Presidential voting

Moving the goalposts

A plan to change the Electoral College carries a whiff of desperation

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Readers' comments




"Instead of trying to thwart the popular vote, Republicans might be a lot better off trying to win it."
This applies equally to their legislation-by-blackmail. Instead of trying to get their way by making obnoxious threats, they ought to persuade enough Democrats in Congress, or elect enough Republicans to Congress, to get their way. That they can't, might suggest to them that the American electorate isn't too fond of Right-wing Radicals. Certainly, there are many more votes to be gained by moving toward the Center than lost on the Right fringe, but it will not be easy. The centrists will not trust readily, and the Yahoos will not go away quietly. But to continue as they are, trying to play the system instead of trying to get the votes, is a guaranteed loser.


I guess the next steps for the Republican Party will be to count "colored" votes as three-fifths of the white man's vote and to roll back women's suffrage (right to vote)

Sir Alex is gone long live Sir Alex

Any plan to do away with the electoral college would be great as the whole swing state concept just relegates such a large proportion of the country to irrelevance in the presidential election.

Howver, the problem with any plan to apportion electors according to congressional district results is that the congressional races are uncompetitive and the districts gerrymandered. No further proof of this is necessary than to look at the disconnect between votes cast for democratic candidates in congressional races (slight majority) and the number of seats won by them (clear republican majority).


In 1950 the US Senate passed the Lodge-Gossett Plan, to eliminate human being electors but keep the electoral college. Every state would apportion its electors to the candidates in proportion to the popular vote for each candidate within that state. The electoral votes would include decimals, out to 4 places to the right of the decimal point. The US House refused to ratify the idea.

WT Economist

The only good argument I've heard for the Electoral College is that it eliminates the need for a nation-wide recount, and repeat of Florida in 2000, in the event of a close election.

As an alternative to pledge all electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote, states could award their electoral votes in proportion to total votes cast.

Now if a state that favors one part were to do so, it would disadvantage that party. But Democratic-leaning New York and Republican-leaning Texas could do a deal to both choose the proportional method, allowing both states to attract more attention than they do now.

liberty lee

Your blithe acceptance of the Democrats' smears concerning the motivation of Republicans in attempting to clean up voter registries is naive but, unfortunately, too typical. Some Republicans probably are racist but here in Massachusetts, racists are much more likely to be found in the genetically-Democrat precincts around Sough Boston.

What you fail to recognize is that Democratic Party organizations used the run up to the last Presidential Election to buy commercial mailing lists and mail everyone on those lists very official-looking voter registration materials. When local registries received thousands of registrations, they were unable to verify them properly and thus just added names to the voter registry.

But who registered? Not only the standard mix of normally apathetic citizens but also unqualified felons, non-citizens (about 12 million of them), parolees, underage people, people who were registering in two different jurisdictions, and, of course, a random assortment of pets and cartoon characters.

We are quite certain that this sort of voter fraud has changed electoral outcomes (JFK's notorious presidential bid and, more recently, Norm Colman's Senatorial bid) and, while I am no Republican, I applaud the Republicans for attempting to stop this sort of fraud.

Lee Nason
New Bedford, Massachusetts


The Electorial College was designed to solve a logistical problem 200 years ago that no longer exists. Today, it's an assault on true democracy.

It does not deserved to be tweaked. It need to be replaced, so everyone has an equal say. The popular vote is the only vote that matters.

Joe Bialek

some delegates felt that a direct popular election would lead to the
election of each state’s favorite son and none would emerge with sufficient
popular majority to govern the country. Other delegates felt that giving
federal legislature. The compromise was to set up an Electoral College

Each state is allocated a number of electors equal to the number of its US
senators (always two) plus the number of its US representatives (which may
change each decade according to the size of each state’s population as
determined in the Census).


amended in order to change the presidential election process. Some promote
eliminating the Electoral College in favor of a direct popular vote for
president while others believe the Electoral College should remain
electoral votes to electoral points and reward each candidate a percentage
individual states to determine who actually gets elected.

As for political primaries the number of delegates awarded in each state


I think your headline should refer to a "whiff of representation". We tried it over two hundred years ago. It worked. We won, you lost. To use the majority of the popular vote to award the totality of the electoral college vote is nonsensical on its surface and represents a residual distrust of the common man.


It is not "unloved"!! I LOVE the electoral college. Without it, we would be even more dominated by the large urban centers. They gave Obama the office this last time.



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