Electoral College belongs in 1787: John Conyers Jr.

[progressoid]

With the Electoral College meeting Monday to formally elect Donald Trump as our 45th president, it is time that we reconsider whether a political compromise approved in 1787 bears any principled or practical reason for being today.

Several serious concerns were raised at a forum I organized earlier this month featuring leading experts in history, constitutional law and political science. Most obviously, we learned that the Electoral College is anti-democratic. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has so far received over 2.8 million more votes nationwide than Trump — the largest divergence between the popular and electoral votes in history. This is the second time there has been a divergence between the popular vote and the Electoral College in the last five elections, and the fifth time that a popular-vote loser won the White House.

We also learned that the Electoral College is rooted in slavery. At our forum, Yale law professor Akhil Amar explained that slave states opposed direct elections for president because “in a direct election system, the North would outnumber the South, whose many slaves . . . could not vote. But the Electoral College . . . instead let each Southern state count its slaves, albeit with a two-fifths discount, in computing its share of the overall count.”

Our forum also made clear that many of the arguments in defense of the Electoral College are anachronistic. Electoral College defenders argue that it serves to check the passions of ordinary voters, pointing to Alexander Hamilton’s view in The Federalist Papers that the Electoral College would help ensure “that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.”

Rogue Electoral College? Don't count on it: Our view

However, the Electoral College does not meet to deliberate about who should be president. The general public does not even know the electors’ identities, and the Electoral College’s choice for president has largely been reduced to mere formality. Members of the Electoral College are party loyalists who are subject to various state laws, some of which prohibit them from even exercising independent judgment. This is why over time there have been very few faithless electors, and none that have decided an election’s outcome.

...http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/12/19/electoral-college-trump-democracy-states-column/95587592/

[no_hypocrisy]

1. If the EC is going to rubberstamp the votes of states, then it must exist

to avoid having any or all of the 50 states challenge the popular vote, perhaps all the municipalities of those states and/or the multiple districts and machines of those municipalities. It's for expedience -- and unfortunately, manipulation of the will of the voters.

[yeoman6987]

2. All it takes is a constitutional amendment

We have done it 44 times. At least start the process. We may be surprised and it goes through. Talking about it does nothing.

[TDale313]

3. "All it takes..."

Sorry, I seriously want to see it abolished, but a constitutional amendment is going to be really, really difficult. The small, conservative states that benefit from this are not gonna willing take their thumbs off the scale. They know as well as we do that if you go popular vote, republicans lose the presidency for decades.

[treestar]

4. We should not let it be reduced to formality

this election should teach us that. If it's going to determine the winner, then we should vote for the electors and not the candidates as it provides for. If it is intended to prevent a demagogue from getting the presidency, then they should do it, not be bound by the popular vote.

What a lazy country this is. We should have gotten rid of it long ago.