Talk:United States Electoral College

Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act of 2022

This 2022 legislation changed a number of aspects of the Electoral process.

The section United States Electoral College#Meetings currently includes:

[...]

The electors certify the Certificates of Vote, and copies of the certificates are then sent in the following fashion:

• One is sent by registered mail to the President of the Senate (who usually is the incumbent vice president of the United States);
• Two are sent by registered mail to the Archivist of the United States;
• Two are sent to the state's secretary of state; and
• One is sent to the chief judge of the United States district court where those electors met.

[...]

In particular rather than "registered mail" , the law now says [https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/4573/text#ide93e7469-13a1-46f5-93f3-856940f78c0f]

“The electors shall immediately transmit at the same time and by the most expeditious method available the certificates of votes so made by them, together with the annexed certificates of ascertainment of appointment of electors, as follows:

So will we see a road rally, mail rockets, drones, and/or delivery robots? Or will an PDF via email suffice? :-)

Lent (talk) 18:27, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Lent (talk) 18:27, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Also changed is the date the electors meet in their respective state legislatures following the presidential election. I've known it to be the "first Monday after the second Wednesday in December" for a number of years, and then I see that the one coming up in 2024 is December 17 (a Tuesday), which is one day later than I thought it would be. Section 106(a) of the law—what I cite here apparently is an early draft of it (a bill at the time)—addresses this. It looks like a fairly straight-forward addition to the "Meeting of electors" section (currently 3.8 in the table of contents), but the old date is mentioned in at least one other place (4.2.4 "Meetings" in the table of contents, for one). Possibly just a simple change there? MPFitz1968 (talk) 21:09, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

References

the US is not the only country using indirect voting

U.S. stands out in how it picks a head of state | Pew Research Center

How Germany’s electoral college was set up to prevent another Hitler - The Washington Post

Thirty democracies are constitutional monarchies (with elected representatives in Parliament selecting the Prime Minister), and another thirty republics use indirect-voting, including Germany and India. 192.252.228.133 (talk) 03:11, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

A prime minister is NOT the head of state. And the indirect elections in other countries are not the same as the electoral college. The EC is chosen for the single purpose of the presidential election. The indirect elections in other countries have preexisting government bodies choose the head of state as an additional duty. This was all explained in your first link --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 22:12, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

"bdieschoose" What do you mean by that? Dimadick (talk) 22:24, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, my phone keyboard was acting up and I didn't proofread the post. I've fixed it now.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 02:22, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Not in Germany; the electoral college used for their presidential elections IS a single-purpose assembly, albeit composed one half by their parliament. Autokefal Dialytiker (talk) 05:30, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

"albeit composed one half by their parliament". There's the difference. I meant for such situations to be covered by the phrase "single purpose of the presidential election", but see how it could be open to interpretation. The constitution of the US expressly forbids federal office holders (including senators and representatives) from being electors. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 15:06, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Reorganize article based on quality and/or notability of the sections

Proposing reorganizing the article to put sections towards the top by:

1) higher-quality secondary sources and analysis. A number of sections currently at the top have really long quotes, citing primary sources that appear to be original research and interpretations that will require quite a bit of work to sort through all the tags before they are encyclopedic.

2) notability: this is a highly-critiqued form of electing president that has been the subject of more constitutional amendment attempts than any other part of the constitution (and a system of electing president that every other democracy has gotten rid of). Elevating these paragraphs would emphasize the most notable parts of the Electoral College (its uniqueness worldwide and debate over its merits and reform attempts). Superb Owl (talk) 17:55, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Primary criticism at Electoral College itself or just the winner takes all aspect of the EC?

Wouldn't technically speaking a lot of the biggest problems with the EC be technically be resolved by either

1) moving the electoral college to proportional representation (likely the easier one of the 2 options)

2) abolishing the EC as an institution, and only using it as weighting mechanism? (harder to accomplish but more accurate)

Both Methods effectively abolishing the current winner takes all system, which seems akin to double rounding in math?

sure a weighting mechanism on votes definitely still means that votes are not equal, but aside from the fact that people from states like Wyoming (or republicans who get most of their votes from these states) complain about those states "losing their voice", this would be kept, but a lot of other problems would be no more:

1) The big change is that it actually matters by how much you win, which creates these consequences

• This means swing states in are no longer as relevant as a vote swing of a few percent would at best change only a few seats
• for "safe states" a change in margin can still change the outcome
• While in the Presidential election it certainly would take a while, it would be at the very least easier for a 3rd party candidate to get some EC seats (even if that means nothing in the end)
• For parties this specifically means that while safe states will very likely give about half the seats to the "safely winning" party, there is a point to actually spend effort in these for both sides.
• For voters, this means that their votes, while not exactly equal still has about the same order of magnitude worth of an impact, unlike currently where safe state people's votes are practically worthless.
• half the election isn't already decided "in advance"

2) The final results are a lot closer to what people actually vote for

• in quite a few cases both parties had "landslide wins" with 300+ Electoral College votes for their Presidential Candidate, despite not even getting more than 54% of votes, an especially crazy case is Clinton vs. Dole 1996 where 54,74% of the votes in total led to 379 EC votes for Clinton
• a closer relation between the votes and the results can also help with turnout due to the perceived closer relation between vote and result

a curious question in general (although maybe not exactly for the scope of a Wiki Talk Page) would be other potential tweaks to the EC and voting system to make it fair for everyone.

My1 23:18, 30 July 2024 (UTC)