The founders wanted to add balance. There was a quote I read in a book (a long time ago, and can't find the quote, now) but it was something like "If the few have the power, they'll oppress the many, and if the many have the power, they'll oppress the few."
The Electoral college is expressly developed to balance power between the many and the few, each of which wants to dominate the other.
We are a representative Republic. EC keeps just one or two high population areas (e.g. California and New York) from controlling the entire country. EC protects the minority. True democracy = mob rule.
I say imagine the United Countries of the World has an election and every Country is comparable to a US State. Without the electoral college then China would decide everything for the whole world. Would you want China to make all laws for the entire world.
If someone else dictating your future is not sufficiently abhorrent, then no amount of logic and reason will sway you.
Outside of the US, the following eight countries combined include 51.86 percent of the worlds population: China (18.47%), India (17.70%), Indonesia (3.51%), Pakistan (2.83%), Brazil (2.73%), Nigeria (2.64%), Bangladesh (2.11%) and Russia (1.87%).
In a world democracy, the unanimous vote of the people of those eight countries could impose any laws they like on you (assuming you're surrounded by obedient sheep).
Of course, they're unreasonable. Reason goes out the window when you live in fear. Fear is the weapon of choice of all dictators. That's the situation we're in now with the plandemic. A large proportion of the people are afraid and want a dictator.
The question is - how do you counteract this? With logic and reason? Catch-22: that doesn't work because of the fear.
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H. L. Mencken
It took our founding fathers four years to come up with the idea of the electoral college and it’s the greatest part of our government process. Without it we would not have equal representation. We live in a constitutional republic where the states hold the power to govern. The only things the federal government is in charge of, per the constitution, is the military and interstate commerce. The electoral college is just as advantageous for democrats as it is for republicans and that’s why it’s great. Joe Biden can win all of the electoral votes in California with 50% of the vote. And Trump can win Montana with 80% of the vote.
Look at the map of election results by county and how many states are red. Geographically vast majority of america is red, the majority geographically and the rural voters shouldnt have their voice ignored for the 1-2 large cities in each state nor should smaller states be ignored, we’re a republic not a democracy and the founders knew a majority ruling over a minority is tyranny. Also look at the balance of power in the US, the presidency, senate and house consistently flips every 4-8 years, if we have a good balance of power that works allowing everyone to be represented why would you want to do something that tips the balance and bring one party dominance.
Here is a post that I put together some time ago on another site that might be helpful:
Generally speaking (try to ignore the U.S. context for a moment) an Electoral-College-Like system (ECL for the sake of argument) is meant to temporarily dampen the fickle passions of the mob (i.e. some transient super-majority opinion) to lend longer term stability to an overall representative government and to protect local governments and local populations.
The theory is based on the principle of self-governance. This is the long-standing idea that local government can and should have subject-matter and territorial jurisdiction over many things to the exclusion of any centralized government entities to which they belong. And conversely, such a centralized government should only have subject matter and territorial jurisdiction over things that the local governments cannot easily handle on their own.
In order to peacefully maintain such a power separation, a mechanism must be in place to reduce the likelihood of centralized government overreach - in other words centralized dictatorship and the effective abolishment of the local governments.
An ECL system is designed to do this by creating a multi-year delay between the momentary passions of the majority and that majority's ability to install a dictator (or to pass some dictatorial law that would affect ALL local jurisdictions). For example, imagine a charismatic individual starting a national media blitz to convince people to criminalize homosexuality at a central government level (just like Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Jamaica, Morocco and others). Imagine he/she was so persuasive that more than half the overall population voted for (and instituted) such a law. Imagine that these pro-criminalization votes came from just a small geographic area that just happened to have huge populations. The local jurisdictions that disagreed with this law would have no say in the matter - even if EVERY person in those local jurisdictions vehemently opposed the law. This is the definition of dictatorship.
An ECL system can DELAY lunatic laws and ascending dictators by giving local jurisdictions a modicum of additional political power. The important thing is that it's just a delay. It's only a delay because if the proposed politician or law EVENTUALLY wins over the hearts and minds of a large enough (and sufficiently diffuse) segment of the overall population, then the law will eventually pass. So, maybe it wasn't so lunatic. But, the point is that until that proposed law or political movement has had a good amount of time to germinate, grow and convince enough people - over a wide enough set of local jurisdictions - it remains unproven and potentially dangerous. ECL systems are an attempt to avoid such things.
And if the proposed lunatic law (or politician) is forgotten as quickly as it/he/she materialized, then the ECL system really did its job by preventing that law/politician from ever seeing the light of day.
We are a democratic republic. Majority of concerns people have about electoral college trumping a popular election vote is because of the overreach of federal power which should be states rights. The Federal Government should be constrained by it's authorities listed in the constitution and the rest of the concerns of citizens should be managed by their states and local governments.
The issue you get into when having this discussion is the majority of people who want to have popular vote are pushing for expanded powers of the federal government, rather than effective actions and policies within their own states to address their concerns.
The founders wanted to add balance. There was a quote I read in a book (a long time ago, and can't find the quote, now) but it was something like "If the few have the power, they'll oppress the many, and if the many have the power, they'll oppress the few."
The Electoral college is expressly developed to balance power between the many and the few, each of which wants to dominate the other.
