65% of U.S. adults say the way the president is elected should be changed so that the winner of the popular vote nationwide wins the presidency.
The US political system has a fair number of flaws, but the electoral college (in my opinion) is the biggest one.
If there were no electoral college, there would have been no Bush Jr, and no Trump.
We favored that 20 years ago when GWB stole an election he lost.
Okay, but what’s 65% of US adults equate to in electoral college terms…
That depends. Do they identify as red/blue or are they
Until we get rid of the two party system and first past the post results, the electoral college is as good as anything else. It’s the underlying elections process that’s flawed.
I don’t think getting rid of the two-party system is going to help as much as people think it will. While I think it would help a little, the Democrats and Republicans are more-or-less de facto coalition parties; if we had more viable parties, there would still be conservative and liberal coalitions.
As for the electoral college, I think it needs to go because it is a hugely flawed part of the US (presidential) elections process. Its problems are that it is (1) winner takes all, (2) not truly proportional to the population, (3) creates the “red-state” vs “blue-state” vs “swing-state” phenomenon, and (4) discourages voters turnout, among others.
I do agree on getting rid of first-past-the-post elections. Having a ranked choice voting system is preferable because that limits the ability for extremists to get power and it helps get the candidate most people agree with elected.
Edit: clarified the last paragraph to include ranked choice
Having a ranked choice voting system is preferable because that limits the ability for extremists to get power and it helps get the candidate most people agree with elected.
Which is why the #GOP is banning it in states like Florida. I wonder why they’d do that?
@CoffeeAddict while the electoral college is a mess, it’d require a convention to fix, which would be very messy and unclear on the outcomes. An incremental approach would be to get the Wyoming Rule passed which would make the popular vote + electoral vote match more by making the House actually apportioned to population. You’d have to have actual voting majority in both houses + the presidency, but its possible without the downsides of a convention.
This would help - the system should be proportionally representative.
The fact that some citizens have their vote count more than others is a problem. I understand that one of the initial goals was to prevent cities and high-population states from dominating the countryside, but at best it’s an over-correction. At worst, it lets low-population states veto things cities and high-population states need.
This is a bigger problem with the Senate, though. Manhattan alone has double the population of Wyoming and yet they both get equal representation.
That’s as designed. The Senate is supposed to represent the State, the House is supposed to represent the people of the State.
The actual issue is that the House hasn’t been expanded since the early 1900’s & as such isn’t representative of their state’s population in respect to every other state.
i.e., kowtowing to the physical properties of a building are preventing us from having actual representation.
