Asklemmy

At the time the electoral college was devised, the only way to reliably get an important message from a state capital to the federal capital was to send a trusted messenger on a horse. The electors are those trusted messengers.

There are benefits?

As a US citizen, it seems like it should be relegated to the last century and not dragged any further into the future.

Like most weird things with the American federal government, you have to remember that at the founding, the individual states were much more autonomous, more similar to individual countries than they are now.

Primarily, the electoral college was one of many compromises made between the states so that all of them would sign on and join the union. It was deliberately designed to give smaller states a disproportionate say in the presidential election, to sooth their fears that they would end up being controlled by the larger more populous states (again, at the time, people would have identified much more strongly with their state than with the federal union.) So, the benefit was that it gave the smaller states enough of a say that they were willing to join the union.

If you conceive of the United States as a single nation state, which many today do, but was not historically a universal norm, then there's no real benefit and only serves to help Republicans maintain power, since less populous states tend to vote Republican. This is what most people tend to believe, especially people on the left, and why you largely see most people online oppose the electoral college.

If you conceive of these United States as a group of states and not just a giant nation state, then the electoral college allows the separate states some hedge against being dominated by their larger neighbors. Almost no one actually believes this. You'll mostly see Republicans bring up this argument, but by and large they're hypocritical about it(they'll use states rights when it serves them, and federal power when convenient). There are some people who do truly think that the states should be left to govern themselves, as a matter of principle and not just as part of a political game to get their way when convenient, but they are very rare.

It helps those with power keep it. Benefits to everyone else, that it may have had, have been eroded by time, demographics, and or technology.

What I’ve heard is that it prevents “tyranny of the majority”, whereby the majority would just get their way 100% of the time.

I know that sounds like exactly what should happen, but I think the thought is that sometimes the majority does not vote in the country’s best interest.

As an exaggerated example, say there is some budget concern that would allocate all money to urban business and zero to rural. Depriving rural business like farms of this funding would cripple the country’s food reserves. But the majority live in urban environments, so they’d vote selfishly and fuck up the country. So rural voters are given more power to balance it out.

Now in my opinion - I don’t care about any of that. And I think if the majority votes one way and fucks up the country, so be it. Gotta learn to vote in the county’s interest and not your own.

You've pretty much got it already, no benefits.

There are no benefits to it now...unless you are part of the minority who exploits and benefits from it.

the main 'advantage' i believe is that it allows non-voting people to lend weight to the votes of those who do vote. it allows states to disenfranchise voters, without that impacting their state's influence on national politics. it also allows smaller states a larger proportional influence than their population would make reasonable.

personally, i don't see those as advantages, but i'm not some wealthy slave owner from the 1700s.

I am an American. There are none other than ensuring the ruling class continues to wield unbalanced power over the masses.

Upon the founding of this country the office of president was very severely limited in what its function was (technically still is, which has been the great grift of American politics—true power is in congress but no one pays attention to congressional elections).

Nowadays the presidency has expanded a bit from its original design, to the point that it really should be a directly elected office, but it is very difficult to change the constitution of this country so the electoral college remains.

Drama, mostly.

Seriously, the reason we keep it is that it’s written into the constitution. Now is not the time to use either method to amend, so we’re stuck with it.

There’s no reason for it to exist, though I can see its utility before communications were instant.

Seeing how many times it's fucked us. I say it's an in lubed dildo that's meant to bring minority rule over the people

Currently: None. I guess you could swing a semi-benefit that it gives more power to smaller states so they don’t “get overrun” by the big boys, but the way most states decide their electors, this happens anyways and would probably be better without the EC. Unfortunately to get rid of it requires a Constitutional Amendment which is very hard to do in this country (only 27 times in 230 years under the Constitution, 11 of which were proposed with the Constitution). There are a couple sneaky ways states are trying to get around this. I think CGP Grey has a video or two all about the Electoral College if you’re interested

Historically: Actually more than people think. It was difficult to spread information around the nation cause it was really big for the technology at the time. The optimistic idea behind it was that a state could hold their elections, the electors would then be informed what the desires of their electorate would be, then they would spend a month moseying up to the Capital (originally NYC, then Philadelphia, then DC) and once they got there they could then vote for the President using not only the desires of their electorate, but the most up to date political information. The cynical view is that this allowed the wealthy and powerful to elect other wealthy and powerful men to be President. Real history probably places the true reason somewhere in between

The only benefit today is for the GOP. They would never win the presidency without it they are so unpopular.

