Dwain Northey (Gen X)

The Pros and Cons of the Electoral College

Updated on April 2, 2023

Written by Amelia Josephson

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When you go to the polls to vote for a president every four years, you’re participating in an indirect vote. Why is it indirect? Well, because of the electoral college. Some say the electoral college is key to maintaining what’s good about U.S. politics, while others want to abolish the institution in favor of a more direct system. Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of the electoral college in the context of modern American politics.

Advantages of the Electoral College

The electoral college has a number of pros and cons, depending on where you fall on the political spectrum. While it prevents an easy-to-understand election that would draw from a popular vote, it was originally enacted to give every state its fair say in who gets elected to the highest office in the country. Here are the most relevant benefits:

1. It Keeps Smaller States Relevant in National Politics

Imagine a U.S. presidential election with no electoral college. If only the popular vote mattered, candidates might concentrate their energies on densely populated metro areas like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. Depending on your perspective, that might sound like a change for the worse. It would mean candidates would have little reason to consider, say, the state of farming in Iowa or the opiate crisis in New Hampshire.

One reason that some analysts support the electoral college is that it encourages candidates to pay attention to small states and not just get out the vote in big, populous states and cities. The electoral college gives small states more weight in the political process than their population would otherwise confer.

2. It Provides a Clean, Widely Accepted Ending to the Election (Most of the Time) 

The electoral college, proponents say, makes U.S. presidential elections less contentious by providing a clear ending. There’s no need for a national recount when you have an electoral college.

If one state has voting issues, you can just do a recount in that state rather than creating national upheaval. And to win, a candidate must garner the support of voters in a variety of regions. That means whoever wins the presidency must build a truly national coalition. This, in turn, helps promote national cohesion and the peaceful transfer of power between presidents and helps keep the nation’s political system stable.

3. It Makes it Easier for Candidates to Campaign 

If you’re a Democrat running for president, you don’t have to spend too much time or money wooing voters in left-leaning California. The same goes for Republican candidates and right-leaning Texas.

The fact that certain states and their electoral votes are safely in the column of one party or the other makes it easier and cheaper for candidates to campaign successfully. They can focus their energies on the battleground states. Some argue that getting rid of the electoral college could make American presidential elections even more expensive than they already are, exacerbating what some see as America’s campaign finance problem.

Disadvantages of the Electoral College

In politics, there are very few things that make everyone happy. The electoral college is no different as there are a few cons that need to be considered. Here are the most important cons to the electoral college.

1. It Can Make People Feel Like Their Votes Don’t Matter

In the electoral college, it’s true that not every vote matters. A Democrat in California who gets stuck in traffic and doesn’t make it to the polls probably shouldn’t beat themselves up. The same can’t be said for a voter in Florida, Ohio or another swing state.

U.S. voter participation rates are already quite low. Some argue that eliminating the electoral college would be an easy way to raise them and boost Americans’ engagement in the political process.

2. It Gives Too Much Power to Swing States

If you follow U.S. federal elections and you don’t live in a swing state, you might find yourself grumbling that some voters get all the attention. If you don’t live in a swing state like Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and more, you probably won’t see as many ads, have as many canvassers come to your door or get polled as frequently. The electoral college means that swing states – which aren’t necessarily the most representative of the country as a whole – get most of the attention.

And even within swing states, certain counties are more competitive than others. That means voters in those counties are courted particularly hard. If that offends your sense of fairness and you think that candidates should fight for the votes of all Americans, you may oppose the electoral college. In fact, this result has ended up creating the same thing that the electoral college is supposed to prevent, which is candidates focusing on a few specific areas.

3. It Can Clash With the Popular Vote

Remember the 2000 election when Al Gore won the popular vote, but lost the electoral college, and therefore the presidency? That was enough to turn some Americans off from the electoral college forever.

If the U.S. eliminates the electoral college, that scenario would never happen again. The potential for the electoral college to conflict with the result of the popular vote is one of the most commonly cited arguments against the electoral college.

4. There Remains the Possibility of “Rogue Electors”

Many states have no law requiring electors to vote the way their state has voted. Electors in these states are “unbound.” Therefore, the electoral college is based on a set of traditions that electors vote the way their state votes.

However, there’s always the possibility of “rogue” or “faithless” electors who could give a vote to a candidate who didn’t win the elector’s state. This also worries critics of the electoral college.

Pro or Con: It Keeps the Two-Party System Strong

This one is either a pro or a con, depending on your point of view. The electoral college helps keep the two-party system strong. It makes it very hard for a third party to break through at the national level and increases the risk that a third party could spoil a candidate’s chance of winning, which in turn discourages people from voting for third-party candidates.

