in america, if the popular vote in each state determines the electors who choose the president, who will then obviously vote for the same person as whoever won the popular vote in that state, what is the point of electors?

Question

you vote for people who then vote for the people you want, so why not just vote for the people you want?

In: Other

Answer 1

There are arguments for and against and some of the arguments were made in the context when the US had only just declared independence.

Fear that small states would be forever locked out of selecting the Presidents. The 14 original states were not quite as “united” as it may seem today. The electoral college is designed to give the smaller states a “larger” say in who becomes the president.

Although we think of the US as more of a “one person one vote”, “every person is equal” country, the idea of this kind of republic was fairly new at the time and power was still pretty concentrated among the land owners (think aristocrats but without the titles). They weren’t about to hand over power to the “people” – this idea was not very tested at the time (although it has a long history) Remember that the original Constitution did not count slaves as full people, nor did they allow women to vote.

In modern times, President Bush and President Trump shows that the current system does, in fact, “elect” presidents that did not win the popular vote.