That's the only way Kerry should even consider running again. Because I guarantee you, in the next presidential election, there will NOT be party "unanimity" for a Kerry nomination. There will not be wide spread concensus to support his nomination as the Party candidate and people will not shut up and fall in line the next time. There will be major factional splits - because it already exists, and it is wider than ever before in my memory.

So the only way for Kerry supporters to have a chance in hell of success for a Kerry Election Victory, is if there is Proportional Representation or something very close to it. at the minimum IRV.

Not only should this country have abolished the current system decades (if not a century) ago it certainly is clear to most people that the two party Electoral College system is a miserable failure and no longer works for either party.

For those who do not know about Proportional Representation, or Choice Voting and Instant Runoff Voting, (IRV) then go to any number of sites on the subject including Center for Voting and Democracy http://www.fairvote.org/pr/

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/polit/damy/prlib.htm

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/polit/damy/B...ng/howprwor.htm

or other sites listed in google here:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=propo...G=Google+Search

The Electoral College is a rich tradition of our country and does not need to be abolished. Rather, it needs to be ammended.

It's a "rich" tradition alright! It's very design was created to benefit the "Landed Gentry" - in other words, Rich White Land Barons and Slave Holders.

Not even poor white farmers were given the "right to vote", not to mention Women and Blacks. This Rich Tradition is White Supremacists to it's very core.

Abolishing racists, sexist and classist system(s) is long long long overdue.

Really. Next time we won't have the "evil" Bush to run against. I too believe that people will be more splintered next time and it will be harder to unite the base behind one candidate. The worst has already happened. People will be more inclined to take a risk and support the candidate who is more in line with their views.

Well, here's the thing. There is no true representation for divergent views or groups - we live in a very diverse and pluralistic society. We have to have an elections system that actually REFLECTS that diversity - and we just don't have that. The system we have in place favors the representation and interests of a single select wealthy elite group (mostly White Male CEO's of Corporations and multi-nationals than it represents ordinary citizens) -

Our country was founded by wealthy landowners, that is true, but it is no longer the case, and hasn't been for well over a century with mass immigration from Europe and other parts of the world. The wide divergence of people in this country needs a wide divergence of represntation if we want to continue calling our selves a democratic system of governance.

A "Democratic Republic" it once was, but in today's world, I don't think anyone can honestly say that's what we should continue to embrace.

It only serves the wealthy and the priviledged, which is really a plutocracy, not a democracy.

Proportional Representation at least provides for truer representation of all of our people, and at the same time does not extinguish the "majority" view, while at the same time eliminating the "winner take all" paradigm.

So everybody wins at least to some extent which is more what a democracy is supposed to be. And though our battles with the extreme right will continue, at least no one party can have absolute power over the other.

And then I think, a more balanced and ACCURATE political compass can then emerge as a measure of the varying divergent viewpoints represented as being more "moderate" or "extremist" - (on the Right or the Left) within the political spectrum in this country.

If we had this system tomorrow, people would be shocked to see their long held assumptions shattered with regard to the range of political ideology in all of our communities.

it would certainly elmininate the so called "Red State Vs Blue State" paradigm, (where in the hell did that come from anyway?) that the media simpleton whores love to cling to so they don't have to actually think about anything more complex than the lint in their collective navals.

I love the moderate pushers or ones that want the dems to go to the right, who also want the electoral college gone

It would lead in an even left and more right candidate for each party,
because a Dem would only have to cater to NY and Calif and a Repub
only to Texas

You keep forgetting that Texas as a republican state is a fairly recent phenomenon. Due to the fact that Rick Perry is a joke as governor, I predict that Texas is fixing to swing back to its democratic base.

I do think the electoral college has got to go. If you go to a one vote=one vote system, candidates won't need to win STATES. They will need to win voters, one by one.

The next election wont have George W. Bush as the opponent therefore it wont be a "ABB" election. Face it, Bush was a weak candidate and we should of had no trouble beating him. But, no wartime President in history has ever lost, Democrat or Republican. Some say this may have been one of the reasons why he wanted to invade Iraq... but who knows.

