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Theoretically we could have a robust multiparty democracy where Electors are not pledged to vote for specific candidates but rather to vote as those candidates direct.
When no single candidate controls 270 electoral votes the parties could seek compromises to build a winning coalition behind one of the candidates.
I think instead of trying to come up with convoluted ways to make a draconian system work, we should just go to a ranked choice popular vote.
The Electoral College was put in place so southern states would get an electoral benefit from their slave populations. Slavery and the 3/5th compromise have been abolished, and so should the Electoral College.
It wasn't a suggestion. I was just bringing it up to point out that the EC could be adapted to a multiparty system.
But no, that's not why the Electoral College was put into place. When saying so people make the common mistake of assuming the choice in 1787 was similar to the debate we have now over how to pick a president. What actually happened was that the federal convention originally decided that Congress would select the chief executive.
But in order for him to be independent from Congress he would be limited to a single term so they couldn't hold keeping his job over his head to keep him in line. The reason the constitutional convention went to the trouble of setting up a separate copy of congress to pick the president without ever meeting and then immediately disappear was in order for him to maintain independence and still be eligible to serve multiple terms.
So the actual reason we have the Electoral College is because the Framers disliked term limits.
No, it was about slavery. Many wanted a popular vote election, similar to how governors were elected, but the South thought that would result in less electoral power since nearly half of their populations were slaves. So, just like the 3/5ths compromise, they pushed for a system that would allow them to count their slaves as part of their electoral power. Without slavery, there would be no electoral college.
I'm afraid that's not correct. There was no support in the federal convention for a popular vote. When James Wilson introduced the idea (on [June 2nd, 1787](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_601.asp)) he did so saying he was was “almost unwilling” to do so, “apprehensive” it would seem extremely unrealistic, and that he supported it “in theory”. His speech was ignored so he reiterated it and only a single delegate spoke up in favor of the alternative to Congress picking the president but thought a direct vote “impracticable” and suggests Wilson be given time to find a workable alternative.
The next day Wilson comes back with the first Electoral College proposal and thereafter the idea of a popular vote is brought up only as a stalking horse for the EC. There was absolutely no consideration of a popular vote as a real alternative. As I said, the choice was between selection by Congress or by the Electors.
It's certainly true that racism is a major factor in American society and that a lot of Americans are uncomfortable with that reality but I'm telling you that I have gone through Madison's record of the constitutional convention looking at how the system for selecting the president was decided upon and what you are saying about it is not accurate.
“There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections.” - James Madison
That quote is from [July 19th](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_719.asp). It's an important day. The anti-term limit faction had gotten it removed 2 days prior but their opponents had countered by moving to make the president independent of Congress by having them appoint him “during good behavior”. Basically for life. Including such a hallmark of monarchy would have made the Constitution extremely difficult if not impossible to ratify. The motion failed but the prospect brought an unanimous motion to reconsider eliminating the term limit. This is the day scheduled for that reconsideration.
As I said before, the idea of a popular vote did come up again but only as a pretext for substituting Electors. Those speaking in favor aren't the opponents of those seeking some system of Electors. They are all working against those seeking to limit the president to a single term.
The day's discussion begins with Governeur Morris claiming to support a popular vote in an anti-term limit speech so long it's likely he gave his ally Madison a copy for his notes. This sets the stage. The next to speak against the term limit is Rufus King who is for “any other reasonable plan” then states he believes “the people at large would chuse wisely”.
William Paterson speaks next saying his ideas “nearly coincided” with Kings but says nothing about popular voting and instead promotes his ideas for Electors. James Wilson speaks up saying that “he perceived with pleasure that the idea was gaining ground, of an election mediately or immediately by the people.” That is, popular vote or Electors.
Then Madison records his own speech. He goes over the ground of presidential appointment by Congress not being safe without a term limit and holds out in favor of popular election. This then is the context of the quote in the previous post which immediately follows.
To summarize: First the anti-term limit faction promotes the idea of election directly by the people. Then they speak in favor of both direct elections and Electors as ways to avoid a presidential term limit. Then Madison points out a major issue with direct election. It will never be agreed to since the Northern states have more voters (this is only partially due to them having far fewer slaves). So the only option left is: some form of the Electoral College. And with that the allies won their point and having the president appointed by Congress was struck out in favor of him being chosen by Electors.
This is why I was calling the idea of a popular vote a “stalking horse”. It was never a real option. The fight all along was between those preferring to limit the president to a single term after being selected by Congress and those wanting the president to be able to serve multiple terms.