Some analysts credit the two-party system with keeping American politics stable and driving candidates to the political center, while others would like to see a multi-party system takes hold in the U.S. So, depending on where you stand with regard to the two-party system, you’ll probably have corresponding feelings about the electoral college.

The Bottom Line

Will the U.S. decide to eliminate the electoral college? It’s hard to say. There’s a movement to encourage states to split their electors in proportion to the percentage of the state vote that each candidate gets. While that wouldn’t eliminate the electoral college, it would change the winner-take-all nature of our system and the way candidates think about state campaigns. Time will tell whether that reform – and others – come to pass.

Lyle Northey (Silent/Boomer)

Not in Power still seemingly pulling the strings.

The puppet master seems to have some puppets internal to some key places in the government and he is pulling strings to have them do all kinds of things to interfere with the current administration. When they are discovered what will their fate be? Should it be dismissed, absolutely. Should it be tried for internal espionage, possibly. Should it be incarceration , by all means. Seems harsh, maybe it is one thing to have a job and not agree with the boss and another to do everything you can to cause grief for the boss. 

  Trump was supposedly taken to the Federal Detention Center in Miami along with someone else he was working with at home and some documents were taken as well. There seems to be information to name persons working inside the government that are loyal to Trump and have been trying to help him during all these legal hearings. Guess we will find out as to who has been sleeping with who.

  Monday begins with no news of Trump being locked up so we move on. His gag order has been put back in place not that it will do much good. His attitude is that he can do as he pleases anytime and anywhere he chooses to do anything. His life has been one of little responsibility and getting away with screwing over everyone that gets in his way. Hopefully this segment of his miserable existence will end with his head in the toilet and his feet in the air.

  It has been noted that he is a vulgar man and he is not alone in that even for someone that lived in the White House. LBJ was pretty impressed with his own equipment and was supposed to have been quite willing to show it off whenever the occasion arose. Don’t know what there is about someone in a power job that they seem to think everyone needs to be impressed either by what they have in their pants or with how they are sleeping with.

  Colorado is having a trial to determine if Trump is even allowed to run for office again according to the Constitution. He should not be and that should be the finding, in that state and every state as well as the entire United States. The stacked Supreme Court is of course very likely to see it differently. If they let him run and hopefully he loses then they should be tried for supporting an insurrectionist and removed from office. 

  The gag order has been reinstated and of course this is violating his 1st Amendment Rights. It is amazing that the people that have the least respect for the Constitution are the ones that try to use it to protect themselves from justice. They wish to destroy our way of life and yet they wrap themselves in our flag and use Constitutional law to attempt to  further their efforts.

  Why can’t they come up with a flag of their own, something appropriate say a big turd falling out of a Rhino’s ass. That sounds about right to me. Trump is such an expert at all things you would think he could come up with a way to send his venomous messages out telepathically and not have to worry about being censured. 

  If the lawsuit in Colorado and possibly other states to keep him off the ballot makes it to the Supreme Court and is upheld, as it should be, will we be able to go after all members of Congress that have supported this action? Making an example of these people would send a message to the world that we have not yet fallen and that we are still a strong viable nation.

Feel free to comment, disagree, agree, rebuff all commentary is welcome.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Anyone else remember in July of 2018 that The Donald at a meeting of NATO referred to himself as a Stable Genius. I don’t know what that means to this day but still the Orange Blowhard is out in the world touting his ‘mental superiority’ to the MAGA Minions.

The Twice Impeached, Four times Indicted, Convicted Sex Offender, for some reason has a percentage of this nation bamboozled into believing he is some kind of messianic figure that is here to save them. When it is painfully obvious to the remainder of the population and most of the citizens of the planet that he is a narcissistic menace that is only good at one thing and that is manipulating the media. For this trait I blame the media because the best way to disarm a narcissist is to ignore them, but they continue to shine a spotlight on his bloated carcass.

Back to the ‘Stable Genius’ he loves to say things that he, I assume, he thinks that only he knows. He claims to know more about a lot of things, here is a short list.

