Re:Google’s top news link for ‘final election results’ is a ...
by twblalock on Monday November 14, 2016 @04:36PM
(#12953586)
> People need to understand that the electoral college is working as designed.
The electoral college was indeed intended to ensure representation for all of the states, but it is definitely not working the way it was originally designed.
The original design assumed that the voters would vote for electors by name (i.e. the electors' names would be on the ballot, not the candidates' names), and the chosen electors would exercise independent judgment and vote for the candidate they thought would be the best president. We know this is the original intention, because the people who designed the electoral college wrote about this at length.
When some states started putting the names of the presidential candidates on the ballots instead of the names of the electors, James Madison and the other people who designed the electoral college were very unhappy about it. They felt so strongly about it that they proposed amending the constitution to require that ballots contain the electors' names rather than the candidates' names.
When electors are bound to vote for a certain candidate, it's clear that the electoral college is not working as it was originally designed.
The electoral college was indeed intended to ensure representation for all of the states, but it is definitely not working the way it was originally designed.
The original design assumed that the voters would vote for electors by name (i.e. the electors' names would be on the ballot, not the candidates' names), and the chosen electors would exercise independent judgment and vote for the candidate they thought would be the best president. We know this is the original intention, because the people who designed the electoral college wrote about this at length.
When some states started putting the names of the presidential candidates on the ballots instead of the names of the electors, James Madison and the other people who designed the electoral college were very unhappy about it. They felt so strongly about it that they proposed amending the constitution to require that ballots contain the electors' names rather than the candidates' names.
When electors are bound to vote for a certain candidate, it's clear that the electoral college is not working as it was originally designed.