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Iowa Seeks To Remove Electoral College
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."
If the popular vote truly counted, that would be a very compelling reason to register and/or go out and vote.
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Isn't this kind of what the framers had in mind? When issues like these come up, let the states decide how they want to run things.
Finally us white aristocratic land owners won't be the only ones electing the president!
I didn't think they would ever get rid of the electoral college during my lifetime, I'd be very impressed if it actually happens.
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.
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damn they're doing it the right way by using the national vote too, well done Iowa
The PROBLEM with the electoral college is the states all-or-nothing states; those that give all their electoral votes to some winner rather than properly distributing them amongst the candidates as they were voted for.
If Iowa adopts this measure, it would be noteworthy, but the summary seems to imply that this is a new idea or something unique that Iowa is considering. It is not. See the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact:
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This is IOWA!
That is THE BEST use of that tag I've seen all year.
I live in Iowa, and I think I have a few phonecalls to make today. And so do you.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Frankly, if I ran a state, I would NOT do that. Why? Because it removes any incentive for the Executive to pay special attention to your state.
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.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
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).
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Small states like Wyoming might want to protect the electoral college. Couldn't they withhold their actual vote counts to ruin this scheme?
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As a Brit I was shocked to read this from TFA:
"Support for such a move has been building since 2000, when President Bush became president despite losing the popular vote to Al Gore."
So Bush won despite more actual people voting for Gore? I'm sure there's some great technical reason for the system to work this way, but to a layman it just seems ridiculous.
Wait, what's that you say? Britain works the same way? WHAT!?
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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.
Everyone likes to talk about who won the popular vote but the truth is not all votes are counted. Many states will simply not count some votes. Usually this happens when a state shows a candidate with more of a lead than there are uncounted votes. However, if you institute a popular vote you would have to count all votes because other states may have tighter races. The truth is we only ever know the popular vote winner of counted votes and this could differ than cast votes.
This is one of the absolutely dumbest Ideas I have ever heard. It would makes Iowa completely irrelevent in the national elections. The idea of the Electoral college is to stop the largely populated areas from dominating the smaller and rural areas with policy that simple doesn't translate effectivly. That is why each state got two senators instead of the same amount as the representatives. It's to equalize the effects of the larger populations.
If this happens, then expect Iowa and every other state stupid enough to follow suit to end up like California which couldn't even pay out tax refunds because they spent too much on stupid shit. California alone has more of a population they their electoral representation compared to say Iowa or Ohio or KY or WV. The east coast states typically will too. It could be possible for a candidate to get the popular vote simply by concentrating on the population centers and ignoring more then two thirds of the other states and plans like this one only makes it possible.
What is good in one state doesn't mean it is good in another, the electoral college signifies that by making the candidates visit and court each state. The founding fathers knew about this and feared large groups of concentrated population centers making it impossible for smaller areas to be effectivly represented. It's the reason why it is there, the state has the election, not the nation.
There are pros and cons to the electoral college. If it is eliminated, the voting would swing more heavily towards the more densely populated areas of the country.
I like the idea as a concept, but other things would have to change. The states would need to become stronger to balance out the federal government, which might not carrying out the will of the people in a given region.
In 2007 Governor Martin O'Malley made Maryland the first state to adopt this legislation. You can see where legislation on this topic is stuck in your home state in this wikipedia entry. Contrary to the unusually sensational headline posted here that makes it sound as though Iowan's don't care about the constitution, I see this as a great progressive step towards avoiding any future national elections determined by "the 9".
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Finally us white aristocratic land owners won't be the only ones electing the president!
Um, can you explain how that's a good thing if you are white?
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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..
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.
--Jim (me)
As for this movement, I'm not sure it is such a hot idea. The electoral college forces candidates to visit contested states. If a majority of states adopt measures like this, candidates then can focus on a fewer, higher populated places instead.
I'm not sure democracy is done any favors by making it cheaper and easier to campaign but then again I'm not sure democracy is done any favors by keeping it this convoluted either. The balance should be sought between representing a majority and making sure everyone had a chance to give their input where even dissenting votes are important. Measures like this always have me wondering if that defeats half of the equation.
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.
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If popular vote were to be implemented, Iowa would be one of the states marginalized by this.
Stop verbing nouns. Or nouning verbs in this case.
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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.
Yeah, it doesn't work like that. In fact, that suggestion is probably a violation both the Constitution and election law. Electoral college votes are supposed to represent the people of the individual states and strengthen the votes of smaller states. By using the national election results, Iowa would be effectively disenfranchising it's own citizens and diluting their votes to nothing. The Iowa electoral college votes would not reflect Iowans concerns and values, but rather those of the citizens of New York, California, Florida, etc.
This is a very bad idea and will hurt Iowans.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
This is exactly what the electoral college was meant to protect against, larger areas chosing the President based on population. I'm not saying it's a great system, but this is one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard. If every state in the union did this, then it would be a great idea because it would effectivly null the electoral vote we have now in favor of a popular system without altering the Consitution. But as it stands, Iowa citizens would be largely unrepresented in the presidential vote due to living in a sparsely populated state.
Please fix the post.
If every state says, "Our law goes into effect after a near-majority of other electors are bound by similar rules", then they're in deadlock.
When, oh when, will the Iowa legislature finally pass the laws requiring that all newly elected legislators have a master's in CS? That's it - I'm moving to Canada, next week for sure.
I think a better way to ensure that presidential elections line up with popular votes, short of an amendment, is to allow split electors. Maine does this. Basically you take the popular vote in the state and use that to decide what percentage of electors vote for who. So say your state had 10 electors. Candidate A gets 52% of the vote, candidate B gets 21% of the vote candidate C gets 17% of the vote. Well then you send 5 electors for candidate A, 2 for candidate B and 2 for candidate C.
It is obviously not perfect, you are effectively "rounding" votes, but it still gives a much more accurate mapping of the popular vote. This also has the advantage that if states start doing it, political parties can't just ignore states that are strongholds of the other party. For example Republicans pretty much always write off California. Good reason too, they nearly always go Democrat. However, if you look at the popular vote it isn't so one sided. It isn't 98% democrat or anything. It's more like a 60/40 split, or less. Well, if the electors split, there'd be reason to care how California voted. Maybe you aren't going to win it, but you can get more electors. Same deal in reverse with the Democrats and the red states. They aren't going to win them, but they'd often be able to pick up a third of the state's electors.
This also helps third parties. Right now one of the big problem a third party faces is the all or nothing system. If you have strong national support, but not enough to win majority votes in big states, you are screwed. With this, there'd be a much better chance.
All this is something states can do on their own. The Constitution says we elect the president via the electoral college. It doesn't say states can't split electors. I'd really like to see more states start to go this route, but there seems little interest in it.
Wow, why would Iowa want to do this? Right now they're the host of one of the earliest primaries (actually a caucus) and host most serious contenders. Doing this would marginalize Iowa quite a bit, unless there's some side effect I'm not thinking of. Iowa has seven electoral votes, so why would candidates even bother going there anymore?
I think this is a good idea on the whole though, but I'm pretending I'm a selfish Iowan here, it doesn't seem to make sense.
This doesn't get rid of the electoral college. It changes how the electoral college works, but there will still be 7 people from Iowa going to the electoral college to vote for president.
Since the point of the Electoral College was to keep the populace states from having too much of a voice, and give the small states more of a voice, maybe we should redistribute the count of electors to be more fair. Going with just the popular vote would make it even more likely that someone could carry just the big 3 or 4 states, ignore the rest of the country, and still win. Even more skewed than today...
Logic is the beginning of reason, not the end of it.
