Posted on Jun 29, 2015
How do you feel about your vote NOT actually counting during a Presidential election?
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There has (and will be) tons of talk about the 2016 Presidential Election. It is generally the same things over and over...someone making more promises to more people than he/she could ever make good on. We, as Americans, fail miserably on keeping our public servants accountable to us, but that is a whole different discussion. So with all of this talk about who everyone will vote for in the upcoming Presidential election, my question is do you know that our votes might NOT count at all? The President and the Vice President are elected by the Electoral College, not by popular vote. This has happened four times in our great nations history. First was in 1824, John Quincy Adams. The second was in 1876, Rutherford B. Hayes. The third was in 1888, Benjamin Harrison. The last one was more recent in our history, it was in 2000, when George W. Bush beat Al Gore by 5 electoral College votes even when Al Gore had 540,000 more popular votes.
How do you feel about this? Not how you feel politically, but do you feel that your voice is heard? Ideally, the Electoral College vote should mirror its constituents wishes. This is our system, created by our founding fathers, and should stress the importance of voting for your Senators and Congressmen (or Congresswomen).
How do you feel about this? Not how you feel politically, but do you feel that your voice is heard? Ideally, the Electoral College vote should mirror its constituents wishes. This is our system, created by our founding fathers, and should stress the importance of voting for your Senators and Congressmen (or Congresswomen).
Posted in these groups: 
Election 2016
Voting
Election 2016 Voting
Posted >1 y ago
Responses: 19
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SPC(P) Jay Heenan - Spec; The way that the "Founding Fathers" originally intended the Electoral College to work was for a select bunch of "the right people" to get together and decide - without any reference to the hoi poloi - who the next President would be.
The "Founding Fathers" would have been absolutely APPALLED at any suggestion that the President of the United States of America should be elected by direct vote of ALL adults (regardless of level of wealth, literacy, or knowledge).
PS - Legally there is absolutely nothing stopping the Electoral College from electing Charles Manson as the President of the United States of America even though his name wasn't on any ballot and he didn't receive a single vote.
The "Founding Fathers" would have been absolutely APPALLED at any suggestion that the President of the United States of America should be elected by direct vote of ALL adults (regardless of level of wealth, literacy, or knowledge).
PS - Legally there is absolutely nothing stopping the Electoral College from electing Charles Manson as the President of the United States of America even though his name wasn't on any ballot and he didn't receive a single vote.
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SPC(P) Jay Heenan
I completely agree COL Ted Mc, I certainly didn't mean to imply that I thought we should elect by popular vote.
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I think the electoral college should be proportiional not winner take all. 3 or 4 small states do that already. Perhaps make APO/FPO locations get some electors as well (unless they vote with their home state.)
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COL Ted Mc
LTC (Join to see) - Colonel; considering their commonality of interest, one could give some thought to making the US military into a constituency which elected its own Representative.
[Unfortunately that sounds a lot too much like the way that membership in the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union were selected. I mean, how undemocratic can you get when there is only one officially endorsed candidate to vote for (the fact that you were likely to know everyone who was seeking to become that candidate either personally or by direct reputation and had a personal vote on who that candidate was going to be is totally irrelevant because everyone knows that - in a REAL democracy - you have to be able to pick between two candidates neither one of which you know anything about and which you had absolutely no input into selecting as candidates).
[Unfortunately that sounds a lot too much like the way that membership in the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union were selected. I mean, how undemocratic can you get when there is only one officially endorsed candidate to vote for (the fact that you were likely to know everyone who was seeking to become that candidate either personally or by direct reputation and had a personal vote on who that candidate was going to be is totally irrelevant because everyone knows that - in a REAL democracy - you have to be able to pick between two candidates neither one of which you know anything about and which you had absolutely no input into selecting as candidates).
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