How much disparity between the popular vote winner and the electoral college winner would be tolerated , 51% ,55% ,60% ,because it is entirely possible to win the popular vote by a large margin and still not win the electoral college. How much would we tolerate before we demand the system to be changed like every other election in the world is done ????
Not to defend your system, but don't go assuming the 'rest of the world' has systems that produce outcomes where the popular vote is strictly reflected. I can think of a number of Australian elections where the winning party got a smaller share of the vote. In one case the opposition won 51% of the vote but got 13 fewer seats. The current British government has a majority based on 36% of the popular vote.
We don't use the popular vote to choose our leader. Most countries don't. We vote for members of the legislature in geographic based electorates, who then appoint the Prime Minister if they have a majority in the House. That's closer to your system than most calling for the abolition of the EC would like to admit. [Hr][/hr] The differences are as such: 1. We have a majoritarian system. The legislature appoints the executive. You have a strict separation of powers. To achieve basically the same result you elect electors (ie: "MPs" who arent in the legislature and whose only purpose is to appoint the executive). 2. Our "electors" are decided on a local electorate level: many for each state. Your electors are decided on a state level. In part this makes sense because you have 50 states and we have 6. 3. Your electors are less accountable. MPs would face serious backlash likely leading to a loss of their election or party affiliation if they voted against confidence in their own party's leader. Your electors are (with the exception of a few states which mandate the elector vote with the populace) free to choose who to appoint. It's notable that this almost never happens, making this objection pretty mute. 4. In your system of government (originally, not so much now) the states retained most of their powers. They were reduced heavily with the 1787 constitution, then again and again through to the 17th Amendment and beyond. But the basic structure remains the same: the states are sovereign, the Federal government is vaguely a union of states. In keeping with that tradition, your "electorates" for the EC are based on the state level, whereas ours are local electorates. In short, if you take this away from the states, what involvement do they actually have remaining? You may as well create a unitary government. [hr][/hr] I hope this post has served to dispel some of the common misconceptions around the electoral college and its alternatives. I still don't see a viable alternative, short of abolishing your separation of powers or otherwise fundamentally changing the structure of your government. If the President's powers are properly limited, it's quite proper that the people within the states should appoint the President, as his powers ought to chiefly concern state and administrative matters. Unfortunately the power of the executive has grown like nothing the framers could have anticipated, hence the current debate over the EC. Thanks.
How do you think Americans would react if a candidate got 55% to 60% of the popular vote but lost the EC. Would they except it or riot in the streets ?
Our parliamentary elections are completely different to their Presidential elections though. They’re the equivalent of their congressional and senate races, which work in much the same way. Elections for regional representatives are never going to reflect the overall vote share regardless of how they’re structured. The main problem with representative elections is how so many ignorant voters are conned in to thinking they’re voting for a particular government or Prime Minister. In general terms, taking the result from the overall popular vote would generate just as many complaints as any other system. You can still end up with large regions or segments of the population strongly supporting the eventual looser. Any close run election with only two leading candidates is going to result in roughly half the population being unhappy regardless of how the election is structured or who wins.
Yes, I know. That was my point. Plenty of systems deal with disjunctures between the popular vote and the winner of the election. It isn't uncommon. I'm more worried about arrogant people who think they are better than everyone else based on a silly piece of hair splitting. Most people vote for the candidate representing the party they want to govern. No 'conning' there, just you thinking there is.
Has anyone ever noticed that it,s the party that loses that complains about the EC if it wins the popular vote but loses the EC. If it loses the popular vote but wins the EC that party keeps it's mouth shut.
Part of the reason the EC was put into place was to allow equal representation across the states, so a high populace state like Connecticut didn't have an overwhelming majority compared to Maine. That still needs to be maintained today, so that states have as close to equal representation as possible. But, also the Constitution thing.
The problem of course is that 90% of the population are effectively disenfranchised. The influence of a Louisiana or a Massachusetts voter on the outcome of a presidential election is nil. Candidates don't even campaign in like 40 out of 50 states because these voters don't matter.
I think there's a chance that Trump could win the popular vote and lose the election, I think all the swing states with the big electoral vote numbers will be really close, and a lot of the red states might crush it for Trump. In the deep blue states, even their, people hate Hillary, she'll win those states, but closer than usual. I saw a analysis where they thought potentially Trump could have a landslide in popular vote, but lose in electoral vote.
It remains the majority party in government, albeit slim, from a majority vote. The OP's point is if a majority of the electorate fail to achieve the president of their choice, which I'm guessing means if Trump gets 50%+ of the popular vote but fails to secure the race.
Extremely unlikely (if not impossible). In the only 2 times the NPV/EC split occurred in the last 140 years (1888 and 2000) the spread was less than 1%.
What do you mean tolerate? The so-called "popular vote" is meaningless trivia. We do not have national elections in this country. This Tuesday there will be 50 unique and separate state elections to select the electors from each state, the President and Vice-President are NOT elected on that day. The STATES elect those those offices not the PEOPLE. Heck you don't even have a right to vote for those offices you only do so at the pleasure of your state legislature. And don't even talk about trying to change it because it ain't gonna happen. Would take a constitutional amendment and that ain't gonna happen. - - - Updated - - - Why would they unless they are just totally ignorant of our form of government? - - - Updated - - - It would be worse if we somehow managed to change the system to a national popular vote. And what about the hundreds of challenges that might arise across the country and the election of the President not being able to be certified until all those challenges are dealt with.
No, not a majority vote. It got more votes than any other party - a plurality. It barely got more than one third of the vote for a majority of seats. In a more representative system it should have been a minority government. Still illustrates the point about vote level not equating to government.
I meant the major vote share, if we must split hairs. With anything more than two parties on the ticket it's extremely hard to get over 50% of the vote. With UKIP and the SNP in play now, it'll never happen again in the UK for a long time.
There is NO NATIONAL VOTE in the USA. There is NO NATIONAL ELECTION in the USA. The PEOPLE do not elect the any national office, the STATES do. The state legislature of any state could decide not to even allow the citizens to cast a vote for the state electors and it would be perfectly constitutional and within the law. How the state electors are selected is solely up to the individual state legislatures if the state legislature wants to pick who will be the electors so be it.
You really don't see how our system of government works, do you. If California votes for Clinton with 50.1 % of the vote, then she wins that state. Good for her. But it does not matter if she were to eventually go on to win with 70% of the vote in California, those votes do not magically carry over into the neighboring state's vote count, and and blot them out. We do not live in a country where tyranny rules over the people. We have fifty states and they would never have ratified the US Constitution had the more populous states been allowed to rule over the others.The concept of federalism is why we have the electoral college and two US senators per state. If you eliminate the electoral congress then you should eliminate the US Senate as well. Jesse Owens won four gold medals. When he won the 200 m sprint even by one tenth of a second, he still won the race. Just because he beat the second place runner by a half a second, does not mean in Jessie's next race, he gets to carry his time over and subtract a half second from his time.
You can say this until you turn blue but some here cant seem to grasp basic civics. The State also used to pick the senators as it should still