This should also be coupled with the adoption of Instant Run-off Voting whereas instead of just picking one candidate you rank the available candidates. If your first choice does not get the votes to win they move down the list.
Many people vote based on who can beat the person they don't want in office. A system like this you are more free to express who you do want in office and it also opens up the game for third parties and independents since people can take the risk when the race is close between the big two.
This is why I have never liked people like Ron Paul etc because they continue to run failed campaigns wasting millions in contributions. If they were so much smarter than the other canidates they would instead focus their efforts on election reform such as this and be trying to get this policy in place so they have a chance.
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" Franklin
Well, one thing I can assure you is that your vote will NOT count in Iowa, should this bill pass into law.
Your vote will count in Iowa, as long as you don't vote there.
--
Oh, wait.
It allows the other states to determine how their residents will vote. If 100% of the Iowa voters voted for candidates other than the popular vote, then 100% of the state's voters would be disenfranchised.
A better solution is the district system in which the vote is done by congressional district, and the majority winner of that district receives that district's vote. If no, majority is received, then a runoff happens in 45 days with the candidate list being limited to the two candidates that received the most votes. The state's two electoral votes can then be apportioned however the state desires. In this case, they could send their two votes to the popular candidate.
i read the headline as "Iowa Seeks To Remove Electrical Charge"
I think you guys missed the last bit: "This would only go into affect after enough states totaling 270 electoral votes (enough to elect a president) adopted similar resolutions."
So, until enough other states have similar resolutions, Iowa votes will be counted exactly the same way as they are today. When (if) Iowa is joined by enough other states that together their electoral votes will dominate those of the remaining states, then you'll have a president elected by popular vote. Even in the holdout states, votes will still count: they're part of the popular vote that Iowa and friends will be evaluating.
...go fuck yourselves. We don't care how you vote.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I'm so against this idea I've decided to pull some census data to prove my point. There are an estimated 299,398,484 people in the United States as of 2006. There are only 2,982,085 people in Iowa. If every person in Iowa voted for McCain, currently those electoral votes would go to McCain as they would in almost every other state. However, if this legislation were enacted, those votes would go to Obama despite the majority vote for McCain in the state of Iowa even if Obama only received one more vote on the national level than McCain. This is exactly why we have an electoral college - because the founders couldn't figure out a better way to allow smaller, lesser represented areas and states have a stake in the Presidency. Maybe that system has run its course due to major media outlets that let you know everytime a candidate sneezes, but changing this law in some peacemeal fashion only stops your state's citizens from being represented. If I were a voter in Iowa, I simply wouldn't vote because I now realize that the entire election, at least for my state, is being decided by California, New York, Pennsylvania, etc.
I am not a sports fan, so when it comes to things like the Superbowl, or the Stanley Cup, I always say that I am solidly behind whichever team eventually wins.
If this goes through, Iowa will be solidly behind whichever candidate eventually wins.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
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.
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"
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If the popular vote truly counted, that would be a very compelling reason to register and/or go out and vote.
Why would a voter in Des Moines, IA feel the need to register let alone vote when there is little chance they'll ever see either candidate? With this mechanism, all a candidate needs to do is focus on a fewer places and they win. It isn't worth their time going out of the way to places without much population.
Having Clinton and Obama visit nearly every state had an effect. It made them appear in many places.It seems that forcing competition on a state jurisdiction level seems to promote voter participation.
and it disenfranchises voters by, potentially, giving their electors to someone who last the state. A better solution is along the lines of Maine and Nebraska. Award electors by congressional district and give the two extra to the winner of the state.
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Effect, not affect, goddamn it!
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The real purpose of EC was to give electoral wieght to people who did not vote. The system is based upon representing people and not voters. This allows the states to have VERY different rules about who can and cannot vote. At a time that was 150-190yrs from universal sufferage, EC was the only way to represent people and not reward states for excessive openness in sufferage. I'm saying I agree with that strategy, many people nowadays might think it was just short of evil. But that was the purpose of the system. Now that we have universal sufferage, EC seems to present ambiguous value.
However, look at how bad the recount was in FLA in 2000. FLA is mearly a medium-big state. Imagine a Nationwide recount? Wow, the fight taking place simultaniously in every corner of the U.S. If anything, EC prevents nationwide recounts, and thus, still serves a limitted purpose and should be kept.
Jerry
If the popular vote truly counted, that would be a very compelling reason to register and/or go out and vote.
While the EC means that a North Dakotan's(633k, 3 EC votes) vote counts about three times as much as an Californian's(34M, 55ECV), that doesn't mean your vote doesn't count.
North Dakota gets a vote for every 211k people.
California gets a vote for every 618k.
If nothing else, your vote still counts for your representative, senator, state and local government, etc... Remember, the President doesn't work in a vacuum - Having Senator A instead of B in office can mean some important differences, even if they're not immediately apparent.
I don't read AC A human right
Why would any presidential candidate ignore 2 milion votes? To put it differently: if the EC was abolished (literally or in the way the article suggests) Iowa would likely get as much attention as Chicago. Does it get more with the current system? Probably (see bioethanol, subsidies for ) but that actually means voters in other places get the short shrift.
If I was an Iowan, I'd be pissed.
Give the electoral votes to the winner of Iowa's popular vote - not whoever California, Florida, New York, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Ohio voted for.
What?
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):
When the US abolished gold standard in 1971 and the dollar became "fiat money", 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?) 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...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Article I, Section 10 Paragraph 3 states in part "No state shall, without the consent of Congress, ... enter into any agreement or compact with another state..."
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?
They already do, since the number of electors is the sum of the number of senators and representatives. For the sake of simple math, let's say a state gets one representative per million people. A state with 10 million people gets 12 electoral votes, or 833,333 people per elector. A state with 20 million people gets 22 electoral votes, or ~900000 people per elector. A state with only 1 million people gets 3 electors, or 333,333 people per elector. A voter in the one of the smallest states has their vote count for nearly triple that of a voter in one of the largest states.
Nope. The measure doesn't spring into action until enough states accept the resolution to ensure the popular vote overrides the other states. In other words, if less that 270 electors' worth pass a similar measure, Iowa's votes will work the way they used to. However, once more than 270 are on board, they switch to the popular vote method and winner takes all. If anything, Iowa's votes will count for more because of this measure.
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.
Part of the agreement to join the union required that larger, more populous states not dominate the smaller, less populated ones. If this deal was "unfair", then why did the more populated states agree to it? It seems to me that they decided that having the smaller states in the union was important enough that it was worth it. That, to me at least, is the definition of "fair". If we would like to change the terms on which we are unionized, why not go back, and let each state decide again whether or not those terms are fair?
Exactly!
The Party system is the problem. I'm all for using party affiliation for elections. But they need to be banned from government. Right now 90% of the resources any polititian has are spent trying to tear down the "other half" of our government. This is schezophrenic idiocy. Senators and congress(wo)men should sit and vote according to what state they are from, NOT according to who their political affiliates are.
Nowhere does the constitution give power to the parties, yet they run the whole country now. Each party performs multiple treasonous acts every year, yet they get away with it all the time. Stop the IDIOCY!
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That's just it: nobody sane would support it aside from those in the population centers. That's why guises like "pure democracy" are popular in places like San Francisco and NYC. Unfortunately, in many states, the population centers already have near-complete control of the state, and would wish to force their will irrevocably on the rest of the population as well.
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...should surely be...
Justin.
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Mod parent up. "This would only go into affect after enough states totaling 270 electoral votes (enough to elect a president) adopted similar resolutions."" means that the GGP is shockingly mistaken and the people who modded him insightful didn't even read, or perhaps couldn't understand the implications of, the summary.
