Thread: Presidential elections/electoral college

People wonder why we do not have a "popular vote" decide the election results. We have a weighted system that gives some slight sway to low population or rural states to compensate for the extreme populations of the more urbane states. Below is a map showing the election results by county from the last Presidential election.

while Barack Hussein Obama won a decisive victory he did not win state by state. He lost big time in a total of states. See below:

Number of States won by: Democrats: 19 Republicans: 29
Square miles of land won by: Democrats: 580,000
Republicans: 2,427,000
Population of counties won by: Democrats: 127 million
Republicans: 143 million

by the way. these statistics are debatable as there is some internet hax floating out there pertaining to this. Just wanted to point that out in the interest of fairness.

We can still have a popular vote ellection that is weighed slighty in the favor of rural areas.

It could work where the smaller districts get a certain percent increase in their popular vote.

That way everyone is happy.

Any problems with that?

Yeop sorry. Checked the actual statisitics and they are bogus.

Obama won 22 states and McCain 28

So clearly something does not fly here.

Originally Posted by Nerv14

We can still have a popular vote ellection that is weighed slighty in the favor of rural areas.

It could work where the smaller districts get a certain percent increase in their popular vote.

That way everyone is happy.

Any problems with that?

It is already set in the Constitution. Why do you think it should be changed?

Originally Posted by justoneman

People wonder why we do not have a "popular vote" decide the election results. We have a weighted system that gives some slight sway to low population or rural states to compensate for the extreme populations of the more urbane states. Below is a map showing the election results by county from the last Presidential election.

Were you with the Democrats in 2000, who were advocating for the popular vote, or do you support it now that Obama was elected?

Originally Posted by justoneman

It is already set in the Constitution. Why do you think it should be changed?

Thats the Constitution, not state laws though. Therefore our system would still need to change.

I am talking about what ideally the law should be everywhere :P I just think that eveyone should agree that the votes for each candidate should depend on their percentage of the total popular votes in a state.


I agree with state's rights for many issues, but I don't see why a state should "have the right" to give all of their votes to one candidate. It won't change state by state any time soon because if a state is predominately controlled by one party, they won't want to give some votes to the other candidate when there is a presidential ellection.

They also don't like 3rd party votes taking away ellectoral college votes as well.

Originally Posted by Bluegrass

Were you with the Democrats in 2000, who were advocating for the popular vote, or do you support it now that Obama was elected?

Huh? I am not advocating a change to the popular vote! Why would you think that? I am doing the opposite of that. I am illustrating why the electoral college was innitiated and why it is a good idea. Without it the people in the rural states would have no voice at all.

Originally Posted by Nerv14

Thats the Constitution, not state laws though. Therefore our system would still need to change.

I am talking about what ideally the law should be everywhere :P I just think that eveyone should agree that the votes for each candidate should depend on their percentage of the total popular votes in a state.


I agree with state's rights for many issues, but I don't see why a state should "have the right" to give all of their votes to one candidate. It won't change state by state any time soon because if a state is predominately controlled by one party, they won't want to give some votes to the other candidate when there is a presidential ellection.

They also don't like 3rd party votes taking away ellectoral college votes as well.

I absolutely love how the Founding Fathers set it all up. they did a magnificent job. How they had the forsight to anticipate that the urban states would be full of voters that would be so....miopic in their thought processes. Really the Constitution is brilliant.