Iowa Seeks To Remove Electoral College 1088
Zebano writes "Since changing the US constitution is too much work, the Iowa senate is considering a bill that would send all 7 of Iowa's electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote in a presidential election. This would only go into affect after enough states totaling 270 electoral votes (enough to elect a president) adopted similar resolutions."
Headline wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
Uh, sending all their votes for a single candidate is the OPPOSITE of removing the electoral college. It makes much more sense to award them proportionally if your goal is to mitigate the problem of its existence. The fact that you can win some states and avoid others is what makes it a problem in the first place - the electoral college is basically a system for ignoring the needs of most of the nation based on geographical boundaries, and as far as I can tell was designed to make it easy to game the system. Only FOUR times in history (IIRC) has the EC actually ever overridden the popular vote. One of those times was GWB (well, the counted popular vote, which is known to have been intentionally gamed, but let's put that aside for now.) If the other times the electoral college actually had an effect were like this time, then it is pure evil and must actually be destroyed.
It's long past time for a constitutional amendment abolishing the electoral college. Let's decide to be a democracy.
Re:Before we tag this as a bad idea... (Score:1, Insightful)
Very selfless of Iowa. (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, as it's worded in a way that it only comes into effect when enough states adopt the position for it to become constitutional law, they are covered. The President can safely pay no attention at all to sparsely populated states.
Yawn. (Score:4, Insightful)
Backers of this idiotic scheme have been pushing it for years.
The problem is, the "national popular vote" is anything but uniform. Liars like to claim Al Gore "won" the popular vote, but that is a false claim; he had less than 1% difference, and the average error rate of voting machines across the US is somewhere between 2-3%. If you go by the actual vote and work with the number of counties where there were voting irregularities and counting irregularities, there's a major question of how many votes anyone had.
In other words: voting equipment is not perfect. This is why we have recounts.
Now, can you imagine the scale of someone having to do a national recount based on the fact that Gore's supposed "win of the popular vote" in 2000 was under the threshold to trip an automatic recount in every single state that has such a law?
We apportion the votes by state for two reasons:
#1 - The US is supposed to be a union of self-sovereign states. The Federal government is supposed to have only a limited set of powers, with each state independently deciding the rest of the issues for itself. Yes, this has been eroded badly away in recent decades, but it's still true.
#2 - The logistics of holding a "national recount" are simply not possible. Recounting a state alone is bad enough (look at the Dem vote fraud efforts for Franken and the "targeted recounting" of counties, which magically has more votes than voters in several Dem-heavy districts trying to steal the Senate election).
Iowans missing the point (Score:3, Insightful)
Okay, I understand that only 2% of Slashdot readership has a clue why the electoral college even exists. And I realize that most people won't even rub two brain cells together before responding and saying that this is a great idea ("This is a great idea! Now there's a reason to vote!").
However, part of me honestly hoped that a state like Iowa, which is filled with people who are convinced they really are the most important people in the country, would be able to do the math to realize that following a straight popular vote gives Iowans less power and that if the country would depend solely on the popular vote, Iowa (and most other small midwest states) would be completely marginalized.
Well. At least that increases the chances of gay rights bills getting passed.
the electoral college is a useful tool. (Score:5, Insightful)
As a former history major and a election junky I think the move to kill the electoral college is a stupid move for several reasons. I personally like the Nebraska solution (house districts go to the candidate winning the district, senate votes go to overall winner in the state).
With California, NY, and a few other states becoming huge, with even more illegals etc why would we want to make sure that candidates only have to promise goodies to city dwellers on the coasts?
We are talking about stripping something that harkens back to the "representative republic" nature of the starting of our country in favor of pure democracy.. Pure democracy gave us TARP 1, the Porkulus bill, Tarp2 etc..
Federal Republic (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm getting the idea that just because GW wasn't a very good Republican, we're now willing to give up our federal system? We're not a tiny, little homogeneous European country; we're a huge friggin' landmass with diverse wants and needs. Keep power as close to home as possible.
Re:Headline wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell no. As my old poli sci prof put it "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what to have for dinner".
We are not, and should not be, a democracy. We are a constitutional republic. The founders did that very deliberately to make sure that the minority (however defined) could not be trampled by the majority.
Tne founders had a great (and valid) distrust of pure democracy, as well as a great distrust of an overpowerful government.
Sadly, their goal of small sane government has been swept away. But for now we have a constitution that protects the minority.
And no matter what they taught you in school, we are not a democracy. Never have been. I vaguely recall something about "...and to the Republic for which it stands..."
Re:Wow... (Score:4, Insightful)
On what grounds?
Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution. Any interstate compact needs congressional approval.
Just remove the electoral college (Score:2, Insightful)
The original idea was good for its time but just as the Constitution has been amended to reflect changes in society, the electoral college should be abolished completely and the popular vote be used to decide who the winner is.
The presidential election is the ONLY election in the entire country in which the person with the most votes may not be the winner. Even in elementary school when voting is done by classes, the one with the most votes win.
If it's good enough for elementary school elections, it's good enough for the presidential elections.
And before anyone whines about this giving more power to states like California, explain how it is any different than people fixating on Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida for a person to win the presidency.
Call me antiquated (Score:5, Insightful)
I side with the Founding Fathers on this issue. The common man, even 200+ years later, is not educated enough, or even intelligent enough, to make an informed decision about who should lead the US.
All you have to do is watch the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and catch his, I believe its called Jay Walking now but I recall it as "The Great American Pop Quiz", quiz of the common man on the streets of NYC to see that the vast majority of Americans have NO business selecting who should lead the US.
Re:But other states could block... (Score:3, Insightful)
That only works if the population of Wyoming is greater than the difference between the conidates.
Plus remember that Wyoming and the other tiny states will get more influence not less under this idea. What it really does is eliminate the swing states.
The states that may be against it is Florida, Ohio, PA etc. This is because these states get extra attention since the votes are close. Under this idea the votes in Wyoming would be worth just as much as the votes in Florida.
Re:Finally! (Score:3, Insightful)
Nope, what it means now is that California, New York, Florida, and Texas will pick our president. I am sorry, but if my state votes overwhelmingly for the losing candidate and its electoral votes get cast for the other candidate because they won the popular vote, explain to me how democracy was served?
People who think the Electoral College is bad have to be ignorant of the consequences of doing away with it. What it means is that candidates for national office will only campaign in a handful of states that will guarantee a popular majority. No one will ever again campaign in New England, the Midwest, or much of the South. So by doing away with electoral votes and tying them to the popular vote, you are potentially disenfranchising a huge number of states and their citizens from any meaningful participation in national elections.
