How the electoral process works.

[ICantSpellDawg]

Well the more I look at it the more I don’t think it matters, either the politician panders to the most populated states or the more populated cities. Gore almost won in 2000 by going after the populated cities, he only had 676 counties while Bush had 2,436 but Gore still had the popular vote.

The entire system is irritating me today after doing some reading. Gore won Michigan after winning Detroit and the same thing happened with our governor election. There are so many people in the big cities that it doesn’t matter what the rest of a state wants. Win 1 city in most states and you take the entire state, popular or electoral vote. It wouldn’t be an issue if we had a slam dunk leader run on either side.

Exactly.

[drone]

I think the system reflects what the founders wanted for the country, it's just not implemented correctly at the state level. The Constitution does not specify how the electors are chosen, just how many the states get. It's up to the state legislature to decide how their share of votes is divvied up. If a state firmly in the grasp of one party, generally the legislature will want to help out on the national level by giving all votes to the majority winner.

In the original document, direct election was meant only for the House of Representatives (people power). The state legislature would chose the Senators (state power). The president was chosen via electors, which balances the power between large and small states (same balance as the Senate/House relationship). Unfortunately, they did not foresee the huge disparity in size between the Californias vs Montanas.

Since there is nothing (coming from a state's rights advocate) that can be done about the selection of electors, to better restore that balance I would say reduce the number of representatives.

[Don Corleone]

I think Yesdachi actually stumbled on the answer. One of the things the founding fathers were trying to prevent was Europe II. They didn't want 10-15 major population centers to control the destiny of their new country. They were farmers, they wanted the rural areas settled, and they knew nobody would move out ot the rural areas if they lived in constant fear that the masses in Philadelphia or Charleston would vote to tax them at 75%.

The electoral college serves as a force against urbanization. There's a reason a smaller percentage of Americans live in the major metro areas than they do in Europe or Asia (or Canada for that matter). The reason is, because we can.

If we went to direct election, the elections would follow the exact same pattern that television ratings systems do. 15 major urban areas make all the decisions for the rest of the country. While this is fine for things such as whether Big Brother will get another season or not, when deciding things like people's tax rates and the services provided by the state (in the federal sense), it's a bit disheartening.

We like having life out in the suburbs/rural area, and this would end in 30 years if we went to direct election.