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Proposal to Update the Electoral College
A Stanford Professor has put down an idea (and also co-wrote a 620-page book for those who are that interested) on how to update the often criticized Electoral College system for presidential elections. Under the proposed system participating states would form a compact to throw all Electoral College votes behind the winner of the national popular vote regardless of which candidate won in any individual state. This proposed system would also make it much easier to bring the system up to date since it would not require a constitutional amendment to change or disband the Electoral College.
Oh, you're quite wrong. The answer to the problem is in the name of our nation: "The United States of America"
Under the original constitution, each state was a separate entity with its own laws that banded together for common defense under a singular Federal entity. Federal powers were always intended to be weak so as to allow for the diversity present in each state governing itself.
The electoral college was setup because the states were concerned that they would not be fairly represented. The concern was that since New York had the largest population, all the elections would follow their desires without the opinions and diversity of the rest of the nation coming into play. As a result, the EC was developed to allow even the smallest state to have a bit of weight in their vote.
In case the implications of that aren't clear, let me spell it out: The electoral college is designed to NOT reflect the popular vote.
Sometimes the popular vote reflects the college vote (especially in the case of a landslide), but in many close races the two will differ. (e.g. Bush vs. Gore '00)
What's interesting is that the people demanding a change in the method used to count the vote is almost always the folks from heavily populated areas. i.e. The exact people the electoral college was setup to protect against. The concern is that these people have little understanding of other areas, and would do insurmountable damage to the rest of the nation. Considering that our food production as well as many forms of research and manufacturing are handled in rural areas, failing to represent them could be disasterous.
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Keep in mind that a "state compact" really is a treaty, but between American states instead of between countries. Actually, a state compact can also include a foriegn government as well.
The one thing that keeps them under control and from getting out of hand is that all state compacts must not only be approved by all state legislatures involved, but also by the U.S. Congress.... keeping the U.S. Consitutional issues in hand.
These compacts are usually done for rather mundane tasks like highway construction projects that cross state lines, school districts that take in kids from just across the state line, or other issues that would involve multiple states. Some good compacts I've seen allowed "in-state" tuition at a group of universities in a specific region. Minnesota in particular established seperate compacts to do just that with all of the neighboring states.
Even more bizzare was a compact between Minnesota and Mantoba, where an airport on the U.S./Canadian border was more cheaply extended across the international border by 1000 feet. It wasn't a huge airport, but the need was there to build the extra length of runway and make a joint state/province authority over the expanded airport. The state and provincial governments ran the airport, but it also needed federal authority from both national governments in order to get this to work.
Once states enter into a compact like this, it becomes enforceable almost like the U.S. Consitution, and states simply can't back out of it shy of fully repealing the compact by agreement with all of the people participating in that compact. Indeed, something like this ultimately has even more authority in fact than the U.S. Constitution as trying to get the whole thing renegotiated all over again after the compact is in legal force would be something next to impossible to accomplish. All told, I think a constitutional ammendment would be easier to negotiate because of this problem. SCOTUS doesn't let states get away with the same garbage that would be routine for the World Court.
Isn't it interesting that each example cited above is an example of groups that vote strongly Democratic.
You didn't include lists like "gun enthusiasts, stock traders, CEOs, and religious fundamentalists". This shows where your bias comes from.
Note that you didn't hear an outcry about the electoral college when Clinton took the White House with 43% of the popular vote in 1992
That's because he got more popular votes than any other candidate:
Clinton 43%
Bush Sr. 38%
Perot 19%
See? The guy with the most votes won. Even without the electoral college, Clinton was the winner. Interesting concept. Nobody said the winner had to have the majority of the votes, just more than any other candidate. Clinton got 5 million more votes than the next highest candidate. The will of the people was served. Hence, no uproar.
In 2000, the will of the people... as a whole... was that Al Gore be President. He got 500,000 more votes than any other candidate. That fact is incontrovertible.
Your hatred of Clinton notwithstanding, more Americans wanted him to be president than any other candidate... both times.
You're trying to confuse the issue. Kennedy got more POPULAR vote than Nixon in 1960 by the way... by 100,000.
Abolition of the Electoral college would have STILL meant JFK won in 1960 and WJC won in 1992 and 1996. Actually, abolition of the Electoral College would have meant that every election in the past century would have gone EXACTLY as it went... with the exception of 2000.
Any time there is a viable third candidate, no candidate will get 50%. That's a mathematical fact. It doesn't detract from the basic fairness that says "the guy with the most wins".
No amount of spinning will change the fact that America, by a narrow margin, rejected Bush in 2000. If a vote were somehow held today, Bush would make McGovern in 1972 look like a landslide winner.
"I have as much authority as the pope, I just
don't have as many people who believe it" - George Carlin
> So you want millions of uninformed uncaring citizens to start determining national policy?
They already do.
This will do nothing to encourage voter turnout though. Voter apathy is a much more complex issue.
Historically, one of the most effective ways to increase voter turnout is to force people to live under dictatorial rule for an extended period of time.
Me? I keep voting in order to AVOID that. Usually it works.
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You do know that your employer is required by law to give you time off to vote, don't you?
No?
*sigh*
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You do know that your employer is required by law to give you time off to vote, don't you?
Not true in all cases - though it looks like roughly 3/5ths of the states do *something* about it:
http://www.timetovote.net/voter_leave_laws.html