The first past the post system (or winner takes all) is also fucking trash that most democracies don’t use it.
The_Conversation on
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.
bodnast on
Gotta love that we use popular vote in each state to determine who gets the electoral votes.
The only reason this election is even possibly close is the archaic electoral college. Dems have won the popular vote in 6/7 elections in my lifetime and will likely do it again, yet the election is going to be a nailbiter. So lame.
feral-pug on
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.
NPVT on
The Republicans wouldn’t win without it
terrasig314 on
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.
redmambo_no6 on
Because Republicans know that they’d never win without it.
twesterm on
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.
sparlock_ on
This country gives way too much of a fuck about what the FoUnDiNg fAtHeRs wanted
Livesies on
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.
Plus literally every other type of election we hold is about the popular vote. It makes the most sense and is the most convenient and it’s not even close. A third of our SCOTUS justices were appointed by a president in the term they lost the popular vote and Lord knows how many others at other levels.
Nearby-Jelly-634 on
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.
Morepastor on
Trump 2016 “The Electoral College can be rigged and the election should be decided by the popular vote”. Trump like most republicans lost the popular vote in 2016.
Trump 2020 “let’s rig the Electoral College” loses the popular vote and Electoral College
Walz 2024 “The Electoral isn’t the best system.” Likely wins the popular and Electoral but will face a legal challenge.
Stay_At_Home_Cat_Dad on
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.
Dense-Comfort6055 on
Never forget it was compromised measure to appease slave states
PorgCT on
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.
prustage on
The US has to use it, its part of the package that comes with imperial units of measurement,110v electricity and the 12 hour clock.
Castle-dev on
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.
pjflyr13 on
It’s pretty much flipped its purpose to the opposite of intended. Now effectively only four-five states decide the election.
Oceanbreeze871 on
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.”
Most defenders of the electoral college are going to say we are not a democracy we are a republic and if you don’t have it you become vulnerable to the “tyranny of the mob.” I think this is a cop out answer hiding behind “this is what the founders wanted.” At this point there needs to be an effort for a Constitutional amendment. If it passes, great, if not wait a decade and try again.
UnusedTimeout on
The electoral college is DEI for idiot townies
InsuranceToTheRescue on
The US is one of the oldest continuous governments on the planet, beat out by the likes of the UK & Japan. All the rest learned from our lessons – What did & didn’t work well. They’re driving Ferraris and we’re driving a Model T.
pgsimon77 on
Isn’t it time we at least considered overturning a rule that was designed to protect slavery?
jiggerofbourbon on
It needs to go away, sooner the better.
mike0sd on
Americans: DEMAND DEMOCRACY NOW
This Electoral College bullshit only exists because we allow it to
Wasparado on
We also use the empirical measurement system, so I guess I’m not too surprised.
buddhist557 on
America is a shoddy house built on such old thinking it’s amazing we’re still intact.
SpaceKappa42 on
The republic system (with a singular president) is the dumbest system when it comes to democracy. Incredibly inferior to multi-party system with a prime minister.
sgreenm22 on
The electoral college is subverting the will of the people
muffledvoice on
The electoral college only still exists because this country has always had a class of elites that knew they couldn’t hold onto power with changing demographics. Currently the Republican Party knows that they no longer have the demographics to win a national election, so they’re trying to undermine the democratic elements of our system.
David Frum once said that when conservatives can no longer win in a democracy they won’t abandon conservatism, they’ll abandon democracy.
Vampenga on
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.
rhb4n8 on
A friendly reminder that for many MANY reasons we should be attempting to expand the size of the house rather than get rid of the electoral college. It’s much easier to repeal the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 than to attempt to change the constitution.
zaxstarr on
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.
Peshhhh on
whoa
so the US is different?
jgl142 on
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.
dunderfunder on
I mean that’s just not true, unless we exclude prime ministers and councils to be the same as „president“, ( which most countries use as a ceremonial role)
More_Momus on
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.
sasquatch0_0 on
“The popular vote will make politicians only focus on certain states”
Oh you mean like how they already work that way? What are swing states again?
dautjazz on
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.
