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Ask HN: Why do we still have an Electoral College in the US?

1 points by jcromartie ↗ HN
I live in Maryland. It will go to Obama (market predictions put the chance at 93%). If I vote for anybody else, I may as well just throw my ballot in the trash. Why do we not have a good, secure, nation-wide popular vote counting system based on modern communications technology? Are there some technical hurdles that have yet to be cleared to make it possible?

4 comments

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epi0Bauqu
It's called the amendment process.
jacobscott
The easy answer is that the system for presidential elections is part of the constitution, and is quite hard to change, on purpose. You should know this if you've graduated high school (since you live in the US).

The second reason is that it is not clear that a "secure, nation-wide popular vote counting system based on modern communications technology" is a good idea even before we get to the technology. Our system of government is a type of federalism (state/national) and moving to a popular vote based electoral system weakens this division. I don't have much expertise here, but can assert with confidence that expert opinion is divided on whether or not this is desirable.

pbh101
I've heard that it currently ensures that more, disparate voices will be heard. As Jonah Goldberg once said, democracy shouldn't work such that "51% of the country can give the other 49% a wedgie".

Were the electoral model to be abandoned, it would ensure that candidates would stick to major urban areas as much as possible because they would have the largest amount of influence per unit of effort. Now, this wouldn't hold true in all cases, but from what I understand the Electoral College as it stands helps to ensure that the sundry opinions of different interests in this country are given more consideration.

Interesingly, before the electoral reforms of the 1800s in Britain, seat allocations weren't decided by population, but rather influenced by the weighting of the needs of various regional trades/industries. While this seems very anti-democratic to modern American ideals, at that time industries were much closer to the individual. Also, I'm not so sure it was a bad idea: you baked lobbying and the concerns of industries into the political system as opposed to grafting it on in a shadowy, behind-the-scenes system, and therefore had the ability to regulate it to some degree.

pbh101
Another point I forgot to mention is that, IIRC, every single Congress since the start of the nation has introduced and entertained a bill looking to replace the Electoral System with a popular vote system, and not once has it gotten anywhere.