Talk:U.S. Electoral College
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See also: Talk:Electoral college
Archived discussions
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Alternative Systems
"...Some have argued that the French system creates problems of its own; it is possible that the initial vote becomes divided up between so many candidates that someone who is highly undesirable to most voters can make it to the second round of voting, as occurred in 2002 with the rise of candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen to the runoff election..."
"Highly undesirable" is a wrong term: if a candidate got enough votes to go to the second round, it means that a large number of voters "desires" the candidate to be president!
- The article on Jean-Marie Le Pen explains why the French considered him highly undesirable. He is used as an example of the flaws in the French system because he received 16.8% of the vote. He got the second round of elections due the fact that there were so many people running. The issue is that with more people running, the cutoff percent potentially gets lower and lower until you could possible have a guy make it to the second round with less than 1% of the vote (I admit that it would take half of France to run for election to get that low - but this is an extreme examples). Kainaw 19:01, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Detractor argument: Use of the term "disenfranchise"
I do not think the use of the term 'disenfranchise' is appropriately used in the section of the article presenting the arguments against the Electoral College system.
Disenfranchise is to 'deprive of the right to vote.' Voters who vote in the minority in a given state, while deprived of seeing their candidate supported in the electoral college, are not by any means deprived of their right to cast a vote.
In our system, the electoral college sets up mini-elections that are rolled up into a larger election. Minority-candidate voters in a particular state are not disenfranchised just as minority-candidate voters would not be disenfranchised in a popular-vote election.
The idea that an large-state resident's vote "counts less" than a small-state resident's is a fair statement to make; however, I believe that the benefits of balancing the numeric and geographic components of public opinion outweigh the perceived inequity of not having a one citizen/one vote for president election.
The article states that Gore/Liebermann had "6 unpopular votes". Is this someone's idea of a joke or does this term mean something? Cigarette 13:42, 3 Nov 2004
the See Also section contains the following:
The statement Bush/Cheney won the electoral vote with 271 votes by cheating. is false. It is an emotional response not based on fact.
I assume this is more vandalism. It appears this article has restricted editing or else I would elminate the passage myself. Funkyj 01:23, 2004 Nov 4 (UTC)
Two persons
Following is an email sent to webmaster@wikipedia.org. I will reply to the email by giving him the standard WP:BB line and directing him to this talk page. -- Tim Starling 00:12, Nov 5, 2004 (UTC)
Subject: article on the Electoral College (U.S.)
From: Carl Moore
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 14:07:50 EST
To: webmaster@wikipedia.org
I see "Originally, each elector voted for two persons." That is STILL true!!! What changed was that the 12th Amendment calls for each elector to vote for 1 person as president and 1 person as vice president. Perhaps say "Originally, each elector voted for two persons without specifying president or vice president."
Introduced some more subheadings and some more points to the different arguments
Hello all, I just introduced a number of subheadings into the text to divide it up more clearly. I also introduced a number of diverse additional points to different aspects of the Pro-and-Con arguments and slightly reordered some paragraphs. I believe the additional material to be factual and NPOV, and I believe the subheadings increase clarity. I hope this is OK with the other contributors. All the best, -- 84.57.79.215 17:27, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Introduction paragragh has been repeated
Look at the top of the article, its there, twice. My inexperince at editing means im mising ot on how to change it so there it is there only once. Chrismullan
- That's not all - almost the entire article is repeated twice. I don't want to pick through all the edits to see which is the most up-to-date, so I'm simply removing the second half of the repetition. This has been caused by people now knowing how to revert. If you want to revert, go to the history, click on the date of the version that you want to revert to, click Edit This Page (you will see a warning that it is an old version), and save it. Don't try to cut and paste old versions on top of new ones. Kainaw 15:33, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
The E College and Third Parties
I don't understand how the electoral college stifles third parties. Even if there were a direct election, a third party candidate's 19 percent of the vote would still translate into 0 percent of political power. The simple fact is that presidential power cannot be divided. Imagine if Ross Perot had won 19 percet of the electoral college, 102 votes, he still would have lost.
As long as there is a unipersonal executive, a presidential election is always going to be winner take all.
Where winner take all is relevant in explaing our lack of third parties is in legislatures.
No other post is elected by an e college in the US, yet third party victories are still exceedingly rare. (IIRC, there are eight third party state legislators right now, out of 8,000. Four of those eight are in Burlington, VT)
- In the way that all but 2 of the states handle the electoral college, third parties cannot get any electoral votes. The states use a plurality to give all of the electoral votes to one candidate. For a third party candidate to win, that candidate must get more votes in the entire state than any other candidate. While it is possible (and it has happened in the past), it is not probable.
