POLL: Majority says Electoral College system is fair


The vast majority of respondents in the latest unscientific poll at SharylAttkisson.com say the U.S. Electoral College system is “fair.”

The Electoral College was established under the U.S. Constitution. The system has come under attack by some who say the president of the U.S. should be chosen based on the popular vote, instead. President Trump won an overwhelming electoral victory in 2016, but Hillary Clinton, his Democrat opponent, won the popular vote.

Some argue that if presidential elections were based on popular vote, it doesn’t necessarily mean the same candidate would have won a popular vote victory because the candidates would campaign differently, focusing on different states and regions of the country.

Others argue the Electoral College system is outdated.

In our poll, 99% of those who responded would stick with the Electoral College.

The Electoral College system is:

99% Fair

1% Unfair or outdated

>1% I don’t know

https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/about

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22 thoughts on “POLL: Majority says Electoral College system is fair”

    1. Yes! That is the problem here in Washington state. The largest city (Seattle and the surrounding areas) is largely liberal and decides everything for the rest of the state, which is largely conservative. If we had electoral college at the state level, things would look mighty different, indeed!

  1. Anthony J Codispoti

    I took a closer look at the 2016 popular vote results by county. I was amazed to learn that virtually all of Hillary Clinton’s margin in the popular vote could be narrowed down to just TWO COUNTIES: LA County in California and Cook County in Illinois. If you were to throw in Clinton’s margin in the District of Columbia, it accounted for more than her popular vote margin. It’s a stark textbook example illustrating exactly why there is and there ought to be an Electoral College.

  2. The electoral college is a primary reason that we are the United States. The sparsely populated agrarian states would not have joined the union if they did not have some protection from the tyranny of the more densely populated states.

      1. And if they will pool their electoral votes and dedicate them to the candidate who wins the most popular votes, they might be legitimate. To continue with h is antiquated system that chooses candidates according to their use to the two political parties ignores the wishes of the public and makes some states’ votes more powerful than others. This is not true democracy. It is the use of an oligarchy to make decisions and impose them on us. Check out the National Popular Vote webpage to learn more and find out how you can help assure that all our votes are counted equally and our chosen candidate is elected.

  3. Sorry to throw a wet towel on your survey, but aren’t most of us who are attracted to your wonderful program far from the left of the political ideology that wants to change the constitution and replace the electoral college?

  4. stuinmt (Stuart Reynolds)

    Agree with Ray Williams.
    Furthermore, we should repeal the XVII Amendment and return the appointment of senators to their respective legislatures, and reinstitute Federalism.

    1. I am sure Ronald Reagan would appreciate your statement. Sure return the country to medieval times and let the legislatures of rich white men make decisions for all of us. You are living in the wrong era.

  5. Those who oppose the Electoral College are ignorant fools who need to take the time to read the Federalist Papers and learn the intent of the founders when they wrote the Constitution.

    1. Arthur lives in a terrible country, surrounded by the ignorant fools who don’t agree with him. Arthur, please answer a question from an ignorant fool: why does the vote of a resident of Wyoming count for three times as the vote of a resident of California?

      1. James stop with the lies and liberal propaganda.

        Each vote cast in the Electoral College is one vote.

        If you want to talk about unbalanced influence on the EC, then let’s talk about California. That state has 18% of the population but accounts for almost 25% of the votes necessary to get the required numbers of votes in the EC.

        But please inform us, you ignorant fool, why residents of liberal enclaves want to disenfranchise millions of voters and why you’re so afraid a verifiable and fair election?

    2. We all know their intent: voters must be white males who own at least 40 acres of land and the rest of us can be damned. It has worked well for our despots but not so well for the 99% of us who work hard to keep a valid democracy alive. It is antiquated and serves to suppress the popular vote. It is time to get over it and pass the National Popular Vote so each vote will count.