It helps candidates that don't actually have a policy win elections anyway. Helps the side that keeps losing popular elections get into office regardless.

I mean it seems like you understand the system perfectly.

Originally, the benefit was that the president would be chosen by the established powerful men, not the filthy proles.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_Two_of_the_United_States_Constitution#Clause_3:_Electoral_College and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Electoral_College#History

It's an interesting conversation topic. It's easy to mock for being backward and racist. It serves as a good cautionary tale for other governments....

Your vote does not count!

The main benefit is that it allows us to change how we vote for President over time without requiring a Constitutional amendment every time. This is because the states themselves can decide how they select electors, and can try out different voting systems without requiring permission from the federal government.

For example, there is currently an agreement between states that, if they get enough states to agree for a majority of electoral votes, they will all switch to using the national popular vote as their only criterion. So we can switch to that system with less than half the states, rather than requiring 3/4 of them to approve an amendment. And of we decide we hate the system later, we can switch back, again without an amendment.

In general, complicated electoral policies help maintain the status quo and a disconnect between the people and the state. It makes the people always think that things are bad because they didn't use the system right. Come on guys we need more voters. Come on guys we need to focus on swing States. Actually guys we need to vote in Congress too. Guys we also need local elections. Omg guys, we forgot about the supreme court!!

Rather than revolting against your government, you will always be presented with another route forward that won't take you there.

Makes it easier for the establishment to control the outcome.

I'm not sufficiently educated on the subject so I can't argue either way, but the defense I usually hear is that the sparse farmland states and the densely populated city states have different needs, and that the majority of the population living in cities shouldn't be making decisions for the rest of the country. So it gives each state an equal say in the executive branch; Otherwise the most populated states hold all the power.

If there's a problem with this defense of its pro's, please educate me. I'm not being sarcastic.

This may sound cynical, but in my experience with it, 100 people are a lot easier to bribe than 230 million.

E: see, the people vote, and the EC are supposed to vote for what their state's people vote for. But, as free citizens, they're allowed to vote for who they want. So, we may get into situations, where the popular vote in a state was for A, but the EC vote was for B. The EC are supposed to represent their state, but should also be allowed to vote for the candidate they think is best (like the other citizens). IMO, it should be a point system. Each state gets the points of the EC count they currently have. The state's popular vote decides the candidate that gets the points of the state. The EC is disolved. Done. This allows the popular vote to win, while still maintaining the original reason for the EC (rural states have less people, but now have as much of a voting power as urban states, when compared to popular votes alone).

The main benefit is that it pushes a lot of issues to a more fault tolerant system.

Technically, the election of President was not supposed to be decided by the people. Only two state legislatures devolved the authority to choose the Electors in the Electoral College to a vote when Washington was elected. All states voted for the President after the Civil War, but the layout wasn't even.

In its current state, the Electoral College provides a fire break between the different states in how they vote. The states are supposed to run all elections, which may have impacts on who gets elected.

The system becomes easy enough for a lawyer to understand

The "popular vote" is also not a perfect system. When there are a majority of rural voters in area, and those voters are poorly educated, they come up with some interesting choices of town mayors, who then have no clue how to actually run a town council and provide services (not inside the US but just saying, no political system seems to be perfect).

It's a decent idea that's been devastatingly crippled. We could fix almost all the problems with it by doing two things: unbinding electors, and uncapping the House. If more states moved to a proportional system, that would help, too.

The thing is... to forbid states to bind their electors (binding means the elector is not free to choose their vote for President, but must vote as dictated by state law) or to force states to choose electors proportionally, is beyond the power of the federal government. It would be better for everyone if states did this on their own, of course, but they can't be forced to do so.

Uncapping the House is desirable both in itself (for greater, and more granular, representation in Congress) and would also make the EC more representative by allowing more electors to populous states, without diminishing the representation of less populous states. But making the EC more democratic, without the check that unbound electors provide, could be dangerous, pushing the country further towards populism.