My opinion is the Electoral College should be abolished but since that requires a Constitutional Amendment it is probably unlikely to happen at any particular time (not that I would discourage people from pushing it, if they don't, it will never happen).

Proportional representation, heaven help us! Look at Israel and their crazy politics. They have proportional representation. With it nut parties get real clout. If you think extremists of the Christian Right have too much influence wait until we get PR.

IRV? Excellent idea! That way you vote for Nader for your first choice and then the Democrat for your second to make sure that whatever Bush clone is nominated in '08 doesn't win. And I think that each state would be free to institute this, so the barriers to implementation aren't too great.

I do think Kerry should run again and I also think the electoral college system should be firmly and absolutely put in its grave.

This system was divised in an era when many people could not read or write and therefore could not cast a written ballot. They depended on local officials to take a "hand count", or oral vote such as Yeh's or Nay's (which they still do in Congress, but on hotly contested issues they take an electronic vote to make sure they have an accurate count) and report it to their city official, who compiles all votes and report them to the state offical who then casts all of the votes collected for his state. The electoral system was built as a way to "communicate" the vote, not count it. You can compare it to how Native American's use to communicate with Smoke Signals to notify one another of issues, events, etc. One person gets a message, they take it to another that knows how to work the smoke signal, and they communicate it to the next tribe, on and on until the entire nation is "in the loop". Then the governing council makes it's decision based on all the signals. Same idea, but too primitive for us now since most people can read and write and are able to cast a ballot. Also, technology allows us to count more votes more accurately, eliminating the need for a hierarchy system, or at least paving the way for less hierarchy's in the system.

As far as the system being based on the Landed Gentry or weathly Land Barons, I thought this system lost its power after the revolution, and was put completely down in the South by the civil war. Our government's systems were primarily modeled after the Native American Indian's governing system. The idea of many states under one nation was modeled after the Iroqouis(my spelling is awful - sorry) Nation to be exact (if my memory serves me correctly).

It is completely and 100% against the law for any American citizen to hold any type of inherited title, Baron, Gentry, anything. The only titles that are permitted (that I am aware of) to American's are Honorable Title's from the United Kingdom. And this is only if you can proove your family is a legitimate unbroken male (nobody said this wasn't a sexist system) line from one of England's first noble families, or if the Queen decides to knight you.

So, for example, even though Rudi Giuliani was knighted, he cannot be addressed as Sir in this country and this title may not be passed down to anyone in his family. It was an honor bestowed on him only and entitles him to only the honor of the receiving the title, nothing else. We got rid of that entire social structure after the revolution!

Our system was founded by wealthy white people that had to settle and form their own identity in a new world with new ideas and people around them. I dont' think this system caters to the wealthy, I think it was formed by the wealthy because it was, in the beginning, being run by governers and such from some of England's aristocracy and nobility. The ones that rebelled with us were influenced heavily by the ideals from England, however, their was a lot of other input from other groups that helped fight the revolution. These men were often "Enlightened" thinkers that did not cater to the norm. I don't think they excluded the poor as much as you think they did! That is pretty common misconception that is out there right now.

If you are ever in Washington D.C. (some people may know this already), take a look at the top of the capitol building. There is a statue on top of the dome, nobody knows who it is, some say Pocahontas, but there is no certainty. Anyway, the point is, it is an Indian, and it is on top of where some of the most important decisions in the country are made. This was done to pay tribute to those people that our system was modeled after.

I think we tend to identify our roots as coming from England, we have a fascination with their royalty, nobility, soforth. I even think the current administration has tried to reestablish some of the "noble" ideals that they "think" our country was founded on. My personal opinion is, when they got to the White House to restore these ideas, they found that these were only a small part of what we are built on. They didn't take into account the other significant influences that our country has. Therefore, when they looked to the past to build our future, they often looked to the wrong things and screwed up, a lot, and really big. During the election, Bush fundamentaly messed up because he tried to use religion as a catalyst to get him into the White House. Well, this was bad, because, what religion do you know of that works like a democracy? They used their own methods of getting things done. The election problemo that we had is another one of the reasons we don't mix religion and politics - the result is always bad in our Nation, and has been the main catalyst behind England's bloody and often tragic history.