- Now, consider the two states that use allot the electoral votes to regions within the state - mini electoral colleges. It is much more probable for a third party candidate to gain a plurality in a smaller region and therefore gain an electoral vote in one region of one of those states.
- When it comes down to it, an electoral college makes it easier for a third party candidate to get a larger vote margin because the candidate has the ability to target low-populated areas that count just as much as higher populated ones. However, the United States isn't using an electoral college inside the states themselves (except 2). So, that popular vote is basically barring them from the electoral vote. Kainaw 15:20, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- Even if winner take all by state were changed to proportional allocation, or district allocation, a third party candidate would still be a long way from 269 votes. What difference would it make if a Perot or Nader could win electoral votes? They still would lose the elections. Wallace, Thurmond, and TR won e votes, and their third parties still disintegrated.
- If we had district allocation, and a Green won districts like Berkeley, CA or Dane County, Wisconsin, then the Green party would be an asterisk to the electoral vote, just like it is an asterisk to the popular vote. It would do little to make the Green party an enduring, significant party. What the US needs to have non-trivial third parties is proportional representation for legislative races. In legislative races, getting 5 % of the seats means getting 5 % of the power. In the electoral college, since the presidency cannot be divided, getting 5% of the e votes means getting 0 % of the power.
- It is true that a third party doesn't stand a chance of becoming President of the U.S. - regardless of the voting system. The U.S. is a two-party nation. That is not abnormal. Humans eventually boil everything down to two options: us and them, black and white, liberal and conservative...
- You are correct in pointing out that there is easily more third party representation in Congress. I feel that the third party representation in Congress justifies the electoral system. While the country as a whole hasn't backed a third party candidate, small parts of the population may be represented in Congress. I feel that is how the founding fathers designed the system.
- Disclaimer: The following paragraph is my opinion and I have yet to find someone who isn't offended by my opinion that the President is the least powerful person in government.
- If you research the founding fathers, you will find that they were against political parties. That is why it was initially designed so that one party could get President and another could get Vice-President. But, it doesn't end there. The President, over time, has become a figurehead. What power does the President really have that isn't controlled by Congress? Appoint a judge to the Supreme Court? Not without Congress' approval. Declare war? Not without Congress' approval. Cut taxes? Not without Congress' approval. Veto Congress? Not without Congress' approval in the form of not overriding his veto. When it comes down to it, the President has the power to decide how to decorate the White House - as long as it is within the budget set by Congress. Kainaw 21:39, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- Regardless of what was intended, the very structure of the original Electoral College made it almost certain that the President and Vice-President would be of the same party. The mistake was giving electors two votes. If they had only one vote, no political party would ever run two candidates, because they'd split their vote; therefore, the President and VP would always be from different parties. But when electors have two votes, it's in a party's best interest to run two candidates, and encourage electors to vote for both of them.
Pros and cons
On January 2, User:Susurrus spun off the "Pro and Con" section to the article Pros and Cons of the U.S. Electoral College. Then some user (I don't know who anymore as they didn't write anything on the talk page and the comments in the history went to the Great Bit-Bucket in the Sky) wrote that they would delete this article because its content was duplicated in this article. Now I want to make it clear: the content was not duplicated, because Susurrus had removed the content from this article when it was spun off. Nonetheless, even though I noted the fact that the content was non-duplicative on the talk page for "Pros and Cons of the U.S. Electoral College", I found today that the article had been removed. Therefore, I have restored the "Pros and cons" section to this article.
— DLJessup 02:25, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Does EC favor small or large states?
The article states several times that the EC favores small states. It's certainly obvious, since each state gets 2 senators regardless of population, that small states get more electoral votes per capita. I don't think it's obvious that it follows that voters in small states have more voting power. In fact, I don't even think it's true. Campaign strategists don't seem to think it's true either if you take ad dollars per capita or campaign stops per capita as any indicator. If it is true then it needs some mathematical justification.
- Don't try to draw a relation between campaign financing and voting power. Money goes to areas that are not clearly Democrat or Republican - not to areas where there is the Electoral Vote/Population ration is higher. Kainaw 01:00, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Restored "Pros and Cons" again
Hello, I just restored the "Pros and Cons" section, which had been deleted without comment again on March 9 (why delete it?) -- 84.58.45.131 23:12, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Request for references
Hi, I am working to encourage implementation of the goals of the Wikipedia:Verifiability policy. Part of that is to make sure articles cite their sources. This is particularly important for featured articles, since they are a prominent part of Wikipedia. The Fact and Reference Check Project has more information. Thank you, and please leave me a message (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Taxman&action=edit§ion=new) when a few references have been added to the article. - Taxman 18:28, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)