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How does this take into account the veracity of the vote? If there's a dispute right now because the vote was different by less than half of one percent is knife edge, then under the current system when a particular state has a 13,000 vote difference there's legal wrangling for months to straighten it out. If you're taking into account all the votes of all states, then a difference of 660,000 votes becomes knife-edge. One of the things the electoral college helps insulate against is funny business in a particular state, because the damage is localized unless the election is already very close. Under a popular system, each state has to fully trust the certification of another state's voting system from its ballots or machines on up through the final count. We don't have a centrally mandated federal voting system (nor should we) and without one I don't see this working.
What about reading the blurb before posting ?
"This would only go into affect after enough states totaling 270 electoral votes (enough to elect a president) adopted similar resolutions."
That means the vote will count, until the US president is elected on popular vote.
The agreement between the states was a perfect example of a holdout problem, where when a large block of land is being assembled for development, the last few remaining holders of land of land can holdout, demanding a disproportionately large amount to what everyone else got, and everyone else has to go along with it in order to complete the development. Whether it's fair or not is I think not a cut and dry question.
At any rate, though, that hardly makes this a situation of robbing Peter to Paul.
In this case, one of the small states that got a disproportionately large amount of the vote by holding out, is now considering relinquishing their disproportionate share and making things equal. If anything, I'd say Paul was the robber to start with, and after 10 generations, Paul's children out of a principled stance have agreed to give back what they took to Peter's children.
The disenfranchisement of large numbers of voters in a state by clumping all a state's electoral votes for the candidate that won the popular vote in the state was the worst move any state ever made. Instead, these votes should be apportioned by the percentage of the vote each candidate got (as is done in a couple of small states).
Moreover the Electoral College is being completely bypassed as a check and balance because states pretend to allow you to vote for a candidate but you are actually voting for Electoral College representation. You have no idea who you are actually voting for when you select a candidate... because they are simply puppets of their political parties who are told to go and vote for candidate X.
It's actually VERY hard to find the names of these people. The people who are actually voting for the candidates.
In a system where the Electoral College was used correctly (as intended) you would vote for intelligent Electoral Candidates who you respected and they would represent you in the Electoral College by casting a vote for who they thought was the best candidate. You would never directly pick a candidate... but instead delegate the decision to someone who you respected to represent your best interests. These people would meet and debate the decision as mandated by law and then cast their votes which would be transmitted Congress for authentication.
But that's not going to happen. The Du-opoly of our current system keeps the power in the two parties hierarchy and they will never allow the power to be leveled down. They pick the two candidates so you get one more choose than they did in Soviet Russia, where they had elections with one candidate on the ballot.
Electing the president based on popular vote would not affect the outcome of most elections. The only ones it would change are those where the EC vote goes to a candidate other than the popular vote winner. Right now the EC vote wins disagreements. The plan is to make the popular vote supreme. What's the problem?
The "big population centers" are generally the ones paying the taxes that support rural areas.
It has nothing to do with living in a population center, it's about swing states. Presidential campaigns direct all their efforts to that minority of the population, because an additional vote in deep blue Maryland is worth nothing, while an extra vote in purple Virginia can make a difference.
Anyone who doesn't live in a swing state should support it, as it means that that vote of a single person living in a solid red or solid blue state counts as much as a swing state vote.
And any intellectually honest person living in a swing state, who don't think they deserve a louder voice than the rest of us, should support it too.
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You cannot wash away blood with blood
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?
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.
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?
Because the Electoral College wasn't structured to represent racial groups. It was structured to represent 50 (well 13 at the outset) sovereign states that voluntarily entered into a larger Republican government.
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.
Fine, then let Paul out of the deal as well.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
One further point that I wish to make for those who still think the electoral college is a good idea.
Why do you think that rural Californian voters or New York voters should get no meaningful vote at all at the expense of favoring rural Midwestern voters?
Is tradition worth that much?
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.
That's laughably wrong.
Why would a candidate waste a week traveling all over Iowa to convince people they were the next best thing, when all they need to do is spend a few days in Chicago and get the same benefit? They can spend a couple extra days in Cleveland and Minneapolis and lock up twice as many votes as the whole remaining midwest.
I disagree. With the current system, only a few states matter. The majority of states are not competitive and can be safely ignored. No one spends time in Alabama or California. They go to Florida, Ohio, Missouri, etc. Just look at how everyone reacted to McCain's push in Pennsylvania. They thought he was crazy because, even though he made some headway, he wasn't going to be close to winning. There are probably 10 or so states max that matter.
Without the electoral college, it would still make sense for McCain to campaign in a place like Pennsylvania. He's not going to win the state, so right now there is no reason to even think about them but without the electoral college in place, even if he increases his vote count by from 35% to 40%, that's a good gain.
Further, losing the electoral college allows every individual's vote to count. Right now, a fairly significant portion of voters don't matter. Republicans in New England don't matter. Democrats in the south don't matter. Removing the electoral college means that everyone matters.
So yes, large population centers may become more important when campaigning, but I don't see that as very different from the current situation where only a few states matter. Plus, even if you're not the focus of a campaign because you don't live in NY or LA, you still have the same voting power as people who live in those places. Right now, if you don't live in a swing state, you have no voting power.
"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."
Lets see. If you are in California, you get 1 vote towards the popular vote. If you are in Iowa, you get 1 vote towards the popular vote.
THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE.
I love going down to the elementary school, watching all the kids jump and shout, but they dont know I'm using blanks.
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?
Yes, there's a very good reason a voter in Iowa should receive a bigger say; when it affects their state. Why should people in big cities tell Iowans how to live their life? The federal government affects Iowa, and just because there's more people in CA and NY doesn't give people in CA and NY the right to dictate to IA.
Your argument is that we'd have a harder time doing recounts? Isn't that akin to putting a price on freedom? Voting in a free country is not supposed to be efficient for price at the cost of liberty.
When it comes to nationwide voting like a system that actually uses the popular vote, it could actually be both cheaper and more fair to do a run-off election instead. I think people would feel better after it, too. There would be no more "Nader factor" and fewer complaints of unfair treatment (since locations accused of that would get far more attention the second time around).
Liars like to claim Al Gore "won" the popular vote
That was flamebait and you know it. Sure, Gore's victory in the popular vote was within the margin of error, but so was Bush's victory in the popular vote of Florida (at least). Isn't this all just flame bait anyway? It doesn't matter. What matters is that the election was so close and the tensions so heated that we had to get it decided by the Supreme Court, and even that final decision was debated (justly or not, you can't argue that there was debate). And now we're done with that chapter.
We apportion the votes by state for two reasons: ...
#1 - The US is supposed to be a union of self-sovereign states.
#2 - The logistics of holding a "national recount" are simply not possible...
We apportion the votes by state for one reason: fair representation of all states.
Your first cited reason is a part of this - smaller states should be given larger proportionate say because they are valued members of the union (your cited reason of limiting the Federal government's power with the state deciding the rest of the issues is mostly moot on the federal level, e.g. a presidential election). We're more tightly knit than the EU, no? States govern themselves, not the nation.
Your second cited reason was definitely not considered by the Constitution's framers as recounts weren't worked into the picture until later. Maybe I haven't looked hard enough, but I can't find a single recount from before I was born, let alone the 1800s or earlier; for example, the Presidential election of 1876 featured an electoral voting loser with the popular vote won by a margin of 3.1%, but there were no recounts.
I think everybody can agree that when the electoral college and the popular vote disagree, it is a very close election. Rather than jumping ship from one system to the other, why not do something about the discrepancy? A run-off election is expensive and recounts are expensive (and often unfair), so we need another option.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
Nuff said.