Is that what you want?
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:5, Insightful)
You're making the--quite absurd--assumption that people are not voting because of the Electoral College.
You could drop a daisy-cutter on Chicago and probably not kill anybody who knows what the Electoral College is, much less why it's there.
People don't vote because people are generally lazy and apathetic about things outside their immediate sphere of reference. Which is not to say that they don't have opinions about things outside their sphere--they just don't do anything about those opinions.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:5, Insightful)
The real reason to do this is to fix a flaw in the Constitution. The founders (perhaps for pragmatic reasons--no public education at the time) considered "common" people to be too dumb to vote. They decided only free, land-owning males have enough education or intelligence to make such an important decision.
Furthermore, they considered even these people to be easily fooled, and put in the electoral college so that the few political elites could override the peoples' vote if the people screwed up.
We now have public education and mass media. Anyone who feels so inclined can now be as politically inclined as the electoral college. Let's get rid of this relic of an unjust time.
Re:Finally! (Score:3, Insightful)
That is the current system. Look at the Swing states. They get many times the attention of other states.
The new system means that California takes YOUR vote into account when it delegates its electoral college votes.
Right now California only looks at it's citizens for the electoral college.
Under the new system California looks at California Citizens AND Wyoming citizens AND Texas citizens.
The new system means that one person is no more important than anyone else.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:5, Insightful)
The electoral college was put in place so that there would be a check on the power of the uneducated masses...Originally the EC didn't have to vote with the state!
Winner take-all-vote distribution is disgusting. If I live in a state that goes 49% for party X, and 51% for party Y, you can't even argue that giving 100% of our states votes to party Y makes the least bit of sense.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not? I've lived in plenty of states where my vote for any national election was absolutely pointless, because 80% of the population always voted the other way. If you don't care about local politics, and you can't change national politics, why vote?
(I personally do care about the local crap, but if I didn't, I don't know that I'd bother going out without a close senate/house race)
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes you can -- if you understand why it was designed to do what it does.
States are supposed to pic a executive. The select an executive to represent the STATE. They send electors (the number of which is weighted by population) to vote for that executive. How can a state pick 51% of an executive? And 49% of another? They pick a SINGLE executive, not two, three or more.
By removing this system, you effectivly remove any executive representation to small states. Preseidents will be elected by large cities (Los Angeles, New York City, etc) of a handfull of states. Executive decisions will be based on the needs of those few zones rather than the country as a whole.
Census Data (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Great way to get LESS registered voters (Score:3, Insightful)
You act as if national campaigns targeting larger groups in the population is a bad thing. Is there a principled reason in this case to think that Iowans and other rural voters should receive votes that matter more even though they are numerically fewer? If so, why does that principle not also apply to all sorts of other minorities, such as giving racial minorities their own set of votes in the electoral college?
This is not robbing Peter to pay Paul. This is Paul having exacted an unfair deal from Peter as a price of being able to form the country, and Peter's descendants 50 generations later wanting out of the deal.
You are right, though, that from a purely selfish point of view, this is not a good idea for the rural states. The electoral college system disproportionately favors them, and giving up such an advantage out of a belief in principles seems almost quaint these days.
Into affect? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well... I am no English expert, in fact it is my 2nd language (Âprimero Español amigo!) but I found the sentence:
"This would only go into affect after enough ..."
Very strange... is it that confusing "effect" vs "affect" for native English speakers? for me they mean completely different things "afectar" vs "efecto"
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:4, Insightful)
How can a state pick 51% of an executive? And 49% of another? They pick a SINGLE executive, not two, three or more.
I agree completely...I think I have a solution for the best of both worlds... each state should award all of it's electorate votes to a single candidate, but that candidate should be selected via instant run-off.
As an honest question is if someone can really find anything wrong with this... it would require no changes to the U.S. constitution (although state constitutions may need to be amended). I submitted this suggestion to my state rep and was completely blown off. It seems to me it simply doesn't suit the people in power to entertain the idea of actually having to compete with more than one other party.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:5, Insightful)
In what way does the popular vote not count? As far as I understand, and bear in mind that I've been a US citizen for only 4 decades or so, and my only exposure is living here for that time and going through the primary, secondary, and tertiary educational system, including state-mandated civics classes, the popular vote is what determines which electors will vote and (by pledge) how the electors will vote. While there are some exceptions, and different states have different rules, the electors are understood to vote for the candidates indicated on the ballot, and are determined by, wait for it, popular vote.
Of course, you probably meant the national popular vote. And by focusing on that, you clearly have no understanding of why the electoral college was created in the first place.
Perhaps you've noticed that most presidential elections in the US are pretty close (maybe you're not old enough to have noticed, but it's true). We don't have 80% to 20% popular vote splits. A 5% margin is considered good. The 1972 landslide was barely 60-40. And yet Nixon won 49 of 50 states. (That should give you a clue right there.)
The standard story is that the electoral college was invented because at the time of the creation of the US as a nation, long-distance communication happened largely by horse. Sending results from each state to a central location to tally up meant sending a person in one form or another, to drive the horse carrying the results if nothing else, so instead of sending the votes, they sent people. Easy enough, not any slower, and it helped ensure that the votes weren't tampered with along the way.
But that's only part of the story.
The more important part is that the founding fathers were really, really smart. They saw how hard it was to organize and galvanize disparate peoples. They recognized that for leaders to be followed, they needed to be widely recognized by the larger populace as leaders. A nation, especially a younger nation, exists only because its citizens all agree it should. Broad dissent, particularly when the nation is still gaining its legs but also once it's strong, can be hugely deleterious. It leads to civil unrest and civil wars.
So, when most elections are close, barely much beyond 50-50, how do you convince the HALF of the population who voted for the losing candidate that they should give up and follow the winner? The answer, THE answer, is to arrange things so that elections are never close to 50-50. The electoral college is designed to do this, to amplify small differences, so that marginal elections become mandates. With a mandate, the winner can lead.
How does the electoral college do this? By taking the results from each state and, effectively, turning them into winner-take-all results. Not every state will vote for the nationally more popular candidate (except as was nearly true in 1972), so some states will vote for the ultimate winner, and some will vote for the ultimate loser, but by quantizing the results on a per-state basis, the small differences get amplified.
In our most recent election, Obama won the national popular vote 53-46. That's damned close to 50-50. Nearly half of the US population voted for the fellow who didn't win. They aren't happy with the results. And yet, Obama is called one of the most popular presidents ever. He has a clear mandate. Why? Because the electoral college results were 67-32, or over 2-to-1. Landslide. Mandate.
