level as well.

Now, I think it would be useful if someone could come up with some figures that would show how many states or counties Nader swung for Bush by drawing votes away from Gore. Absent this info, I think the reference should be deleted.

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No fair! <GRIN>

"Supporters feel the intent of the college is to favour a candidate who may have minority support overall but whose appeal is more broadly distributed across the nation, rather than one who is favoured by a minority of regions or only by voters in large cities. "

Well, if this is the case, then supporters of the college are completely ignorant. Ross Perot received 19% of the popular vote, but ZERO electoral college votes. So, that theory is shot down. In fact, supporters often make the opposite case -- the electoral college offers a way of keeping out fringe and extremist minorities.

This is incorrect in its presentation. Both Al Gore and George Bush failed to win a majority of votes in the election. While supporters (of which I am one), do feel that the purpose is to possibly favor a minority candidate with broadly distributed appeal, the implication is unfavorable - though technically correct (both Gore & Bush were in the minority).

Can someone clarify this - I think I'm too partisan about to be fair myself!

Urban

The article implies in one particular sentence that the primary purpose of the college is to stop the influence of urban centres over rural. While this may be the effect, what evidence is there that this is the primary purpose of the college, as intended by the authors of the constitution?

Personally, I wouldn't say that the founding father's intended the U.S. Electoral College to balance the power of urban centers per se. Instead, I would say it was to put smaller states on better footing so they could have a voice versus the larger states. This is exactly what the United States Senate was intended to do, and the two extra votes per state in the Electoral College was an extension of that. See Connecticut Compromise. Pmadrid 01:47, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

No it's to encourage a careful selection - look at the way it was originally structured so as to produce a list of candidates which the House of Representatives would then select from. To be honest they didn't care much beyond getting Washington as the first President (hence the way all rules get flouted with the way the Vice-President was selected) and intended Congress to be the most important branch. Timrollpickering 09:08, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

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Please excuse me if I'm not doing this right, but this is the first time I've done anything with the Wikipedia. A useful addition to this page would be other countries that have Electoral College systems, for example I cam to this link from the Pakistan Electoral College link, so clearly there's a least one other country right there. It would be an interesting measure of the popularity of this concept.

Nations with Electoral College systems outside the United States include Brazil, Estonia, Finland, France, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Kazakhstan, South Korea, Madagascar, Nepal, Pakistan, and Trinidad and Tobago.

Most of this list is wrong. Brazil, Finland, France and South Korea should all be deleted. If the specification was electoral colleges for choosing a president a number of the others have to go as well. Adding semidemocracies like Kazakhstan and Hong Kong feels more like POV defence of electoral colleges than anything else. Moreover, we really need to sort out what belongs in this article and what belongs in the US electoral college aticle. Alan