Do you think the electoral college is out of date?

NO. Most individuals within the U.S. are entirely ignorant when dealing with economics, foreign affairs, and many other things needed to run a country.

To prove my point, look at how many people are voting for Obama.

Yes it is.. take a look at last nights election for proof Obama had 51% of the popular vote but got more than 2/3 of the electoral vote.. Someone said then big states would elect the president, thats the way it is with the electoral vote, if you have enough key big states than it is almost impossible to lose. After Obama had won a few large swing states the election was over, they even said that on CNN. Not only that but if you are Republican and live in a state that has a Dem majority your vote goes essentially unheard, and vice versa. The actual vote was way closer than the college portrayed it to be. McCain still would not have won but I know people that didnt even bother voting cuz they knew that the states alligence was with the other party. What it comes down to is not everyones voice is heard. The electorates of the winning party cast their vote period.. If you live in a state and vote Dem but the state goes Rep. the Repulican electorates vote republican, and your vote is disregarded.

I think I would prefer if ALL electoral college votes from a state more accuately represented the people. So, in a state with 9 electoral college votes, in a 51% vs 49% the votes should go 5 and 4, not 9 and 0.

The electoral college had it's purpose before main stream media came along. Today with all the information that a person can gather about the candidates the electoral college is out of date. However until people make it an issue popular vote will not matter. I also believe that we need to invest in internet voting. If we can do our taxes and get returns without ever leaving home, why can't we vote without having to go out? I truly believe that if we had internet voting that we would increase the percentage of people that vote.

Yes, it should be based on popular vote. It should not matter where you live or if Texas gets more votes than Rhode Island...if more people live there, so be it. Electoral college takes away from people actually feeling like their vote counts. If it's by the people, for the people, then if more people think x is better than y, then x should win.

Period.

It's critical to keeping the country together. We give the most remote states, and the largest land masses a tiny edge, and we eliminate the perception of forcing policy down the throats of those with smaller population. Otherwise, a handful of states would dictate all electoral outcomes, and the smaller states would be left feeling shut out of the process, and that their voices were unheard. And truthfully, as an urban professional, I have no interest in agriculture or mining, but I recognize that they are necessary... and that I am in no position to dictate how best to run those businesses. They need to be able to voice their concerns and have them heard, otherwise, what reason would they have to continue to be part of our system?

I think the electoral college is out of date and needs to be modernized, but I don't think popular vote is going to be the best alternative.

It will never happen. To amend the Constitution would be next to impossible and also the end of our democracy.

The authors of the Constitution had studied the history of many failed democratic systems, and they strove to create a different form of government. Indeed, James Madison, delegate from Virginia, argued that unfettered majorities such as those found in pure democracies tend toward tyranny.Madison stated it this way:

[In a pure democracy], [a] common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert results from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.28

Alexander Hamilton agreed that "[t]he ancient democracies, in which the people themselves deliberated, never possessed one feature of good government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure, deformity."29 Other early Americans concurred. John Adams, who signed the Declaration of Independence and later became President, declared, "[D]emocracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."30 Another signatory to the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Rush, stated, "A simple democracy . . . is one of the greatest of evils."31

Despite these strong statements against democracy, the Founders were also strong advocates for self-government, and they often spoke of the need to allow the will of the people to operate in the new government that they were crafting. "Notwithstanding the oppressions & injustice experienced among us from democracy," Virginia delegate George Mason declared, "the genius of the people must be consulted."32 James Madison agreed, speaking of the "honorable determination which animates every votary of freedom to rest all our political experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government."33

The delegates, then, faced a dilemma. Their fierce opposition to simple democracy ran headlong into their determination to allow the people to govern themselves--and they knew that voters in small states would need to be free to govern themselves, just as would citizens in large states. The Founders reconciled these seemingly conflicting needs by creating a republican government, organized on federalist principles, in which minorities would be given many opportunities to make themselves heard.

The Electoral College was considered to fit perfectly within this republican, federalist government that had been created. The system would allow majorities to rule, but only while they were reasonable, broad-based, and not tyrannical. The election process was seen as a clever solution to the seemingly unsolvable problem facing the Convention--finding a fair method of selecting the Executive for a nation composed of both large and small states that have ceded some, but not all, of their sovereignty to a central government. "`[T]he genius of the present [Electoral College] system,'" a 1970 Senate report concluded, "`is the genius of a popular democracy organized on the federal principle.'"34

It doesn't matter because it is not going to change. The constitution requires the States to ratify any change to the process and the smaller states will never seed there power to the larger states that the electoral college delivers them.

I believe most everything that has to do with Election Day is totally outdated. The whole entire system needs re-vamping and updated. In this the age of computers and the technology we seem so proud of, you'd expect more than a little tiny booth with levers and a old curtain hanging behind you when voting. Why haven't we learned our lessons with the whole Florida/Bush fiasco years ago?

BARACK THE VOTE!!

p.s. interesting cut and paste all over the place, Katie... how long did it take you to write that drivel? Reminds me of my mom ranting. That's scary.