Oct 22 2008
Electoral College
Electoral College
First some background. An absurd number of people have no idea what the electoral college is or how it works so I’ll start there.
Now if that was to boring or technical for you here is a more amusing explanation :)
So why do we still use the electoral college instead of the popular vote?
A few things to consider. If the Electoral College was removed and we changed to a straight popular vote people in smaller communities would likely be ignored by candidates. Issues of smaller communities could be viewed as less important (because they would bring fewer votes) and laws favoring the beliefs/interests of people in more populous areas could become more prevalent. (This to me is a reason to stick with the EC)
A reason to get rid of the EC (for me anyway) is that it is the reason we are stuck in a two party system. Because the winner of the state (yeah yeah except for the two) takes all of the electoral votes a lot of people don’t want to ‘waste’ their vote especially when they are afraid doing so will help the person they like least win (sort of like someone voting for McCain instead of Barr because they don’t want Obama to win) if we got rid of the EC more people would/should be willing to think outside of the two party box. Of course some people think that the two party system is more manageable than a multi-party system (imagine a party for every cause) so…yeah.
So should we keep the electoral college or try to move to popular vote?
P.S.
If you were wondering the popular vote and electoral vote have differed three times. In 1824, 1876, 1888, and 2000 the person who won the popular vote did not win the election. Check here for more nifty presidential facts 
It’s unfair to third party candidates and it implies that a farmer in North Dakota is equal to five drama students in New York.
Or 8 1/2 Transvestites in California, Bill, can’t leave them out.