Electoral College

[Mikey]

How does the electoral college actually work?

How is our president really elected?

Does the popular vote really count?

[Clarkmeister]

http://www.fec.gov/pages/ecworks.htm

[HDPM]

The short answer is that it is not a direct election. So the popular vote count matters and obviously affects the outcome, but does not control the outcome as in a direct election. As it should be BTW. We should also scrap direct elections of senators. That was a disaster of a Constitutional amendment as I have ranted about before. The House Of Representatives is the only federal institution for which there should be direct elections, as the Constitution originally provided.

[andyfox]

An undemocratic feature of the U.S. Constitution, it should be abolished. The framers really had no idea of how the electoral college would work and in fact messed it up royally so that the candidate for vice president ended up tied with the president in the election of 1804 and it took a long time for Thomas Jefferson to finally become president.

[Cyrus]

The procedure of the Electoral College is basically meant to give every State in the Union approximately equal say on who gets to be the Union's President. Unavoidably, this is done by violating the principle of "one man, one vote".

The link that Clarkmeister provided has the details.

(And Andy Fox was far too quick, I think, to dismiss the Founding Fathers' actions and intentions.)

[adios]

As I've pointed out before, the framers of the Constitution didn't necessarily envision a two party system. The electoral college was devised to resolve presidential elections where there were 4 viable candidates for instance and none received a majority of the votes. A lot of people assume that a 2 party system was more or less mandated by the Constitution but this is certainly not the case.

[HDPM]

The whole point of the Constitution was to limit democracy. And the scheme was a good one. The balance between the states and the federal government was critical. The abolition of the apportionment of direct taxes and senators being elected by legislatures have really screwed things up. We would be a much freer and more prosperous country without the income tax or the direct election of senators, but it is hard to imagine a country without direct taxes anymore.

[Wake up CALL]

[ QUOTE ]
An undemocratic feature of the U.S. Constitution, it should be abolished. The framers really had no idea of how the electoral college would work and in fact messed it up royally so that the candidate for vice president ended up tied with the president in the election of 1804 and it took a long time for Thomas Jefferson to finally become president.

[/ QUOTE ]

Andy from many of your posts I realize you are old but had no idea you personally advised the framers of our Constitution. What was it like before the modern conviencences we take for granted today were invented? [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Zeno]

I agree with your sentiments on this. The 16th and 17th amendments should be repealed. Both were a crime against the constitution. I think the 16 th and 17th amendments were passed sometime early in the 20th century. No doubt that Idealist Wilson had something to do with both the 16th and 17th amendments.

Another thing that needs to be done is to limit voting rights. I don't agree that every moron is entitled to a vote. And neither, by the way, did the framers of the constitution. By common practice or voting laws, initially voting was limited to men of property, I believe. We should go back to some minimum requirements or possibly limit voting to people 25 or older.

And while I’m ranting, after you reach 75 you should have a choice: No taxes but no vote or, Vote and you pay taxes (Federal income tax). I’ll lay 10 to 1 odds most older people would gladly give up federal voting rights (retain right to vote in state elections etc) if they no longer had to pay the federal income tax. By that age most people should realize it is all a farce anyway. Let the old farts finally have a little piece and die in some comfort. If you make it to 75 you deserve a break. In addition, No octogenarians should have to pay any income taxes at all, state or federal. They don’t need to save money or pay taxes; they should be spending their last dimes whooping it up before leaving this “Best of All Possible Worlds”.

Le misanthrope

[brad]

given the various state and city resolutions to reaffirm the bill of rights and to instruct employees not to help feds implement patriot act,

im sure that many many federal senators would have been recalled by now by their state legislators if they were not popularly elected.