Because we are formed from many different ideas and people, we have to include all the voices of these ideals and people. This is where our diversity comes in and why it must be respected. It helps our country to run the way it was meant to.

No, actually the electoral system was designed to circumvent the widespread ignorance in this country in terms of its election of its highest office. Unfortunately, it is not really accomplishing that goal. Therefore, it must be redesigned so that it can meet the expectations of our country's founding fathers. Any suggestions?

Conventional history says that the Founding Fathers got their ideas from classical Greece and the Roman Republic as well as from England. I don't know too much about the theory that they based the new country on the Iroquois Confederacy, in my basic ignorance I suspect that thay probably based their ideas on the Iroquois along with the English, Romans and Greeks. You might want to post some sources on the Iroquois theory for those who might be interested.

As far as your analysis of the landed gentry and "barons", I think that your analysis is a little off. There never was a titled aristocracy here, but at the time of the Revolution the North was dominated by a class of wealthy merchants and the South was dominated by a class of wealthy plantation owners. Even the Civil War didn't completely break this system in the South, though it did enable what turned out to be a long process of ending it. (For a long time the post-bellum South was characterized by a political struggle between the plantation owners, whose plantations were now manned by sharecroppers rather than slaves, and small white farmers, with Blacks mostly disenfranchised. Fear of Blacks was used by the elite to keep their advantage.) But I tend to agree that even the mostly elite group of the Founding Fathers were not just motivated by protecting their class interests, to deny that would be a kind of crude Marxism. (I even think that Alexander Hamilton, IMO too unfairly attacked for his elitism, made a lot of wise and prescient decisions that set this country on its eventual course of economic greatness. He may have had some flaws, but on balance I think that he certainly deserves his place in history as one of our greatest Founders.) And there was certainly input by non-elite types. (There was also suspicion based upon class, many people opposed the Constitution saying it was developed for the interests of the "well-born".) And the system also proved flexible enough to adapt to the rising democratic tendency that developed in the decades after the Revolution.

Here is one good resource for election methods and reform: http://electionmethods.org/
Be sure to check out Condorcet voting, a variation of IRV.

Prior to this election, I was one of the biggest supporters of abolishing the electoral

college. After, I am not. If the electors voted other than party line or felt there

was real fraud it would have changed everything. Just because they did not

change there votes, does not mean it does not work. And with evil smegal in the

WH I would not want any USC changes. They would be worse than what stood for

200+ years

Actually the electoral system came about as a power sharing agreement between 13 sovereign states, the same is true of the composition of the house and senate. It's a way to allow both the will of the populace (majority) to be expressed while helping preserve the rights of local or regional dissenters. Until the last few decades there was far more difference based on region than there was within any region, this is still largely true.

Regarding 3rd parties, look at it as a matter of communication, if an idea doesn't gain popular support either it isn't being expressed well or it's being rejected by the majority. IRV wouldn't solve anything, we already have ways to express our views and people understand what impact their vote will have.

I also think the electorial college should be amended and not got rid of.


As far as Irv, imho I believe it will cause more voter fraud suspicion. If a system as basic as what we have now can be screwed up so bad, a system like Irv would be a nightmare if there were ever suspicions of fraud. Instead of double checking one vote, you would have double check each preference if thier wasnt a clear winner and you had runoffs and fraud was thought to of happened.

We need a basic easy vote and check system, amend the electorial college, and require paper trails.

Also a reciept for my vote would make me feel much better about our voting system regardless of what it is.

The old system was formed to allow the rich landholders to controll the elections by preventing the cities from winning the elections. The system was designed by the big land holders and power brokers of the time. It is outmoded and should be abolished in favor of one person, one vote. That would be a true election.

You are confusing the issue by lumping a number of "problems" under the electoral college!!!