No, you're utterly wrong on this. FTA, the law will only take effect if enough other states get on board to deliver an election, which means we'd have (nationwide) a popular vote election. So your vote would count exactly as much as every other American's does, and this whole electoral college thing would just be a formality.
Where you live has absolutely nothing to do with it, though in some cases it's true that the value of your vote might decrease. But that's only because your vote was (unfairly) more important than mine to begin with, so I'm not very sympathetic to your plight. We're not living in a real democracy if we don't have equally important votes when electing our collective leader.
Protection against mob rule comes from the Constitution, not from weighting small town votes more than big city ones. If there are more people in population centers, damn straight they should have more say in things, there's more of them!
What I find most interesting is that it has the potential to wrest control of the outcome from the couple of states with the most electoral votes and force candidates to actually campaign everywhere. But IMHO, a better solution would be to eliminate the winner-take-all nature of the college. That has the potential to eliminate focusing a campaign effort only on the big city that happens to occupy a small part of a much larger state. But we also need to throw out McCain-Feingold because it doesn't work the way it was intended. Either that or make the 501C(3)'s totally transparent so that everyone can know where their money is coming from.
Not entirely. You're forgetting the cost of media markets. The cost of advertising in L.A. and S.F. is much higher than Des Moines. Iowa happens to be pretty close to a swing state, so people care about it right now, but they wouldn't if it were more partisan in either direction. More partisan small states (like Kansas, Oklahoma or Maryland) are completely ignored now. Under a national popular vote, they would be more attractive targets, because every voter swung in those states would count, and it would be cheaper to talk to the smaller markets.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
In a real democracy things go the way majority wants. Sure it's not pretty if for example majority wants to kill all atheist, but nobody has ever claimed that democracy was pretty.
According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact (which seems very comprehensive and easier to see the state-by-state-status than the NPV site) there have been four states the have fully enacted the law: Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, and New Jersey; their 50 electoral votes total amount to almost 19% of the 270 needed for the compact to take effect.
Beyond that: what do you think would happen is say, the Democratic candidate completely ignored Iowa? You can bet that the Republican would ensure that the people of Iowa voted massivly for him.
That is not a principled reason, but instead is based on self-interest, which I already freely acknowledged is with Iowa keeping the existing system.
If you are presenting this as a principled matter, then why should people in Iowa get to tell people in the big cities how to live their life? The federal government affects everyone, and just because we needed to make a Faustian bargain with Delaware, New Jersey, Vermont, etc. (man I bet they regret that now) to be able to form this country doesn't mean it's right for the country to spend a disproportionate amount of money on the few.
Or maybe it does, and we should have spaces reserved in the electoral college for each racial minority. That way, we can guarantee the candidates won't care only about the needs of white Americans.
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.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
I found a link to this article here a while back, and it is relevant to this thread:
Math Against Tyranny
It is a mathemtician's view as to why the Electoral College has helped this country. It's kind of a long read, but definitely worth it. It even references the Pirates over the Yankees in the '60 World Series - that can't be a bad thing...
One great quote from the article about why equal voting isn't enough:
"Under a tyranny, everyoneâ(TM)s power is equal to zero. Clearly, equality alone is not enough."
There is a difference, because the majority of people in California are going to have completely different priorities than the majority of people in Iowa. Let's take a look at some problems with this, shall we?
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.
Iowa isn't going to award all 7 of its votes to the winner of the election in Iowa. That would be "winner take all" as you're complaining.
Instead Iowa will give its 7 electoral votes to the candidate with the most votes *nationwide*. But ONLY if enough states adopt the measure.
That would mean that the candidate with the most votes nationally would always win the electoral vote.
So it's "winner takes all" in the sense that the winner wins, instead of sometimes losing like in recent history.
No, my reasoning is that we shouldn't have a national vote for President and that the President should be selected by the individual states that still (theoretically) retain their sovereignty. If we have a national popular vote for President, then what's next? Should we abolish the US Senate because New Hampshire has the same number of Senators as California?
Let's look at this on a smaller level. Ever since SCOTUS deemed "one man, one vote" must apply to state legislatures (geographical representation is good enough for the US Senate but not the NYS Senate, apparently), rural areas have been dictated to by urban areas. Here in New York almost half (42%) of the population has no voice in Albany because NYS Government is dominated by legislators from NYC who have the votes to do whatever the hell they want. From what I understand it's a similiar story in other states with big cities -- California, Illinois, etc.
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?
Because that's not in the Constitution. This is: The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
They (Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark) have the highest ratings (transparency, corruption, etc) of all democracies, and they mostly use proportional representation, not the winner-take-all approach.
It seems like there are several people posting from the hip, so to speak, and getting very worked up without quite understanding what the Electoral College does, what it is, and the nature of the current situation. You may disagree with me on a factual basis. If that's the case, please cite something. All my info is from wikipedia and several civics textbooks I've got kickin' around.
1. States are allotted a number of electors equal to their Representatives and Senators. In other words, all but two electors are granted in proportion to a state's population. DC gets three, the minimum a state could theoretically have, despite having no Congressional representation (with any teeth, at least).
2. About half the states have laws against what are called "faithless electors", or electors who vote differently than how they're "supposed" to. It's a pretty rare occurrence.
3. The Electoral College was instituted for a number of reasons, but a lack of confidence in the wisdom of the mob was certainly one. In the 18th century, it was highly unlikely that every eligible voter in every state would have enough information about the candidates to make an informed decision, or even know who the candidates were, for that matter. Electors, known to the community and considered "in-the-know", solved the information problem to a degree. It was also hoped that they would act as a last-ditch defense against a charismatic politician duping the public. Not so successful in the last regard, I'm afraid...
4. Although most states use the winner-take-all system, they do so by custom rather than law. Nothing in the Constitution requires it.
While it is true that votes in smaller states pack a bit more of an electoral punch, it doesn't do them too much good these days. Remember the bit about the House of Representatives? In the pre-industrial U.S., the difference between urban and rural populations wasn't nearly as dramatic as it is today, simply because cities had yet to become industrial centers and so didn't draw population from the countryside or smaller towns/villages. Consider the following. Iowa has seven votes. California has 55. Two Ohios and a North Carolina, if you will. Maybe Iowan votes are worth more per capita, but California as a whole is worth almost eight Iowas.
Candidates only have to win the big states. The smaller states tend to go reliably to one party or the other. Look at the number of campaign stops and amount of money spent per state and you'll see that it leans towards the populous states.
The reason, and this is important, that people pay attention to Iowa is that Iowa is the first to hold primaries, and they do so in a caucus. Iowa's impact on the national election is in the very first stages as a bellwether for party nominations.
Furthermore, even if Iowa decides to toss it's seven votes to whoever already has 270, I daresay it wouldn't affect the outcome one way or the other. At 270, we already have a winner.
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I'm not actually in favor of this, simply because it takes away the say of the people in Iowa. If their state votes for the loser, so be it, they should be counted.
I hate the idea of the winner-take-all electoral college as it is currently incarnated, but I don't think that this is the right way to go about changing it.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Of the electoral college (in the states or anywhere), but this sounds plain stupid: it would be sending Iowa's votes to whomever won nationaly, regardless of the WILL of the Iowan.
Plain idiotic.
I didnt RTFA, but then the heading must be wrong or those congressmen need to go back to school.
They should do a direct election in Iowa and send all 7 electoral votes to whomever wins the popular vote IN IOWA (not nationaly!)
