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Incompetent · 3 Nov 2004

Majority fraud: running up the vote The direct election system is subject to types of fraud that are impossible under the Electoral College system. With direct elections, there would be an incentive for Nebraska to produce more Republican votes or Massachusetts more Democratic ones. Majority fraud would be hard to combat, because the majority party would also be responsible for counting the votes.The Electoral College system concedes some states to the party in power, but it eliminates any reason to run up the vote.
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Well, one would hope that the people counting the votes would always be card carrying centrists who don't belong to any party, and thus have much less reason to drive up the votes either way.

Minority Presidents: Under the present system, the winning candidate has to win outright at least twice; first in the party convention, then in the Electoral College. Direct election makes minority rule even more likely than the present process.
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Swamped with candidatesThe winner-take-all feature of the Electoral College system discourages third party efforts. In contrast, a direct election system encourages candidates to run, simply because they can. The apparent voter choice among a huge number of candidates is a dangerous illusion. In practice, well organized minorities have a very good chance to achieve the highest or second-highest share, advancing to a run off round.
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There isn't any reason that a direct democracy couldn't have a system in place to keep people from running just because they feel like it. You can't just jump on the ballot for fun now, abolishing the electorate wouldn't change that. Besides, right now you practically have the illusion of a majority rather then a real one, barely any serious issue can be distilled down to two sides and quite a few people these days don't vote because they like a canidate, they vote because they don't like the other guy more. It would be alot nicer if everyone didn't have to be either a liberal or conservative, but could both form and hold there own opinions without anyone who disagrees with them hurling a label at them likes its a insult.

Tedious tallies
The Electoral College vote tends to be less in doubt than the popular electoral vote, for two reasons:

* Only a few states will have close races, even if the national vote is close, and
* The electoral vote tends to magnify the margin of the victor.

Under a direct election system, a close election nationwide could realistically depend upon absentee ballots, or upon recounts anywhere. In a direct election, any of the 160,000 polling places in the U.S. could affect the outcome.

The last direct election proposal provided that the election results should be certified no less than thirty days after the election. Under the present system, even close elections have rarely been in doubt past the next day. The thirty-day limit was included no doubt to put a practical limit on the challenges that could be made. But it also indicates that in a close election, the outcome may be in doubt for up to a month.
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Ohnoes, we can't just tell everyone there vote matters, now we have to actually count them!!!!11one

Citizens left out
Under the Electoral College system, only U.S. citizens who are residents of a state may vote for presidential electors, because it is the states, not the citizens, who elect the president.Under a direct election system, how could the U.S. legitimately deny the vote to citizens who are residents of U.S. Territories and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico?
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I find it funny that it goes from "What, you actually want us to COUNT the absentee ballots" to "Citizens left out."

And a good devils advocate is always a good thing, if you can't defend your opinion, you probably need to go back and try and figure out why you have it in the first place.

Black Drop · 3 Nov 2004

Incompetent said:

And a good devils advocate is always a good thing, if you can't defend your opinion, you probably need to go back and try and figure out why you have it in the first place.
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That's the best thing I've read all day!

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