I think changing the rules after the election because one side is upset at the outcome is childish. It's like that guy who agrees to rock/scissors/paper or a coin flip for who buys lunch, loses and insists on 2 out of 3 or 3 out of 5...

The rules have been in place for over 200 years. Both parties knew the rules. Furthermore, there are rules to change these rules, but good luck getting 2/3's of the states to vote for it putting the president in the hands of California, New York and Texas.

The truth is closer to people being sore losers. If the election went the other way and Trump had more votes, do you really think these same people would be complaining about the popular vote?

Not minorities specifically. Regions. Its in place to account for all regions / states.

Agreed, and I don't advocate that. We entered the election with those rules, we should keep them for this election. That doesn't mean that we have to hold on to the Electoral College forever, either.

There have been two elections in the past 16 years where the popular vote and the electoral college vote would have produced different outcomes. That's not insignificant; in this election, for example, the winner lost the popular vote by more than 2 million.

Never mind the suppressing effects that this could have on the vote in states that are solidly blue or red. If you're a Democrat in Indiana or a Republican in Maryland, it can feel like your Presidential vote doesn't matter at all ... and it mostly doesn't. That's pretty ridiculous.

As to Shadowstalker1's point:

States aren't actually that great of an identifier for groups / cultures. They're pretty arbitrary. The point is that we are distinguishing voters into groups - rural vs urban, black vs white, etc. The voters from more rural states (such as Wyoming) not only get more representation in the Senate per voter, their votes are also more valuable in the Electoral College.

I'm told this is to prevent Presidential candidates from only visiting cities and only caring about urban issues. Okay. But why is weighting a vote a solution to that? Couldn't a presidential candidate only cater to the dominant religion, or dominant race? In response, wouldn't we want to weight the votes of the minority groups so that mob rule doesn't cancel out their ideas and opinions? We've established that as the solution for rural vs urban, why not other groups?

[I don't actually support that. Just showing how it is a weird way of accomplishing their goal.]

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/802972944532209664

See since those "extra" votes were in states that already have large population such as california that are anti-trump
Those illegal voters mean very little because of electrial college.


The actual study

I understand, but I think the EC system is different from that in that it is based on region with the intention of regional equality only, and not other kinds. Possibly, the region based system is seen as more fair than giving different races different voting weightages, since it is still a ''colorblind'' privilege. And do keep in mind that not all elections are like this, and even an ''unrepresented'' community maybe represented in the senate.

I also think the EC system being enforced has a lot to do with how federal / decentralized the US governmental system is, since all the states are near autonomous units, enabling laws more suited to the local communities on the state level.

Think economics and policy though. The big cities and the coasts have entirely different needs and problems than the rural areas making up the rest of the country.

The states used to matter more before the federal gov't ballooned out of control, each region has it's own circumstances. There is no one solution serves everyone. The electoral college is imperfect, but if it is done away with the country will be ran the same way the bulk of Hillary's campaign was. Focus on the major population centers, and ignore everything else wholesale.

This agreement was made so that each state was happy to be part of the Union. Another barrier is the fact that each state gets to make their own voting laws. States can allow non-citizens to vote if they wish. Make it easier or harder by allowing early voting. Going to popular vote, when some states require one to vote on the day (or apply for an absentee ballot a month in advance) vs. a state which has open voting for a couple weeks, means that state likely gets more people to vote.

This isn't an issue in an electoral system (one state, a fixed number of electoral votes), but becomes quite an issue is one decides it by popular vote. Each state seemingly would need the same rules.

People seem to make a lot of excuses about why they think this is unfair. I just don't think they are giving enough credit to the Electoral College and how it helped keep the Union of States together for more than 200 years with only one very serious attempt at succession.

Why change what has worked for a couple centuries? It's not like someone didn't say the same thing back in the 1700's that total votes is more fair, but they compromised on a system which made it fair for the people of all states, so that the interests of their region would be fairly represented.

Exactly.

These people advocating "popular vote" over Electoral vote should show us where they were advocating for it in 2008 & 2012. Because if they can't (and, allowing for age - show for where you were of age to be able to vote - if you're a US citizen [if you aren't, and it's all "academic" to you - then why wasn't it also in those years?]) - then it's hard to take them seriously..

It's about being sore losers - AND - about having the ethical-lack to be willing to do "anything" to win.

Such as: Demanding of one side to "respect" the outcome of the election (posing that otherwise they're sending a dangerous signal to Democracy) - and then being the ones NOT doing just that.

Or, criticizing the Democratically-elected leader of the country for taking a congratulatory phone call from the Democratically-elected leader of another country because it might piss off a communist dictatorship.

(To give a couple of examples of literally an endless number of them).

Bunch of hypocrites to the core.

I could point out one detail: When the Electoral College was originally created, it was decided that slaves (who were almost entirely black) would each count as 3/5ths of a person for determining the representation in the House (which in turn affected the number of electoral votes the state received).

(Of course, this was well before the 13th Amendment, enacted after a bitter civil war, was added to the Constitution.)

I could also point out the confederates were democrats and
GOP whole purpose started as the anti-slavery party.

Which the war broke out when first republican preisdent was elected Abe.

"Whenever I hear any one arguing for slavery I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally", Abraham Lincoln republican president 1861 - 1865
Acommplisment? Ended Slavery.

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." Dwight Eisenhower republican president 1953 - 1961
Accomplishment? Ended segegration of black schools and white schools.

"I’ll have those niggers voting democratic for the next 200 years",Lyndon B Johnson democrat president 1963-1969
Accomplishment? Passed bill that is still used today to reject the idea that requiring photo identification to vote is racist because blacks are too stupid to have identification.

Hillary Clintons quote , Hillary's mentor she speaks of

PS: troll bots delete post like others i'll just repost it and get it seen again... can't be spam when it "never posted"

Hmm the original intention wasn't very open, but I think its still maintained because the system itself was seen to have some benefit in regard giving vote weightages to different communities as compared to giving it based on some other characteristic.

Wonder how they got to 3/5 though.

They got to it through negotiation. Once again, in order to keep the Union together, the representatives met, discussed the issue, and came to a result that found a middle ground. In order words, likely neither side was entirely happy with it. States which didn't emphasize slavery weren't happy with the way primarily southern states were growing their population with slaves (gaining representatives as a result). Obviously, the slave states wanted them to count. They threw numbers around and eventually settled on a number between 0 and 1.

I'm pretty sure there are some documents talking about the negotiation process, at least I think I remember such from long ago days in school where they took time to discuss such things and it wasn't all about memory and facts.

Just wikipedia but it gives a little more info:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Fifths_Compromise

Very interesting. Its quite unique that a slave population was given voting rights at all, seeing the precedent set by the Romans and followed by many others of letting an only a small portion of the inhabitants vote.

Except they weren't actually given voting rights, but their states were given the equivalent votes in the Electoral College as well as the additional Representatives in the House as if they could.

True, slave owners probably still had control over them.