NO SIG
The reason that advertising in L.A. and S.F. is higher than Des Moines is because it reaches more people (voters) in those cities. The real question is how much does the advertising cost per voter. So is advertising in Des Moines 1/18th the price of advertising in L.A.? Is it 1/3 the price of advertising in S.F.? That is the ratio of the population of those cities versus that of Des Moines. And that doesn't take into account the rest of the media market for those cities. The media market for L.A. that is outside of L.A. proper is probably larger than the entire media market for Des Moines.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
If they do this, they will just ensure that no one ever campaigns in Iowa. Their population is so small that they will be able to be safely ignored as long as you concentrate on large population centers.
Liberty uber alles.
No, really. Go look it up... its right there in the Constitution.. you know, that annoying document that won't let politicians get away with half of what they want to do?
The Founding Fathers knew well enough that pure Democracies eventually self-destruct because, well, people are stupid and group-think makes them do stupid things. The 17th Amendment did enough damage to this country by removing the election of Senators from the States and putting it into the hands of the people... it was never intended to be that way. Now the Federal Government has too much power and the States have very little.
Now Iowa wants to further push towards an over-reaching Federal Government and remove the rights from the States.. WTF are they thinking? Don't we already have too much power entrusted in the Federal Government?
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
I aim to misbehave.
It's "take effect", not "take affect" as the summary puts it. Sorry, pet peeve.
Quality, not quantity is what we need more of.
If you want ideas for useful voter reform, I have one for you; How about adding a qualification section at the top of every ballot, with a few basic questions. Failure to get the questions right, and the ballot does not count.
Simple non-partisan questions, such as:
How many states are in the United States?
How many terms can the President serve?
What is the length of the term of a US congressman?
How many US Senators does each state have?
etc.
IMHO, if you don't know simple stuff, your ability to make a good decision is highly suspect and we would be better off without the "uninformed" vote.
Without the Electoral College the popular vote would go to: New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, Philadelphia, San Antonio, San Diego and Dallas. The total of these (around 238 million) are over 70% of the total US population (around 300 million)
The populations of: Wyoming (~500,000), South Dakota (~800,000), North Dakota (~600,000) and Iowa (~3,000,000) would not equal the population of New York City (~8,000,000).
If this trends continues, Iowa and any "small state" will never see a presidential candidate campaign again, they would be too small and their vote would no longer matter anymore.
Remember that under the US Constitution, the appointment of the President is by the States (via the appointment of the electors)
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.-- Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 - US Constitution
Why are they even considering this? Isn't this obviously unconstitutional as it means individual Iowans votes can't actually count for anything, effectively removing any meaning, value or even purpose of them voting at all.
So if Bob won the majority in Iowa, but Cmdr Taco won the national majority all the electoral votes go to Taco.
It dilutes Iowa's voting power, kinda the whole reason the Constitution electoral college was set up.
Half of writing history is hiding the truth.
Where did you see me say that Iowa should tell people in cities how they should live either? The federal government should be small and do very little, and then only things that benefit all the states. A common defense, roads, etc. Everything else should be left to the states.
Apparently the larger colonies felt the smaller states were important enough to include in the Union. It also fits our Founders beliefs on rights; it's not a sumation game, where my rights plus someone elses rights are greater than your rights (which is what democracy is, by the way, and the reason why specifically didn't built a democratic state).
You should really really brush up on your history; Vermont didn't exist as an independent state until AFTER the Union had been formed. I doubt they would have joined (nor would the other smaller colonies) had the Constitution not been setup the way it is.
I have been making the same argument for years (as a mathematician with a penchant for voting theory). Unfortunately, this is way over the head of most people (despite actually being based on very simple concepts and math), whereas a national popular vote has a very strong appeal due to inherent biases towards simpler and easier to understand solutions.
Way to disenfranchise your voters, Iowa. This will last until the nation votes against who Iowans, as a majority, want. There there will be a kerfluffle.
I don't necessarily agree that the electoral college disproportionately favors rural states, but for the sake of argument let's say that it does.
This would mean that in Presidential elections, rural states have a slight advantage. And in the Senate, rural states and urban states are equal. And in the House, urban states absolutely overwhelm the rural states. No contest.
Remember, all laws are written by Congress. NOT the President.
And all spending bills must originate in the House. You know, the ones that control the money?
You still think the urban states got a raw deal?
Without the electoral college giving the rural states a chance in terms of electing the President, they wouldn't have joined the union in the first damn place. Because it's the only thing that gives them a fighting chance.
Will be ending for Iowa if they end the use of the electoral college and that will just be the begining.
We could trade them to Canada for Celine, would be a better deal!
The solution to the issue you've raised here of the proportionality of the various states could be solved with one rather interesting solution:
Increase the number of representatives in the House!
There is no reason why the number of congressmen is restricted to just 335 people, and by increasing the number of congressmen you would also have much more direct voter interaction with each congressman as well. Doubling or tripling the number of representatives would also even out the number of electoral votes between Wyoming and California in terms of this proportionality.
Now look! We've figured it 17 different ways, and each time we figured it, it was no good, because no matter how we figured it, somebody don't like the way we figured it! So now, there's only one way to figure it. And that is, every man, including the old bag, for himself!
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
This is sort of funny because it is a (mostly) rural state that is making the change here: Iowa.
Yes, I know that Des Moines is hardly a rural "small town", but most of the political power of Iowa is divided up into mostly low-population areas.
signed
Your friends in Big Places, where the whiskey drowns and the beer chases...
How does it take away the say of people in Iowa? An Iowa voter's vote would count exactly as much as a New York or LA vote. You seem to over-value collectivizing people based on where they live. In the end one American vote is one American vote (unfortunately - as most Americans are dumb-as-rocks).
Basically, the electoral college has an amount of people roughly equal to all of the members in congress, right? so then set up the voting standard similar to the representative system in congress today.
1) Electoral voters are assigned the same districts as the House of representatives and 2 EC members per state (who stand in as senators).
2) The representative district popular vote dictate how the HOR EC member votes for a particular district, in other words, if district X popular vote votes in favor of candidate X, then the HOR EC member assigned to that particular district must vote for candidate X
3) The Senator EC members votes based on the outcome of the districts in their state, and are winner take all. In other words, if state x has 9 representative districts, 5 vote for candidate X and 4 vote candidate Y, then both Senator EC members must vote for Candidate X. In case of a District tie, then use the popular vote of the state to determine this.
This would give you a very close representation of popular votes in the EC, as well as give the smaller, less populated states, more leeway in electing the next president.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
The reason for the electoral college ( one of them ) was to give small states some leverage against the larger states.
By doing this Iowa will be - in effect - giving her votes to California and New York.
That's dumb.
What strikes me as odd is that this goes against the Iowa's best interests. Don't get me wrong, it's real swell that they're doing this for the rest of us, but I'd think that Iowa would want to maximize the influence of its own voters. Now candidates have less incentive to campaign in Iowa and promise it pork.
You're not even close to a valid point here.
Our system is set up with CHECKS AND BALANCES... that is, 3 arms of government, only 2 of which are even an indirect representation of the will of the people... who can override each other.
THAT is what protects the minority.
The electoral college exists ONLY because it enticed small states to join the union, as did representation in the senate and the minimum 2 rep rule. Perhaps there is a secondary concern by the elitists we call the 'founding fathers' that having the electoral college would prevent disaster if everyone got it in their heads to do a plebian prank like massively write in a joke candidate. That is all.
The electoral college serves NO other limiting factor on the "democracy" we have, except to make it less democratic. Not better, not protected, not "looking out for the minority"... just less democratic.
IF we are going to have elections, we should have them accurately reflect the will of the people. As a whole. Democratically. AFTER that, the elected officials can do what they have done, which is subject to the checks and balances of the other 2 branches of government they must work with, including the non-elected judicial branch.