42 Comments
The first past the post system (or winner takes all) is also fucking trash that most democracies don’t use it.
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.
Gotta love that we use popular vote in each state to determine who gets the electoral votes.
The only reason this election is even possibly close is the archaic electoral college. Dems have won the popular vote in 6/7 elections in my lifetime and will likely do it again, yet the election is going to be a nailbiter. So lame.
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 Republicans wouldn’t win without it
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.
Plug for the [National Popular Vote Interstate Compact](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact)
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.
Because Republicans know that they’d never win without it.
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.
This country gives way too much of a fuck about what the FoUnDiNg fAtHeRs wanted
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.
There’s no reason
Republicans will cite that if not for the electoral college that “presidential candidates would only focus on more populated areas” [In reality the majority of Americans were not even living in urban areas until 1920](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_States#:~:text=The%20urbanization%20of%20the%20United%20States%20occurred%20over%20a%20period,as%20the%20Midwestern%20United%20States.) . And besides, a few states truly decide which is why [a reported 79% of campaign ad money has gone into just 7 states since Kamala entered the race](https://digiday.com/media-buying/political-ad-spending-piles-up-in-key-states-less-than-a-month-until-election-day/)
Plus literally every other type of election we hold is about the popular vote. It makes the most sense and is the most convenient and it’s not even close. A third of our SCOTUS justices were appointed by a president in the term they lost the popular vote and Lord knows how many others at other levels.
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.
Trump 2016 “The Electoral College can be rigged and the election should be decided by the popular vote”. Trump like most republicans lost the popular vote in 2016.
Trump 2020 “let’s rig the Electoral College” loses the popular vote and Electoral College
Walz 2024 “The Electoral isn’t the best system.” Likely wins the popular and Electoral but will face a legal challenge.
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.
Never forget it was compromised measure to appease slave states
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.
The US has to use it, its part of the package that comes with imperial units of measurement,110v electricity and the 12 hour clock.
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.
It’s pretty much flipped its purpose to the opposite of intended. Now effectively only four-five states decide the election.
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/
Most defenders of the electoral college are going to say we are not a democracy we are a republic and if you don’t have it you become vulnerable to the “tyranny of the mob.” I think this is a cop out answer hiding behind “this is what the founders wanted.” At this point there needs to be an effort for a Constitutional amendment. If it passes, great, if not wait a decade and try again.
The electoral college is DEI for idiot townies
The US is one of the oldest continuous governments on the planet, beat out by the likes of the UK & Japan. All the rest learned from our lessons – What did & didn’t work well. They’re driving Ferraris and we’re driving a Model T.
Isn’t it time we at least considered overturning a rule that was designed to protect slavery?
It needs to go away, sooner the better.
Americans: DEMAND DEMOCRACY NOW
This Electoral College bullshit only exists because we allow it to
We also use the empirical measurement system, so I guess I’m not too surprised.
America is a shoddy house built on such old thinking it’s amazing we’re still intact.
The republic system (with a singular president) is the dumbest system when it comes to democracy. Incredibly inferior to multi-party system with a prime minister.
The electoral college is subverting the will of the people
The electoral college only still exists because this country has always had a class of elites that knew they couldn’t hold onto power with changing demographics. Currently the Republican Party knows that they no longer have the demographics to win a national election, so they’re trying to undermine the democratic elements of our system.
David Frum once said that when conservatives can no longer win in a democracy they won’t abandon conservatism, they’ll abandon democracy.
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.
A friendly reminder that for many MANY reasons we should be attempting to expand the size of the house rather than get rid of the electoral college. It’s much easier to repeal the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 than to attempt to change the constitution.
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.
whoa
so the US is different?
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.
I mean that’s just not true, unless we exclude prime ministers and councils to be the same as „president“, ( which most countries use as a ceremonial role)
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 popular vote will make politicians only focus on certain states”
Oh you mean like how they already work that way? What are swing states again?
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.