Re:Electoral College is Obsolete (Score 2)

The Electoral College is not obsolete. The winner-take-all system of awarding electors is horribly dated and should be done away with in every state. (I personally prefer assigning by congressional district with the two electors corresponding to the senators being awarded to the winner of the state-wide popular vote.) People all over the world need to remember that the United States was formed as a loose federation of states. Prior to the adoption of the Constitution, these states even had their own currencies! Even under the Constitution, we have a federal system of government. The federal government has few powers, some are reserved to the states, and the rest to the people. Despite what some people might lead you to believe now days, states have rights to determine certain things without the federal government being involved. I doubt that the founders ever envisioned a federal government as powerful as the one we have today, particularly as large as the country is. For example, it took a constitutional amendment in order for the federal government to levy an income tax against every citizen without regard to the decennial census. The states choose their electors, who in turn choose the president. Plain and simple. The constitution guarantees a minimum amount of representation for every state, regardless of population, so perhaps an electoral vote from North Dakota and Wyoming might represent fewer citizens than an electoral vote from California, but such is the nature of our republic. Those of us who vote in the small states do not get a bigger vote than you do, we get one vote in our state just like everyone else. By your argument, Congress is horribly broken as well and California, New York, and Texas should just decide the laws for every state in the country. That wouldn't work, plain and simple.

Finally, if you have a problem with the current electoral system, rather than griping about the Electoral College, a system that you won't be able to get rid of because of the following list of states: North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Alaska, Vermont, Delaware, New Hampshire, Maine, Idaho, Hawaii, and Rhode Island. All of those states have three or four electoral votes, and thus would not give up their citizens' right to be involved in choosing the president by getting rid of the Electoral College. (Because that's what would happen. No one would care about how people vote in those states, because they just don't have enough people to matter in the popular vote.) There are twelve states in that list (and probably several five-vote states could be added to it). Twelve states is all it takes to block a constitutional amendment. If you've got a problem with the Electoral College, start pushing for something you can change: the demise of the winner-take-all system of distributing electoral votes.