Squeely wrote:I wonder: what does everyone here think about the electoral college?
This is the second election out of the past five in which the electoral college elected someone who did not win the popular vote. This has caused many people to want the electoral college abolished.
Others say the electoral college is good to have because it gives the lesser-populated states more power. They feel that the democratic nominee would always win without this system in place, due to how democrat-filled states with a high population, such as California and New York, are.
I personally feel like this system needs some sort of reform. I'm not sure exactly what kind of reform, but as a Californian, it's very disheartening to know, had I gone and voted for Hillary like I wanted to, she still wouldn't be president. Not for lack of barely eeking the popular vote win, but because officials in another state, who I have no say in who gets elected there, picked Trump.
But, what are your thoughts?
My only fear about making the president elected based on the popular vote is... the small margins.
This year, the vote totals for Clinton and Trump were 59,938,290 votes and 59,704,886 votes, respectively. This means Clinton won 233,404 more votes. That percentage... it's extremely low. It's 0.195% of all votes. It's like this: If 1,000 people voted in the United States, then Hillary got 501 votes and Trump got 499. When you add in third parties, it's not even like that at all.
Because those numbers are so absurdly close, it would almost make sense to give Clinton and Trump equal representation in the executive branch. Since roughly the same number of people voted for each candidate, anything else just isn't fair. When we look at the raw numbers, that fact couldn't become more obvious.
Let's also consider that Gary Johnson won 3% of votes, and Jill Stein won 1%. What that means is that, between the two of them, there were more people who wanted a different candidate than who wanted Clinton over Trump. Since neither Gary nor Jill had a chance to be president, the people voting for those candidates, myself included, should still get some representation. Where should those votes go? Would it be fair to give Gary's votes to Trump, and Jill's to Clinton? Maybe, but that would sure change the numbers.
Because this was such a close contest for the popular vote, a small difference in the count can have a much greater effect. Actually, as of this writing, Michigan and Arizona still haven't finished their counting. We're not completely sure what the vote totals are yet. Imagine if the contest was even closer--what then? I don't think we'd know the winner of the election yet. I think that would kinda suck, since I like being able to see the winner on election night.
In short, the electoral college makes the system much more certain. It's possible for a candidate to win the electoral college, even if not all the votes are counted in a state like Arizona or Michigan. We know, then, that they're our president regardless of the outcome. 279 to 228 is a very clear result, whereas 501 to 499 makes me think, "oh God, we need a recount."
That said, I don't think the electoral college is the best system, either. I think we should use a system where every states' votes are given proportionally, such that if Trump wins 20% of the vote in California, he gets 11 of California's 55 electoral votes. A system such as this could still result in a candidate winning the popular vote but losing the electoral college, but it's much less likely. It would essentially only happen due to rounding error.
I think it's much more important that we fix our damn primary system so that the parties can stop kicking us over. We either need to implement ranked choice voting on election day so that third parties actually have a chance, or we need to implement strict rules and regulations to treat primary elections with the same reverence we do to the general. Democratic and republican primaries should be held in every state on the same day, and any registered voter should be able to vote in one or the other, regardless of party affiliation. And superdelegates? Nuh-uh. GTFO.
I don't like being forced to stay indoors like this. Feels like I wasted the only sunny period of autumn and now it's just gonna be rain, rain, rain when my knee finally heals.
