The one major problem with removing the Electoral College

[piku]

The independent candidates. If it went by the popular vote it would be completley pointless to even run - it would turn into a two-party system. At least with the College the independent voters could get enough votes to at least spoil the other parties in states (like Florida, New Hampshire, Oregon, ect.).

 

[InTheClouds]

i dont understand what you mean. how does the electoral college help the independants?

 

[piku]

Look at Florida. Less than a thousand votes seperate Bush and Gore. Look how many votes Nader got - 96,000 some. Going by many many analysts estimates, if Nader did not run then roughly 50,000 of those people would have voted for Gore. Gore would have then won by a long shot. But because they voted for Nader Gore had a harder time keeping up.

 

[wyvrn]

Doesn't seem like a problem to me. Exactly how is an independent going to win these days anyway? Look, people will vote for who they want. If someone wants to vote Nader, then so be it. Who cares what shoulda-coulda-woulda happened if Nader didn't run. The pt. is he did, has the right to, and I admire him for it.

 

[Spoooon]

Another thing about the electoral college is that it gives a little more weight to states that aren't heavily populated. Good point about it allowing an independent to spoil the party for another.

 

[Pretender]

Uh, nationwide, Nader got 2.6 million, Gore got 48.98 million, Bush got 48.79. Nader "took away" (if you think of it that way) 2.6 million votes, yet the difference between Bush and Gore was only 190,000. Does Nader still look useless in terms of the popular vote now?



[edit]Gore stole my math skills and tossed them in a lockbox [/edit]

 

[extra]

now, following pretender's logic, removing the electoral college would help the independent parties
because nader got what, 4% of the popular vote? yet he got 0% of the electoral vote!