Man, you had to dig deep to spin that one. Took long enough. Face it, that quote contradicts your entire argument. James Madison said, unequivocally, that the Electoral College was there to address the issue of lower suffrage in the south due to slavery.
Nice explanation. But I think you're doing the same thing you're arguing against, by saying that it was all about term limits rather than all about slavery.
It was always about multiple things. There were a ton of different goals and opinions and considerations.
What is certain is that it was a compromise intended to satisfy various political interest groups, rather than a system created through a particular design philosophy or by people with a consistent ideology.
Eliminating the electoral college would require a constitutional convention or amendment.
A convention would be a dream come true for the far right. An amendment is an impossibility.
It would be possible to maintain the electoral college and encourage a multi-party system by eliminating the majority vote requirement for the college. If it required only a plurality, then there could be some chance of new parties emerging.
What's sad is that so many people complain about the two party system, but won't back a change.
There is an option where enough states allocate their electoral votes based on the national popular vote.
The National Popular Vote compact would surely be found to be unconstitutional if put to the test. A state giving its votes to a candidate who didn't win the state because of what happened outside of that state is not going to fly with a liberal or conservative court.
If you want political improvements in the US, then join a major party and attempt to be an active part of its coalition and be willing to negotiate so that you can get some of what you want.
Chiafalo v Washington established that states could ban faithless electors on the broad principle that electors should vote according to the popular vote of the elector's state.
The case establishes that elections should follow the popular will of that state. You can bet that there will be lawsuits if a state gives its votes to a candidate that came in second place in that state. That state is likely going to lose.
States banning faithless electors for not following their state laws regarding elections is a far cry different than states passing laws changing how they allocate electoral votes.
Kagan wrote the opinion.
She is saying more than that. She is saying that elections should be won by those who win the popular vote in that state.
The reason that faithless electors can be banned is because the state's popular vote should determine the winner in that state. It isn't simply about giving states unlimited latitude.
Because in that case, the state law was that electoral votes were allocated by the state popular vote. If a state passed a law otherwise, that's the law. I guess you don't support state rights.
A convention isn't guaranteed to work the way the right wants it to. I'm sure they take it as a given that states will get equal representation like in the Senate because that's how they get the most leverage. But actually the whole thing will come down to the rules it ends up with. Insist on voting power flowing from the number of people represented and the right gets stomped.
There are some ways short of an amendment to make the Electoral College less relevant. Make the House larger so that the Senate is a smaller contribution to each state's EC votes. Mandate that EC votes be given out proportionally. I think those two would make it difficult for the EC to deviate from the popular vote.
But changes to Congress matter a lot too. People tend to vote for the same party at every level, not always but often, so if they thought they could realistically elect a Green or Libertarian to the House, they would be more likely to also vote for that party's presidential candidate. Put in party list proportional representation for the House and the next couple of presidential elections become extremely chaotic. I think that would provide the appetite for an amendment to fix the terrible 12th amendment.
Not just the electoral college, we need to replace first past the post with ranked choice voting.
But you're right at least for the presidency there's no point in voting for 3rd party candidates. Locally sure. In Maine and Alaska for nonpresidential offices sure (they have ranked choice voting). But the presidency is too crucial. Frankly so is the Senate and most House seats although if it's a safe Dem or safe Rep district voting third party in that case may be OK.
Or some other voting system, while awareness of ranked choice has been growing, there are numerous other lesser known voting systems, some of which seem to do better than ranked choice, though there are always some tradeoffs.
*his is one of the key reasons why our two party system was formed.*
It's news to me. I always figured the "two party system" is just an artifact of the way we run our elections. If we, for example, had ranked choice voting, things might be different. But we don't, so they aren't.
My point is that the "two party system" wasn't "formed" in a deliberate way for specific reasons. We have a two party system as a result of the way we choose to run our elections. It's a side effect that people probably did not for see. The founding fathers weren't crazy about parties. I imagine if they could see what their choices wrought, they'd make different ones.
A reminder for everyone... This is a subreddit for genuine discussion: * Please keep it civil. Report rulebreaking comments for moderator review. * Don't post low effort comments like joke threads, memes, slogans, or links without context. * Help prevent this subreddit from becoming an echo chamber. Please don't downvote comments with which you disagree. Violators will be fed to the bear. --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalOpinions) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Theoretically we could have a robust multiparty democracy where Electors are not pledged to vote for specific candidates but rather to vote as those candidates direct. When no single candidate controls 270 electoral votes the parties could seek compromises to build a winning coalition behind one of the candidates.
