Why Do We Still Have The Electoral College? | Throughline | NPR

Показать описание

What is it, why do we have it, and why hasn't it changed? Born from a rushed, fraught, imperfect process, the origins and evolution of the Electoral College might surprise you and make you think differently about not only this upcoming presidential election, but our democracy as a whole.

NPR's Throughline podcast did a series of episodes on the history of our election system called (mis)Representative Democracy.

Listen to the episodes:

------------------------------------------------------

FOLLOW NPR ELSEWHERE

Рекомендации по теме

Комментарии

An election system run by 2 parties competing for power is truly not interested in participation or consent of the governed. Can we please just finally admit that just because we think we have the best system, doesn't mean we have a good system. Voting once every 2-4 years for crooks is not a good system.

brianblue

So if we want to make all voice heard, this needs to go. You mean to tell me if a close battle ground state squeezes out a win, all those votes from the losing party just go "poof" and count towards nothing? This is why "every vote counts" is dog water. If every vote counts - every vote should be counted period.

jonathanngo

This is why we can never have a "true" third party group. When you have an electoral college, it hard to vote for another third party if you are afraid that your vote will be counted for the party or candidate that you are against. This cycle needs to stop.

happymelanin

NPR is the reason we have a electoral college!👍

deano

some important things (i keep seeing) left out. Quoting heather cox richardson:
"The Framers originally designed delegates to the Electoral College to vote according to districts within states, so that states would split their electoral votes, making them roughly proportional to a candidate’s support. That system changed in 1800, after Thomas Jefferson recognized that he would have a better chance of winning the presidency if the delegates of his own home state, Virginia, voted as a bloc rather than by district. He convinced them to do it. Quickly, other state officials recognized that the “winner-take-all” system meant they must do the same or their own preferred candidate would never win. Thus, our non-proportional system was born, and it so horrified James Madison and Alexander Hamilton that both wanted constitutional amendments to switch the system back.

Democracy took another hit from that system in 1929. The 1920 census showed that the weight of the nation’s demographics was moving to cities, which were controlled by Democrats, so the Republicans in control of the House of Representatives refused to reapportion representation after that census. Reapportioning the House would have cost many of them their seats. Rather than permitting the number of representatives to grow along with population, Congress then capped the size of the House at 435. Since then, the average size of a congressional district has tripled. This gives smaller states a huge advantage in the Electoral College, in which each state gets a number of votes equal to the number of its senators and representatives.

These injuries to our system have saddled us with an Electoral College that permits a minority to tyrannize over the majority. That systemic advantage is unsustainable in a democracy. "

WarrenEBB

All we have to do to tweak the electoral college model is simply do away with winner take all and follow the Nebraska/Maine example in that each districts electoral vote goes to the candidate who wins that district. That solves all the problems right there.

lenbone

WHY IS NPR NEWS COMMENTS OFF ON ALL THEIR THREADS ???? Why don’t they want people to speak ??

jimbeam

This video basically wrote my gov essay for me thank you

frankieremacle-grimm

Some things that work in Idaho don’t work in New York, makes perfect sense

sheendean

This video did NOT answer the question "Why Do We Still Have The Electoral College?"

DavidMN-

We have the electoral college so 6 cities do not own the politics. BTW, those cities are crap holes.

PrepperNow

The Editorial vs factual content is staggering in this piece. And yes Nebraska or Colorado should have a say in who leads their country just as much as the big four states.

Handlethecurvessmoothly

Should the country reevaluate the electoral college, I would be interested in the results if the shift. As many decades that have pasted and census that have been enumerated, we should see a significant change. People residing all over the country regardless of political stance don't stay in the same regions anymore. We go where there is opportunity and provision. I'm courious to know why it hasn't shifted in such a long period of time.

homewithjess

Here to read the HS graduates who couldn’t pass a civics course comment with authority :)

jaymills

The States created the Fed Gov't, and each State is a Sovereign State with their own State Constitution that through it's people, whereby each Sovereign State casts a Vote for a President of the Union of States. If a popular vote was inherently discrete as part of the U.S. Constitution, the 8 and then 9th sovereign State would NOT have ratified it. Why would a State hand over their Sovereignty to a Fed Gov't that didn't exist until 8 States ratified the document?

Each state could have ended up as a "Sovereign Country" if what you are proposing was writ in the the Document to be Ratified.

The presented writ here implies that the Electoral College's framework is deeply rooted in the Constitution and its amendments, making it a challenging system to alter without significant constitutional amendments. The historical context provided highlights how past electoral challenges led to the refinement of the Electoral College through the ratification process. This perspective underscores the complexity and significance of any potential changes to the Electoral College, emphasizing its foundational role in American presidential elections as established through constitutional ratification processes.

Each sovereign region, as a state, has a sovereign right to have a say from their proximal purview as how the Fed Gov't serve the states, in discrete terms, as it willfully signed the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, and gave away some of it's power to the Fed Gov't in good faith.

NOTE:
The Electoral College's structure, outlined in Article II, Section 1, Clause 3 of the Constitution and further refined by the Twelfth Amendment, was designed to address issues that arose during early presidential elections, particularly the tie vote between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr in 1800. The ratification of the Twelfth Amendment in 1804 solidified the process of electors casting separate votes for President and Vice President, ensuring a more efficient and clear outcome in presidential elections.

etinarcardiaego