By taking the results from each state individually and turning them into winner-take-all, small differences (51-49 percent of the popular vote in a hypothetical example state like Kansas) are amplified into large differences (6-0 votes in the electoral college). And this creates a definitive result from the electoral college, and a mandate for the elected candidate.
Re:Yawn. (Score:4, Insightful)
Cute. Still not a good argument though.
Look, Franken's team said from day 1 of the recount that their goal was to count every valid vote. Coleman, during the recount, sought repeatedly to have voted held back from the count, and now that he's down, he's seeking to get some of those exact same votes added back in. Naturally Franken wants to win just like Coleman does, but the difference is that Franken's message about the conduct of the recount and the election contest has been consistent from day 1, while Coleman has flopped around like a fish out of water.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:3, Insightful)
And as a New Yorker, and therefore a resident of one of the two states which will receive any attention, I am all for this plan.
Yeah, let's get rid of the US Senate while we are at it. It's totally not fair that New Hampshire has the same number of Senators as we do. We should totally be able to dictate terms to them because we have more people.
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner. I can't wait until we have more and more Democracy.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:4, Insightful)
It makes more sense than X receiving 51% and Y receiving 49% and Y getting 100% of the votes because X did better nationally. All this system does is officially guarantee a third party will never get electoral votes.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe originally, but the Civil War put an end to any pretensions of state's rights. That being the case, everyone should have an equal say on the election of a chief executive.
The problems you state already exist. California goes with its big cities, New York goes with New York city...New york state is as red as a damn stop sign, and the entire state has gone democrat since forever because the city has more votes than the whole rest of the state. Those states have more electoral votes than nearly all the midwest combined.
I'm not even against splitting the electoral college votes based on the votes of the population of the state. But winner take all disenfranchises people who aren't the majority, and it doesn't reflect the actual views of the state.
And, frankly, the small states have such an inordinate amount of legislative clout in the Senate, I really don't care if they don't get a lot of say in the Executive. Executive branch representation should be based on the wants of the majority of citizens.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:5, Insightful)
You think "public" (i.e. government) education has made things better? Then why do so few people even understand that we're not a true democracy or that we have an electoral college at all?
We now have public education and mass media.
The laughable thing (and yes, I realize some will think this flamebait) is that you think this is a good thing... that this has actually helped.
What we have now is American Idol politics, where every month or so contestants are booted off in state by state popularity contests; the one that promises us the most at everybody else's expense wins... woohoo!!!
Ignoring the Constitution is easy (Score:5, Insightful)
Fortunately, ignoring the Constitution is very easy — as long as you have "bipartisan support". And no, I don't mean the Guantanamo and the like, which are, actually, arguably legal (however distasteful).
A lot more profound example is the requirement, that all the government can only use "gold or silver coin" as means of payment (Article 1 Section 10 [usconstitution.net]):
When the US abolished gold standard in 1971 and the dollar became "fiat money [about.com]", all State tax-refunds, welfare payments, salaries of the State-employees, etc. became unarguably unconstitutional.
And yet, chances are very good, dear reader, you read about the issue here for the first time in your life... Now, I don't claim the economic acumen to argue whether or not Gold Standard was (or would be [house.gov]?) a good idea. But I have that "ideological rigidity" to be disturbed by a violation of the Constitution, that is so blatant and yet so ignored...
Re:Great way to get LESS registered voters (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Before we tag this as a bad idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
The FF's didn't really trust the people to do the right thing.
And you do? "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky animals and you know it." (Agent K, Men in Black)
I've seen nothing in my ten years of being involved in politics that convinces me this isn't true. The vast majority of people in this country just vote for the person in the same party as them. The vast majority of those who aren't in a political party just vote for the person with the most name recognition because "he's experienced and doing a good job". Why do you think politicians make such an effort to bring pork (preferably the kind with photo-ops and construction signs that have their name on it) back home?
Democracy sucks. It really shouldn't have been allowed to get beyond the House of Representatives and the Lower Houses of the State Legislatures.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:4, Insightful)
"The real reason to do this is to fix a flaw in the Constitution. The founders (perhaps for pragmatic reasons--no public education at the time) considered "common" people to be too dumb to vote."
Ummm no, try to get the average 30yo American to read and understand the federalist papers before you slam the intelligence of the revolutionary era population. The reason for the Electoral Collage is because the founders wanted states to do most of the heavy lifting in governing. We were a federal republic in which the states maintained many rights aside from the federal government.
"They decided only free, land-owning males have enough education or intelligence to make such an important decision."
Free yes, land owning? not so
Each of the thirteen colonies required voters either to own a certain amount of land or personal property, or to pay a specified amount in taxes. It was about the people who pay for things voting, Im not saying its right but this 'land owners meme' has to be stopped.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:3, Insightful)
Good post; I wish more people would understand the reasoning... when the U.S. was founded, it was actually meant to be a lot more like the European Union... a bunch of mostly free states that ran things the way they wanted to, but with a common defense and a federal government that regulated interstate commerce.
Now we have a monolithic federal government... since this is slashdot, people should understand it's similar to the difference between a monolithic kernel and a modular one... most of us Unix nerds prefer modular. I prefer modular.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Before we tag this as a bad idea... (Score:3, Insightful)
What protects the minority is NOT the president it is the House. Thoes are tiny districts which are constantly under review by it's constituents.
Roflmao! You owe me a new monitor for all the soda I just spit up on it.
You might have actually had a valid point if you were talking about State Assemblyman but Representatives? The average district had almost 650,000 [nationalatlas.gov] people in it at the time of the 2000 census so that number is probably a low estimate today.
"Under review by their constituents"? Give me a fucking break. My Congressman is under review by the most partisan elements of his party because that's who he needs to win over to keep his seat. The primary is the real election in most gerrymandered [wikipedia.org] districts. Short of indictment, the actual election is just a formality for most members of the House.
Get back to us when you actually know something about our political system and just how rigged it really is.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:2, Insightful)
The electoral college was put in place so that there would be a check on the power of the uneducated masses...Originally the EC didn't have to vote with the state!
Nice tinfoil hat you've got there.
The electoral college was created to make national elections possible. The electors allowed for a simplified election process without the need for a national ballot counting system.
Even more importantly: The electorate system was designed to mimic the representation in Congress, which was designed in turn, to prevent a few large states from exerting constant control over the federal government.
Not that you should allow facts to get in the way of your paranoia, though...
Re:Great way to get LESS registered voters (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think you've quite understood...
