Kein Land verfügt noch über ein Wahlkollegium – außer den USA

The article, by a political scientist who [studies democracy around the world](https://theconversation.com/no-country-still-uses-an-electoral-college-except-the-us-240281) points out that this institution dates back to the Holy Roman Empire, and was the result of compromise after weeks of debate at the US Constitutional Convention of 1787. Other countries adopted it after the US, and all have gotten rid of it.

I understand why it was a thing centuries ago but disagree with the notion that “the states” should elect the president as opposed to the people. If there’s thousands of square miles of mostly empty land with a few people scattered around, those people’s votes absolutely should be equal to the votes of individuals living in densely packed cities, but it’s irrelevant what “state” the individuals live in. If national politics represents people living in urban centers to a greater extent than people living in rural areas, so what? People, not land, have votes and the popular vote totals should be all that matters nationally.

The EC is a weird, flawed, anachronistic system that does nothing but invite corruption while disenfranchising voters.

The EC is a dumbass relic of a time when appeasing slavers was what we had to do to keep a cohesive nation. Time to dump that shit.

I know we’re a young country but aren’t we still on our first constitution as well? Which is even more mind-blowing if you ask me.

The only valid reasons I’ve ever heard of why we should keep it, _we, the GOP, can’t win without it_, perfectly explains why we need to get rid of it.

I’m sorry, but if your policies are so unpopular that they can’t win a popular vote, then that is a policy problem, not how we vote problem.

The majority of the problem was created after the electoral college was founded. The limit on the number of members in the House of Representatives combined with the ‘Wyoming rule’ means low population states need at least 1 representative but large states are disproportionately under represented. Uncap the house and the larger populations get their representatives which brings a ton of balance back towards the popular vote. I saw a comment in the last election that if the lower population states get ~3 representatives the population/rep would actually be pretty even across the country and the increase in reps would dilute the effect of the Senate’s flat +2 votes.

Undoing the EC would take a constitutional amendment which has absolutely zero chance in the political climate today. We can however remove the completely arbitrary cap in the number of representatives in the House. The constitution is explicit that the house is supposed to have proportional representation. If a rep in California is worth less than a rep in a state with 376 people like Wyoming that is not using any definition of the word proportional.

The EC is not needed in this modern age. The winner should be determined by the popular vote. It makes no sense that a candidate can get 2.9 million more votes than their opponent, but still lose the election.

The fact that nations which the U.S. has “influenced” (Philippines, Germany, Japan, etc.) don’t have an Electoral College says all you need to know.

Other countries also don’t have proportional representation as a holdover for giving the South voting “credit” for the slaves they had, but here we are.

The electoral college was created as a compromise with southern slave owner states who refused to ratify the constitution. slave owners, the billionaires of their day, demanded the ability to purchase significant voting power.

“But the savvy Virginian James Madison responded that such a system would prove unacceptable to the South: “The right of suffrage was much more diffusive [i.e., extensive] in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of Negroes.” In other words, in a direct election system, the North would outnumber the South, whose many slaves (more than half a million in all) of course could not vote. But the Electoral College—a prototype of which Madison proposed in this same speech—instead let each southern state count its slaves, albeit with a two-fifths discount, in computing its share of the overall count.

Virginia emerged as the big winner—the California of the Founding era—with 12 out of a total of 91 electoral votes allocated by the Philadelphia Constitution, more than a quarter of the 46 needed to win an election in the first round. After the 1800 census, Wilson’s free state of Pennsylvania had 10% more free persons than Virginia, but got 20% fewer electoral votes. Perversely, the more slaves Virginia (or any other slave state) bought or bred, the more electoral votes it would receive. Were a slave state to free any blacks who then moved North, the state could actually lose electoral votes.

If the system’s pro-slavery tilt was not overwhelmingly obvious when the Constitution was ratified, it quickly became so. For 32 of the Constitution’s first 36 years, a white slaveholding Virginian occupied the presidency.”

https://time.com/4558510/electoral-college-history-slavery/

The electoral college is DEI for idiot townies

Isn’t it time we at least considered overturning a rule that was designed to protect slavery?

Americans: DEMAND DEMOCRACY NOW

This Electoral College bullshit only exists because we allow it to

America is a shoddy house built on such old thinking it’s amazing we’re still intact.

The electoral college is subverting the will of the people

God I hope we can get rid of that stupid thing. It’s legitimately the only way Republicans have a chance at winning…which is why they’ll fight tooth and nail to ensure we keep it. Fuck I hate how screwed up this country is. There’s so many things that need restructuring and fixing around here that we need Bob the Builder to save us.

The EC makes no sense in this day and age. It blows my mind how a candidate can win the popular vote and then lose to a candidate who got less votes because some of the states are apparently “more important” to win. Bro what?

If you can’t win the popular vote then you don’t have popular policies. Why should someone with unpopular policies be selected to run the country? That’s stupid.

I believe we should all be equal. A person in Georgia’s vote should be worth just as much as a person in California, Montana, Alaska, Texas, wherever. If everyone’s votes were actually equal I would also imagine more people would vote. But who am I kiddin’, that ain’t gonna happen.

EC is fine. But the winner take all system for electorates is what needs to be amended. It would make states more competitive and forces candidates to pitch the entire country vs spending billions in adds for one state or two.

The problem isn’t the electoral college, per se. It’s the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929, which made us the least representative republic in the world.

If we had proper representation, I would be willing to bet it would be harder to buy politicians, the electoral vote would more closely match the popular vote (while still providing the same protections that the electoral college is supposed to), and more of the citizenry would be acquainted with their representatives.

The country has something like 10 million more registered Democrats than Republicans. I believe independents are basically split. So if it were just popular vote, we’d basically be a shoe in everytime. Lets not forget that states that non-swing states are naturally going to have less voter turnout since they usually win by large margins, so you feel less an urgency to vote. Imagine the turnout we’d have in California and NY if we got rid of the electoral college.