It appears not all Americans are enamoured with the EC.
"Though it’s not gone unremarked upon, the fact that the loser of the popular
vote has won the election for the second time in 16 years is an entirely
home-grown disgrace. It would be nice if we spent at least as much time talking
about how the electoral college, a bizarre institution originally designed to
protect the power of slaveholders, perverts democracy. But it is widely
considered an immutable feature of our political system."
Elsewhere I have read that the EC system favours larger states being
over-represented in the vote [the key to the EC system being that not all votes
by citizens will carry equal weight - that is why the loser of the popular vote
can win with less weight of votes were they measured as equal] and so does not
work to protect smaller states from overbearing large ones or any of that
fair-sounding justification.
The extent to which these points are true may be matter for debate, but nothing
has emerged that justifies the EC system so that we would say "If we didn't
have it, we'd probably introduce it, such are its advantages compared to its
disadvantages."
This appears so far from being the case, it surely indicates how the EC system
is now an anachronism.
My own understanding is that the EC system had some practical justification
before the age of mass communications but also was a product of a view where
voters elect 'wiser men' of the EC who then decide who should be President - a
view which arguably now belongs in the same corner with the view that men
should only have the vote because they will cast it wisely for the household on
behalf of their wife.
The article as a whole may be worth reading.
Putin didn't win this election for Trump. Hillary Clinton did | Doug Henwood
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Putin didn't win this election for Trump. Hillary Clinton did | Doug He...
By Doug Henwood Democrats would rather point to shady foreign operators than
think about why Hillary Clinton will not be the one... | |
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