Is there anyone who prefers the archaic electoral college system over an election decided by the national vote total? By the way, I don’t believe the term “Electoral College” is in the Constitution. I think they’re referred to as “Electors”. In the 2016 election, Hillary won the popular vote by more than 3 million. Whether you preferred Hillary or Trump is irrelevant to me, this is a dumb system.
During a Presidential campaign, the candidates essentially ignore most of the nation and concentrate on what is known as “the swing states”. They include Florida, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, among others. These states make up the only unknown in the election. All other states are either deep red or blue, so candidates completely ignore them. Do we want a large percentage of our country ignored during a Presidential campaign?
As for residents of a state which isn’t a swing state, they often feel their vote is wasted. If you live in a deep red state but want to vote blue, your vote essentially doesn’t count because you know the red party candidate will win the state. However, if the Presidency is determined by a national tally, then your vote has more meaning. In fact, every vote counts if we go with the popular vote.
Are you aware of the National Popular Vote Plan? It’s an effort to create an agreement among states that vow to elect the president of the United States using the national popular vote instead of the final vote count in each respective state. States who agree, will no longer cast their electoral votes for the winner in their individual state, but will instead cast them for the winner of the national vote. This is an attempt to bypass the complexities of amending the Constitution. Some believe only about a dozen key states need to agree with this new policy to seriously impact a 270 electoral college majority.
I’m sorry I can’t give credit to the author, but I copied the following points from an email message I received which I thought was fascinating. It highlights some very interesting statistics from recent Presidential campaigns.
In the 2016 general election campaign:
Over half (57%) of the campaign events were held in just 4 states (Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Ohio).
Virtually all (94%) of the campaign events were in just 12 states (containing only 30% of the country’s population).
In the 2012 general election campaign, 38 states had no campaign events, and minuscule or no spending for TV ads.
More than 99% of presidential campaign attention (spending on ads and visits) was invested on voters in just ten competitive states..
Two-thirds (176 of 253) of the general-election campaign events, and a similar fraction of campaign expenditures, were in just four states (Ohio, Florida, Virginia, and Iowa).
Over 87% of both Romney and Obama campaign offices were in just the then 12 swing states. The few campaign offices in the 38 remaining states were for fund-raising, volunteer phone calls, and arranging travel to battleground states.
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