Talk:United States Electoral College/Archive 6

message: (Though we should note that at the time it was one paragraph long - now it is around 75 paragraphs long)  Don't be afraid to make big changes!Juneappal 20:47, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: older edit, unsigned 

message: This article clearly has a pro-conservative bias as demostrated by the "Losing the popular vote" section.
"In the elections of 1824, 1876, 1888, and 2000, the candidate who received a plurality of the popular vote did not become president. The 1824 election was eventually decided by Congress and thus distinct from the last three which were decided without.
Proponents of the system counter that the Electoral College requires candidates to garner more widespread support throughout the Union; a popular vote system could elect a person who wins by a large margin in a few states over another person who wins by small margins in most states. The latter candidate, the argument goes, has to appeal to a broader array of interests than the former and is less likely to be a demagogue or extremist. However, the Electoral College is not guaranteed to favor the latter candidate in that scenario. In fact, given the 2000 allocation of electors, a candidate could win with the support of just the 11 largest states.
Further, there is currently no such thing as a national "popular vote," because combining the different popular votes into a single vote has serious statistical problems, and claims of the electoral college denying the "popular will" are specious. For example, voters in Massachusetts or Texas in 2000, as their respective states were sure to vote Democrat or Republican for President, were more likely to vote for a third party candidate, or not vote at all, since their vote for their preferred Democrat or Republican candidate was extremely unlikely to change the result. Conversely, a voter in Florida was more likely to vote Democrat or Republican, even if they favored a third-party candidate, because their vote was much more likely to make a difference.
Similarly, the effect might be more likely to affect one candidate than another; for example, as there was a large anti-Bush sentiment in 2004, voters in uncontested states might have been more willing to come out in favor of John Kerry, despite their vote being less likely to make a difference, as a sign of opposition to incumbent George W. Bush.
The effects of this phenomenon are somewhat known, but impossible to quantify in any close election, such as in 2000, when Al Gore had 0.5% more of the cast votes than George W. Bush, far inside the margin of error of any study. Because of the extremely thin margin, the only way to know who would have won the popular vote in 2000 would be to have conducted an actual popular vote."
:Considering the time since this was posted, the lack of a signature, and no specific problems, I am removing the neutrality tag. — BQZip01 — talk 16:55, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pro-Conservative Bias 

message: I'm just slightly confused on how they work, as the article doesn't seem to address it.  It says that the "parties" select the electors, who then pledge to vote for their candidate, and as a result you are really voting for the group of electors who promised to vote for this candidate or whatever, with some variations by state.  But who are you voting for when you vote for an independent?  Do they assign their own electors? Errick 07:23, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, independent candidates put up their own slate of electors in each state, as do all the minor parties (assuming they can get on the ballot). NoSeptember 08:23, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

text: He's right. Each party will typically either select their elector candidates in the primaries or just outright create the list of elector candidates they want.  The actual key thing in this though is satisfying the State laws to actually get your elector candidates' slate on the ballot. Foofighter20x 12:35, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Independent candidates? 

message: I wanted to know why some U.S. Presidents won (like George Bush) without getting the majority of votes from the people. I found that there is an electoral vote and a popular vote in the U.S. and that it is the electoral vote that ultimately decides who will become President. But as to why and how so, I couldn't get it from this article. It's not helpful at all. >_< Berserkerz Crit 17:37, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: People talk about the popular vote like it exists, but don't be fooled.  There is NO popular vote for president.  The Elector College is all that counts.  What's refered to as the popular vote is just historians and news organizations simply adding up the total popular votes for elector candidates within each State to come up with a national total.  It's simply just a big game of "What If..."  The "Popular Vote" is only a footnote to the Electoral College and means NOTHING.  Hope that helps you out! :) Foofighter20x 12:48, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The founding fathers were afraid of the majority, and wanted to make sure that responsible elitists could elect a president that the majority didn't want. This is a feature and not a bug. It was intended to be that way. These elitists want the majority to be irrelevant. J2Thomas 14:10, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: They were afraid of a charlatan who could bamboozles the masses and trick them into electing him. This added one additional layer between the people and the Presidency. The majority certainly isn't irrelevant, but the rights of the states as sovereign entities is also balanced in as well. In short, the electoral votes aligned with the number of members in the House accounts for the popular vote while the 2 additional votes per state coincide with the number in the Senate. This makes for a delicate balancing act between popularity of the people and the support of enough states to carry through the election thereby balancing states rights and popular opinion. Anyone who thinks the majority is irrelevant in elections probably has an axe to grind (from my experience, it's usually those who think Bush stole the election from Gore in 2000). — BQZip01 — talk 19:36, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Confusing Article 

