Slashdot Mirror
West Virginian Mayor Might Defy Popular Vote
gleam writes "A maverick Republican mayor in West Virginia is reportedly considering not casting his vote in the Electoral College for Bush, even if Bush wins the popular vote there. South Charleston Mayor Richie Robb says, 'I know that among some in my own party, what I'm discussing would be considered treasonous, but I'm not going to cheerlead us down the primrose path when I know we're being led in the wrong direction.' It wouldn't be the first time a West Virginian Elector defied the popular vote: In 1988 an Elector cast her vote for Michael Dukakis's running mate, Lloyd Bentsen, even though Dukakis won the state's popular vote."
Actually, it's 4 for the anti-Bush side, if you count the Democratic PAC.
Unfucking-believable.
Every candidate who is on the ballot provides a slate of electors. So whoever wins sends their people to the electoral college.
-Esme
I really suggest you read the Federal Papers before you make yourself look uneducated. There was no single reason the electoral process was chosen. Distance and communication was one. Another was to avoid foreign powers having an effect on the election of the President. They used words like "prostitue the vote" and assumed an Elector would be better educated then the general public and could avoid foriegn manipulation. Yet another reason was to balance the small states vs the large states. Don't belive me, then take a look at the information from the US Government on the electoral college. Also note that the electoral college is made up of the number of Senators and Represenitives.
Nowdays one of the reasons for the electoral college is gone, but not all of them.
-- Slashdot, making the Left look conservative since 1997.
That is BS. Check this link http://thomas.loc.gov/home/histdox/fed_68.html/
This is from the 68th Federalist Paper. Notice that they don't all go to Washington. They meet in their own state and fill out documents that are sent to DC. It would be just as easy to send a document with the certified popular vote as it is to send the votes of the Electors. Sorry, but you are just wrong on this one. Another issue that wasn't brought up was that low population states have slightly more voting power than heavily populated states per capita. Remember that we get an elector for each representative and senator.
Here is a link to the 2000 election broken down by county. San Diego is the only heavily populated county that I can find that went for Bush.
Fellowship 9/11
Bush by numbers: Four years of double standards
By Graydon Carter / Independent
1 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security issued between 20 January 2001 and 10 September 2001 that mentioned al-Qa'ida.
104 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security and defence in the same period that mentioned Iraq or Saddam Hussein.
101 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security and defence in the same period that mentioned missile defence.
65 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security and defence in the same period that mentioned weapons of mass destruction.
0 Number of times Bush mentioned Osama bin Laden in his three State of the Union addresses.
73 Number of times that Bush mentioned terrorism or terrorists in his three State of the Union addresses.
83 Number of times Bush mentioned Saddam, Iraq, or regime (as in change) in his three State of the Union addresses.
$1m Estimated value of a painting the Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas, received from Prince Bandar, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States and Bush family friend.
0 Number of times Bush mentioned Saudi Arabia in his three State of the Union addresses.
1,700 Percentage increase between 2001 and 2002 of Saudi Arabian spending on public relations in the United States.
79 Percentage of the 11 September hijackers who came from Saudi Arabia.
3 Number of 11 September hijackers whose entry visas came through special US-Saudi "Visa Express" programme.
140 Number of Saudis, including members of the Bin Laden family, evacuated from United States almost immediately after 11 September.
14 Number of Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) agents assigned to track down 1,200 known illegal immigrants in the United States from countries where al-Qa'ida is active.
$3m Amount the White House was willing to grant the 9/11 Commission to investigate the 11 September attacks.
$0 Amount approved by George Bush to hire more INS special agents.
$10m Amount Bush cut from the INS's existing terrorism budget.
$50m Amount granted to the commission that looked into the Columbia space shuttle crash.
$5m Amount a 1996 federal commission was given to study legalised gambling.
7 Number of Arabic linguists fired by the US army between mid-August and mid-October 2002 for being gay.
George Bush: Military man
1972 Year that Bush walked away from his pilot duties in the Texas National Guard, Nearly two years before his six-year obligation was up.
$3,500 Reward a group of veterans offered in 2000 for anyone who could confirm Bush's Alabama guard service.
600-700 Number of guardsmen who were in Bush's unit during that period.
0 Number of guardsmen from that period who came forward with information about Bush's guard service.
0 Number of minutes that President Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney, the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, the assistant Defence Secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, the former chairman of the Defence Policy Board, Richard Perle, and the White House Chief of Staff, Karl Rove the main proponents of the war in Iraq served in combat (combined).
0 Number of principal civilian or Pentagon staff members who planned the war who have immediate family members serving in uniform in Iraq.
8 Number of members of the US Senate and House of Representatives who have a child serving in the military.
10 Number of days that the Pentagon spent investigating a soldier who had called the President "a joke" in a letter to the editor of a Newspaper.
46 Percentage increase in sales between 2001 and 2002 of GI Joe figures (children's toys).
Ambitious warrior
2 Number of Nations that George Bush has attacked and taken over since coming into office.
130 Approximate Number of countries (out of a total of 191 recognised by the
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, for expressing something I've been thinking about for a long time:
Popular election of Senators may be a bad idea.
