
The Electoral College Is the Greatest Threat to Our Democracy - smacktoward
http://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/opinion/the-electoral-college.html
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magduf
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
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.

~~~
anoncake
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.

~~~
magduf
It's still much better than the presidential system, because you don't get
deadlocks between the executive and legislative branches that last indefinite
amounts of time. The legislature picks the executive (instead of the voters
electing him separately and on a different cycle), so the two branches tend to
be in agreement. And the voters are able to change the makeup of parliament to
some extent at every election.

Also, parliamentary countries seem to have elections based much more on party
rather than actual people, so they have more parties with representation,
instead of devolving to just two parties per Duverger's Law.

~~~
anoncake
> It's still much better than the presidential system, because you don't get
> deadlocks between the executive and legislative branches that last
> indefinite amounts of time.

Sure, but that's a different argument.

> (instead of the voters electing him separately and on a different cycle)

Nothing prevents having both elections on the same cycle. AFAIK France (which
is semi-presidential) somewhat recently aligned their cycles to make that
disagreements between president and parliament less likely.

> Also, parliamentary countries seem to have elections based much more on
> party rather than actual people, so they have more parties with
> representation, instead of devolving to just two parties per Duverger's Law.

That actually weakens the claim that parliamentary systems are superior,
unless presidential systems somehow cause first-past-the-post.

I think they may have a common cause though: If the writers of a country's
constitution believe that people should vote for parties, they'll probably
chose proportional representation and a parliamentary system. If they want
people to vote for individuals, a presidential system with FPTP is the obvious
choice.

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

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

~~~
krapp
> 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.

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

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exegete
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
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... ;-)

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DLA
So is a massively biased press establishment.

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Isamu
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.

