Court rules Electoral College members aren't bound by popular vote

Yep, doing away with the archaic EC will make everywhere a battleground. During a really really close election we can stay up late and wait for Hawaii or Alaska decide the winner.

 

Trump has ZERO chance of winning California, New York, Illinois, Oregon, Washington, etc. Why would he spend an hour or a dime on those states in the General Election?

Just like Hillary does not go to Texas, or Alabama, or Idaho, or Utah.

 

At its extreme it means that elections will be meaningless and each elector will do whatever they want.

 

The Electoral College is a brilliant idea and will not be changed anytime soon.

2/3 of the Senate & House is needed & 3/4 of the states is needed.

Republicans have a slim majority in the senate & a 27/23 majority in states.

Good luck getting 38 states...

Also I do not see all small swing State Democrats supporting this if the vote is close.

 

Yah because of the EC! Lol
Get rid of it and the candidates have to search for votes everywhere.

 

You know it's bad when their base is teenagers, felons, and people who don't even speak english.

 

In my spreadsheet I used the values recorded at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election

I computed off the percentage from Clinton times the number of EC votes (i.e., Alabama 9 * 34.36%), I rounded up for anything .5 plus and down for less, and then I took the total votes minus what were assigned to Clinton and assigned them to Trump. 3.0924 for Clinton in Alabama rounded to 3.

The one thing that I didn't do is consider other candidates, but regardless of that I still didn't get Clinton to 270.

I just re-calculated Trump based on his percentages of votes and got him only to 250. So Clinton 255 and Trump 250. Congress or the states through congress choose.

Also, my first inclination to your approach is that this would be the same as simply counting the popular vote, but for me it didn't turn out that way. One thing for consideration is, if it were popular vote, red voters in blue states would turn out more and blue voters in red states the same. This means we don't really know how any election could have or would have turned out were the rules different. Just thinking out loud here.

 

I feel like this came up during the Democratic primary, but can't recall. I thought some state wanted to support Hillary even though Bernie won.

 

This doesn’t apply to primary as the electoral college plays no role in primary elections

 

I guess it was the delegates then that could be pledged wherever the state pleased. I'm not sure.

 

Depends on the rules of the primary. Some are winner take all, some are based on percent of the vote, and then there are the super delegates who can do wherever they want. Most wanted an actual democrat to be the nominee, so they picked Hillary.

 

That’s a long winded way of saying you don’t support democracy because your ideology is such a small and shrinking segment of the population.

 

The founders also feared party’s forming as they would lead to people voting for their team over their country.

They would be appalled at what system we have today.

 

Good plan. Populists have never been bad for a nation.

 

Maybe we shouldn’t get to vote at all

 

Sounds like we are in the ballpark.... But if you only get Clinton to 255 and Trump to 250, you are leaving out a bunch of electoral votes (538 total). Those have to be assigned by some method. I give the extra votes for each state to the winner of the state (Why??? Why not They have to go somewhere)

Examples
California (55 votes)
Clinton . 6173 (34 rounded)
Trump .3162 (17 rounded)
4 extra votes I give to Clinton for winning the state

Texas (38 votes)
Clinton .4324 (16 rounded)
Trump .5223 (20 rounded)
2 extra votes I give to Trump for winning the state

In Raw Rounding Count, I get Trump 252 and Clinton 259, but that leaves 27 extras, which I divide 14 for Trump and 13 for Clinton, getting to 266 Trump/272 Clinton...

I'm doing all the elections now

Clinton 272/Trump 266 (Closest I've done)
Obama 276/Romney 262
Obama 290/McCain 248
Bush 278/Kerry 260
Gore 273/Bush 265
Clinton 302/Dole 236 (Divided out Perot votes the same way - state winner - Perot would have gotten 36 EC votes by this method - He won 17% of the National vote)

1992 will be VERY close I suspect

But you are right... if this was the method, it certainly could have changed voting patterns, because it will make voting in each state a little more competitive than winner-take-all

It's still fun though... Love me Excel!!

 

Prediction: the sarcasm well melt away from this statement the second Trump and or some other conservative populist walks away with the popular vote.

The politics of whatever's expedient...

 

I agree that the Founders would likely be appalled. The system is not being used as it was intended. The candidates were not suppose to pick their own VP and States were not suppose to influence Electorals. They would pick them, but not influence them. Influence was one thing the Founders were worried about.

 

No but it's been an unenforceable law. Binding their votes violates the 1st amendment. The worst that can be done to faithless electors is removal from the Collage but that has no effect on the vote they cast.

 

The EC is one thing but the way Electors vote is not set out in the Constitution. The current system could easily be changed.

 

The Electoral College should stay.

But the Electors should vote based on their voters' choice, not "winner-takes-all".

Requiring Electors to vote for Candidate A even though their voters chose Candidate B, is authoritarianism.

 

Half the country doesnt pay income tax.

You know what mob rule is?

 

Interesting.

So if Candidate A gets 55% of the votes in that state he should get 55% of the EC votes is the state, not winner takes all the EC votes in the state. And each candidate gets the EC votes in the state that correspond to their share of the vote.

There is no constitutional reason why that couldn’t be implemented.

 

It sounds reasonable and fair I'm surprised it wasn't this way along time ago.

It allows third-party and independent candidates to make a better try at winning

the current system makes third-party and independent candidates virtually have zero chance of ever winning. Not even one single state

 

The Constitution guarantees to the state we will never be a democracy.