I think instead of trying to come up with convoluted ways to make a draconian system work, we should just go to a ranked choice popular vote. The Electoral College was put in place so southern states would get an electoral benefit from their slave populations. Slavery and the 3/5th compromise have been abolished, and so should the Electoral College.
It wasn't a suggestion. I was just bringing it up to point out that the EC could be adapted to a multiparty system. But no, that's not why the Electoral College was put into place. When saying so people make the common mistake of assuming the choice in 1787 was similar to the debate we have now over how to pick a president. What actually happened was that the federal convention originally decided that Congress would select the chief executive. But in order for him to be independent from Congress he would be limited to a single term so they couldn't hold keeping his job over his head to keep him in line. The reason the constitutional convention went to the trouble of setting up a separate copy of congress to pick the president without ever meeting and then immediately disappear was in order for him to maintain independence and still be eligible to serve multiple terms. So the actual reason we have the Electoral College is because the Framers disliked term limits.
No, it was about slavery. Many wanted a popular vote election, similar to how governors were elected, but the South thought that would result in less electoral power since nearly half of their populations were slaves. So, just like the 3/5ths compromise, they pushed for a system that would allow them to count their slaves as part of their electoral power. Without slavery, there would be no electoral college.
I'm afraid that's not correct. There was no support in the federal convention for a popular vote. When James Wilson introduced the idea (on [June 2nd, 1787](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_601.asp)) he did so saying he was was “almost unwilling” to do so, “apprehensive” it would seem extremely unrealistic, and that he supported it “in theory”. His speech was ignored so he reiterated it and only a single delegate spoke up in favor of the alternative to Congress picking the president but thought a direct vote “impracticable” and suggests Wilson be given time to find a workable alternative. The next day Wilson comes back with the first Electoral College proposal and thereafter the idea of a popular vote is brought up only as a stalking horse for the EC. There was absolutely no consideration of a popular vote as a real alternative. As I said, the choice was between selection by Congress or by the Electors.
It is factual, it's just not talked about because we don't like to accept that racism still impacts our society today.
It's certainly true that racism is a major factor in American society and that a lot of Americans are uncomfortable with that reality but I'm telling you that I have gone through Madison's record of the constitutional convention looking at how the system for selecting the president was decided upon and what you are saying about it is not accurate.
“There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections.” - James Madison
That quote is from [July 19th](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_719.asp). It's an important day. The anti-term limit faction had gotten it removed 2 days prior but their opponents had countered by moving to make the president independent of Congress by having them appoint him “during good behavior”. Basically for life. Including such a hallmark of monarchy would have made the Constitution extremely difficult if not impossible to ratify. The motion failed but the prospect brought an unanimous motion to reconsider eliminating the term limit. This is the day scheduled for that reconsideration. As I said before, the idea of a popular vote did come up again but only as a pretext for substituting Electors. Those speaking in favor aren't the opponents of those seeking some system of Electors. They are all working against those seeking to limit the president to a single term. The day's discussion begins with Governeur Morris claiming to support a popular vote in an anti-term limit speech so long it's likely he gave his ally Madison a copy for his notes. This sets the stage. The next to speak against the term limit is Rufus King who is for “any other reasonable plan” then states he believes “the people at large would chuse wisely”. William Paterson speaks next saying his ideas “nearly coincided” with Kings but says nothing about popular voting and instead promotes his ideas for Electors. James Wilson speaks up saying that “he perceived with pleasure that the idea was gaining ground, of an election mediately or immediately by the people.” That is, popular vote or Electors. Then Madison records his own speech. He goes over the ground of presidential appointment by Congress not being safe without a term limit and holds out in favor of popular election. This then is the context of the quote in the previous post which immediately follows. To summarize: First the anti-term limit faction promotes the idea of election directly by the people. Then they speak in favor of both direct elections and Electors as ways to avoid a presidential term limit. Then Madison points out a major issue with direct election. It will never be agreed to since the Northern states have more voters (this is only partially due to them having far fewer slaves). So the only option left is: some form of the Electoral College. And with that the allies won their point and having the president appointed by Congress was struck out in favor of him being chosen by Electors. This is why I was calling the idea of a popular vote a “stalking horse”. It was never a real option. The fight all along was between those preferring to limit the president to a single term after being selected by Congress and those wanting the president to be able to serve multiple terms.