  6. The huge popular vote margin for HRC was from a few counties in California and later investigation discovered the ballots were illegally cast … and so it went across the nation in strong Dem strongholds, but it didn’t make a difference thanks to the Electoral College, The Lefties will stop harping about the Electoral College once they realize that it is far easier to win by infiltrating the large cities in 12-15 of the most populous states, and it won’t matter at all what the Red States (if there are any left) have to say.. It is by the Grace of God that Michigan went for Trump in 2016, by very slim margin (300 or so).. In 2018, thousands of illegal votes were cast in Detroit from the Walking Dead, and that was enough to flip a Red State Blue for the Leftist Matriarchy!!
    The Electoral College is desperately needed for STate Govt. elections, or the popular vote will ensure there is nothing but Blue across the Land for all levels of governance.. NOthing was corrected for 2018 and likely never will be. Our destiny is Globalism, no sovereignty, no individual freedom, no rule of law, just involuntary servitude to the Oligarchs who know what’s best for us All. To that, I say, BAH HUMBUG!

    1. Then you must agree that true democracy requires votes from everyone to be counted equally. That is the goal of the National Popular Vote movement, not voter suppression and select party functionaries making the final decision. The electoral college as it is now simply allows the popular vote to be basically ignored and the party machinery to elect presidents we don’t want who destroy our democracy. Get real and read up on this issue.

  7. I guess it depends how you define the term “fair”. I believe that it corresponds to “equitable” which the Electoral College is decidedly not. Using 2014 population data, a Presidential vote in Wyoming is 3.6 times as impactful as one in California. How is that in any way fair? Is the President supposed to care 3.6 times more about Wyoming voters than about California voters?
    This is the first time that I can remember any defense of the Electoral College being based on the concept of fairness. In fact, every defense that I have read reasons that the whole purpose of the Electoral College is to be unfair to voters in populous states. The claim is that this unfairness is to keep those populous states from undue influence in the election. So we are supposed to live with this unfairness in the service of a greater good. The previous comments all have agreed with this assertion yet have still claimed that the system is fair. These two viewpoints seem incompatible to me.
    While it’s undeniably true that more populous states would have more influence in a popular-vote election, I have never heard an argument as to why that would necessarily be bad. The current system is unfairly weighted to the less populous states. Why is that good? It may be, but I have never seen an argument to that effect. It’s just said as if it’s true with no justification needed.
    I believe the Electoral College exacerbates political divides. For example, Ted Cruz disrespected practically the entire state of New York with his “New York values” comment during one 2016 primary debate. He could do this because he knew that he wasn’t going to carry New York no matter what in the general election, and it didn’t matter if he lost it by 10 votes or 10,000,000 votes. So he can play to his conservative base by using divisive language (implying that New Yorkers don’t have the values that real Americans have) to denigrate people in New York without causing him any political harm – indeed I imagine that distancing himself from that part of the United States and thereby endearing himself to his conservative base was exactly what he intended. He felt that he gained more than he lost. He couldn’t have been so dismissive if all of the votes in New York had counted. Hardly seems like the kind of inclusive language I would expect from a President. But the current system encourages that kind of behavior.
    Without the Electoral College, all of this talk about Red States and Blue States would at least be tamped down since state boundaries would no longer have any significance in the election.
    If you are a Democrat living in Alabama or a Republican living in California, you know that your vote will have exactly zero impact. That can’t be good for civic engagement.
    And Electoral College defenders are forgetting that that there already is a government institution (the Senate) that is based on equal representation for each state. This negatively impacts the more populous states even more than the Electoral College system does (the Wyoming to California ratio in the Senate is 66:1, i.e. each California senator represents 66 times more people than each Wyoming senator). Why do we need to have two such institutions?
    And, really, the whole concept of “state” is pretty artificial. How would things differ if there were only one Dakota or one Carolina, for example (other than changing the Electoral College makeup and, hence, influencing the election outcome)? Or if Vermont and New Hampshire combined?
    Those who use the “Founding Fathers” argument for the Electoral College must admit how different today’s college is from what the founders envisioned. They saw the Electoral College as really a debating assembly where all the smart people would get together and decide who should be President. Now it’s a rubber stamp. Remember that originally the electors were appointed by the state legislators, not elected by the people. Since that’s the system that the Founding Fathers designed, should we go back to that?
    The Electoral College isn’t the worst system ever designed. But it certainly isn’t fair.

