The Electoral College Enhances Majority Rule
Simple Analogies Help to Explain the Function of the Electoral College
Suppose that you and your adult siblings are planning a family get-together, but some of you want to have the function at the beach and others want to have it in the mountains. What do you do? Take a vote, right? But wait, there's a problem: Some of you are married; some aren't. Some of you have children; some don't. Should spouses and children get to vote? Is that fair to the siblings who are single or childless?
Voting may be the obvious solution, but deciding how the vote will be tallied is another matter. There are at least two ways to proceed, and reasonable arguments to be made for either approach. You can conduct a popular election, providing ballots to all who will attend the function, including spouses and children, and let majority will prevail. Or you can create an electoral-college system in which each of the sibling's families has one vote -- or a set number of votes determined by an agreed-upon formula (perhaps assigning a half-vote to each spouse and a quarter-vote to each child). Each of the sibling's families then holds a popular election in its own household and uses that majority decision to cast a "family vote" for the beach or the mountains.
Remember the hilarious scene in It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World in which Sid Caesar and the rest of the cast try to decide how to split the money they hope to find? Should the shares be divided just among the people who heard Jimmy Durante's dying words about the hidden cash? Should shares be divided among the various groups of traveling companions? Or should they be divided equally among all present, so that Milton Berle and his wife and mother-in-law wind up with three shares? As the scene illustrates, "one man, one vote" is only one of many ways to resolve the question, and quite possibly not the fairest.
Don't employees at large companies sometimes vote by department? Don't students sometimes vote by grades or classes? There are plenty of situations in everyday life in which an electoral-college system is resorted to in preference to a majority decision. The important thing is that the system be agreed to beforehand, and abided by afterward.
Published by F.R.
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- Should We Abolish the Electoral College in Presidential Elections?This article describes the Electoral College. It explains its origins; it shows how the electoral college affects the presidential election and explores whether it should be abolished.
- Electoral College: Should it Be Abolished for the 2008 Election?a review of the Electoral College system in America.
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- How Has the Government and Politics of England Been Shaped by Its History?
- Tax that Man Behind the Tree
- Voting and Elections in the U.S
- What the Electoral College Means in Modern-Day America
- U.S. Constitution The Federalist Papers BehindTheHeadlines.com "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World"
9 Comments
Post a Commentexcellent advise re: the federalist papers. they need to be required reading for all students in the USA
Read The Federalist Papers.
While I appreciate the fact that having a small population still means North Dakota, my home, has a whopping 3 votes in the electoral college, and I do know the difference between a democracy and a republic, I have to agree with Tim. I've read at least a dozen articles about why the Electoral College system is more fair and balanced than a popular vote system -- and I still don't agree. Those citizens over age 18 who haven't been convicted of a felony have both the right and the responsibility to vote - and each and every one of those votes should matter.
We don't have a true democracy. We have a republican form of government. If you don't even know that, you don't deserve to vote.
Tim's right. One man/one vote is true democracy in action. The way it works know, a one vote majority in a state could mean one man/27 (electoral) votes. There's no place for compromise when you're talking about a system where the people's choice loses.
Actually, Tim, the Electoral College is a brilliant compromise, striking a balance between the interests of the states and the desires of the overall population. It gives more influence to smaller states than they would otherwise have in a direct election.
Okay, then whoever it was that cast that last deciding vote would have one vote that meant more than all those other votes. I'm talking theoretically here. The electoral college is patently unfair because it ultimately gives more power to larger states.
Two things, Tim:
First, it could not have been your one vote that decided the election, but your vote in combination with others.
Second, it was not Florida alone whose electoral college votes decided the election, but Florida's in combination with those of other states.
I live in Florida so my one vote could be worth more than millions of votes. If my one vote was the deciding vote that would mean ALL 27 electoral votes went to the winner, meaning my vote meant more than all the votes in VT, NH, DE, RI, ME, MT combined.