"How", you say? "How dare you!", some of you scream. Well, how long have we been complaining that real statesmanship is missing from Congress? The Senate was supposed to be the wise check on the popular passions of the day when the Constituion was written. The Senate was not supposed to be anti-democratic. It was not meant to block the will of the House, those popular representatives of the citizenry. It was mereley supposed to be a group of older and wiser men that would provide moderation in the expression of the democratic will. It didn't always work out this way, but for the exception of the tenure of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster (and those two also served in the Senate), the Senate was always known as the chamber of Congress that had the deepest debates about what we would call the Big Picture today. Congressmen were too busy trying to get roads built and budgets passed. The Senate always debated the truly lofty issues of the day.
After the 17th Amendment passed, and Senators became directly elected by popular vote, they became less statesmenlike. For all intents and purposes, they're just "Super-Congressmen" now, just as concerned with bringing home the pork as their fellow House members.
I'm not saying there wasn't abuse of the old system (with state legislatures electing them), or that common people aren't fit to elect their leaders. Far from it. But I wish we could get a better caliber of Senator, regardless of party.
How many truly great Senators have there been last century? Truly wise men that had the best interests of the country at heart, and at times bucked their own party to follow that instinct? In the latter half of the 20th century, I can think of only two I'd apply this label to: Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, and John C Stennis of Mississippi. DPM was Liberal, but had common sense. He was a Democrat, but respected Republicans. And keep in mind, I'm a Republican. How often do you hear someone of one party praise someone of another party? Not often. Stennis was a lifelong Democrat that is remembered as the father of the modern navy for his contributions. What about the House? Despite the more partisan nature of the House, Congressmen have more often made their mark in the public memory than Senators have, becoming both famous, and infamous. Sam Rayburn, Jim Wright, Newt Gingrich.
Maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Raidcal leftists? Explain. Your asterisk led me nowhere*. Like, I know some radical leftists, like say, anti-social anarchists, and they're a far cry from anything the Democratic party even comes close to, even, being in the same universe as.
*Did you mean your note on "Loonies"? Maybe your definition of radical differs from the one generally well understood in most politcal or social theory, but "radical" theory is not required at all to have to do with changing one's mind or considerations on evil. It more generally refers to the far-left, or sometimes to just critical theory in general. Or maybe your note on "Loonies" wasn't what your asterisk was linked to? Then I stand by my original statement on said asterisk.
Your argument falls on its face in light of the fact that the number of electoral votes given to a State is determined by that State's population.
Therefore, South and North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Nebraska, Iowa, Mississippi, New Mexico, and probably a few other states, are vastly under-represented precisely because they they're a minority.
Thanks for playing, though. It's been fun.
Kid-proof tablet..
Go read the original constitution. Originally, people didn't vote for the president. In fact, the people didn't have a say on how the president was chosen.
Article II, section 2, clause 2: Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
The legislature of a state chose the electors, not the people! The popular vote is just as important as the world-wide popular vote. It is irrelevant. All the states have delegated that responsibility to various systems. I believe Rhode Island and Maine appoint electors according to the proportion of the vote.
The electors assembled in their own states and chose two people to be president, one of which must not be from their state. (That's why Cheney moved to Wyoming and claimed residency there - he could not be voted as the second because he was a Texas resident.) They had to send the number of votes for each person, signed and sealed, to the federal government. Whereupon the president of the senate opens the envelopes and reads the votes. The one with the majority is the president. The second place is vice-president, and president of the senate. If there is a tie and both have majority, then the house decides who is president and who is vice-president. If no one gets a majority, then the house chooses one from the top five candidates. In the case the house is tied, the senate breaks the tie.
That's how the president was chosen at first. In fact, in the first election, nobody ran for president. However, George Washington won overwhelmingly. It was said that each of the electorates actually debated and took seriously their duty to choose a president. How I wish we elected representatives to choose the most important office in the land! And how I wish those people would debate and choose outside of the visibility of the people and legislatures the president!
Eventually, we got rid of the "second place is vice-president" rule by amendment because it always meant that the president of the senate was in opposition to the president, and the government was constantly gridlocked due to that.
When the Florida debacle occured, the Florida state legislature could've stepped in and changed the law permitting them to appoint electors without regard to the people's voice. That was their right under the constitution. Then they could've appointed their own electoral college and then sent them off to vote whichever way they pleased. However, because so few Americans have even read the simple document that our nation is built on, they refused to do so for fear of open rebellion. Instead, they allowed the courts to settle the matter.
Now, go read that document! You have to understand what is in it and what is not, and it is an easy read for techies like us. If we forget what checks and balances are in there, and why they are there, we are doomed to end up like France, Germany, Russia, or China one day.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
Except they get +2 for their Senators which have nothing to do with population, so South and North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Nebraska, Iowa, Mississippi, New Mexico get +16 electors between them, in fact:
Alaska
D.C.
Delaware
Montana
South Dakota
North Dakota
Vermont
and Wyoming
all get +16 electors base almost entirely on their Senate representation and not their population. 16 electors is like the smaller states getting Indiana and Oregon for free. D.C. however, can't have any more electors than the least populated state, so if you're specifically talking about D.C. you'd be right, but you weren't.
