I always hear people complain about the electoral college, but I've never once heard a detailed, objective argument as to why they think a popular vote would be a better system.
Friends I've talked to about just seem to default to a majority system because it seems more 'fair', or its easier to understand? I dont know.
In the USA, I think we are conditioned to belive in the democratic process, so I guess it feels 'natural' to just tally up the votes, & majority wins.
We've done it countless times in our personal lives. Anytime there's a disagreement, or a group decision to be made, "Ok, lets vote on it". Majority wins. Simple.
This is a fine & easy way to decide things in small groups, but is it really the best way to decide something among 300 million?
I'm not convinced. I'm not saying the EC is perfect, I just suspect a simple majority wins vote could cause other serious problems that are not immediately obvious.
If majority rule is a bad thing, why do you think minority rule is better?
What if I told you that the framers Hamilton and Madison were appalled by winner-take-all laws passed by states in the early 1800s, and tried to change the constitution to abolish the Electoral College, it having become an abomination completely unlike their intent?
So after looking it over, the idea is to eliminate get rid of the 'winner take all' system in the participating states. Seems fine to me. It's definitely hard to argue for winner takes all electoral votes.
I'm not really a history guy, but I wonder why states decided to move in that direction to begin with? Guess I'll have to look into it.
What I don't get is if there are this many states trying to push this idea, why do they need a bill like this to do it. Why don't those states just take it upon themselves to change their laws individually. What's stopping them right now?
Moreover, it seems one of the main points is that the current system causes candidates to only focus their campaign in a few battleground states. I'm struggling to see how the National Popular Vote system would change this. Maybe it would break up the current pattern, if so, I have a feeling another similar pattern would emerge.
The battlegrounds would just shift. For example, it might just redistribute the candidates focus to the greater metro areas where 2/3 of the population lives, and republican/ democrat distributions are more even (according to the site). If the city centers are strongly democrats, and rural strongly republican, the I imagine the same problem emerging since those areas are a 'done deal'. Why would the candidates spend any resources there is there is no chance of swaying them?
Friends I've talked to about just seem to default to a majority system because it seems more 'fair', or its easier to understand? I dont know.
In the USA, I think we are conditioned to belive in the democratic process, so I guess it feels 'natural' to just tally up the votes, & majority wins.
We've done it countless times in our personal lives. Anytime there's a disagreement, or a group decision to be made, "Ok, lets vote on it". Majority wins. Simple.
This is a fine & easy way to decide things in small groups, but is it really the best way to decide something among 300 million?
I'm not convinced. I'm not saying the EC is perfect, I just suspect a simple majority wins vote could cause other serious problems that are not immediately obvious.