    1. Yet another pack of lies by the liberals.

      First, California has 18% of the population in the US. yet it has almost 25% of the votes necessary to secure a win for President. That is unbalanced representation and influence.

      It’s interesting to hear liberals now support “majority rule”. Let’s expand that to all areas of our republic. The majority are, or were, against same sex marriage, yet the courts stood up for minority rights and forced it’s legality on the majority. Shall we go with majority rule in all areas or just when it’s convenient for liberals?

      It’s interesting that you deride a conservative for comments made, yet have remained silent on “a basketfull of deplorables in flyover country” or people “clinging to their guns and God” (the last from a President who attended a church for decades where the preacher preached God***n America), or a President labeling all law enforcement as racist killers. Hardly the kind of inclusive language we expect from our President or candidates.

      Your lie about campaigning to all voters in a popular election has already been disproven. Candidates would focus on the largest population centers, all liberal enclaves, and ignore 99% of the population. In your scenario the voters in Wyoming and Vermont and New Hampshire would all be disenfranchised because (like you mentioned, and probably the only truth in your rant) they would be the “Democrat living in Alabama or the Republican living in California”.

      How would things differ is there wasn’t one California? That we divided up that state into one liberal enclave and 4 or 5 with real Americans?

      The EC is working exactly as the Founding Fathers and the Constitution designed it to. A check on the tyranny of the majority. A means for ensuring that the voice of everyone has a say, not just those with the loudest voice

      Political division isn’t caused by the EC. The EC is just an excuse for the acting out of those who were told “no”. It’s caused by those who didn’t get their way and think that name calling and whining will sway people to your side. It’s caused by those who demand to impose your will on others and failed.

      Why is it that liberals hate free and fair elections? Why is it that liberals want to disenfranchise millions of voters outside the coastal liberal enclaves?

    2. I agree. The solution is to pass the National Popular Vote in enough states to give us the 270 electoral votes to elect the president according to the popular vote only. There will be no distinction between large or small states, urban vs rural, etc., first conventions or last. Just the vote of t he people will count. How can that be anything but fair? And it won’t take a constitutional amendment to make it happen. Visit the National Popular Vote webpage to learn more and help us get legislators to sign onto the compact and you will see a president elected by the people. It that results in blue states nationally, that will be better for the people, not the corporations anyway.

  8. Our less populated states (and their cities) may not remain so in the coming years if illegal immigration rates keep ticking up. That sparsely populated state today may not remain so tomorrow and it is why the Electoral College MUST remain. The House has representation adjusted by population and the Senate system is the bulwark against tyranny in the House. (Which we are witnessing today thanks to the Squad and the Left’s hatred of this President.) I don’t want the brainwashed masses (thanks to a dishonest and thoroughly corrupt MSM) in major cities deciding our elections.
    The demographics of a city, state, and county can change on a dime, (thanks to refugee re-settlements here in the US) and we are witnessing the Democrat party effect a wholesale overhaul of our electorate with Open Border policies and the demonization of citizens who want our borders secure and immigration laws enforced. Democrat Eric Holder is openly helping to re-district precincts in critical states like VA to help Democrat candidates. Go Here: https://democraticredistricting.com/
    Why would any Democrat candidate campaign outside of NYC and California and a few other locations if we abolish the Electoral College?
    Democrats lost the last election and look for all sorts of ways to make sure it does not happen again. (And ways to overturn the votes of 63 million people) They don’t realize that their ideas are horrible and they had a terrible candidate. The last three years have been such a waste. My own Rep can’t bring herself to say that any Trump policy has been effective. Working with the President on is just not in their DNA. Republicans are taking notes……and we can expect more of the same should the office change.
    Tampering with a voting system that has elected both Democrats and Republicans over the years to effect “the change you want to see for your political benefit” seems ill advised.

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