Thursday, November 8, 2012

The Electoral College

When you look at this map with blue being Democratic voting and red being Republican, it's hard to believe that Obama could have possibly won. The issue at hand is that major population centers speak for each state. The bottom line is that usually those in urban areas are left leaning (e.g. Austin, Texas) and those in rural areas are right leaning. The only apparent exception to that is cities that contain a majority minority population (e.g. El Paso and the Rio Grand Valley of Texas).

I believe that the only way to avoid disinfranchising millions of Americans (whether we agree with them or not), other than eliminating the electoral college outright, is for states to move away from the "winner take all" model and do what Maine currently does in giving their votes based on percentage of voters (i.e. if the state has ten votes and the ballots are 60% for A and 40% for B; A would get 6 electoral votes and B would get the remaining 4.
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2 comments:

  1. UnknownNovember 9, 2012 at 9:01 AM

    I couldn't agree more! Watching the election I realized more and more how this 'all or none' system could possibly work!
    It also made me feel like my vote does not matter, because I live in Texas, Texas has always voted republican, I'm sure there are times they haven't perhaps, so if I was going to vote for mitt then why should I worry? My state will give all of the electoral votes to him! Other side. If I was to vote for Obama why would I? Same senecio. To me it seems as if the only time voting would be important is if I were to live in a swing state.

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  2. Dwayne SpearmanNovember 9, 2012 at 9:50 AM

    You are totally correct. The same could be said of New York and Florida. The current system disenfranchises the America voter. Also, it encourages the candidates to not even consider those states in their election bid. There is no need for them to go there and campaign because they already know it's "in the bag." As a result, they spend all of their time, money and energy on the swing states (i.e. Ohio and Virginia). There has got to be a better way.

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