Electoral College: any changes coming?

[12th Doctor]

The Electoral College System as it stands may suffer from some short comings, but it is fulfilling its original purpose with was to make it so that a candidate had to have wide geographic support inorder to win.  It seems to me that lately, attempts to change the system seem to be taking place only in Democrat controled states that Bush one in 2000 (i.e. North Carolina, there are others but I forget.  Anyway, wouldn't it be unfair if state by state the legislators got to pick and choose how they assign electors.  If we are going to change the process, it should be done nation wide, to put it on an eqaul footing.

[12th Doctor]

What you said about winning the north-east and the mid-west to achieve 270 isn't true at all.  In fact its not even close.  Even with the maximum number of states that can be considered "North-east" and "Mid-west" given to one party, it still would only add up to about 215 or so.  You should remember that Gore did carry nearly the entire North-east and Mid-west and he lost.

As for what you said about winning the 11 largest states to achieve 270, that proves my point, not yours.  The 11 largest states are California, Texas, New York, Florida, Penn., Illinios, Ohio, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia and New Jersey.  California is in the Pacific West, Texas is in the south west, Florida, North Carolina and Georgia are in the South east, Penn. New York and New Jersey are in the North East and Illinios, Ohio and Michgan are in the Mid west.  That seems pretty diverse to me.

[12th Doctor]

Something I wanted to add: the electoral college makes it so that the rest of the country is not affected (as much) when a candidate wins a vast majority in a highly populated area.  Such as in the case of a candidate who comes from a large homestate.

[12th Doctor]

That's the point of a Federal Republic (which is what we are).  This analogy limps a little, but think of it as the World Series.  Lets say that you have, I don't know the Cubs (I'm a fan) and they win four games and the series then you have a second team, the Yankees (I am not a fan) who win only one game.  Now the four games that the Cubs won were low scouring (1-0, 2-1, 1-0, 3-1) and the game that the Yankees won was a blow-out (14-0).  Now the Yankees clearly out scoured the Cubs for the series (16-7), do the Yankees therefore deserve to win.  The answer, of course, is NO.  The Cubs are clearly the supearior team because they won more games and the Yankees threw everything they had into that won game, but it doesn't matter because those points don't carry over.
Similarly, large margins in one area or even one state don't nessesarily determine the outcome of the election as a whole.  And the odds of carrying just those 11 states and no other, or even of carrying those 11 states are almost impossible (unless you have a landslide) because of the regional differeces.
Not to sound confrontational, but do you want a system where high margins in one part of the counrty can determine an election.  Do you want a system where, just getting as many uniformed voters to the polls as possible can eqaul a win.  Lets be honest, get out the vote efforts always consentrate on the inner-cities.  Do you want a system that basically says "screw rural people".

[12th Doctor]

Once again, not to be confrontational, but since when has the political phiosophy every been centered around screwing urban people.  All the so-called "great society" programs have gone to help the cities and if they didn't start out that way, that certainly where they are now.  When was the last time you heard an Senator other than Zel Miller debate for the side of rural people with any passion.  I do give Edwards partial credit, because he has brushed the issue.  Why is it that its still okay to make fun of poor white people by calling them "Hill-Billies" and "White Trash", but it's politically in correct to say anything that can be precieved as being racsist about minorities. You ever wonder why Democrats can't get elected in rural areas.  Here the answer, because all the pork, all the programs and all the attention go to the cities.  Inner-city people complain that there is no oppertunity in the city.  Well, try living in the town where I came from where half the working people have to drive 80 miles a day to get to and from work.  Where the nearest McDonalds is 20 miles away.  Where the nearest govenment agency building, other than the post office is 90 miles away.  Where the newest car on the block is a 1990 Cheve.  Where the newest house in town was built thirty years ago.  Where the newest building in town is a bar.  I don't live there anymore, but I live in a state that is dominated by innner-city interests in Philadelphia and I'm sick and tired of it.  Why don't you get out of Massachusetts and make a visit to "fly-over country" sometime, that will show you how it really is.

[12th Doctor]

I don't feel accountable to this voting bloc. No one is shackling them to where they live. They can always leave, but a stubborn rural determinism prevents them. You think people in Metropolitan Areas don't drive long distances to get to work? Many live in suburbs that are well over an hour away from their home. Th reason why urban areas get more attention than rural areas is because more people live there. If one had to choose between urban and rural America, a logical person would choose urban America for an obvious utilitarian reason that would be in keeping with everyone from nineteenth century theorists like Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and Henry Mayhew to contemporary pragmatists: It does the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Many people fail to realize that French language and literature was only my undergraduate minor, sociology was my major. In my case studies, I have seen situations that I couldn't have appreciated coming from my background unless I had been there. I have seen families being torn apart from the inside, and women who have had to have sex to get by. I have seen a criminal justice system which was viciously biased against the urban poor, and would lead one to the wholly justified conclusion that there is no such thing as crime, only behaviors which the power structure determines it disfavors, and will punish those who deviate from their paradigm. I have seen deep-seated class resentment, and I know because few would volunteer information because I was not of their social class. People in rural America may be poor, but they are not being strangled by the oppressive weight of societal disfavor, but only by their voluntary behaviors of religious and social conservativism. After all this, one must pose the question: How can anyone, in light of the fact that the government is the only helping hand these people see, deny them the help they need in favor of wasteful farm subsidies and the like? Only a person who willfully overlooks real facts can have such a proclivity which maligns our poor urban masses.