If Iowa wants to do something constructive for the presidential race, how about we don't do straw polls or primaries there anymore so the candidates don't have to ponder to the corn lobbies.
Who knows, maybe in a few years after that we wouldn't have Corn Syrup in everything and tariffs on foreign sugar.
Why do you think that rural Californian voters or New York voters should get no meaningful vote at all at the expense of favoring rural Midwestern voters?
Ask the state legislators of those respective states why they are ignoring the wishes of the rural communities of both states at the expense of the major population centers.
Go ahead, ask New York voters what they think of the dominance of the city at the tip of their state, and you might get an earful. Most upstate New Yorkers that I know are less than thrilled about the political dominance that happens.
BTW, electoral votes don't have to be decided in a winner-take-all situation. Indeed, such a system encourages political machines to develop like Tammany Hall.
Changes to allow more disbursed political control (the point of the electoral college) perhaps ought to be incorporated on the state level as well... particularly for the larger states.
Is tradition worth that much?
Yes. If you are clueless as to why the tradition was started in the first place and are ignoring other more pressing reasons for the situation, then abandoning tradition is a foolish thing to do. That doesn't matter what the tradition you are talking about.
As I'm reading everyone's posts about this, looking at the arguments people are making for or against this, all I can think of is that it doesn't matter.
The reason I say it doesn't matter is because while it's crystal clear that our election system, (scratch that; make it our entire political system) needs something - this isn't it.
As some other posts have pointed out, we're stuck in this dirty two-party system, and it stinks to high hell and seems to be little more than a big show to manipulate the public - it promotes self-interest (and rewards it if you know how to play the game).
Even if you wipe all off all of the straight up illegal corruption for the sake of this discussion and just remove it from the equation, when you look at many, many facets of the everyday business of our system, the lobbying, the gerrymandering, the money/finance side and all sorts of manner of quid pro quo that isn't called what it is - It's basically entrenched institutionalized corruption.
In general in this country I feel that the best thing to do is get back to the constitution in every way we can - I am heartened by the way NH has started standing up for state's rights in a serious way. Some people say it couldn't be changed unless you change the monetary system.
One thing that may help is a sort of "run-off" election that makes parties that don't win more viable, though I don't know how compatible that is with constitution.
The point is that there have to be some real changes - otherwise it's business as usual, just with a twist..
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?
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
This is also precisely why it will never work out, and certainly what Iowa is doing here will never happen for the complete 270 votes that the act will require.
Colorado attempted to do electoral college reform and it was the entrenched political parties that played short-term politics on the issue trying to decide what the electoral votes for that election (2004) would go instead of thinking for the long term implications of their action. Colorado's electoral reform also wasn't a feel-good "we've done something about it" but not really doing anything solution, but rather a real example of reform that would have had national implication and would have had immediate results and impacts.
I could only wish that Iowa would have had the "balls" to have tried that sort of bold approach at electoral college reform, but instead came up with a lame excuse of a solution. Just like in Colorado, the major party leaders didn't want to give up some perceived future political power.
Where did you see me say that Iowa should tell people in cities how they should live either?
You said it when you assumed that by not giving Iowans disproportionate representation, that people in big cities would be telling Iowans how to live their lives. If you assume Iowans are not exercising their disproportionate influence to receive disproportionate benefits from the federal government, then there is no reason to assume that city centers would do so either if voting was made equitable among all citizens (as opposed to among pieces of geography).
Regarding Vermont, you're right, I was mistaken. Amend that to Delaware, New Jersey, New Hampshire, etc. then for the small states that forced this inequitable result.
Remove the local nature of elections the founding fathers sought.
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?
Yes. People who live in the same region tend to share the same interests. (Hence, governments are organized geographically.) A candidate who only appeals to urban voters in a few regions does not very well represent the interests of the country as a whole. Similarly, a candidate who appeals to a variety of regions but can't get a majority of voters (because he rejects urban interests) doesn't represent the country as a whole, either. An ideal candidate should be strong in *both* dimensions: regionally and popularly. Hence, a formula was derived that gave weight to both dimensions (although the popular dimension carries much more weight -- 436 vs. 102).
In mentioning other groups with common interests (races, religions, etc.), you're suggesting that there ought to be other dimensions that carry some weight in the formula. In principal, I think that sounds fine. A president should appeal to a variety of races, etc. But I think regional interests tend to be more significant than interests associated with membership in these other groups, and it would clearly be a lot harder to prevent abuse of a system based on the ill-defined concept of identification with a certain race, etc.
Never! We must have elites in control, or the people might actually do something democratic! The horror!
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I blame the (lack of) education system in the USA for the reason why people think we live in a democracy. If people would go back and read the writings of the founding fathers (the federalist papers), they would get a clear understanding of why they designed our laws the way they did. They were extremely worried about having a "king", mob rule (a pure democracy), and what ever the political whim of the day was. By having an electoral college, EACH state would have an equal chance during an election. Without an electoral college, the candidates would only spend time in the states with large populations. I would really wish we could go back to the way it was. The people for for the U.S. Congress (which is why it is called the peoples house). The state legislatures vote for the U.S. Senators, which is why it is called the states house. Then, the U.S. senators would "appoint" the president of the United States. When politicians figured out they could vote themselves a raise (by NOT voting for it, they automatically get it), and knowing how politically inept the public is, it is no wonder why we have "career" polticians that act the way they do.
The Iowa votes still count because they count towards the popular vote, which in turn determines the distribution of a majority of the electoral votes.
How is this hard to understand???? It's getting rid of the electoral college by tying it to the popular vote; the popular candidate wins, no shenanigans. The law only goes into effect if enough states pass the same law, thus insuring that a majority of electoral votes go to the winner of the popular vote.
Everyone wins in this circumstance. No reasonable human being could possibly object to it, unless you share our forefathers' opinions that the country needs to be protected from the voters.
The persecution/martyr complex of America's rural poor would be funny if it didn't have such negative real world outgrowths. The poor suffering NY upstate rural voters, so ignored by the NYS government that doesn't have an electoral college or a geography based Senate, such that they're forced to accept $11 billion from the city of New York each year that they don't give back in benefits.
Source
Your Constitutional argument has nothing to say on this particular reform, because all of this is being done in the context of reforms that are legal under the Constitution. And an appeal to tradition has nothing to say from a good idea/bad idea point of view either. In terms of whether the current electoral college is a good idea, there doesn't appear to me to be much more of a rational basis for apportioning votes based on geography than based on race, or sexual orientation, or disability, etc.
There are two primary reasons we have an electoral college at all. Both have gone by the wayside by now.
First was the simple practicalities of communication in the 18th century. The only way to get the election data to the capital was by courier. Someone from each region was going to have to travel with his region's votes anyway.
Second was the practicality that most people had neither the time or the information needed to make a rational decision. News was slow and sparse. The idea of the electoral college was that you would vote for someone you trusted and who you believed had the necessary information to make a good choice for you. The duly elected regional representatives would then travel and elect a president.
Of course, these days election results can be transmitted instantly and anyone can get as much information as the electoral college very easily.
Yes, let's make the system even more complicated by adding more exceptions to the system. That will solve it's problems?
Seriously though, the electoral college system actually makes the most sense for the US. The popular vote is not a good statistical sample because a greater fraction of people from some regions may vote than from others.
A popular vote over a territory as large as the united states wouldn't work because local weather conditions, or local ballot box stuffing would have a disproportionate effect on the popular vote, whereas in the electoral system they are weighted against the local population.
The only "unfair" aspect of the electoral system is that states with low populations get disproportionate representation.