message: This paragraph was removed for being WAY too POV and innaccurate anyway (there is no such thing as a district of Wyoming. If someone wants to move this to a controversies section, go ahead, but it doesn't belong in the general knowledge section.
:It has been argued by advocates for statehood for the District that Wyoming has a smaller population than Washington, D.C. and therefore deserves fewer electors. However, opponents note that Houston, New York City, and Los Angeles each have vastly greater populations than Washington, D.C. and no dedicated electoral votes at all. These cities do, of course, have their population count in the total for their state and thus give their state more electors.
BQZip01 07:41, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Right, the top section of the article - Electoral College mechanics - should not have any discussion about what anyone thinks or proposes to do with the electoral college. It needs to explain as best as possible how the current system works, nothing more. The comment right above this section does point out the importance of first explaining the mechanics before we can discuss advantages and disadvantages lower in the article. NoSeptember 08:30, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I looked at the top section as it appeared on the day this article was a the Today's featured article, and it reminds me that we should look at previous good versions to help keep the current version up to quality (at least the top section which should be a neutral presentation of how the college works). NoSeptember 09:00, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: removed POV paragraph

message: This is my target article for repair this week. I'll try to bring it back into an NPOV position over the next 6 days one section at a time starting in about 8 hours doing this one or two sections a day. Post here and let me know what you think as I go. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Lostinlodos (talk • contribs) 19:51, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  New Target  

message: In addition to the 19th century cases cited in the article where the Presidency was won without a national mandate, the same was true in both 2000 and 2004. It would have been equally true if Gore or Kerry had won. Bush won without the Northeast, the Upper Midwest or the West Coast, and Kerry or Gore would have won without the South or the Interior West.  I feel strongly that this recent regionalism should be addressed in the article - I personally am a Democrat, and the sentence or two I added (that Overacker removed) may have been seen as unfavorable to Bush - that was not my intent - I simply wanted to include that EITHER outcome would have been highly regional, in a manner unprecedented in recent history, and I am amply supported by the election results (availble from the US Federal Elections Commision along with other sources (all ultimately traceable to the Federal Elections Commission - look at www.270towin.com for a simple graphical presentation of the results of any Presidential election ). 2004 was the clearest example of regionalism, because Kerry won New Hampshire (completing the Northeast), but lost New Mexico (losing the Interior West completely). In 2004, the dividing lines are so stark that Kerry won three contiguous blocks of states (two if you count a common lake as a border, because  Pennsylvania, New York and Michigan border Lake Erie), and Bush won one contiguous block - neither one took a state surrounded by states the other took. Looking back,  Clinton won a smattering of "conservative" Southern states (Arkansas, Louisiana, among others) in both 1992 and 1996 in addition to the states a Democrat often takes, Reagan won a huge national mandate including even Massachusetts, and Bush Sr. won several New England and mid-Atlantic states, along with California. All of these recent elections (along with every other election since 1924) showed much less regional division than 2000 and 2004. 1924 showed the South voting as a bloc for John Davis, while the rest of the country elected Calvin Coolidge without the South. 75.68.252.96 17:57, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lack of National Mandate

message: I have given up on trying to understand this article.  It is tough to read and uses too much unexplained American terminology for which I need to read whole new articles, sometimes even wikilinks to these are not provided.--Konstable 07:01, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Your concerns would be better addressed if you could give us specific examples. Foofighter20x 02:59, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  <nowiki>{{confusing}}</nowiki> 

message: The "for and against" arguments, which make up the bulk of this article, should be branched off to their own pages, IMO. When I pick up an encyclopedia I want facts, not debate. This page should address the mundane nuts and bolts of the electoral college, with a bit of history to explain how it came to be -- nothing more, nothing less. The current text could be cut literally in half, without losing anything necessary for an encyclopedic explanation. In fact, much would be gained by such a culling: it would crystallize the facts for uneducated readers without burdening them with rhetoric from either side (unless and until they chose to follow such links), and it would allow those editors who simply cannot adhere to WP:NPOV to have articles of their own where they could freely spout off for or against the system without having to fight each other for territory on the main page. But of course this is a problem with most of Wikipedia, I'm just picking on one article.
:—Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.105.244.240 (talk) May 31, 2007
I salute and agree very strongly with the above user: This article should be excised of opinion/advocacy positions related to the Electoral College. The main article should be as straight-forward an articulation as possible -- as in news reporting -- of its history/founding and rationale articulated by the nation's founders; reference to and as unbiased as possible an explanation of relevant constitutional provisions and amendments (Article II; Amendments 12th, 14th, 20th, 22nd, 25th); presidential elections in which the electoral college was perceived as a relatively significant and controversial issue (1800, 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000 and I would add arguably 1968) and a listing of the various perspectives about the Electoral College today, with very, very straight-forward, short description of the corresponding perspectives: a) retaining with zero changes; b) modifying without substantial change to the "character" of the current system -- appropriate topics could include abolishment of the office of Elector; c)  substantially changing -- separate entries for a host of proposals: national popular vote plan, congressional district plan (Maine and Nebraska), proportional vote.
Dennisjaffe 17:46, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Too flabby to be encyclopedic 

