The Electoral College Is the Greatest Threat to Our Democracy

http://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/opinion/the-electoral-college.html

by smacktoward • 7 years ago

19 16 7 years ago

shazeubaa• 7 years ago

Are we not a Republic? And the Electoral College was put specifically into place so as to avoid devolving us into a Democracy?

qstyk• 7 years ago

Beyond that, the author has completely missed that the electoral college protects us from things like the five most populous counties in America selecting our President for us and limits the effects of massive voter fraud. cough Illinois cough

dllthomas• 7 years ago

the five most populous counties in America selecting our President for us

The 5 most populous counties have less than 10% of the US population.

Moreover, I have yet to see a good reason it makes sense to prefer tyranny of a minority to tyranny of the majority, where we can't avoid both.

limits the effects of massive voter fraud

This is an important point that's not often discussed, IME

anoncake3• 7 years ago

The Electoral College was put into place to avoid the USA devolving from a non-monarchy to a country ruled by its people?

krapp• 7 years ago

The Electoral College was put into place to avoid the USA devolving from a non-monarchy to a country ruled by its people?

The US at the time was a slaveowning nation for which voting rights could only be held by white, male, landowning gentry... so yes.

exegete• 7 years ago

It's interesting that each State can choose its electors in whatever way they want and have all (with a few exceptions) converged on the winner-take-all popular vote of the State's voters. I think if a State gives the electors to the national popular vote winner but that State's voters chose another candidate, that policy won't last long in that State.

Recurecur• 7 years ago

It seems to me that any effort to subvert the Electoral College will be overturned on constitutional grounds.

If folks want the Electoral College abolished, get an amendment passed... ;-)

DLA• 7 years ago

So is a massively biased press establishment.

Isamu• 7 years ago

Yeah, but it is an opinion column after all, and labeled as such.

Some (many?) "news" outlets have opinion makers speaking off the cuff all the time and don't bother to label it as such.

needlenose• 7 years ago

A counterargument (with a mathematical basis in a paper I could not find) is described at http://discovermagazine.com/2004/sep/math-against-tyranny . The NYT also it in https://www.nytimes.com/1996/11/03/weekinreview/why-the-elec...

magduf2• 7 years ago

The democratic republics that score the highest/best in things like quality-of-life, income equality, incarceration rate, crime rate, access to healthcare, life expectancy, etc., all have forms of government where the executive is not elected at all by popular vote, but is instead chosen by the legislature.

The only other countries that have a form of government like the US's (a presidential republic) are ones like El Salvador and Turkey.

newen• 7 years ago

Yes, I always find it funny when I see just how easy it is to pass a vote of no confidence in parliamentary systems and have a new executive government set up. While in the US you have to wait four years(!) if you want a new government even if the majority of people do not want the current executive government in power.

anoncake3• 7 years ago

Even in a parliamentary system the majority of people may not want the current government in power if the parliament they elected years before does.

dragonwriter• 7 years ago

The democratic republics that score the highest/best in things like quality-of-life, income equality, incarceration rate, crime rate, access to healthcare, life expectancy, etc., all have forms of government where the executive is not elected at all by popular vote, but is instead chosen by the legislature.

They also have systems where the electoral system for the national legislature produces substantially more proportional results than the US system, which seems to be a more significant factor, as it both means law is more likely to reflect the preferences of the people and the evidence suggests it also creates a more multidimensional space of public discourse and, therefore, considered policy options. In fact, a lot of systems with Presidential and Semi-Presidential systems are better than the US on these measures, and they tend to have more proportional systems for electing the national legislature. (Also, usually the President as well, though that, again, doesn't seem to be as important.)

Also, the US executive isn't elected at all by popular vote, either—at least no more than ones in which the executive is chosen by a parliamentary majority—though the body by which they are elected isn't the legislature and has no other function than electing the President and Vice President.

The US executive is separately elected, but neither directly or popularly elected.

The only other countries that have a form of government like the US's (a presidential republic) are ones like El Salvador and Turkey

That's...only true if you take “like El Salvador and Turkey” absurdly broadly. There's a pretty wide diversity of Presidential systems (and even more if you include Semi-Presidential systems.)

The Electoral College Is the Greatest Threat to Our Democracy

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