To take this to a logical extreme ...
the popular vote could be won by a candidate who is NOT on the ballot in a particular state.
Then that state's electoral votes would go to a candidate that noone in the state voted for.
The electoral college is a great buffer to prevent voter/election fraud in one state from affecting the votes in another state. Can you image without an electoral college all one would have to do is rig an election in 1 or 2 states...with 100% folks in those states (even more than the population) voting for a single candidate. And now with electronic voting machines that becomes even easier.
I'm not actually in favor of this, simply because it takes away the say of the people in Iowa. If their state votes for the loser, so be it, they should be counted.
Actually I think the opposite is true. Right now the outcome of the presidency is determined by a small handfull of so called "battleground" states, the rest of the states might as well not exist unless a major upset occurs there.
In Illinois it was a foregone conclusion that Obama was going to take it, so he and McCain spent almost zero time here campaigning. There was essentially no reason to vote at all in Illinois for either candidate.
By making the popular vote count, every vote becomes important battleground state or not.
This would essentially take the votes of Iowa away as much as all the other states that adopt the measure. Its an effort at the state level to disband the electoral college and elect the president by popular vote. The vote of each Iowan would count the same as each vote from a Californian.
Granted this means areas with more people have more influence so small and rural areas have less of a say. That's one of the reasons we have two houses in Congress and the reason the electoral college is setup the way it is. A popular vote will always mean the minority can be oppressed by the majority.
However, in this case we can only elect one man as president. So if the vote is split 49% to 51% the votes of the 49% are all meaningless. If Iowa was really that concerned about making it a popular vote without being so concerned with making sure their state has more influence they could follow Nebraska, who divides their delegates to the electoral college based on the vote percentage (usually 50-50 and Nebraska only has 2 delegates so one goes to each candidate and makes Nebraska worthless). Also, if Iowa was concerned about fairness they'd move their primary back before Feb 5th, and remove the law saying their primary automatically moves up before any other state.
I'm sure why people always have this idea that all of a states electors have to match the states popular vote. While a few states have laws dictating fines or jail time for electors that change their vote, Constitution only specifies that the states' legistlatures decides how the electors are chosen. In the old days, many states didn't even hold a popular vote for president. Look up the U.S. Presidential Election of 1824 in which all four national candidates were from the lone national party (at the time). In the original election, 6 states split their electors (NY split between all 4 candidates). Some states used a state wide popular vote, some assigned electors by districts and others were chosen directly by state legislature, and Maine used a hybrid of the last two options. Andrew Jackson had more more Popular and Electoral votes in the election than any other candidate, but ended up not getting either the Presidential or Vice-presidential position (there were accusations that the 4th place candidate sold his electors to Adams for the Secretary of State job) Personally, I wouldn't mind going back to having electors split up within each state, or even back to having the 2nd place guy get the VP position instead of a running mate. It would give smaller parties a chance to get some electors, it would definitely be more exciting, and it would be fun to watch the national news networks fall all over themselves during coverage.
The major shortcoming of the current system of electing the President is that presidential candidates concentrate their attention on a handful of closely divided "battleground" states. 98% of the 2008 campaign events involving a presidential or vice-presidential candidate occurred in just 15 closely divided âoebattlegroundâ states. Over half (57%) of the events were in just four states (Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and Virginia). Similarly, 98% of ad spending took place in these 15 âoebattlegroundâ states. Similarly, in 2004, candidates concentrated over two-thirds of their money and campaign visits in five states and over 99% of their money in 16 states. Two-thirds of the states and people have been merely spectators to the presidential elections. Candidates have no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, campaign, or worry about the voter concerns in states where they are safely ahead or hopelessly behind. The reason for this is the winner-take-all rule enacted by 48 states, under which all of a state's electoral votes are awarded to the candidate who gets the most votes in each separate state. Another shortcoming of the current system is that a candidate can win the Presidency without winning the most popular votes nationwide. This has occurred in one of every 14 presidential elections. In the past six decades, there have been six presidential elections in which a shift of a relatively small number of votes in one or two states would have elected (and, of course, in 2000, did elect) a presidential candidate who lost the popular vote nationwide.
Though a true majority run country does seem morally superior to the current model, it's also unrealistic.
Shifting the power of government to large population centers, may outwardly seem intelligent, as these centers (large cities like New York) do produce the largest amount of tax revenue for the maintenance of the government and hold the single largest block of civilian interest. Unfortunately, in a country this large, the economic prosperity of the nation is all sustained by the infrastructure in the outlying regions. To eliminate representation for these outlying areas will lead to degradation of the country as a whole. As funding is shifted into high population centers, we would see a massive, but short lived period of growth before a national economic catastrophe. Our short sightedness would have repercussions for the entire planet.(additionally, the resulting new type of government created, by this centralization of power and resources, is called a bureaucracy)
It may sound all well and good to toss out the electoral college, but it's a dangerous idea and not to be considered frivolously.
Indeed, for this to even be plausible, the elected officials would be obligated to ignore the immediate and direct needs and desires of the majority, the same majority that elected them, and then continue to divert funding away from rural centers in order to maintain the economic viability of the country. Should the political dynamics begin to shift in this direction, representation will inevitably cease to exist.
So, in essence, the only possible outcomes are economic obliteration and a total lack of representation for the entire country.
My state, NJ, already has one of these laws, and I'm very much against it. While the Constitution doesn't have anything to say with how states assign electors and thus this isn't unconstitutional technically, I think it's certainly against the spirit of it. If you think something as fundamental as our presidential election system should be changed, fine, but at least go about it the correct way (constitutional amendment). Just because you can get away with something the wrong way, and it's something you want done doesn't mean you should do it that way.
I'm amazed at how shortsighted people are. They're willing to get their own pet law passed by any means necessarily, and in time when something they oppose is being passed the same way they won't even see the irony.
To review the current system, each state has a certain number of votes (based on HOR + Senate), each state decides how they want to vote and then they do. They can give every vote to whoever wins the state (most do), or they can give each vote to whoever gets more in the area represented by it (like NH). The problem is, since there is a large discrepancy in state populations the 11 most populated states have enough votes to decide on their own. This is the basis for this National Popular Vote Interstate Compact nonsense. However as being a member to the NPVIC will be a purely state matter they will be able to change it on a whim. If you get 11 state legislators to agree you effectively can pick anyone for President. What if they decided to give all their votes to a new party whose sole platform is exploiting the other states for everything they're worth?
The point is 11 states shouldn't decide the president, the nation as a whole should. I personally feel states don't have enough rights as it is (17th amendment), and I like the electoral college as it lets each state vote however it wants. However, I know that the bulk public doesn't understand or care about the complexities, and anything but direct democracy (which we'll never have regardless) sounds unpopular.
If you don't like the electoral college, please support a constitutional amendment. Don't get change by cheating the system. Don't allow 11 states to impose their will upon the rest (even if it's a "good" will in the short term). There's a reason why constitutional amendments are hard, because major changes to our system of government should be carefully considered.
How long have they been practicing democracies?
And what is their population? Democracy works better in smaller populations. All four together would be the third most populous state in the U.S.. Norway would be the New Jersey and North Carolina (the 11th and 10th most populous states), the other three would be between Kentucky and Minnesota (the 26th and 21st most populous states).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Why should people in rural states get to dictate policy the other direction? Why should either side get preferential treatment?
