Winner Take All

[Keith Broaders]

The original intent of the electral college was to have the representatives of the state legislatures choose Presidential electors to represent each of the Congressional Districts.

In the election of 1796 Alexander Hamilton devised a scheme to have all of the electors from New York to vote for the candidate winning the most votes in a statewode popularity contest. He was able to convince the state legislature to implement his plan and as a result all of New Yorl Electoral votes went to the Federalist Candidate Jojn Adams. Had the votes been allocated by Comgressional Districts Adams would received 4 fewer votes and Jefferson would have won the Presidency.

If more than one half of the voters in Los Angeles County vote for a particular  candidate and 100% of all of the other voters in the other 57 counties voted for a different candidate their votes would not be counted,

All of the state's 52 electoral votes will go to the candidate winning only one of the state's 58 counties..

According to Supreme Court ruling in Baker v Carr every person's vote must count the same, but in the "winner take all" system only the votes of the candidate winning the state's popular vote are counted.

This scheme of disenfranchising up to 49% of the voters by giving all of the state's electoral votes to the candidate winning the popular vote is how the will of tyhe majority can disenfanchise a minoroty.

The Winner Take All method of allocating their states electral votes in Presidential elections is unfair. All of the states except Maine and Nebraska award 100% of their states electoral votes to the candidate who wins their statewide popular election.

Rather than having a statewide popularity contests in 50 states we should have a Presidential elections in each of the 435 Congressional Districts.

Each Congressional Districts would have one Presidential elector and every person in every Comgressional District would be counted. 

The electoral college was created to prevent the tyranny of the majority which is what the wiinner take all methid of allocating all of the states electoral votes to the candidate winning the most popular votes in a statewide Pesidential election.