My proposal for Electoral College reform.

[rockymountaindem]

It would take a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College completely, and I think the highly populated states would vote against such an amendment, so we may as well try to make it as equitable as possible. Here's my plan...

Instead of a winner-take-all format, could the states all decide to award their EC votes based on percentages? This would make margin of victory more important. I'll give a simple example using some small states. Kerry is definitely not going to win North Dakota. However, if he were to get 33% of the vote there, he could still get one EC vote. Likewise, Bush isn't going to win Rhode Island. However, he could win 1 vote in that state by getting 33% of the vote there. This would provide incentive for candidates to campaign in states where they might not win, but could get close, ex. Kerry's plan to air ads in LA and CO. This plan also protects the influence of highly populated states, because they would still have the most votes to win regardless.

I wouldn't want to see what they do in Maine (awarding some votes based on congressional district wins) applied nationwide, because that would make gerrymandering all the worse.

The only major problem I see here is rounding, and perhaps we could tackle that problem by rounding in the challenger's favor, helping to negate the incumbency advantage.

What do you think?

[buddy22600]

1. too many elections would get thrown into the

House of reps

[qazplm]

2. one of the ideas

is to do it by congressional district...so if you win a congressional districts votes you get an EC vote for that district.

[rockymountaindem]

3. Gerrymandering is bad enough already.

[SaveElmer]

4. Actually it is the small states that would object

to abolishing the electoral college. They are over-represented. Big states would love it.

[ejcastellanos]

5. There will never be electoral college reform

The Constitution was adopted by 13 colonies that became the states in the United States of America. The people don't elect the president, the States do. I cannot see how any small state would be willing to go along with reforming the electoral college. The reform could very well reduce the influence they have on the process.

I don't understand why people don't recognize that we have a republican form of government with indirect represenations. We do not have a direct democracy and many people want to reform the electoral college so that it represents a more direct form of democracy.

There is no way in my mind I can see a number of the less populated states supporting any measure that would make them have less ability to determine the chief executive of the country. Candidates would bypass great swaths of the country if there were direct election of the president. The candidates would focus on the major media markets to gain the corresponding votes in those areas.

Conservatives would oppose reform on two grounds, one it is a drastic change to the system and two it could very well end up disenfranchising them. Many of the red states would become irrelevant.

Perhaps more importantly, we should focus on reducing the power of the executive branch that has been accumulating for the past 140 years. Hmmm, why is it that Republicans seem to favor smaller government in the form of greater power concentrated in the executive branch? Congress should take back the power it was granted in the Constitution and shouldn't abdicate its responsibilities onto the president.