Thanks for playing, it has been fun.
-dameron
Sorry, it was meant to lead to the "Bi-partisan note", which was meant to show I think there are "loonies" on both sides, or at least were in the recent past. (Of course the Republicans haven't 100% removed them, but they no longer set the agenda.)
:-)
I define "loonies" as I did, as I also define "liberal" and "conservative" damn near everytime I use them, because there are so many definitions of the words that when you see them in isolation, they are worse than meaningless. On my blog, I have alternately used "liberal" to mean "conventional, vaguely left people", "classical liberal of the 19-th century (where we get the term "liberal arts")", "economic liberal", and "person who tends to concentrate on individual effects vs. social effects" (one of my faves). That last one in particular has no apparent connection to the literal meaning of the words, but don't blame me for starting down that road, I'm just following other's usage.
I particularly define "loonies" as the ones who won't change their minds, even when shown facts, particularly when they do spectacular mental gymnastics to convert the plain facts into something that supports their views, because they are the dangerous ones. The democrats are currently way too controlled by people seriously running around claiming Bush is worse than Hitler; while I'm personally not impressed with some of the authoritarian actions his administrations has taken, he's a far cry from Hitler.
The reason they are so dangerous to the Democrats is that just like the Loonie Christian Right (and bear in mind as I say this that I consider myself a Christian), they are so disconnected from the mainstream that they don't realize how crazy their accusations sound to the mainstream, and how they marginalize the mainstream. Off the top of my head I can't think of any equivalent for the Christian Right, but I suppose watching the 700 Club for a week will fill you in adequately; I wasn't politically active during the height of their power.
An example of the leftist loonies are most of the protestors at the RNC (though presumably not all of them).
(Generally, though this is necessarily vague, I'm looking at political, social, and academic "leftness", not economic leftness (socialism/communism), and I tend to think of anarchists on the libertarian/populist axis because I've seen both left and right anarchists, arguing against government for almost entirely opposing reasons, but ending in the same place. Yeah, there's overlap; if only the world were so simple.)
Source: http://www.issues2000.org/askme/Faithless_Electors .htm
The first clear case of the faithless elector happened in 1820, where one of James Monroe's electors voted for John Quincy Adams instead. Monroe carried every state in the Union, so the outcome was not affected.
In this century, there have been 7 faithless electors. The first was in 1948, when Strom Thurmond was running for president on the Dixiecrat platform. Preston Parks, a Truman elector for Tennessee, voted for Thurmond, who was a distant third in the popular vote. W.F. Turner, an elector for Adlai Stevenson, voted in 1956 for a local judge from his home district.
The first appearance of a faithless elector in a close election happened in the 1960 race between Nixon and Kennedy. An Oklahoma Kennedy elector named Henry D. Irwin voted instead for Harry F. Byrd, a senator from Virginia. Byrd ran as an independent and gained in addition all the 8 electoral votes from Mississippi and 6 of the 7 votes from Alabama. Reportedly Irwin, a southern Democrat, objected to Kennedy's civil rights policies. Although this election was very close, Irwin's vote did not affect the outcome.
In 1968 however, the independent candidate's appeal and his corresponding electoral votes almost did change the outcome. Lloyd Bailey, a North Carolina Nixon elector, voted instead for George Wallace, who ran as an independent. In this case, Wallace gained a total of 46 electoral votes, which came close to preventing either Nixon or Humphrey from getting the number needed to win.
In 1972, a Nixon elector named Roger L. McBride voted for the Libertarian candidate John Hospers. The publicity McBride received culminated in his own run for President in 1976, also as a Libertarian.
A Ford elector from Washington, Mike Padden, voted in 1976 for Ronald Reagan. Reagan has lost the party's nomination to Ford. The most recent case was in 1988, where Margarette Leach, a Democratic elector from West Virginia, voted for Democratis Vice-Presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen instead. She said, "it was nice to make a mark on history... I wish every year somebody... would make a statement and it would be heard."
What happens when an elector is faithless? It turns out that only about half of the states have laws binding their electors to vote for the popular vote winner in their state. But wait, the situation is even worse. In the states that do bind their electors, either there is no penalty, or the penalties range from a fine ($1000 in Wisconsin) to conviction of a fourth-degree felony (New Mexico). And, although there are clear documented cases of faithless electors, no faithless elector has ever been punished. Of course, no faithless elector has ever changed the outcome of an election. So far.
Note: On the world stage, many view the entire U.S. system as skewed to the Right.
One example, politicalcompass.com puts Kerry nearly center on a graph of left/right and also of authoritarian/libertarian, with GWB further right and authoritarian than Kerry.
A differnt type of world leader, such as Ghandi and Nelson Mandella fall left and libertarian.
In that light, Kerry's the more "centered" to the world, which GWB is the radical. The far left in the Dems are probably quite a way over on the graph, but could be either authoritarian or libertarian depending on their views.
Of interesting note, virtually no world leaders fall in the Libertarian/Right quadrant - a rare person indeed.
+++OK ATH
Crap - wrong link. Try this one instead...
politicalcompass.ORG
Oops.
+++OK ATH