...should surely be...
Justin.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Great way to get LESS registered voters (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:5, Insightful)
But the people vote against that very idea every single time, by electing strong-fed candidates that move more and more power away from the state to DC. Sure, you could send all that tax money to your state capitol (or event city government) instead; you could let your state legislator or city councilor (who has relatively few constituents -- your vote matters more) represent you in important policy decisions. But we'd rather send the money further away to a less accountable bureaucracy, and let decisions be made by less accountable reps in DC who have more constituents so that each us us has a weaker voice.
This move by Iowa is just another step in democracy's goal: to eliminate democracy, to weaken every voter's voice (in this case: Iowa's voters' voices). It's the all-too-common scream of: "Stop listening to us!"
And it makes sense: can you imagine the horror of actually being responsible for our government's actions? Do you want that crushing burden on your kids? Please think of the children, and keep moving the power away from the people, so that future generations can can say, "It's not my fault, and I can't do anything about it." Give them the freedom of powerlessness, so that their apathy will be a virtue, instead of the vice that we still somewhat suffer from.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:2, Insightful)
Excellent post. The more I read and understand the constitution and about those who wrote and signed it, the more impressed I am at how intelligent and thoughtful they were... true patriots, people who looked historically at what worked, what didn't, and what were good solutions to those things that didn't.
And people take the straw-man arguments about how I don't want women to vote or how I consider black people to be only 3/5 of a whole person simply because I think we actually ought to follow the constitution. It's just such crap.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:1, Insightful)
And, frankly, the small states have such an inordinate amount of legislative clout in the Senate, I really don't care if they don't get a lot of say in the Executive. Executive branch representation should be based on the wants of the majority of citizens.
You do realize why it was setup that way? Otherwise, what possible reason would there be for small states to join the union if they are always outvoted by the larger states?
Saying the civil war put an end to state rights is stupid; quite frankly, you're stupid if you think you have any clout at all against 300 million other Americans. Power should be local, not national.
Re:Great way to get LESS registered voters (Score:2, Insightful)
And if any large states ever agree to that, say California and New York, then Iowa's vote will stop counting. At just a measly 3 Million people, its vote would mean nothing against the will of a state like California at nearly 37 Million people.
If you're in California, this sounds perfectly fair. If you're not, then hopefully you've got the sense to see that local desires in California would have more than enough "power" to completely override any desires for the entire state of Iowa.
So, if Iowa wants $20 million for road repairs, the San Francisco metro area can simply say "Nope. We want more parks" and Iowa has to take it.
Yeah.
That sounds like a great system.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:4, Insightful)
It is within the state's rights to assign votes based on national elections. I think it marginalizes the voice of the state population and would create even more of a 'why bother' attitude, not the other way around.
While the federal government has set some laws regarding voting, dealing with discrimination mostly, the states have a wide latitude. For instance, states could lower the voting age to 16 if they choose to, 18 is only the federally mandated minimum age at which US citizens can vote. The states can choose whether to require or not require their electoral college to vote the will of the people. They can choose to prorate the votes, or all-or-nothing.
Anyone who wants to remove the electoral college should realize that by doing so, it is highly likely that this would force the federal government to set all the rules and further reduce the state's power.
On a different note
I don't want to live in a 100% Democratic society, although I could tolerate eliminating the electoral college. Most people are too ignorant to vote for everything. I didn't say stupid, some one who is stupid isn't capable of learning. An ignorant person is just uneducated or uninformed. Do we really want our neighbors voting on everything???
Re:Finally! (Score:3, Insightful)
The way things are now, candidates spend a lot of time in swing states where there are more swing voters who could go either way and they ignore states where they've got it in the bag.
So with this change, the republican candidates who used to largely ignore Texas will go to the largest cities there now to motivate their base to get out to the polls big time.
Liberal candidates will now go to specific large cities in California, Massachusetts, Vermont, etc. that were otherwise ignored except for fund raising time.
The smaller cities and towns full of people on the fence won't attract much attention from candidates anymore. Why bother trying to win them over when you can get 10 times as many voters to the polls by going to places where they already like you?
I predict this will further polarize candidates and they will work much harder to please their masses of "dittoheads" than the center. Some might think that's a good thing, but I'm afraid of what would happen when there's an incentive to focus on the largest population of groupthink.
Re:Iowans missing the point (Score:3, Insightful)
We don't have democratic elections and we never did, nor did the founding fathers ever intend it. Hell, we didn't even elect our senators for a long time after the country was founded.
The founding fathers were the elite of their society and did not want the uneducated mass of population to have the greatest say in who should run the country or what policy should be. They also wanted to make sure power was balanced among all the lands of the US, so that each part of the land could be represented significantly.
We aren't a democracy here in the US(at least nationally speaking). That word is only used for propaganda purposes.
Re:Before we tag this as a bad idea... (Score:3, Insightful)
The Electoral College was created because communication was so poor.
Well that, and the fact that a compromise was needed that would preserve each of the original state's sovereignty while still reflecting the general popular vote to some degree. And at the time, there was also a much greater recognition of the need to protect each citizen from the "tyranny of the majority" than there is today. You hardly even hear that phrase today.
If adopted nationwide, the Iowa system would make Presidential elections a much simpler and less costly thing. Only voters in California, Florida, and about half a dozen other states would have any effect on the election, so there would be no need to bother with any of that voting and campaigning rigmarole in Iowa, Idaho, etc. It would be almost as simple as going to a purely popular vote, where voters in half a dozen big cities would be the only ones who mattered.
The Electoral College is a shitty construction, but let's not jump into the outhouse hole in our desire to get rid of it. The tyranny of the majority is the pits.
Re:Call me antiquated (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Before we tag this as a bad idea... (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmmm...you might try harder.
I personally speak with my representative at least once a year.
I don't know about your representative but mine gets re-elected every other year....that IS consant review.
The average may be 650,000 (I will assume your number is right) but only 50% are registered to vote and 50% of thoes vote during presidential elections and only about 25% in off year elections....The practicale size is only 163K for presidential elections and 81K for off year elections. Both of thoes numbers are fairly easily influenced if you actually put the effort to it.
Representative government is HARD. You personally have to put effort into it or you personally will be ignored. I make my representative answer to me. No amount of gerrymandering will ever change that. Stop whining and take some responsibility for your representative...like he represents YOU.
I live in a district that is very republican...yet my representative is a Democrat, Jim Marshal.
Re:Great way to get LESS registered voters (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. Rural areas should not be held hostage by urban ones just because they happen to have more votes. This is the entire point of the US Senate and Electoral College.
