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LINK Most Americans support using the popular vote to decide U.S. presidents : NPR

Most Americans support using the popular vote and not the electoral college vote to select a president, according to data from the Pew Research Center.

About 63% of Americans support using the popular vote, compared to 35% who would rather keep the electoral college system.

Approval for the popular vote is up from January 2021, when 55% of Americans said they back the change; 43% supported keeping the electoral college at that time. ...

snytiger6 9 Aug 10
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6 comments

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1

It might prove interesting if we ditched the electoral votes system and went to the other one.

1

And let us remember that, however unlikely, one primary duty of the Electoral College is to protect the Presidency from falling into the hands of a mentally deranged individual. The Electoral College demonstrated they could not, or would not, and did not perform that one vital function when it was apparent and needed. So yeah, the Electoral College should be discarded (but as noted below, when hell freezes over).

3

I second the motion, the Electoral College should, in reality, be named the Electoral Kindergarten and should be eliminated entirely!

2

I completely agree.

Five times in history, presidential candidates have won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College. This has led some to question why Americans use this system to elect their presidents in the first place.

Among the many thorny questions debated by the delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, one of the hardest to resolve was how to elect the president. The Founding Fathers debated for months, with some arguing that Congress should pick the president and others insistent on a democratic popular vote.

Their compromise is known as the Electoral College.

What Is the Electoral College?
The system calls for the creation, every four years, of a temporary group of electors equal to the total number of representatives in Congress. Technically, it is these electors, and not the American people, who vote for the president. In modern elections, the first candidate to get 270 of the 538 total electoral votes wins the White House.

The Electoral College was never intended to be the “perfect” system for picking the president, says George Edwards III, emeritus political science professor at Texas A&M University.

“It wasn’t like the Founders said, ‘Hey, what a great idea! This is the preferred way to select the chief executive, period,’” says Edwards. “They were tired, impatient, frustrated. They cobbled together this plan because they couldn’t agree on anything else.”

Source: [history.com]

3

America’s ruling class will never allow it.

Yep. Actual democracy? Ain't gonna happen without a revolution.

5

And is there a FEASIBLE path to enacting that change? ...Didn't think so.

Not with republicans as they wouldn't win. Republicans have only gotten the most votes once since 1988 for president.

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