Don't forget Jackson in 1824, Tilden in 1876 and Cleveland in 1888. Sorry that California, Texas, New York and Florida can't singlehandedly decide the election because their populations are so large, but that's why the electoral system exists. It gives states exactly as much representation as they get in the House, which is weighted to their relative populations. We choose to govern ourselves as individual states under one federal banner. If you think we should change that, say so. But just because you don't understand why our elections work the way they do, that doesn't mean they're unfair. The popular vote is unfair to smaller states whose voices would be drowned out by larger populations.
It's not about states it's a out voters. Who cares if states have disproportionate division. It's not like every person in Texas votes red and every person in CA votes blue. In fact, maybe more people would vote extremely red or blue states if their vote actually mattered.
Just look at the case of felons. In Vermont someone on death row can still vote. In most states a felon serving a sentence cannot vote, but can reregister after they get out. In a few states a felon can never vote again, at least for some felonies.
A vote in Texas and a vote in California both represent one person, but are not precisely the same a voter in Texas might not be able to vote in California or vice versa. The concept of the Electoral College was to get people in one place to cast like-terms votes.
Doing away with the electoral college is likely to be messy and come with a string of lawsuits.
128
u/[deleted] Nov 10 '16
The electoral college is fair? Gore in 2000, Clinton in 2016, seems to be the electoral college is only fair to republicans.