Quote:
Originally Posted by Displaced Flames fan
Now, would you like to tell me why the electoral system in the US is an "utter joke" or would you rather continue to sit on your high horse and tell yourself how dumb I am?
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Without even looking at the long line of contemporary instances of electoral college failure, it's easily picked apart on it's basic ideals.
There is no law that holds the electors to the will of the people. That is a shocking declaration of anti-democratic intentions.
The basis for the electoral college is eerily similar to what happened in florida during the 2000 election. The electoral college was a concession to the south, who wanted their slave populations to count towards electoral votes, but didn't want them able to vote. Some democratic institution...institutionalized racism and elitism.
The system was devised after a long summer spent discussing how to create a nation, and received little to no debate. It's a point of history that the system that was set up was fundamentally flawed from the beginning, which resulted very quickly in election problems between Jefferson and adams, and later burr and jackson. Hell, Jackson lost the presidency in 1826 even though he held over 40 percent of both the electoral and popular votes in a 5 candidate race. Some democracy.
It's also incredibly indifferent to huge swaths of the American population. In the 2000 election, 17 states were left unvisited by presidential candidates. Are you going to try and tell me that a third of the states in the union don't matter in Presidential Elections? Because if the electoral college is as functional as you claim, that's the only logical answer.
Putting the fate of the country in the swing electoral votes, that aren't bound in any way to the will of people, of Ohio seems like a faulty system, to me. I'm not the only one who thinks the electoral college is a failure either, other radicals who have opposed it throughout history are fringe characters like Jimmy Carter, Bob Dole, Nixon and Ford. Even James Madison, someone present during the Constitutional Convention thought the electoral college was a bad idea and expressed his position more than 200 years ago.
Do you need any other reasons? There are 5 examples in the last 200 years of the election of president being taken out of the hands of the voters and decided by other branches of the legislative government (and 1 in the courts). Again, some democracy.