I think that this is an oversimplification but there is this to it, the counting of slaves as 3/5 of a person in censuses. Of course slaves could not vote but this clause, by bolstering representation in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College, magnified the political power of the South and its most powerful class, the rich landholders.

Since the US does not have slaves anymore will someone please explain how slavery effects the electorial college at this moment in time?

If the electorial college was set up to do as some of you claim, which I dont doubt at that time in history it was, what does that have to do with NOW that we dont have slavery anymore, and every US citizen has a right to vote thats 18 or older?

Also, I see people wanting the electorial college banished, but Im not seeing any supporting arguments that are based on now day facts, and not past history of why it should be banished completely and not amended.

I was just commenting on the history. Of course you are right that this paticular clause is no longer relevant. I myself made the point that a system developed at a time of much less than perfect democracy was able to be adapted to the more democratic sensibilities that developed. I don't like the Electoral College as it allows for the occasional possibility that the popular vote loser could win the Presidency and I can see no substantial advantage to to compensate for that. But as I said I think that it will take a long time before it is abolished.

My reply and questions wasnt meant to be directed at you personally, but at anyone wanting to abolish the electorial. I just would like to know some reasoning behind anyone wanting that, I did not mean for my post to sound argumentative, its just a quest for information supporting the ideal of banishing the electorial college. No more no less.

I didn't take it personally, and there is certainly nothing wrong in pushing one's argument as long as there is a purpose besides being argumentative, and your posts certainly don't seem argumentative. :D

I just wanted to make sure that my own points were understood.

The real reason to not change?

If there is funny biz going on and the elections are fixed, all one would have to do is forget Ohio or Florida...just fix California and millions of votes could be harvested.
It would probably make theft easier

Why the Electoral College Should be Abolished

The US Electoral College is an historical anachronism that was established back when the federal government did not trust its citizens to vote directly for their Senators or their President. Now we vote directly for our Senators, but we still elect our President through an antiquated, indirect process that distorts and complicates Presidential politics and violates basic democratic principles. The Electoral College was concocted at a time when women and African-Americans were not allowed to vote, of course, and it had the effect of preventing individual states from gaining more power by letting them vote. No legitimate reason exists to maintain the Electoral College, but several compelling reasons exist to abolish it, the most important of which is that it that stands in the way of effective electoral reform at the presidential level.

With a few minor exceptions, the Electoral College gives all of the electoral votes for each state to the plurality winner in that state, regardless of the margin of victory. This "winner take all" arrangement at the state level can elect a President who loses the popular vote, as happened in 1824, 1876, 1888, and 2000 (possibly also 1960, since the popular vote in favor of Democratic electors in Alabama is usually counted all for Kennedy, but only about half of the Democratic electors were actually pledged to Kennedy). Common sense suggests that such a "split decision" is undesirable at best. The Electoral College goes against basic democratic principles by making the vote of one citizen worth more than the vote of another, depending on the population of the state in which they reside and how close the race happens to be in that state.

The Electoral College also distorts and complicates Presidential politics. When one particular candidate appears to have an insurmountable lead in some states, then none of the competitive candidates has much incentive nor can afford to campaign much in those states. Instead, they spend most of their time and money in a few tightly contested states, ignoring most of the other states (often including large states such as California, for example). Proponents of the Electoral College often claim that the "winner take all" arrangement gives a state more attention, but the exact opposite is true for states with one-sided races. If the Electoral College is abolished, all voters will be equally important, as they should be, and candidates will have a healthy incentive to campaign wherever they think they can persuade the most voters. More importantly, they will be less distracted by statewide polls and will be able to pay more attention to the issues.

The most important reason to dump the Electoral College, however, is that it stands in the way of effective electoral reform. Alternative election methods such as Approval voting, Condorcet voting, and even Instant Runoff Voting cannot be properly implemented at the Presidential level as long as the Electoral College is in place. They could be implemented at the state level, but they would be ineffective in combination with the Electoral College because the latter is a majoritarian system. Hence, minor parties would still have the same huge, artificial disadvantage they currently have. In other words, our current two-party duopoly is unlikely to get effective competition at the Presidential level as long as the Electoral College is in place, and if it does get effective competition, political instability can result due to vote splitting.

