Mo Rocca: The Electoral College is obsolete

It’s not hard to get caught up watching the U.S. map light up in red and blue on election night. How will the swing states vote and how many electoral votes did each candidate win?

Make your prediction for the 2012 Electoral Map

But not everyone is a fan of the Electoral College and its process. What’s the point when we have a seemingly educated populace casting ballots?

Mo Rocca, a writer, journalist, and comedian, has declared it obsolete, especially in a day and age where nearly every literate American has access to endless information.

“It’s got to end and I hope there is a Constitutional crisis,” Rocca told the Ross and Burbank Show. “I know it sounds awful to say to put our country through that, but if that’s what it takes for that damn electoral college to blow up…I don’t even want it unaccredited, I want it to blow up in a fiery ball.”

Officially, the Electoral College was established by the founding fathers as a “compromise between election of the president by a vote in Congress and election of the president by a popular vote of qualified citizens.”

In other words, the fathers couldn’t trust anyone with that much power. Checks and balances and so on.

But Rocca argues that’s when a rancher in Wyoming received news three days late and when slave states still wanted representation without giving slaves an actual vote.

“The idea that we still have this mechanism, this relic, is just absurd.”

The college consists of 538 electors. States get electors based on the number of members in its Congressional delegation: “one for each member in the House of Representatives plus two for your Senators.” A candidate needs at least 270 votes to win the election.

Proponents argue the college protects the smaller, less populated states that wouldn’t carry as much weight in a popular vote.

“What do they need to be protected from?” asked Rocca.

“Why in Wyoming does it take 189,000 people to essentially equal one electoral vote and in Georgia you need 600,000? Why do the votes of people in Wyoming count more? People in Wyoming do not need to be protected from people in Georgia.”

In fact, Rocca bets someone in Wyoming could kick the butts of hipsters in Athens.

Rocca is starring in a new documentary, “Electoral Dysfunction.” It airs on PBS Friday, Nov. 2 at 12:00pm.

Electoral Dysfunction Trailer from Electoral Dysfunction on Vimeo.