So by your reasoning if there was a national (winner-take-all) vote for president, people who live in rural areas should have 1.5 votes (or some number >1.0). Your reasoning seems to be that they are a minority so they should have disproportionate power since they are otherwise vulnerable to the tyranny of the majority. If that is the case, why just use being rural as a minority status worthy of having ones vote count more than others? How about we also give 1.5 votes to the disabled? African Americans? LGBT people? Left-handed people? People with type AB-negative blood? Gingers?
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree completely...I think I have a solution for the best of both worlds... each state should award all of it's electorate votes to a single candidate, but that candidate should be selected via instant run-off.
As an honest question is if someone can really find anything wrong with this... it would require no changes to the U.S. constitution (although state constitutions may need to be amended). I submitted this suggestion to my state rep and was completely blown off. It seems to me it simply doesn't suit the people in power to entertain the idea of actually having to compete with more than one other party.
I'm not sure how the US run-off system works, but a problem with having more than one party in a race with a simple first-past-the-post system is that a minority can get their candidate in against a majority. Suppose candidate A is highly polarising. 40% of the active electorate support candidate A, but 60% would rather have pretty much anybody else. Unfortunately, running against candidate A are candidates B and C, who are much alike so they split the remaining vote equally. That gives 40% for candidate A, 30% for candidate B and 30% for candidate C. Candidate A wins even though 60% of the active electorate wanted anybody but candidate A. That's normal everyday political life here in the UK, where it's the norm for govenrments to get in on a minority. There are systems such as single transferable voting that would overcome this, but they have problems of their own. In fact, as Arrow's Impossibility Theorem [wikipedia.org] proves, no voting system is fair if there are more than two candidates, for quite modest meanings of "fair".
Re:I'm Not Sure Why People Believe This (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:3, Insightful)
Picture this:
The right fifteen States adopt this measure, and it becomes law in those 15 states.
Then, the next election, those fifteen States vote for one candidate by a slim margin (51-49, say), and the rest of the country votes for the other candidate by a larger margin (53-47, let us say).
Then the 15 States that voted for the one candidate watch their (majority!) electoral college votes go for the other guy.
Try to imagine the howling to be heard in those States, and the laughter to be heard in the other States.
Note that this particular technique has some interesting problems. Namely, the Census. It is possible that enough States to total 270 EC votes could approve this, causing it to become law in all those States. Then, next Census, for the reallocation of Representatives to cause the States wherein this is law to have less than 270 EC votes. What then?
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes because anyone who believes power belongs to the People, and in individual freedom/rights, should be willing to do jailtime. That is the price of liberty - a willingness to stand-up to the state. Example:
When I was in Texas I encountered a checkpoint. A Homeland Insecurity official tried to search the trunk of my car. I calmly said no. He asked why. I said that I did not cross an international border, therefore he needs a search warrant to invade a private citizens' home or car, and since he does not have a search warrant the answer was "no". He called a couple buddies and they asked if I want to spend the night in jail. I shrugged my shoulders and said, "Okay." They seemed stymied by that answer, made me wait 5 minutes, and then left me continue my journey from Texas to Maryland. (Nice vacation; I go for a fun summer trip and get threatened with jail.)
Freedom requires a willingness to serve jailtime. That is the price. Democrat Thomas Jefferson said the price is even higher. He said the price is blood, which is the Tree of Liberty's natural fertilizer. I'm not sure I'm willing to go that far, but I Am willing to go to jail rather than give-up my rights.
I would vote my conscience.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:5, Insightful)
A more serious problem is that if this were to pass the best national campaign strategy for dealing with Iowa voters would be to ignore them in favor of wooing voters from swing states as it would give candidates a sort of Iowa multiplier. There are arguments for and against the electoral college but this is a bad plan for Iowa.
We can't do this one state at a time so we'll need to amend the constitution to switch over. That's not going to happen as long as the western states remain over-represented.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, and if this law passed, and you lived in Iowa, your vote would not count at all. The candidates wouldn't even bother with that state - too few votes.
Much more efficient to win big in LA and NYC.
The legislator in Iowa who proposed this needs to quit - too dumb for his job.
Of course it would only be a 'law' which IOWA could change at any time up to the day of elections.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:3, Insightful)
If the popular vote truly counted, that would be a very compelling reason to register and/or go out and vote.
I would think just the opposite. If an individual voter stays home on election day, thinking, "my vote doesn't count, the electors just go by the entire state," won't the entire state stay home?
Iowa has what, 3 million people? In contrast, NYC alone has over 8 million. (I'm presuming for sake of comparison the % of eleigible voters is roughly the same.)
Basically, if under this plan instead of the individual vote of an Iowan getting lost in a sea of 3 million people, it get's lost in a sea of 300 million.
If you're not registered/don't vote because of the EC, this certainly isn't going to change your mind.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:3, Insightful)
I knew it. [slashdot.org]
Yes, I love the constitution; I think it was a really well written document that, so far, seems to have lasted longer than any others like it. So I must be a racist and want to end women's suffrage, obviously.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:4, Insightful)
No, I think he means the state right to determine its own economic policy, tax structures, social programs, business requirements, personal freedoms, militia regulations, land distribution and zoning, and everything else left to the states or to the people by the constitution.
The federal power-grab that happened in conjunction with the abolition of slavery and the civil war is a sad example of what happens when a country starts out with major moral problems like slavery and white supremacy.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:2, Insightful)
That's pretty cynical of you. The truth is, people want a strong federal government because they want swift and decisive action. Realistically, the United States would not be the world's most powerful nation without a strong federal government. The Articles of Confederation did not work. I agree that the federal government should have limits (the Supreme Court's rulings about the Commerce Claus are far too broad), but saying the federal level should be the weakest is no longer practical. The State governments tend to be the most corrupt, and with newspapers cutting back on their budgets, there's nary a reporter keeping track of what's going on in the state capital anymore.
Re:Great way to get LESS registered voters (Score:3, Insightful)
And yet, under this plan, a candidate could get the full support of the Iowa electors without a single supporter within the state, provided they managed to make up the lost popular votes elsewhere. (This wouldn't be very difficult; Iowa is hardly a major population center.)
This doesn't quite eliminate the influence of Iowa's voters, but it does significantly marginalize them. As a low-population state, Iowa receives disproportionately greater influence in the electoral college (vs. population); this bill would discard that advantage entirely.
Re:Great way to get LESS registered voters (Score:2, Insightful)
Right now the Federal Government has more and more power to limit freedoms. Pretend for a moment that not only the Presidential office, but the legislature was treated as if this was a full democracy instead of a republic.