A common argument in favor of the Electoral College is that it forces the candidates to pay more attention to sparsely populated states they would otherwise ignore. But that is true only because the Electoral College perversely gives more weight to votes from those states. A simple analysis shows that seven states get more than twice the electoral vote per citizen as California, for example, and a resident of Wyoming is apparently considered well over three times more important than a resident of California. Voters in Wyoming probably don't mind this inequity, but how long would voters in California stand for it if they were aware of it? Less populated states already get more representation per citizen in the US Senate, of course, but that is due to the structure of the federal government, not a contorted voting scheme that weights some votes more than others.

Furthermore, if the Electoral College is needed to give rural states fair representation, then the same argument should apply at the state level. California, for example, is a huge state with a couple of very heavily populated regions and vast, sparsely populated rural areas. According to this argument, candidates for Governor and US Senator must be ignoring the rural areas because their election is by popular vote. If the argument is valid, then California and every other state should have their own statewide electoral college that divides the electoral votes by county. Nobody is seriously proposing such an abomination because the argument behind it is baseless, as is the corresponding argument behind the Electoral College.

Another argument in favor of the Electoral College casts the issue in terms of federalism and state sovereignty. But voting is one of our most important individual rights, just like freedom of speech and the other individual rights spelled out in the Bill of Rights. State sovereignty hardly gives states the right to commandeer those individual rights in service of a plurality. The effect of the Electoral College is to discard dissenting votes and to arbitrarily force the entire population of each state to go along with the plurality winner in the state. Dissenting votes must yield in the final national result, of course, but they need not and should not be thrown out at an intermediate stage of the counting, as the Electoral College does. We vote for President as citizens of the United States, not merely as citizens of a particular state.

Another absurd argument in favor of the Electoral College is that it isolates the effects of illegal voting (or unfair vote counting) to the state in which it occurs. The "winner take all" arrangement at the state level can indeed isolate the effects of voting fraud within a state, but only if the fraud does not change the winner of the state. If the magnitude of the fraud is large enough to tip the election one way or the other, than the "winner take all" arrangement of the Electoral College actually magnifies the effect of voting fraud tremendously. In close races, fraud is much more likely to occur, and it is also much more likely to tip the election. If it does, the fraudulent voters effectively overrule all the legitimate voters of the entire state. The notion that the Electoral College somehow minimizes the effect of voting fraud is simply wrong. In fact, the Electoral College can actually magnify the effect of voting fraud.

A related argument in favor of the Electoral College is that it isolates vote recounts to one or a few states rather than the entire nation. Imagine the 2000 Florida recount fiasco on a national level, say the supporters of the Electoral College. But this argument is specious too. If all the votes can be counted once, they can certainly be counted twice. The Florida recount fiasco was the result of antiquated voting equipment and a State Supreme Court that tried to change the rules after the election. The automatically mandated machine recount agreed with the original count (that Bush won). But that's all beside the point anyway. Of course recounts can be simplified by recounting only in certain states, but that begs the question of why only the votes in those states should determine who wins. After all, if convenience is the primary issue, we could really simplify the recount by simply selecting one ballot at random--or tossing a coin!

To avoid any possible misunderstanding or confusion, we emphasize that we are absolutely not advocating any retroactive overruling of the Electoral College. It is prescribed by the Constitution, and it can be eliminated only with a Constitutional Amendment. Until it is officially abolished, the candidate who wins the electoral vote should become President--regardless of who wins the popular vote. Changing the rules during or after the game is always unfair, and it could be a prescription for disaster when the Presidency of the United States is at stake. George W. Bush was the legitimate winner in 2000. However, his political adversaries are absolutely free to remind us that he lost the popular vote. (The margin was slim enough that voting fraud could have made the difference, but that's another matter.)

