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Juan Donado

High School Student,

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Should Americans eliminate the Electoral College and elect their presidents through simple majority vote?

Given that some presidents have won without persuading the majority of Americans, and the huge deal of money spent only on swing states I ask myself that question

I have always thought that it is unfair that republicans in California or Democrats in Texas are not taken into account just because people around them think differently.

Time for change?

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    edward long 100+

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    Oct 22 2012: The EC system allows a person to become POTUS by winning just 11 out of the 50 states + Wash. D.C.! That's just wrong.
    That means that even if 80% of the states unanimously elect a candidate that candidate might not win, depending on which 20% the other candidate wins! That's just wrong.
    The votes cast by citizens are irrelevant and unnecessary because the Electors are under no constitutional regulation to carry-out the will of the voters! That's just wrong.
    The U.S.A. is the only nation to use such a system to elect a chief executive.
    About 150 million people are expected to vote in a couple of weeks, but who cares? What matters is how those 538 electors vote. That amounts to one Elector for every 279,000 voters. That's just wrong. Granted there are difficulties in avoiding corruption and error in counting 150 million votes, but there is very possibly a better way that the EC.

    • John Smith 30+

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      Oct 22 2012: "The votes cast by citizens are irrelevant and unnecessary because the Electors are under no constitutional regulation to carry-out the will of the voters! That's just wrong."

      Precisely, this seems very disturbing.

      "The EC system allows a person to become POTUS by winning just 11 out of the 50 states + Wash. D.C.! That's just wrong."

      It wouldn't be wrong if those 11 states were the most popolous (the 11 most popolous US states contain more than half the US population), but they're not, they're just randomly picked states, some of whom have very small populations.
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        edward long 100+

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        Oct 23 2012: Correction- They are the top 11 most populous states: CA; TX; NY; FL; IL; PA; OH; MI; GA; NC; and NJ. They are the top 11 states in both population and number of electors. They represent 56.1% of the population (220 million) and 50.2% (270) of the Electors.

        • Noah Crossfield

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          Oct 23 2012: Mr Long, I have to ask. If they represent 56% of the people in this country, shouldn't these states be able to elect the president? They are a majority of the country. If we do base it on popular vote, it seems like those 11 states would still be able to elect the president. I dont understand what point you are making.

          I see what you are saying about faithless electors, but I have not heard of a time when a faithless elector ever changed an election. I may be mistaken, but I have never heard one. It seems like it would be easy to fix this problem too. We could get states to pass a law that electors must vote for their state's representative. It seems like this part of the electoral college is easily remediable. It would be much easier to fix that one aspect than the entire system.

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