> The electoral college is designed (from the start) to prevent the larger, more populous states from dominating the country.
You're probably thinking of the senate. While very small states do have an advantage in the electoral college, it's not very big at all. The electoral college is largely an artifact of a time when the electors were directed by state governments, not state populations.
The brokenness of the electoral college is more about the winner-takes-all allocation of electors that is (usually) practiced. This makes the votes of people who live in divided states far more relevant than those of people who live in states where most people vote the same way.
> ...the electoral college system means that not all votes are created equal. For instance, due to population disparities, a vote in Vermont is three times more powerful than a vote in New York. The electoral college ignores the will of the American people by allowing a presidential candidate to be elected even when they did not win the majority of the popular vote, an instance which has occurred four times in U.S. history. The power of a vote in the United States depends on the population of one’s state, not on the inherent act of voting itself.
It's really not hard to put the US electoral system to shame when it includes "features" like that.
>The founding fathers established it in the Constitution as a compromise between election of the President by a vote in Congress and election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens.
I don't think the statement above means the electoral college was about giving smaller states an advantage over larger ones. For one, the electoral college was developed during a time when communication was very difficult, and education and literacy was not as widespread. Conditions have changed, and it is possible the system is now too far skewed in one direction such that it no longer represents the people's wishes.
The problem you identify isn't with the electoral college but with the centralisation into the federal government of states powers in a way that is directly against the federalist and Republican ideas of the constitution.
I think 'rayiner' might just have meant "it would be preferable that the President be elected by popular vote of the entire nation without regard to state boundaries". While it's possible he was suggesting that the States themselves should be abolished, I think it's just awkward phrasing.
> that weighs each state's political power appropriately
Define "appropriately" in the context of Wyoming and California.
Also explain what happens if only a single person votes for the same candidate in the 41 states and special districts wth the least EC representation,and 100% of the people in the remaining states vote for the other candidate.
The Electoral College is a hugely flawed mechanism both in terms of reflecting the will of the people vs the will of arbitrary land boundaries, and the actual division of "political power" due to forcing everything to round to the nearest integer and setting a (completely arbitrary) cap on the number of EC votes.
> The electoral college is designed (from the start) to prevent the larger, more populous states from dominating the country. Seems to be working as designed. And doing a good job as a system.
Not really. The college disenfranchises Wyoming Democrats and California Republicans a similar amount.
It's the Senate that protects smaller states, since each state gets two senators.
> So rather than tyranny of the majority, now we have tyranny of an arbitrary minority. I fail to see how that improves things.
There's nothing arbitrary about it. The United States is a federated government and the electoral college is a system designed to ensure smaller state governments maintain some influence.
We have granted more and more power to the federal government over the years. You could argue that's a good thing. We are forcing the states to "catch up" their policies with the rest of the nation. You could also argue it's a bad thing. Each state is distinct by its culture, geography, demographics, etc. Therefore it makes sense that each state would need its own government and policies to handle its unique situations. Heavy-handed policies on the federal level could ruin the systems created by those governments.
You can argue the point either way but it's not fair to consider the electoral college as an "arbitrary" system. And it was no more of a bargaining chip than the Bill of Rights. It is a deliberate mechanic designed for a government that has changed significantly over more than two centuries.
I’m not so sure I buy that argument. Larger states have more elected congressional officials balanced by smaller states having more senate votes per state person. The electoral college still gives heavier weights to states by population. Ultimately, from a game theory and incentive prospective, a state should try and be a battle ground state in order to get more political attention. This likely happens only when the state is suffering from more turmoil or problems. If the problems persist, people can move to a new state.
Although comforting, the having a majority of the votes is a misleading metric in some ways, the electoral college is skewed so that voters in states with lower population have more power so each vote is not equal. This effect carries over to the Senate where a similar outcome with lower population states having more power so one person's vote is more powerful depending upon their geographic location.
The point of the Senate and Electoral College is that states are supposed to have quite a bit of sovereignty, and so more populous states shouldn't be able to run roughshod over less populous ones. Your suggestions completely miss that point.
>Define "appropriately" in the context of Wyoming and California.
Appropriately as defined by the Constitution:
* Each state gets Representatives allocated to them according to population, with a minimum of 1 Representative, for proportional representation in the Lower House.
* Each state gets two Senators, for equal representation in the Upper House.
The number of Representatives used to increase on a semi-regular basis as population nationwide increased, but it has now been set to 435 Representatives due to physical constraints of fitting so many Representatives in one room.
The Senate currently has 100 seats to account for the 50 states currently in the union; the seats will increase or decrease anytime the number of states change.
Washington, D.C.'s presence in the Electoral College is a special case. D.C. does not have any representation in neither Houses of Congress because it is not a state, but the EC represents D.C. voters by allocating to it the equivalent number of Senators and Representatives as the smallest state in the union.
This means that, ironically to your arguments, the Electoral College is more representative than Congress because D.C. voters are represented.
>Also explain what happens if only a single person votes for the same candidate in the 41 states and special districts wth the least EC representation,and 100% of the people in the remaining states vote for the other candidate.
If the 41 states plus D.C. have more EC votes than the remaining 9 states, then the winner is whoever garnered those votes. Remember, the President is elected by and represents the states as a collective; the President does not represent the people directly, the people are represented directly by their state's Governor.
A nationwide popular vote removes power from the states, because it means one state's people can unilaterally override the people of another state. The USA is a federation of states, so that is simply not acceptable. Each state is sovereign and each state's will must be represented, so far the best compromise has been re-using Congressional seat appropriations which is something all states agree to work with.
>The Electoral College is a hugely flawed mechanism both in terms of reflecting the will of the people vs the will of arbitrary land boundaries, and the actual division of "political power" due to forcing everything to round to the nearest integer and setting a (completely arbitrary) cap on the number of EC votes.
The Electoral College reflects the will of the people of a given state, because remember: A state's EC votes are determined by the state's popular vote. Just because it doesn't reflect your will ("nationwide popular vote") does not make the Electoral College a "hugely flawed" system. In fact, with regards to working in a country comprising a federation of states, it works marvelously at bringing every state's opinions together.
> The original purpose of the electoral college was NOT to provide disproportionate voice to non-populous states. In fact, the states backing the college were some of the most populous as long as you count slaves.
This begs for a source. Where is it stated exactly what the purpose of the electoral college was, in the Founding Fathers' own words?
Furthermore, you have to keep in mind that at the time the U.S. was founded, the individual states were essentially their own countries with individual governments and leadership. The only way they could make the deal work with all of them was to ensure that no one state could "overrule" the others. If smaller states could be bullied by larger states, the term "united states" loses a quite a bit of its meaning.
> How is the electoral college system not in conflict with the Constitution then, if a person's vote in one state is much stronger than another person's vote in another state?
The electoral college system gives equal weight to the vote of everyone who isn't an elector, and that weight is 0.
It gives stronger votes to large states than to small states, except that states are allowed to split their votes, which obviates that complaint.
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