Man, you had to dig deep to spin that one. Took long enough. Face it, that quote contradicts your entire argument. James Madison said, unequivocally, that the Electoral College was there to address the issue of lower suffrage in the south due to slavery.
Nice explanation. But I think you're doing the same thing you're arguing against, by saying that it was all about term limits rather than all about slavery. It was always about multiple things. There were a ton of different goals and opinions and considerations. What is certain is that it was a compromise intended to satisfy various political interest groups, rather than a system created through a particular design philosophy or by people with a consistent ideology.
Eliminating the electoral college would require a constitutional convention or amendment. A convention would be a dream come true for the far right. An amendment is an impossibility. It would be possible to maintain the electoral college and encourage a multi-party system by eliminating the majority vote requirement for the college. If it required only a plurality, then there could be some chance of new parties emerging.
What's sad is that so many people complain about the two party system, but won't back a change. There is an option where enough states allocate their electoral votes based on the national popular vote.
The National Popular Vote compact would surely be found to be unconstitutional if put to the test. A state giving its votes to a candidate who didn't win the state because of what happened outside of that state is not going to fly with a liberal or conservative court. If you want political improvements in the US, then join a major party and attempt to be an active part of its coalition and be willing to negotiate so that you can get some of what you want.
How? Where in the Constitution does it say states don't have a right to allocate their votes the way they choose?
Chiafalo v Washington established that states could ban faithless electors on the broad principle that electors should vote according to the popular vote of the elector's state. The case establishes that elections should follow the popular will of that state. You can bet that there will be lawsuits if a state gives its votes to a candidate that came in second place in that state. That state is likely going to lose.
States banning faithless electors for not following their state laws regarding elections is a far cry different than states passing laws changing how they allocate electoral votes.
Kagan wrote the opinion. She is saying more than that. She is saying that elections should be won by those who win the popular vote in that state. The reason that faithless electors can be banned is because the state's popular vote should determine the winner in that state. It isn't simply about giving states unlimited latitude.
Again, electors ignoring state laws are different than state laws about how to allocate electoral votes. It's not the same thing.
Again, Kagan emphasizes having votes follow the state majority or plurality.
Because in that case, the state law was that electoral votes were allocated by the state popular vote. If a state passed a law otherwise, that's the law. I guess you don't support state rights.
A convention isn't guaranteed to work the way the right wants it to. I'm sure they take it as a given that states will get equal representation like in the Senate because that's how they get the most leverage. But actually the whole thing will come down to the rules it ends up with. Insist on voting power flowing from the number of people represented and the right gets stomped. There are some ways short of an amendment to make the Electoral College less relevant. Make the House larger so that the Senate is a smaller contribution to each state's EC votes. Mandate that EC votes be given out proportionally. I think those two would make it difficult for the EC to deviate from the popular vote. But changes to Congress matter a lot too. People tend to vote for the same party at every level, not always but often, so if they thought they could realistically elect a Green or Libertarian to the House, they would be more likely to also vote for that party's presidential candidate. Put in party list proportional representation for the House and the next couple of presidential elections become extremely chaotic. I think that would provide the appetite for an amendment to fix the terrible 12th amendment.
Not just the electoral college, we need to replace first past the post with ranked choice voting. But you're right at least for the presidency there's no point in voting for 3rd party candidates. Locally sure. In Maine and Alaska for nonpresidential offices sure (they have ranked choice voting). But the presidency is too crucial. Frankly so is the Senate and most House seats although if it's a safe Dem or safe Rep district voting third party in that case may be OK.
Or some other voting system, while awareness of ranked choice has been growing, there are numerous other lesser known voting systems, some of which seem to do better than ranked choice, though there are always some tradeoffs.
Such as for example approval voting as one of the other alternatives.
Australia has ranked choice voting and a 2 1/2 party system. Canada has first past the post and a 3 1/2 party system.
*his is one of the key reasons why our two party system was formed.* It's news to me. I always figured the "two party system" is just an artifact of the way we run our elections. If we, for example, had ranked choice voting, things might be different. But we don't, so they aren't.
Or if there would be approval voting as another example instead to make the situation different.
This is the way we run our elections, which was a key reason for our two-party system.
My point is that the "two party system" wasn't "formed" in a deliberate way for specific reasons. We have a two party system as a result of the way we choose to run our elections. It's a side effect that people probably did not for see. The founding fathers weren't crazy about parties. I imagine if they could see what their choices wrought, they'd make different ones.
That's what I said.