• Campaign finance: “I think nobody knows more about campaign finance than I do, because I’m the biggest contributor.” (1999.)
• TV ratings: “I know more about people who get ratings than anyone.” (October 2012.)
• ISIS: “I know more about ISIS than the generals do.” (November 2015.)
• Social media: “I understand social media. I understand the power of Twitter. I understand the power of Facebook maybe better than almost anybody, based on my results, right?” (November 2015.)
• Courts: “I know more about courts than any human being on Earth.” (November 2015.)
• Lawsuits: “[W]ho knows more about lawsuits than I do? I’m the king.” (January 2016.)
• Politicians: “I understand politicians better than anybody.”
• The visa system: “[N]obody knows the system better than me. I know the H1B. I know the H2B. … Nobody else on this dais knows how to change it like I do, believe me.” (March 2016.)
• Trade: “Nobody knows more about trade than me.” (March 2016.)
• The U.S. government system: “[N]obody knows the system better than I do.” (April 2016.)
• Renewable energy: “I know more about renewables than any human being on Earth.” (April 2016.)
• Taxes: “I think nobody knows more about taxes than I do, maybe in the history of the world.” (May 2016.)
• Debt: “I’m the king of debt. I’m great with debt. Nobody knows debt better than me.” (June 2016.)
• Money: “I understand money better than anybody.” (June 2016.)

• Infrastructure: “[L]ook, as a builder, nobody in the history of this country has ever known so much about infrastructure as Donald Trump.” (July 2016.)
• Sen. Cory Booker: “I know more about Cory than he knows about himself.” (July 2016.)
• Borders: Trump said in 2016 that Sheriff Joe Arpaio said he was endorsing him for president because “you know more about this stuff than anybody.”
• Democrats: “I think I know more about the other side than almost anybody.” (November 2016.)
• Construction: “[N]obody knows more about construction than I do.” (May 2018.)
• The economy: “I think I know about it better than [the Federal Reserve].” (October 2018.)
• Technology: “Technology — nobody knows more about technology than me.” (December 2018.)
• Drones: “I know more about drones than anybody. I know about every form of safety that you can have.” (January 2019.)
• Drone technology: “Having a drone fly overhead — and I think nobody knows much more about technology, this type of technology certainly, than I do.” (January 2019.)

Remember, Windmills cause cancer, now the wind turbines are killing whales, and we should drink Bleach, this list is endless.

Recently, and to date this is my favorite, he bragged at a campaign event that. “United States… that’s US you know like us, all of us, I don’t think anyone ever noticed that. I am for the United States, so I am for US.”

WOW he is a Genius no person under the age of 6 years old ever realized the United States when stated only using the letters U, S, was the same as the word referring to a group of people, us. With this level of mental prowess this man should absolutely have access to the nuclear codes.

But Biden is old…

Lyle Northey (Silent/Boomer)

Threats of violence are causing law enforcement to hesitate in doing what they should do and would have done in any other case. A threat by itself is not much but when it has the backing of potential consequence of any sort then it has teeth.

  This is the same tactic that is used by someone that wants to put a superior in a guarded position by claiming they are prejudiced on racial issues. It works both ways as long as the two of them are of different races.  It is also a great threat for sexual harassment and is used fairly often in the military, many times with good cause. 

  The only way to deal with any of these threats is head on. If someone is about violence, let them know that you are aware of their threat and that all authorities that deal with such things are being advised that you have so stated and that you will be first on the list for whatever they might dream up if you are harmed. Same thing goes for the racial problems or the sexual problems, make sure that the people that deal with these types of situations are informed of the contact you have received in regards to such allegations.

  Even a bully does not want to be detained for questioning because someone got beat up, and if he has threatened that person he is going to have to prove he did not do it or send someone else to do it. The other situations usually can be flipped on their heads pretty quickly by having the person making the allegation go and have to substantiate it. The results can be quite unpleasant for the person making false statements.

  There are situations that the allegations are in fact real and then they need to be investigated and dealt with appropriately. Many that are charged with investigating such things start with a preconceived idea of who is telling the truth or not and that can be from personal knowledge or personal like or dislike of someone. 

  It is a sad statement that faith in the word of our government officials is so poor that a loudmouth bully can cause people to pick up arms and risk life and limb, careers and futures to go to that person’s pity party. Truth be told it is even sadder that some pretty intelligent people sailed on that sinking boat and are still trying to make it go. Common sense and logic should tell them that they have a 99% chance of failure in this and for a 1% fluke it just isn’t worth the effort.

  Now Mr. Trump is still claiming that the whole world is against him and that he is the victim of a great conspiracy and that as a former President he can not be held accountable. Yet in the same breath he claims that Biden can be, but then that is because Biden was not elected he stole the election and all the rest of the mad men’s deluge. Really sad that mental problems seem to be catching up with him as his speeches turn into rants that go off into things like not being able to buy fly paper etc. 

  As to the threat language some would say that it is a 1st amendment right to say what you want, my take, as soon as you make a comment about doing away with the Constitution, the rights there in just vanished as far as you are concerned. No protection under that law.