We are a representative Republic. EC keeps just one or two high population areas (e.g. California and New York) from controlling the entire country. EC protects the minority. True democracy = mob rule.
based
the electoral college was designed specifically to preserve our Republic's integrity in the face of controversy and uncertainty.
the left has yet to put forward any compelling arguments against the EC other than whining that they aren't getting their way.
I say imagine the United Countries of the World has an election and every Country is comparable to a US State. Without the electoral college then China would decide everything for the whole world. Would you want China to make all laws for the entire world.
If someone else dictating your future is not sufficiently abhorrent, then no amount of logic and reason will sway you.
Outside of the US, the following eight countries combined include 51.86 percent of the worlds population: China (18.47%), India (17.70%), Indonesia (3.51%), Pakistan (2.83%), Brazil (2.73%), Nigeria (2.64%), Bangladesh (2.11%) and Russia (1.87%).
In a world democracy, the unanimous vote of the people of those eight countries could impose any laws they like on you (assuming you're surrounded by obedient sheep).
Of course, they're unreasonable. Reason goes out the window when you live in fear. Fear is the weapon of choice of all dictators. That's the situation we're in now with the plandemic. A large proportion of the people are afraid and want a dictator.
The question is - how do you counteract this? With logic and reason? Catch-22: that doesn't work because of the fear.
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H. L. Mencken
Great illustration!
way to be helpful.
I have more own talking points, just wondering what y'all would say.
1 its the united states, not America. The USA is like the EU, not one giant state.
Otherwise, the USA would not have happened. Genius philosophic thinkers of the time figured this out, negotiated and compromised.
It took our founding fathers four years to come up with the idea of the electoral college and it’s the greatest part of our government process. Without it we would not have equal representation. We live in a constitutional republic where the states hold the power to govern. The only things the federal government is in charge of, per the constitution, is the military and interstate commerce. The electoral college is just as advantageous for democrats as it is for republicans and that’s why it’s great. Joe Biden can win all of the electoral votes in California with 50% of the vote. And Trump can win Montana with 80% of the vote.
Look at the map of election results by county and how many states are red. Geographically vast majority of america is red, the majority geographically and the rural voters shouldnt have their voice ignored for the 1-2 large cities in each state nor should smaller states be ignored, we’re a republic not a democracy and the founders knew a majority ruling over a minority is tyranny. Also look at the balance of power in the US, the presidency, senate and house consistently flips every 4-8 years, if we have a good balance of power that works allowing everyone to be represented why would you want to do something that tips the balance and bring one party dominance.
Here is a post that I put together some time ago on another site that might be helpful:
Generally speaking (try to ignore the U.S. context for a moment) an Electoral-College-Like system (ECL for the sake of argument) is meant to temporarily dampen the fickle passions of the mob (i.e. some transient super-majority opinion) to lend longer term stability to an overall representative government and to protect local governments and local populations.
The theory is based on the principle of self-governance. This is the long-standing idea that local government can and should have subject-matter and territorial jurisdiction over many things to the exclusion of any centralized government entities to which they belong. And conversely, such a centralized government should only have subject matter and territorial jurisdiction over things that the local governments cannot easily handle on their own.
In order to peacefully maintain such a power separation, a mechanism must be in place to reduce the likelihood of centralized government overreach - in other words centralized dictatorship and the effective abolishment of the local governments.
An ECL system is designed to do this by creating a multi-year delay between the momentary passions of the majority and that majority's ability to install a dictator (or to pass some dictatorial law that would affect ALL local jurisdictions). For example, imagine a charismatic individual starting a national media blitz to convince people to criminalize homosexuality at a central government level (just like Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Jamaica, Morocco and others). Imagine he/she was so persuasive that more than half the overall population voted for (and instituted) such a law. Imagine that these pro-criminalization votes came from just a small geographic area that just happened to have huge populations. The local jurisdictions that disagreed with this law would have no say in the matter - even if EVERY person in those local jurisdictions vehemently opposed the law. This is the definition of dictatorship.
An ECL system can DELAY lunatic laws and ascending dictators by giving local jurisdictions a modicum of additional political power. The important thing is that it's just a delay. It's only a delay because if the proposed politician or law EVENTUALLY wins over the hearts and minds of a large enough (and sufficiently diffuse) segment of the overall population, then the law will eventually pass. So, maybe it wasn't so lunatic. But, the point is that until that proposed law or political movement has had a good amount of time to germinate, grow and convince enough people - over a wide enough set of local jurisdictions - it remains unproven and potentially dangerous. ECL systems are an attempt to avoid such things.
And if the proposed lunatic law (or politician) is forgotten as quickly as it/he/she materialized, then the ECL system really did its job by preventing that law/politician from ever seeing the light of day.
We are a democratic republic. Majority of concerns people have about electoral college trumping a popular election vote is because of the overreach of federal power which should be states rights. The Federal Government should be constrained by it's authorities listed in the constitution and the rest of the concerns of citizens should be managed by their states and local governments.
The issue you get into when having this discussion is the majority of people who want to have popular vote are pushing for expanded powers of the federal government, rather than effective actions and policies within their own states to address their concerns.
americanthinker.com Put this in their site search: electoral college