

Ask HN: Why do we still have an Electoral College in the US? - jcromartie

I live in Maryland.  It will go to Obama (market predictions put the chance at 93%).  If I vote for anybody else, I may as well just throw my ballot in the trash.  Why do we not have a good, secure, nation-wide popular vote counting system based on modern communications technology?  Are there some technical hurdles that have yet to be cleared to make it possible?
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pbh101
I've heard that it currently ensures that more, disparate voices will be
heard. As Jonah Goldberg once said, democracy shouldn't work such that "51% of
the country can give the other 49% a wedgie".

Were the electoral model to be abandoned, it would ensure that candidates
would stick to major urban areas as much as possible because they would have
the largest amount of influence per unit of effort. Now, this wouldn't hold
true in all cases, but from what I understand the Electoral College as it
stands helps to ensure that the sundry opinions of different interests in this
country are given more consideration.

Interesingly, before the electoral reforms of the 1800s in Britain, seat
allocations weren't decided by population, but rather influenced by the
weighting of the needs of various regional trades/industries. While this seems
very anti-democratic to modern American ideals, at that time industries were
much closer to the individual. Also, I'm not so sure it was a bad idea: you
baked lobbying and the concerns of industries into the political system as
opposed to grafting it on in a shadowy, behind-the-scenes system, and
therefore had the ability to regulate it to some degree.

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pbh101
Another point I forgot to mention is that, IIRC, every single Congress since
the start of the nation has introduced and entertained a bill looking to
replace the Electoral System with a popular vote system, and not once has it
gotten anywhere.

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jacobscott
The easy answer is that the system for presidential elections is part of the
constitution, and is quite hard to change, on purpose. You should know this if
you've graduated high school (since you live in the US).

The second reason is that it is not clear that a "secure, nation-wide popular
vote counting system based on modern communications technology" is a good idea
even before we get to the technology. Our system of government is a type of
federalism (state/national) and moving to a popular vote based electoral
system weakens this division. I don't have much expertise here, but can assert
with confidence that expert opinion is divided on whether or not this is
desirable.

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epi0Bauqu
It's called the amendment process.

