Decision 2004

[Mr 5 0]

Originally posted by Mach 1 :

I dont really buy into this EC vote. Popular vote should win. Why do "states" have to go one way or another? Dont tell me everybody in CA is a democrat and in NY. Large cities have both republicans and democrats, as does anywhere you go. And since the most populace states have more EC votes anyway, just let the voters decide.

Then, any candidate who wins a majority of the votes in the states with big populations, such as California, New York, Illinois or Texas will always win any national election, even if he (or she) wins 30 or more smaller state's votes. This would make the votes of the people living in smaller states pointless.

The top 10 states in population (California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, New Jersey and Georgia have over 151 million residents. Let's say that half are eligible to vote. that's 75 million potential voters in 10 states. The other 41 states have a total of under 70 million residents. That's less than half of the top ten population states. Let's say, again, that 50% of the residents of the 'bottom' 41 states, population-wise, are eligible to vote. That's 35 million potential votes. Even if every single one of those voters voted for a certain candidate and even if only half of the residents of the top 10 population states voted for a different candidate, the candidate who got only 50% of the votes in the top 10 states would win the election, even though - hypothetically - every single eligible voter in the 'bottom 41' states voted for the other candidate.

That could easily happen as both N.Y. and California, with a combined population of almost 60 million people are heavily Democratic in their voting patterns and history. The unfairness of giving the voters of a handful of highly-populated states the absolute power to elect a president over the wishes of the other states residents is as unfair as it is intolerable. That's why we have the Electoral College. It isn't perfect, granted, but it does help make the playing field more equal and takes the power to elect from a handful of states, which would be patently undemocratic, in my view.

Colorado is now about to vote on a law - effective immediately - that will allow the state to aportion their electoral votes based on the popular vote. So, hypothetically, if 30% of the Colorado votes go to a Republican, he gets 3 of the states 9 electoral votes and the Democrat gets the other 6. It has yet to be passed but it would screw up the Electoral College a bit, even with only 9 votes (Californai has 55, N.Y.: 31). We'll see.