Now let's pretend that shooting bears is utterly outlawed nationwide because people who live in NYC don't see any reason why anybody needs to shoot a bear.
Let's say that new houses and apartments are mandated to be built without full bathtubs, because in the crowded cities, you need all the extra space you can get. Did you know that up here, whenever a storm is coming we fill the bathtubs because if we lose power, we lose running water, sometimes for days? Space isn't a problem, though.
The fact is, this country has a lot of different cultures and a lot of different populations and a lot of different geographic features. What works in the plains won't work in the mountains. What works in the cities won't work in the country. What works in the near-tropical zones won't work in the high-temperate zones. We need to treat the states as their own entities so that a big city on a water-hungry plain in an eternal summer won't be setting policy for the town built in the mountain with fresh water springs pushing into everyone's basements and two-foot snowfalls from September to May.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:5, Insightful)
Voting requires registering to make sure you only vote once ;-)
Re:This pact is old news (Score:4, Insightful)
This has nothing to do with partisanship. It's amazing that people don't realize how this will negatively effect exposure of the candidates to the people. If your state does this, and they have less than 1 million votes, the state will almost certainly be passed over in the election. Campaigning always has and always will be about the best bang for the buck. With the electoral system, candidates focus on areas that would have close elections one way or the other based on electoral votes that the state provides.
With the election based on popular vote, the focus shifts away from states and to urban centers where a candidate can book a meeting and be able to grab 50,000 or more people. You're not going to get more than a couple thousand in the more rural areas. With the new system, you'll see campaigning focusing around NYC, LA, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and a few other populous areas, probably state capitols if the candidate comes to the state. Rhode Island and Vermont? Hah they'll be lucky to ever see a Presidential candidate with such a system. Maybe Rhode Island would get lucky if a candidate was taking a bus from Boston to NYC.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:3, Insightful)
As a matter of fact, no. The larger concentrations of human population should not decide the results of the country as a whole.
There are historical reasons for this, going back to the establishment of the American Republic. Rather than rehashing that tired old issue, the main thing here was to diffuse power among a whole bunch of people so there wouldn't be any singular concentration of power among one group or one population center. In this regard, the system has worked out fantastically.
New urban centers have emerged literally out of the wilderness in the USA, in most cases eclipsing the older and more traditional centers of human concentration quite some time ago. Without safeguards like the electoral college, these new and emerging cities would have been killed through regulations and taxation policies some time ago and may not have even developed in the first place. More to the point, America is what it is today precisely because of laws like this, which have encouraged people to move to more sparsely populated areas for multiple reasons, not the least of which is that those in the more rural areas do get more individualized and local political control as a check against larger population centers that would assert political control on issues that have nothing to do with their local circumstances.
This also completely misses the point that at least in theory each U.S. state is an independently sovereign entity in control of its own territory and subject to independent bodies of law. Many (unfortunately most) Americans and even members of the U.S. Congress... and the current U.S. President... seem to have forgotten this simply concept.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:1, Insightful)
and with the electoral vote gone you could vote in ANY state and have your vote be absolutely pointless.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:2, Insightful)
Thank Ross Perot for splitting the conservative vote in '92 and '96.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:3, Insightful)
You might want to look at the last few elections. Many states go to who wins the few large cities. Even if the rest of the state votes for the other person. Look at the last election results in FL, OH, VA, and MD (there are others). Most of the counties in those state went one way but the state went to the other party. Why? Cause the counties with the big cities pulled the entire state. So it is a popularity contest. Lets just drop the electoral college.
To see what i am talking about **warning need flash for it too work**
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/ [cnn.com]
Click on a state in the center between Obama and McCain. Some interesting breakdowns. Look at MD for example, 17 counties went for McCain and 7 counties went for Obama. Who won the state? Obama. But those 7 counties have more people then the others. Simular results in OH, FL, and other states. So win in the cities and you get the state.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:2, Insightful)
I bet you think that the Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves, too.
Every voting system is unfair. (Score:3, Insightful)
John Allen Paulos makes a compelling case that every voting system is unfair. I don't think it's in his book Innumeracy. Perhaps it's in his book A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper. Continual harping on minor problems with the voting system distracts attention from larger issues.
-Loyal
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:2, Insightful)
Saying the civil war put an end to state rights is stupid; quite frankly, you're stupid if you think you have any clout at all against 300 million other Americans. Power should be local, not national.
Your argument as to why power should reside with the states (hardly what I'd consider local by the way) seems to be "That's what convinced them to join the union 200 years ago" and "you're stupid if you think otherwise."
I personally have never seen evidence that state government is anything other than an amateur version of the federal government. Same types of people in both, except the ones at the state level aren't as good at spinning generally. Combine that with less public scrutiny and you have a recipe for government that is even worse than the federal government, in terms of budgeting, special interests, corruption, and just plain stupidity.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:5, Insightful)
"Voting requires registering, which is just more new world order crap. Not thanks."
No, voting isn't the same as "New World Order" crap. Voting is how most countries elect a President/Leader/PM. New world order is something different, like "One World Government". Bush Sr. used the new world order phrase in some of his speaches. The American people used voting to remove him from office.
Now, do you see the difference?
If you're worried about the act of registering puts you into the "System", hell, you're already there. Have a bank account? Have a social security #? Credit card? Driver's license? Library card? You have been just another name/number in a data base since you were born. You might as well register to vote so you can have a say as to who gets to be president, otherwise you have no ground to complain when your government starts unnecessary wars in far off lands to acquire access to vast oil fields for the benefit of friends & family in the oil industry.
Re:Call me antiquated (Score:4, Insightful)
True, but the Founding Fathers didn't live in a nation fixated on watching "mass media" to get their information, either.
IMHO, the big reason we don't see 3rd. parties having a ghost of a chance of getting elected is due to the television and press deciding for us that they're "not worthy".
EG. Give the Constitutional party, the Green party and the Libertarian party equal news coverage to the Republican and Democratic candidates, and I bet you'd be surprised how many more people consider giving the 3rd. party alternatives a vote.
The only reason Ross Perot did so well as a 3rd. party candidate, years ago, was the fact he was wealthy enough to buy himself a lot of attention in the media.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is why the 17th Amendment should be repealed. The House should continue to be elected by the people (No taxation without Representation... that is why the House controls the purse strings, not the Senate) and the State Legislatures should be appointing the Senator's NOT the masses. Think I'm crazy? Go look it up and read how it was and WHY the Founding Fathers set it up that way... Balance of Power.
