What is the true purpose of the Electoral college?

Yeah, I think it needs to be as simple as yes or no, for most people. Voter apathy is so high for the mere fact that we're not given a real choice, we're forced to make a choice. Many people feel that it makes no difference which of the clowns ends up in office. Yes/No voting would eliminate that completely. Even if you didn't want to vote for anyone, you could still help keep a candidate from being elected. It would be interesting to see if it would ever become a deadlock election, wouldn't it? What if America just voted No on all the candidates? That would prove that we definitely need better candidates. I don't think that would be a bad thing at all. We might even end up with someone worth his salt in office.

reply to post by NephraTari

Why not have the % of the popular vote determine the % of the electoral votes counted? That would be the best of both worlds probably.

In the first place, we don't live in a democracy. We live in a republic.

In the second place our founding fathers were really brilliant men who realized that among all the other individual rights they had the forethought to give us, they didn't give us the right to vote for our President.

Apparently, even then, they knew that there were too many stupid, unknowing, uneducated, unproductive, biased, and corrupt people scattered among the population to be trusted with this important duty.

Thus, the electoral college.

It's served us well over the centuries. The wisdom of these men so long ago who could have done anything they wanted with this new Republic.

They did great!