In summary, the Electoral College is an historical anachronism that distorts and complicates Presidential politics and violates basic democratic principles. The arguments in favor of it are baseless, and it stands in the way of effective electoral reform. Until the Electoral College is eliminated, our current two-party duopoly is unlikely to get the effective competition it needs so badly at the Presidential level. The Electoral College can and should be abolished by a Constitutional Amendment. Unfortunately, that won't be easy because 38 states will have to agree, and some smaller states may want to preserve their disproportionate share of power. We can only hope they are willing to put democracy and the national interest ahead of their own narrow self interest.

Which is precisely why it hasn't been abolished and why it will never be abolished.

Best we can hope for:

One day, when we have a democratic congress, they can change the STATUTE enacted in 1911 fixing the house at 435 members. They could raise it WITHOUT A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT to 1000. This would mean there are 1100 electoral votes in a presidential election.

This is the closest thing we could realistically get to a "popular vote."

The thing about the history of the Electoral College is this: it basically was developed as a compromise dictated by the political realities of the time. In other words, it was a classic product of a committee. (We all know what kinds of products committees make.)

Whatever good points it has (and I don't think that there are many) are pretty much entirely accidental.

The current electoral college allows candidates to campaign in states where the vote is uncertain and ignore those states where the mix of voters is advantageous to him.

Also, certain states electoral votes "count" for more. From fairvote.org:

Disproportionate Voting Power Given to the States

The Electoral College gives disproportionate voting power to the states, favoring the smaller states with more Electoral votes per person.

For instance, each individual vote in Wyoming counts nearly four times as much in the Electoral College as each individual vote in Texas. This is because Wyoming has 3 Electoral votes for a population of 493,782 and Texas has 32 Electoral votes for a population of over 20 million people. By dividing the population by Electoral votes, we can see that Wyoming has an "Elector" for every 165,000 people and Texas has an "Elector" for every 652,000 people.

The small states were given additional power to prevent politicians from only focusing on issues which affect the larger states. The fear was that without this power, politicians would only focus on the big states and major cities.

Ironically enough though, there is a study that concludes that larger states are actually at an advantage in the Electoral College. Larger states are said to be at an advantage themselves because of a greater voting potential. To explain voting potential, imagine a hypothetical situation in which to candidates are exactly tied in a state and there is a single voter left. When that last voter casts his/her vote, it has the potential to decide the winner in his/her state and the allocation of a huge mass of electoral votes. "


Also...
"The Winner-Take-All Method of Distributing Electoral Votes

The Electoral College favors the smaller states with disproportionate voting power. Advocates of the system say that this uneven power forces politicians to pay attention to smaller states, which would otherwise be ignored.

Despite its intentions, the Electoral College does not encourage politicians to campaign in every state.

Some states are still excluded from the campaign; these are not necessarily the small states, but rather they are the states that are not viewed as competitive.

Since the Electoral College allocates each state’s votes (except Maine and Nebraska) in a winner-take-all method, there is no reason for a candidate to campaign in a state that already favors them or their opponent.

As an example, Democratic candidates have little incentive to spend time in solidly Republican states, like Texas, even if many Democrats live there. Conversely, Republican candidates have little incentive to campaign in solidly Democratic states, like Massachusetts, especially when they know that states like Florida and Michigan are toss-ups.

The winner-take-all rule also leads to lower voter turnout in states where one party is dominant, because each individual vote will be overwhelmed by the majority and will not, in effect, "count" if the winner takes all the electoral votes."


So - my vote doesn't count as much as say, Wyoming's does, but because PA has several large cities, we went blue, but it was close.

Illinois is a good sample for large city skewing of blue vs. red. Chicago dominates the state, sending an otherwise Republican voting bloc to the Democrats.

Here is a link on the Iroquios:

http://www.tolatsga.org/iro.html

Here is what I found to be most relevant to our discussion:

It was the Iroquois political system, however, that made them unique, and because of it, they dominated the first 200-years of colonial history in both Canada and the United States. Strangely enough, there were never that many of them, and the enemies they defeated in war were often twice their size. Although much has been made of their Dutch firearms, the Iroquois prevailed because of their unity, sense of purpose, and superior political organization. Since the Iroquois League was formed prior to any contact, it owed nothing to European influence. Proper credit is seldom given, but the reverse was actually true. Rather than learning political sophistication from Europeans, Europeans learned from the Iroquois, and the League, with its elaborate system of checks, balances,, and supreme law, almost certainly influenced the American Articles of Confederation and Constitution.