Once the Senators become beholden to their respective STATES and not the special interest groups, the balance of power will start shifting back towards the States & their local legislatures, and the People of those States and away from an over-reaching Federal Government. As it stands now, there is little difference between a House Rep and a Senator in terms of who they serve. (read: themselves)
Have you ever wondered WHY State Governors got to appoint an open Senate seat but open House seats get a special election? We are supposed to be a Republic, not a pure Democracy. Repeal the 17th and we'll start getting back to that.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:5, Insightful)
In this clip we have three given examples, which are used to suggest, but do not actually constitute a meaningful statistic. There is no sample size- how many interviews were required to obtain this clip? There's no control group- do McCain supporters respond the same way with similar replies? Where these individuals chosen randomly out of the population being studied (black Harlem residents), or were they targeted in some way to make this case? Presented in a different context, these same clips could be used to imply that the entire American population was stupid. Plenty examples of this can be found on YouTube- just search for "stupid americans" (substitute "americans" for members of any other nationality for more examples of such silliness).
The main problem I have with this clip is that it was done with insincere intent- as is often the case with Stern. There's nothing scientific or objective about tricking people into saying something contradictory. Stephen Colbert is a master at getting politicians to do that; but as much as I love watching him cause Republicans to look like idiot this sort of tactic does not invalidate their political ideology. Nor does a lousy argument made by a layman lessen it- I can be an Obama supporter and say the dumbest thing you ever heard; how can you honestly say that reflects badly on Obama? I require an honest debate involving the actual candidate to dismiss their views, and believe Stern's (and the rest of TV&radio pundits') listeners are the uneducated ones to do otherwise.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:1, Insightful)
I've got one that would solve the 'anybody but him!' problem we've currently got in the US.
Each voter gets a single vote *for* a candidate and a single vote *against* a candidate. That way, you get to say, "I really want this guy, but for the love of , *NOT* that guy!"
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's the thing: there are lots of people in big cities. And most of them are really "little" people. But the specific needs of urban people are hardly mentioned in Presidential campaigns, and rural America is touted as "real" America. Why? Well, what are our 10 biggest urban areas? NYC, in a safe Democratic state. LA, in a safe Democratic state (at the moment... it was Republican not long ago). Chicago, in Illinois, once a battleground that recently has been solidly for the Dems (some suburbs in WI and IN, which tend to be closer to the middle, but not many). Dallas-Ft. Worth, in solidly Republican Texas. Philly, in battleground Pennsylvania (minus some of its suburbs). Houston, back in Texas. Miami, in wacky battleground Florida. D.C., solid blue but with many suburbs in Virginia, which was pretty much median this last cycle but usually more Republican. Atlanta, in Georgia, which was fairly close last election but far more Republican than the national average. Boston, which hardly needs discussion.
So two-and-a-half out of our ten biggest urban areas count in national politics. None out of the top four. The only reason you'd visit any big city in America save Philly, Miami, and D.C.'s Virginia suburbs is for fund-raising, and then you're only talking to the big-wigs of those cities. So the issues the politicians take on are skewed, not towards what's best for most people, but towards what's popular in a few states that tend towards the "political median". While those things generally pull politicians to the middle on major issues, it means they pander like crazy on things that will get them votes in these places (plus Iowa because of its early primary). What we need is policy that takes into account all the little people in our big cities. What we get is corn ethanol. I'll take a popular vote, please.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:4, Insightful)
Subjugation? If Kansas tried to secede, I think we could take 'em. Or was it a trick question?
The reason power isn't local is because of the Civil War. The breadth of the rights that the federal government has taken for itself since the civil war is tremendous. States get to vote for paltry crap, within guidelines.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:3, Insightful)
You're making the false assumption that their opponents would have done any better.
Sometimes (most times?) it's the situation and not the man that causes certain events to unfold.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:5, Insightful)
He actually has a good point for once. The Civil War really is a case of "history being written by the victors". However, if you do a lot of digging, you can find some things out there that give you a little more perspective on what really happened. Yes, there was a problem with slavery. However, the way the northern states went about getting rid of it was completely wrong. It probably made things worse for everyone (at least short-term) including the slaves than if they'd done nothing. However, something had to be done, and long term, I'd say the slaves and their descendants are better off now than they would have been, but the country as a whole could be in much better shape if it had been dealt with better at the time. The key point though is that because the north dealt with it poorly, they forced the southern states into a position where they could see no solution other than secession, which (as parent pointed out) is what the war was really about. Slavery was the hot-button issue that catalyzed it. Or in other words, the war could probably have been avoided by dealing with slavery in a good way, and we probably would not still be dealing with racism issues now.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:5, Insightful)
Or more accurately, about the rising class of Northern industrialists seeing a handy way to put the South out of the economic picture by removing its major labour force. Naturally, the South objected to being made economic pawns overnight. Everything else followed from that.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:5, Insightful)
I really wish this comment could be at the top of every political discussion to come up on Slashdot. Losing the representation of state's as entities cost this nation a great deal.
Re:I don't think you understand what this law's do (Score:5, Insightful)
What the hell are you talking about?
51% of the people of the country vote one way, and 100% of the people of Iowa vote the other way, Iowa's votes go to someone who no one in Iowa voted for. How the hell does that make sense to you, and how the HELL do you equate that with the relative "value" of a vote?
Ok, let's take your scenario: 51% of the popular vote in the US goes to one candidate, but Iowa mysteriously manages to vote 100% for the other candidate.
In the current system, Iowa's electoral votes go to the candidate who lost the popular vote. But, *depending on the distribution of votes in the other states,* that candidate may win OR lose. Now, here's the kicker: they can win or lose WITHOUT IOWA. Iowa has 7 electoral votes. Candidate needs 270 votes to win. That means they need to take just 11 states: Georgia, New Jersey, North Carolina, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Florida, New York, Texas, and California. In the 2008 election, those states made up 54% of the popular vote. If a candidate won exactly 51% of those 11 states, they can be elected president with less than 28% of the popular vote.
And without Iowa.
If you *lose* all the biggest states, you have to win in 40 states plus the District of Columbia to be elected. Those states account for 49% of the popular vote, and you need less than 25% of the total popular vote to get elected by them. At least some of that is from Iowa, though.
Iowa has no voice as it now stands. Not only that, but in LARGE states that tend to be foregone conclusions, many voters don't have a say... if you're going to vote for the republican candidate in California, why did you even get out of bed this morning?
