How likely is it that the Electoral College system could be scrapped?

Michael Moore? Fuck dude, I just ate.

Seriously, it would require a constitutional amendment.

Fortunately, and by design, not easy.

Zero.

Not at all likely to happen.

I imagine it would be hard to convince legislators to willingly drop a system that put them in business in the first place.

That is exactly my thought @Seek. I don’t see how it’s helpful to provide a list of things people have to achieve that are mostly outside of their capabilities. This last one is like telling Australia or Great Britain to get rid of the Westminster system. It is never going to happen.

Thank you to those who have answered. Can I ask you to consider the last part of my question, does the system need changing? Is it unfair and resulting in election outcomes that are actually not reflective of what the majority want?

100% disagree with Mr. Moore and I will use my state of Illinois as an example. Hillary won 55% of the votes here yet if you look at this map she maybe won 15% of the counties with most of the votes coming from Chicago. An electoral college system essentially gives equal voting power to all segments of our state so heavily populated sections like Chicago do not carry a voting advantage over the less populated areas like the farming communities down state.

There is already a movement underway to alter the way the electoral college works, and it does not require a Constitutional Amendment. It’s called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.

States pass laws to pledge electors to vote for the winner of the National Popular vote. No state is obligate to do so until a number of states totaling 270 or more have passed laws and joined the compact. At present, 10 states and DC have joined, for a total of 165 electoral votes.

There is a very strong chance this could be in place by 2020.

It would take a constitutional amendment, and I don’t think that everyone wants that, or that it’s necessarily a good idea. Part of the system at least allows less-populated communities to not be dominated by the likes of New York City, and so on.

A much better constitutional amendment, and easier but not an easy one, will be to get Citizens United overpowered, so there isn’t unlimited corporate money in our politics.

And, I think a much larger problem with our electoral system, and one that would have ruled out BOTH the unpopular major candidates in this race, would be if we had a way to really express our views on all of the candidates, and not be forced into obviously needlessly stupid/primitive/wrong single-vote lesser-of-two-evils nonsense.

That is, we need to be able to vote for each candidate, and indicate whether we support them, oppose them, or have no comment. And/or to put them in order (instant run-off voting). So we can capture something like that we may prefer one awful candidate or another, but more importantly, we support neither of them, which seems to be the actual majority view. We need a voting system that actually reflects our opinions, not a fake contest between candidates we don’t really want, and being resigned to not ever be able to have an alternative even if the people really do like them.

Why should some rural mechanic’s vote count for six times what an urban barber’s vote does?

It’s an issue that’s plagued electoral systems for years, without proportional representation elections are always going to be skewed, one more thing that defines politics as putrid.

This isn’t the first time the republicans have stolen an election…

While campaigning, Donald Trump said we should get rid if the electoral college. Fat chance since he just benefited from it.
and it’s unlikely he will follow through on a lot of the shit he said then.

@zenvelo is correct. There does not need to be a Constitutional amendment. States are free to allocate their electoral votes any way they see fit.

For the primary races, the Republicans allow states to allocate their delegates in proportion to the number of votes received. There are a few states that work this way. That is another method that could possibly be used in the presidential election, though allocation could be tricky for states with small numbers of electoral votes.

@Cruiser she may have only won 15% of the counties but she won 55% of the votes of PEOPLE. I agree with @Seek on this. Why would the vote of a rural mechanic be worth more or more worthy than that of an urban mechanic? What exactly is wrong with one man, one vote or rather one person, one vote?

From FairVote.org:

Maine and Nebraska both use an alternative method of distributing their electoral votes, called the Congressional District Method.

The congressional district method allocates one electoral vote to each congressional district. The winner of each district is awarded one electoral vote, and the winner of the state-wide vote is then awarded the state’s remaining two electoral votes.

^^But each state gets to choose their own method so no parity and no incentive to change^^

Nobody likes that particular Constitutional check and balance that stops things from going their way.
Anyway, check Article II Sec 1. It isn’t easy to cut out a piece of the Constitution.

@Cruiser “100% disagree with Mr. Moore and I will use my state of Illinois as an example. Hillary won 55% of the votes here yet if you look at this map she maybe won 15% of the counties with most of the votes coming from Chicago. An electoral college system essentially gives equal voting power to all segments of our state so heavily populated sections like Chicago do not carry a voting advantage over the less populated areas like the farming communities down state.”

But is that pretty much exactly how it goes? Most of the state, in terms of counties, voted red, but the five Chicagoland counties and a handful of college counties went blue. Thus Illinois goes blue. I’m in a red county, but I voted blue. Effectively my vote mattered more than every red vote in my county.

I’ve been talking about scrapping it for years. I did a facebook status about it again yesterday. The republicans have all sorts of reasons why they want to keep it. They talk about if we got rid of it New York and California would rule over the election. Unless I’m totally out of it, NY and Cali almost always give 100% of their electoral votes to the democrats. Only about ⅔ of their popular vote is for the democrat. As far as my math goes it doesn’t have shit to do with NY and Cali.

Michael Moore was one of very few leftists who saw this coming. He wrote an op-ed months ago saying Trump would get elected.

I never undestood why so many Americans despise him. You’re lucky to have him.