It was a quote I read by John F. Kennedy that said that the idea many states under one nation came from the Iroquios. This is the first I have ever read about Indians having Dutch Firearms, they were located in the New York area, probably gained them through trade.

Here is another quote that may demonstrate what I said about our system and the electoral college. It also shows how powerful Indian women were in their political system and how they transferred power during times of war.

The Iroquois were farmers whose leaders were chosen by their women - rather unusual for warlike conquerors. Founded to maintain peace and resolve disputes between its members, the League's primary law was the Kainerekowa, the Great Law of Peace which simply stated Iroquois should not kill each other. The League's organization was prescribed by a written constitution based on 114 wampums and reinforced by a funeral rite known as the "Condolence" - shared mourning at the passing of sachems from the member tribes. The council was composed of 50 male sachems known variously as lords, or peace chiefs. Each tribe's representation was set: Onondaga 14; Cayuga 10; Oneida 9; Mohawk 9; and Seneca 8. Nominated by the tribal clan mothers (who had almost complete power in their selection), Iroquois sachemships were usually held for life, although they could be removed for misconduct or incompetence. The emblem of their office was the deer antler head dress, and guided by an all-male council, the sachems ruled in times of peace. War chiefs were chosen on the basis of birth, experience, and ability, but exercised power only during war.

We know the electorial college is not perfect, I think we all can agree on that at least, it does have problems because it has not been updated with modern times.

But out of the reasons i have seen for abolishing it... I have not seen one other alternative that will give every state a fair voice in votes regardless of population and size and also not cause major problems if the vote is ever doubted or like this election thought to be fraudulent.

I still believe the electorial college can be amended and updated to modern day without banishing it completely.

How should we be "fair" to the states "regardless of population and size"? I think that in terms of fairness it is the individual voter who is important, not the state. With a popular vote each voter would be precisely equal to every other. Right now a voter from San Bernadino, California has less weight than a voter from Billings, Montana. I don't see that as being fair.

Thank you. What you have here certainly raises interesting ideas which probably need more research. I'm no expert in American history but I wonder if the Iroquois influence on the Founders has been a neglected area. From firsthand experience in Virginia I know that the state high school US government curriculum focuses on the influences of the English, Romans and Greeks. Perhaps students should be taught about Iroquios influence too.

Actually it touches on an area that would make a major difference if it was widely taught in our schools, Native American influence on the founding fathers. Most of them were Deists, which are now widely misunderstood. They used Christian terminology but tended to favor science and learning from Native Americans higher than the Bible for their beliefs. The part about science is SOMETIMES taught, the part about Native American influence is rarely taught. When people claim this is a christian country they never have an answer to "then why weren't the majority of the founding fathers christian?", they just go back to God being mentioned.

The states get equivalent representation regardless of size in the Senate, and proportionate representation in the House. From what I posted before, smaller states get disproportionate representation with their electoral votes, but large populous states get an advantage too. So, all things being equal, and I agree with Arneoker, I want my vote to count just as much as someone else's. No more. No less.

I'd also like to see it made mandatory that candidates travel to all states, not just the ones that "matter".

What updates would you make to the electoral college to "modernize" it?

That is one of the reasons it needs amended and updated...

But if you run a election by popular vote, then candidates can campaign only in the largest populated areas and say the heck with the rest, sorry but I dont see that as giving everyone a fair voice either. Actually that is exactly one problem with the electorial college now, a few states with more electorial votes being gave to much power. I dont see how popular vote is going to change that problem.

A example of how popular vote would work would be maybe...