One thing about the USA... (Score:5, Insightful)
"no voting system is fair if there are more than two candidates"
Our system was originally designed to be able to handle more than two political parties vying for votes. Our founding fathers warned against letting our system become bi-partisan.
Look where we are now. If you think restricting the number of parties helps a voting system, you're very wrong, and us Americans are the perfect example to prove that.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:1, Insightful)
No, I think he means the state right to determine its own economic policy, tax structures, social programs, business requirements, personal freedoms, militia regulations, land distribution and zoning, and everything else left to the states or to the people by the constitution.
The federal power-grab that happened in conjunction with the abolition of slavery and the civil war is a sad example of what happens when a country starts out with major moral problems like slavery and white supremacy.
I was just thinking this yesterday while driving home. Civil War was Phase I. The New Deal was Phase II.
Which is why the 17th Amendment should be repealed. The House should continue to be elected by the people (No taxation without Representation... that is why the House controls the purse strings, not the Senate) and the State Legislatures should be appointing the Senator's NOT the masses. Think I'm crazy? Go look it up and read how it was and WHY the Founding Fathers set it up that way... Balance of Power.
Once the Senators become beholden to their respective STATES and not the special interest groups, the balance of power will start shifting back towards the States & their local legislatures, and the People of those States and away from an over-reaching Federal Government. As it stands now, there is little difference between a House Rep and a Senator in terms of who they serve. (read: themselves)
Have you ever wondered WHY State Governors got to appoint an open Senate seat but open House seats get a special election? We are supposed to be a Republic, not a pure Democracy. Repeal the 17th and we'll start getting back to that.
Whatever gets power away from Washington D.C. and back to the states, I'm for it. Our country is just too big and too complex for a handful of people in one city to be making all of the decisions. Each states needs are different from the rest.
I am against Big Government. That doesn't mean I'm against social programs and such. It means I believe that everything except national defense should happen at the state level. If my state wants to run a welfare program, so be it. If my state wants to run a Social Security program, so be it. These things should not exist at the national level. My federal taxes should be about $300 a year and my state taxes should be about $3000 a year, not the other way around.
Taxation with Representation...um, check?
Tax-dollar spending with Representation...EPIC FAIL!!!!!!
precisely (Score:1, Insightful)
The Declaration of Independence established the United States as "free and independent States," not "a free and independent State."
In a close election, the small states will determine the outcome, and that's the whole point. Nine states (California, Texas, New York, Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio) should not be able to dictate to the other 41 who will win the general election.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_population
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:3, Insightful)
That's insightful, but it also ignores that the American Union was like the European Union - a bunch of states coming together.
The *only* part that was popularly-elected was the House. The Senate was selected by the State Legislature. And so too was the President. The Supreme Court was completely disconnected (their loyalty is to the law). The U.S. was primarily a State-based Republic with just a small bit of democracy sprinkled into one-half of the Congress. Hence the name federalism (division of power across multiple levels).
Democratic elections of presidents didn't happen until long after the Founders were dead.
Re:This pact is old news (Score:3, Insightful)
This has nothing to do with partisanship. It's amazing that people don't realize how this will negatively effect exposure of the candidates to the people. If your state does this, and they have less than 1 million votes, the state will almost certainly be passed over in the election.
California is the epitome of a big state with everything to gain and nothing to lose with this measure. California is consistently ignored by both parties, except when it comes to fundraising behind closed doors. Moving to a popular vote would certainly increase the exposure of candidates to Californians.
Democrats generally support the measure and Republicans generally oppose it because the big states are generally blue and the small states are generally red. More power to the big states means more power to the Democrats. That's why it passed in a small blue state like Hawaii and got vetoed by a Republican governor in the state with the most to gain.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:1, Insightful)
Then, to keep the trade wheels going, organize the United States as a trade union. There, no more unfair votes, no more states' interests conflicting. I would welcome this with open arms.
A major problem with this would be that as soon as the welfare payments got cut off to the leech states, they'd go to war to keep living off of other people's money.
The States Have the Power if they will use it (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not really buying that logic (Score:4, Insightful)
If that were true than it would have been mandated that each state's electors vote as pledged and that they be selected en-block by the side that got the majority of votes in that state.
Neither of those things is mandated. The original concept was that the election of a president was too important to be left to the people and was a decision which should be made by a select group of leaders, the electors. It was never intended that they be pledged at all. It was never intended that presidential candidates would even EXIST. As envisaged people would vote for electors on the ballot whom they thought would be the best people to decide who should be president.
Factually it barely worked something like that in the first few elections and certainly since the days of Andrew Jackson it hasn't even remotely worked that way, but that WAS the intent.
I would also assert that the fact that a winning candidate GENERALLY will win a large number of states does not 'enhance their mandate' either. It isn't first of all true (you can be president by winning 51% of the vote in only around 13 states). Secondly nobody pays any real attention to the electoral college. I seriously doubt that what the vote is in the EC has any significant effect on perceptions of the population as to the strength of a given president.
What makes presidents powerful is the fact that there is a two party system. That itself is perhaps partly a result of the EC, but it is more a result of the whole state by state nature of the election of Congress and the internal rules of the Senate and House. In fact those rules and the actual rules formulated by the states on how elections are run have far more material impact on the way this country is governed than anything else.
'Deliverance' soundtrack missing from video... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, that video makes me want to hang my head in shame as a US citizen. And we wonder why things are so fouled up?
Whew! A little 'chlorine in the gene pool' is desperately needed now, more than ever.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:5, Insightful)
No, voting isn't the same as "New World Order" crap. Voting is how most countries elect a President/Leader/PM.
Most countries that I've lived in -- with a couple of notable exceptions -- don't elect a leader; they elect a government. I'm uncomfortable with the idea of absolute power vested permanently in one individual.
a mathematician's method (Score:1, Insightful)
I am very much against the two-party system in the U.S. With only two choices, I would argue that most people vote for the candidate they hate the least, not the one they like the most.
With that said, I once read an article (I'm sorry, I can't remember where) that discussed the flaws with the current electoral system and proposed a method based on a mathematician's idea. It is supposed to be statistically the most fair method and goes something like this:
The two big party candidates are running for an office, but there's also three independent or third party candidates (whom you never hear about on the evening news) running for the same office. With the mathematician's method, the voter would have to sort all five candidates giving a 5 to their favorite and a 1 to their least favorite. As you might imagine, most voters will assign a 5 and a 1 to each big party candidate, but the independents or other parties would get assigned a 2, 3, and 4. In the end, the winning candidate is the one with the highest sum of voters' assigned numbers.
Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score:2, Insightful)