Your coments show me that you are more ignorant to the concerns of rural people than I though.  Don't throw your BS from your social philosophy classes at me.  I'm a political science major so I took those classes too.  You can say what ever you want but don't take it as for the bible because it comes from a text book or because some guy who died 100 years ago thought that he was pretty smart and so descided to throw some achedemic crap on a piece of paper.
What the hell do you mean that they aren't shackled to there area.  What shackles urban people to where they live.  Poverty?  You think that that doesn't exist in rural areas.  You think that that's not the same reason rural people can't leave there towns.  There is oppresion as well, it's just not as pronounced because its the subtle oppresion that comes with ingnorance and not caring.  Something that you have displayed in your comments.  
"I'm not accountible for that voting bloc".  What kind of egg head jargon is that.  You a person aren't you.  Your supposedly care about humanity, don't you?  Then how can you say that you aren't accountable?
All those things that you brought up, you don't think that those things happen in rural areas?  Do you think that middle america in all "Ozzie and Harriot"?  Well, you are dead wrong if that is what you think.
I don't malign urban people.  I know there problems and I want the help to be their for them when they need.  You however, you with your talk about rural people causing their own problems through "religious and social conservatism", you are the one who is maligning people.
The problems maybe different, but they are still there.  They just don't get the attention of what happens in the city because the people who live in Massachusetts and New York and California and Chicago and Rhode Island and Conn. don't see it and thus don't care.
You've seen some nasty things, I don't deny that, but have you seen a family of 8 living in a rusted out school bus in West Virginia?  I have.  So don't come on to me like I'm some sheltered yokle.

[12th Doctor]

Oh and as for the farm subsidies... most of those go to rich corperate farms anyway.  And only about 4 families in my town farmed.  We weren't all farmers  many of us had low paying manufacturing and service jobs.  And the glass plant that employed a quarterof  the people in my area shut its doors 3 years ago.

[12th Doctor]

I respect and understand everything that you are saying.  I just think that if we are going to maintain a federal republican system and insure geographic diversity then the distribution of electoral votes should stay as is.  I do agree with you on one crucial point, which is that the winner-take all system should be changed.  I feel to one that is based on congressional districts.

My main fear about a PV only system would be that candidates would send there people only into heavily urban district to scare a lot of people to going to the polls last minute who wouldn't have gone otherwise.  What I'm trying to say is that I do fear that candidates would consentrate energy on sending a lot of uninformed people to the polls and thus carry the election.  And if someone wanted to pull this trick, they would always do it in urban areas where there is higher population concentration.

I think that right now, the electoral college at least does a little to prevent this from happening.

[12th Doctor]

First, one can make the argument that the Founders' expectations were that the election would be decided in the House.  Initially, there were many candidates in the quadrennial elections and it was difficult to get a majority in the EC.

Secondly, there's no a priori expectation of popular vote mandates.  For example we don't elect most justices.  We can accept that one of the three branches is not popularly elected; this indicates that it may not be such a difficult mental stretch to imagine we can accept that two of three branches are not.  This is neither good nor bad.  Just the way it is.

Third, remember that the EC was a reasonable attempt at Federalism, much like some of the bizarre formulations for distribution of authority in what the European Steel and Coal Union has evolved into.  It is noteworthy that in the early literature the phrase was "These United States are..." and by around 1845 it had been almost entirely supplanted by  "The United States is..."  And this was well before the strong-central-government vs. states-rights issue was finally settled at the point of a bayonnet.    Except in the minds of those who belong to  extreme states-rights groups (Libertarians, Constitutionalists, the Brookings Institute, etc.), the supremacy of DC over the various legislatures is a given.  This, too, is neither good nor bad, just evolution.  But we shouldn't forget the original intentions of the framers.

That said, I'm of two minds when it comes to the EC.  On the one hand, that one candidate can win a plurality of the actual voters' votes and still lose is a bit unsettling.  On the other, if ever there was a case in favor of the current state-by-state system, the 2000 general election was it.  When one guy gets 48 plus or minus a percent and the other guy gets 48-point-something plus or minus a percent (that's what most folks call a tie), there's likely to be serious calls for recounting.  In our current system, the recounts were localized in two small states (NM, where gore eventually won by 360 votes!  IA, where gore eventually won by 4000) and one large (FL, where bush won by 185 if you counted them the way the bushies wanted, bush won by 1500 if you count them the way gore wanted, or 587, if you count them the way Katherine Harris wanted.)  As it is, we didn't have a winner till December 12.  Can you imagine how it would have been if we had been required to do a nation-wide recount of 105 million votes?!  There's a good chance that we may not have had a victor by innauguration day.

Still, like most folks, I'm undecided about whether the current system best fits.  Recall that more amendments have dealt with the issue of how we pick our national CEO than any other issue.  I think the suggestion of getting rid of the vertical offset (y-intercept as it were) of 2 extra votes for the number of senators and keeping the slope (no, that's not an ethnoracial slur, I mean the geometric change in y, or electoral votes, with x, the population).  But, as a serious practical matter, everyone seems to agree that change is unlikely since it involves amending the constitition.

You make two good points.  The first is that having th EC may acctually prevent fraud and cooroption of the system and thus prevent endless recounting and civil war.

The second, that if you counted up the votes THE WAY GORE WANTED TO, BUSH'S LEAD WOULD HAVE INCREASED.  I remember reading reports about that after Bush was sworn in, but it didn't get much press because liberals in the media wanted people to go on thinking that Bush was the illegitimate president.