Take CA, TX, NY and FL those 4 states in 2003 had more population then any other states. 93,812, 145 population total

Then take the next 13 states in largest population a total of 91,173,224

Say Bush had won in those top 4 states in 2004, he has the possibility of 93 million votes.

For Kerry to beat him, Kerry would of had to win all of the next 13 states plus one extra to win.....

A candidate would only have to worry about winning 5 or 6 states with the largest populations and say forget the rest....

I would trust our electorials to draw the campain more then I would want to bet that any candidate would ignore the population totals and would campaign everywhere then just in a few large populated states and ignore the rest.

A person who voted for Kerry in a safe red state like Wyoming will find that his or her vote has far less weight then does the vote of a person in California who cast their ballot for Kerry.

How do you reason that?

Unless one voted for the candidate that wins that state, one's vote won't count for anything in determining the winner of the national election.

I think anyone who is looking to reform the way we elect our presidents ought to also take a serious look at the Senate. Why should two people who represent a state with a population of less then half a million have as much clout in a very important government body as two who reprersent a state with a population several times that size?

By the very same logic a Kerry voter in Rhode Island had more of a voice than a Kerry voter in Texas. What you are getting at here is the "Winner take all" aspect of the Electoral College and has nothing to do with the over representation of the small states in the Electoral College which was my point.

While I don't think that any system can guarantee that no one will be ignored I don't think that a popular vote system will mean small states will be ignored.

1. Right now it is the "safe" states which are being ignored, even the big ones. Why bother campaigning much in New York, California or Texas? The states getting so much attention are the "swing" states, states with just the right demographics and political trends to be considered close.

2. With a popular vote system of course candidates would spend a lot of time in big states. But they would be foolish to ignore the small ones. Even if a candidate wins a majority of votes in California and New York his or her opponent will probably also win a lot of votes in those states, meaning that margin could be overcome by the votes from other states. It may very well become a viable strategy for a candidate to win big in a lot of small states while losing by small margins in the big states and still win.

That's a good point.

Realistically, I believe that changing that would probably be more difficult than abolishing the Electoral College.

What if there were agreements between the candidates before the election happened, such as this suggestion from last year?

Changing how the senate is chosen would be a basic remake of the constitution, I'm opposed enough to that to feel anyone who believes that should move to a country with a system they support. You'd literally have to hold a constitutional convention, I'll stick with the one we've got. By the way, any such revision would eliminate the existence of states and radically change our entire legal system (much of it would have to be redone from scratch and the accused would lose some rights to appeal).

You're making too much of this. It certainly would be a radical change but it would have nothing to do with the existence of states or our legal system. You could have a normal Constitutional Amendment to change representation in the Senate.

The whole thing about representation in Congress, whether equally between the states or proportional to their population was a big controversy in the Constitutional Convention. The system that resulted with one house based on the one and the other house based on the other was a compromise. You can argue that is the best system but there's nothing sacred about it.

In the larger sense, the states would no longer exist! Think about the implications of restructuring Congress. The framers at the Constitutional Convention saw this, That was the essence of "the big controversy."

The senate arrangement afford equal representation to the states - each state is no different than the rest - California is no more or no less important than Wyoming. It needs to stay that way.

The House is set up to represent the people by population.

If California has more Senators than Rhode Island how would that mean that the states would no longer exist?

The framers were "structuring" Congress, not "restructuring" it. What is it that they "saw"? Representatives of big states generally supported representation in proportion to population while those of small states wanted equal representation between the states. The conflicting motivations were pretty obvious. That was the "big controversy" which was resolved by the compromise system that we have today.

Why the worry about equality between states? Isn't people who are important? Why is someone who lives in Cheyenne, Wyoming more important than someone who lives in Bakersfield, California?

Entire population groups would virtually cease to be represented without eliminating the states if anything approaching proportionality by population were to be achieved in the senate. Since the ratio would also be likely to change from census to census there would be no way of maintaining a stable number of senators without moving them to a 2 year or 10 year election cycle unless you entirely eliminated the states.

We aren't making too much of it, you aren't thinking through the implications of what it would take to implement that proposal. It would literally require abandoning the constitution.