What is your opinion of the United States' system for electing Presidents?

  1. Freeway Flyer profile image70
    Freeway Flyerposted 14 years ago

    What is your opinion of the United States' system for electing Presidents?

    Does the electoral college make sense, or should the winner be determined by popular vote?

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  2. sir slave profile image59
    sir slaveposted 14 years ago

    The electoral college was set up to make sure smaller states had better representation in an election...its an arcane system that didn't anticipate the modern age, we should probably get rid of it.
    but there have been many attempts to do that.

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  3. wingedcentaur profile image61
    wingedcentaurposted 14 years ago

    Certainly the Electoral College should be done away with and the popular vote honored. But I'd like America to move beyond a system in which we're encouraged to hero-worship individuals; I'd like America to ACTUALLY become more democratic.

    There's a investigative political researcher called John Judge, who has an interesting idea (and I think he's on to something). He says that it would preferable to vote on issues rather than on people who can't really represent you. What he says is: How can five hundred thirty five people (536 including the President) really represent three hundred twenty million people?

    And do they even try? (I think to ask the question is to answer it, is it not?) Judge points out that our system is archaic, in that it is a throwback to a time when we did not have the mass communications available to us since the 1930s with the invention of radio.

    Back in the colonial period all they had was a wagon. What you did was put someone on it and sent him to the committee meeting to represent the local position, and then he reported back -- by the way you probably since the most boorish, annoying person in the hamlet to get him off your back for a few weeks or so.

    John Judge cites Thomas Jefferson, who apparently said that given a choice between a government without a newspaper and a newspaper without a government, he would always choose the latter. The idea is that information flow is even more important than the apparatus used to execute policy.

    Take it easy.

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