Wow, I just saw a spot on the local news about the Electoral College. They did one of those things where they framed it in the form of a question which you could call or go online to cast your vote. They do one each day and show the results the next day. The question was “Should we do away with the Electoral College system?”

The topic is in the news because there is a proposal on the Colorado ballot which would allow for the state to split it’s electoral votes according to proportional popular votes. So they were trying to talk about what would happen if every state did that, or if we just used the popular vote and nothing else. Instead of presenting you with both sides of the argument, they just had one “expert” and a bunch of figures.

Essentially, what they ended up saying was that if you got rid of the Electoral College, then we would have nothing to “protect us” from third parties. They said that one of the main effects the EC has is to create a “clear mandate” for a candidate, where the popular vote is usually much less clear. Their example was that Bill Clinton received only 43% of the popular vote, but 69% of the EC vote (or thereabouts, I forget).

They neglected what, to me, is the logical next step in that line of reasoning though, that the mandate which the EC creates is artificial. It does not proportionately reflect the will of the people. Just look at good old GW, who lost the popular vote. But the main thing that pissed me off was the way they portrayed third parties as basically a threat, and a stumbling block towards having an effective government.

The hidden argument (subtext) they were making was that if third parties get too much power, then we will never be able to agree on anything at all. Which is exactly why we SHOULD have them. The whole reason our government is split into branches is so that the branches have to fight each other and progress is slowed. The whole reason the Legislative branch is bicameral (split into two houses) is so that there is MORE debate and MORE disagreement and its harder for a bill to get passed into law. This is what checks and balances is all about. It’s designed to intentionally cripple the government, so that it cannot quickly gain too much power. Of course, these types of things are exactly what has been completely crippled over the past four years.