message: I believe WP guidelines instruct us to call groups and people by the name they use for themselves, and to use the names of the groups and derived words in that way also.  For instance, the articles named after the epithets anti-abortion and pro-abortion are redirects to Pro-life and Pro-choice, even though partisans of one group often call members of the other group by the derogatory rather than generally-accepted name.  In this instance, one could make the argument that the epithets are actually more accurate, but in the interest of civility and respect, we (Wikipedians) go with the name preferred by the groups themselves.  Insisting on using "anti-abortion" in place of "pro-life" in an article--barring extenuating circumstances--is at best uninformed and at worst childish and partisan.  The terms "pro-life" and "pro-choice" also have the virtue of being the generally accepted ones.
Similarly, the Democratic Party and most supporters of it use "Democrat" as a noun, and "Democratic" as an adjective.  I recently made some edits to correct the partisan and non-standard use of the phrase "vote Democrat", which User:BQZip01 undid.  Usage of phrases such as "the Democrat party", "the Democrat candidate" and "voting Democrat" started as a deliberate attempt by some Republicans to turn the Democratic Party's name into an epithet; it has since spread to individuals who do not intend to disparage the party but are unaware that the usage is often intended as derogatory and is largely avoided by the press and the organization itself (Note: I'm talking here about the national Democratic Party, not the handful of local organizations that indeed call themselves something like the "Nassau County Democrat Party".  In any event, this is irrelevant as this article deals with the national parties rather than particular local entities.).  The derogatory nature of the usage is sometimes subtle, but just because some do not perceive the POVness of a term does not make the term NPOV.  "Democrat Party" and "vote Democrat" are shibboleths of one particular partisan group and have no place in NPOV Wikipedia articles.
In a nutshell: No one disputes the acceptability and unbiasedness of "vote Democratic" and "Democratic Party".  These are the usages preferred by the organization and its affiliates itself.  "Vote Democrat" and "Democrat Party", on the other hand, are intended by many as epithets and are perceived by many as the political equivalent of second-graders calling someone named Marty "Farty" and someone named Jerry "Fairy".  There are at least two good reasons to use "vote Democratic" and nothing to recommend "vote Democrat".
I don't want to start an edit war, so I want to try to build a consensus that "vote Democratic" is an acceptable usage, and confirm that no consensus exists on whether "vote Democrat" is acceptable, before restoring my earlier edits. --Atemperman 17:08, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Democratic Party 

message: About 2/3 of the article should be deleted.   The article is (supposedly) about the electoral college.  Instead a huge portion of the article is about possible, proposed CHANGES to the electoral system.  Some brief mention of complaints makes sense, disertations on the alternatives makes no sense.  If you go to an article on the V8 engine you don't expect to have two pages about why the Wankle, Steam Piston, Jet and Turbine are all superior, do you?   
A classic example of Wikipedia being a left-wing playground.  I won't try to edit this because obviously a bunch of people are obsessed with this topic.  
People, get a grip.
The Democrats can't even figure out a version of their party name that does not require weird non-standard usage.  The long disertation on the topic claims that certain usages are pejudiced slang. 
Google string search results: 
"Vote Democrat"     347,000
"Vote Democratic"   315,000
"Democrat party"    1,050,000
"Democratic party"  4,760,000
Based on the above I would say that "democratic party" is the normal form, but could not sustain the claim the "Vote Democrat" is a pejoritive.
The Democratic Party web site is "Democrats.org" not "Democratic.org".
: —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.225.84.230 (talk) June 9, 2007
::For one, Google searches being used to support particular positions on Wikipedia are a classic case of "if all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail"--it's a facile way of getting data of some kind, but rarely is any argument made as to why this data is relevant.  Related to this is that if you look at the sites that "vote democrat" returns, most of them are anti-Democratic partisan sites (well, six of the first ten, at least; I couldn't be bothered to check all million results).  If anything, 63.225.84.230 (the previous, anonymous poster) has helped prove my point that "vote Democrat" is to many people, a partisan epithet.
::"Democrats.org" makes perfect sense since it is the webiste of and for Democrats--it's using "Democrat" as a noun, which is standard and unbiased.
:: I do agree with the above poster, though, that much of the article should be moved into a separate article on proposed changes to U.S. Presidential elections. --Atemperman 20:15, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  article is way out in outer space, full of advocacy for leftist proposals vs. information 

