Delegates and electoral votes or the popular vote?

Question

Why bother with delegates and the electoral college? Do you think determining election based solely on the popular vote would be better?

Answer 1

Delegates are a mater of internal party politics. Political parties are not governed by the Constitution and can make (can change) their own rules whenever it's convenient.



The electoral college was set up in the Constitution for a reason and it has worked fairly well for the last 200+ years.



Every election the 'fairness' of this process is brought up and it is always by the side that doesn't get their way. If you want to know more about this check out the link below. Please read the entire article, it's very informative.

Answer 2

"But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice." This is how the Constitution instructs the House of Representatives to elect the President of all the states should the states in their General Election fail to settle the question. (Article II Section 1 and reaffirmed in Amendment 12) That's right California, in Congress the power to elect a President by Wyoming is exactly equal to yours, and since it is part of the Constitution of the states, it is undoubtedly constitutional. A majority of states is what the Electoral College was meant to measure. When the process to be used by the states was accepted by the states by ratifying the Constitution, the largest state, Virginia, had 12 Electors based on the original allotment of Representatives and Senators for Virginia in Article I Section 2 and Section 3. The smallest had 3 electors which gave Virginia 4X the power to elect in the General Election. Today California has 55 and the smallest still has only 3 for greater than 18X the power of Wyoming. The Electoral College should stay because it is an integral part of the republican form of government guaranteed by Article IV Section 4 and to ensure that guarantee, the Electors should be reduced from 538 to 50, forevermore ensuring a newly elected President of the United States has the support of a majority of the member states in the Union. That is if we place any value on the Union for if a minority of states ever elects a President, it will herald the end of the Union. Most states will not abide that result. We barely abide a decision by a majority of states now. We consider a republican form of government very important in my state.

Answer 3

Yes. Delegates and electoral votes causes to many problems. Gore won the popular vote back in 2000, but he lose because of the electoral votes, which was by a state that Bush's brother was ther governor. so you know where that want.



Now he are seeing a problem with delegates in two states that one side does not wented to be counted. Now they are only being counted in half. What a joke.



Popular vote is the will of the people not delegates or electoral votes. This is the problem with are election system. These things cause problems. Where the pop vote will give a complete idea who should have won.

Answer 4

If popular votes were all that counted, candidates would never leave the big cities. Cities like New York City and Los Angeles have more people than many states, so our government would become beholden to these mega-cities with millions of votes. The electoral college makes sure every state counts.



As for the primaries: delegates are points. Votes are yards.

Answer 5

The popular vote, regardless centers of largest populations. One vote is still one vote. Hands down. The original argument in choosing electors instead, was the fear of "mob rule". That's ridiculous. We all learn early in our educational process how democracy works, only to learn later the interference of the electors. Then wonder why our democratic system retains such low participation. "Mobs" imply low literacy, which implies more astute should run the show, as if low literacy doesn't factor in already. It also implies "mobs" outnumber the astute, when it may indeed be more a matter that the astute don't want to be inconvenienced by voting. How many of the astute vote now?

Answer 6

Yes, I think the popular vote should decide Al Gore won 2000.

Answer 7

yeah but to bad obama has popular vote, pledged delegates and the last thing clinton has is shes beating mccain a little better than obama yet obama leads her in the national polls by 10. its b/s

Answer 8

Yes. The whole purpose of having a system capable of over riding people's will is to allow those in power to say, "we know better and we decided to not let you choose this time around."

Answer 9

you bet ye.