message: In the section "Electing the President and Vice President":
"The Senate votes in the normal manner in this case, not by States. If the Senate is evenly split on the matter, then the sitting Vice President is entitled to cast his tie-breaking vote."
Does this mean that Senate has total 100 votes when it elects Vice President ?
--Siyac 19:20, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, except in the case of a tie. Sorry I didn't see this sooner. — BQZip01 — talk 20:39, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  A question 

message: I would suggest a new structure on broadly the following lines:
#Electoral College mechanics
##Apportionment of electors
##Etc. (Note that although the structure here is sound, the content needs work. For example, the section of apportionment doesn't make it clear that every state automatically gets two Senators regardless of population.) Comment added by — BQZip01 — talk: Uh, the electoral college doesn't have anything to do with the election of senators. Reply Yes, it does. Your state's Electors are equal in number to your Represenatives plus your Senators, which means the EC is only partially apportioned by population.  A.J.A. 20:59, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: If you think it could be done better, be bold and do it! :-) — BQZip01 — talk 20:40, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Restructuring and revising 

message: 11:06 A.M.E.S.T. Cape Cod Community College Library, David George DeLancey here,i read the information about the Electoral College ,i do understand it though i did not completely finish the article anyway it was very well understood, at first i ended up here at the talk cession and completed it , i have a few comments towards this portion of wich others have added, on april 30 18:30 it states a President does not seek office i find that strange and hard to beleive, though where it says an office seeks the President well that is sort of understanding maybe if just that was a portion of engagement i would understand it clearer because in order for a President to Hold Office he must want to do so theoredicly it is the possition that is available, i understand.
this is from BQZi 001 16:47,30 May 2007 Popular Vote Should Count in short somewhere within the Electoral System though these are recomedations,.possibly, or just leave the period where it is 
A soveriegn is a state for it is a Bodied and or Balanced Boundery from another giving it a portion of exsistance to the term Law.
Most things are assumed though considered an aknowledgement , an Aknowledgement is something that exsist's ,
If the Presidency is assuming the Position then it is Aknowledged that ,
that Position has aknowledgement to assume , 
if a country club was to listen to my anouncement to a public then a portion sudenly agreed with my proposal then the others whom then feel assumed and positive that it would work would concider it as an electoral or even a decision in controvercy the time of the election within their grasp would have more understanding.
11:26 a.m. e.s.t. for instence take this if i was wanting to be the President i would first want this ofcourse this is a desire many have desires though through time i eventualy think of an arangement towards the position, it is advisable that thinking about the public is a great means and sooner or later one would have to acomplish something of the task an aknowledgemnt for instance.
a long time ago about 1986 i wondered why i had allways since a child wanted to be the President degreeing myself with thought and balance i came up with an idea that everyone over the age of twenty one get five hundred dollars and a sales tax of one percent and a state tax of a percentage from a paycheck towards the needs of that state and disabled persons would get ofcourse more for there needs then the fifth and last thing was the retired persons they would have to achieve a balance of funds to servive and conduct an every day procedure , then i thought of the sale now wait a moment i thought is'nt a sale what i am offering, if so then the five hundred dollars would the have to be five hundred and five dollars and five cents this would happen every month ofcourse retired persons and disabled persons get more, in all it's considered a tooling,
a high office would hire a subject to pay and collect taxes now while this is being read ,it is possible that a particular party is just being like the other for instence a Republic and a Democracy if there are one hundred persons in a Ball Room cathing my anouncement though only 82 are aware of it totally then the rest would posibly be still considered a republic and a Democracy would still be of some understanding, though in a sence the allready understood would still be a Democracy wich was lets say available within a republic if this is agreed who then is recognizing it. THANK YOU I SHALL RETURN TILL NEXT TIME David George DeLanceyDavid George DeLancey 15:50, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I gotta say...what? There are so many grammar errors and typos within the above that I think most people are left thinking "WHAT?" Please re-explain using something close to English and appropriate grammar. — BQZip01 — talk 04:48, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

message: I have started to re-write the entire article. If anyone is interested in working with me on this, I have it posted on my blog at [Chronicler's Minutiae]. Only registered users may post, but feel free to post on my page here otherwise. Chronicler3 01:43, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I have moved forward with the re-write. Feel free to comment about it. Chronicler3 02:47, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Re-write and Re-organization of entire article

message: This more properly falls under the heading of Reform Proposals. --Pgva 16:43, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Interstate Compact moved from Alternative Methods section to Reform Proposals section. To explain the reasoning: alternative methods are historical or practiced currently, whereas reform proposals are prospective. --Pgva (talk) 23:17, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Interstate Compact

message: Why isnt the Amar Plan referenced?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.86.115.6 (talk) 21:54, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Amar Plan