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC). Every vote would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections. The bill would take effect only when enacted, in identical form, by states possessing a majority of the electoral votesâ"that is, enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538). When the bill comes into effect, all the electoral votes from those states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC). The Constitution gives every state the power to allocate its electoral votes for president, as well as to change state law on how those votes are awarded. The bill is currently endorsed by 1,246 state legislators â" 460 sponsors (in 48 states) and an additional 786 legislators who have cast recorded votes in favor of the bill. The National Popular Vote bill has been endorsed by the New York Times, Chicago Sun-Times, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Hartford Courant, Miami Herald, Sarasota Herald Tribune, Sacramento Bee, The Tennessean, Fayetteville Observer, Anderson Herald Bulletin, Wichita Falls Times, The Columbian, and other newspapers. The bill has been endorsed by Common Cause, Fair Vote, and numerous other organizations. In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a stateâ(TM)s electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). The recent Washington Post, Kaiser Family Foundation, and Harvard University poll shows 72% support for direct nationwide election of the President. This national result is similar to recent polls in Arkansas (80%), California (70%), Colorado (68%), Connecticut (73%), Delaware (75%), Kentucky (80%), Maine (71%), Massachusetts (73%), Michigan (73%), Mississippi (77%), Missouri (70%), New Hampshire (69%), Nebraska (74%), Nevada (72%), New Mexico (76%), New York (79%), North Carolina (74%), Ohio (70%), Pennsylvania (78%), Rhode Island (74%), Vermont (75%), Virginia (74%), Washington (77%), and Wisconsin (71%). The National Popular Vote bill has passed 22 state legislative chambers, including one house in Arkansas, Colorado, Maine, Michigan, North Carolina, and Washington, and both houses in California, Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont. The bill has been enacted by Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, and Maryland. These four states possess 50 electoral votes â" 19% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect. See http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/
Hmm...
The persecution/martyr complex of America's rural poor would be funny if it didn't have such negative real world outgrowths. The poor suffering NY upstate rural voters, so ignored by the NYS government that doesn't have an electoral college or a geography based Senate, such that they're forced to accept $11 billion from the city of New York each year that they don't give back in benefits.
Don't give back in benefits eh? How much do you suppose that watershed is worth? And who said anything about money? I was thinking more along the lines of the city forcing upstate to adopt it's policies (random example: the statewide smoking ban wasn't particularly popular around here) or sending us your convicts.
there doesn't appear to me to be much more of a rational basis for apportioning votes based on geography
So let's get rid of the Senate then. That's the logical conclusion of your argument.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I would actually think that regional interests tend to be much less significant than interests associated with membership in other groups. Who has more in common against 'mainstream' America, rural citizens that live in Iowa, or citizens that believe in fundamentalist Islam?
I think even the argument that it supports rural regions is kinda bunk. It supports arbitrary traditions. Who's stronger in the electoral college, a voter that lives in Rhode Island, or one that lives in Iowa? Rhode Island is not exactly rural. Why are Wyoming voters stronger than Iowa? They're both rural. The fact is that the political borders of the states are arbitrary divides that were created not based on the belief that this would be the ideal way to split up the country, but political happenstance. The fact that it helps rural America at the expense of most of the population of America is a side effect. Like someone else pointed out, you might as well have a system of popular vote, where you just give rural voters 1.5 votes per person. Sounds a lot less fair that way though.
By the way, I actually don't think catering to groups other than geography that have common interests is a particularly good idea either. It just seems that they are comparable ideas.
Florida.
If Florida mis-reports their votes again, will Iowa and other states with this rule follow them?
One big benefit of the current electoral collage is local accountability. Your electoral rep should be someone from your area, your elections officals are from your county... I cannot imagine a worse scenario then having my votes invalidated by undead voters thousands of miles away, fraud in other states, incompetance by people I never had a choice about...
Your assumption is not based on the facts. The Iowa votes do not get awarded in this way unless enough states pass similar legislation. This means that Iowa is "voting" for the national popular vote to be instituted, and if enough states "vote" this way, it will be. Once (if) that happens, that Iowa's popular votes will simply be part of the national popular vote. There will be no "multiplier" effect. -Dan
That doesn't make sense. With the national popular vote system everyone's vote is counted and they are all counted equally. That includes people from Iowa.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
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?
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
"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.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Syncing the EC to the popular vote means that candidates can concentrate their campaigning in higher density population areas, most of all large urban centers, where every campaign dollar goes further. Since urban centers trend Democratic due to the concentration of the poor, university students and the communities that surround them, ethnic minorities, and a large number of limousine liberals, this is effectively a gift of a couple percentage points to the Democrats.
Maybe that's a good thing, maybe not--it does seem irritating that a couple ranchers in Wyoming have equivalent voting heft to a thousand well-meaning twentysomethings in New York. But overall, remember that the Obama campaign won because it played the electoral system like a fiddle. They figured out exactly what they had to win, and where, to put them over the top at every point. The net result of this effort succeeding will be to shift campaign focus towards the cities, away from the rural areas.
Although that would mean that Palin-esque "you're the real Americans" speeches in small towns would become far less effective, so maybe it's a good thing :)
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Because gingers are the spawn of satan, and shouldn't be allowed the vote they already have.
Your post gave me this thought:
What if the farm/rural states got representation based on how many people they FEED, rather than how many people live there? That would sure put a different face on the election process, eh?
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
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
The Electoral College was set up so that you could vote for a local politician who you would know better than some distant presidential candidate, and so that big states could not run roughshod over the smaller states. (they were considered independent states.)
Soon enough, though, states tried to gain more power by throwing all of their electoral college to a single candidate. This is what seems to be objectionable and which creates incentives for some non-democratic tactics and strategy.
To be clear, that is not because of the eleectoral college.
That is because those states use a winner-take-all strategy to try to gain more influence.
States could just as well decide to apportion the electors proportionally or perhaps send the winners of county-by-county races to the electoral college.
The Iowa votes still counted towards the popular vote.
The entire thing renders the electoral vote into a formality - it really doesn't matter where the 270 electoral votes come from. Only the popular vote now, matters, and a vote from Iowa still counts towards that popular vote.
I agree.
The problem is the popular vote doesn't count for some individuals. For example: My in-laws live in New York and they're Republicans. They went to the polls like good citizens and voted for McCain, but in the end, that personal presidential vote was useless because New York almost always gives its Electoral votes to the democratic presidential candidate.
Another example: The popular vote was for Al Gore, but Bush was elected instead. For those of us who voted for Gore and watched 8 years of Bush's terrorism on our nation, the EC vote-in of Bush was a huge slap in the face.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
If you read more than the history you're force-fed during school (and yes, you'll probably have to put some effort into it) you will find out that this is exactly the case. Of course there's a lot more details do it than *just* that, but hey, that's the fun in doing some research and digging out more obscure history. Get to it! :)
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
It is quite clear from the debate surrounding the ratification of the Constitution (particularly see the first 10 or so of the 'Federalist Papers') that the intention was not to make either a strong federal or a strong state system. Hamilton's formulation was quite apt, that the Federal and State Governments are BOTH sovereign. That is they both independently exercise the authority of the people. The Federal Government is NOT 'made up of the states' and neither are the states 'parts of the whole nation'.
Powers were enumerated which were granted exclusively to the Federal Government. Others were either reserved explicitly to the states or the people or were left to the people by virtue of not being mentioned at all. This was NOT an attempt to 'divide up' the power between the states and the fed. This has always been a misunderstanding of the nature of the Constitution which most people have fallen into.
The powers of the states and of the fed are COEQUAL and of the same source and nature. They even OVERLAP in numerous areas.
The ultimate expression of this doctrine WAS the Civil War. A state CANNOT secede from the Union because the Union is not a Union of the states, it is a Union of the PEOPLE and the Union is sovereign over itself, it doesn't 'get its sovereignty' from the states.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
If you REALLY want every vote to count, what we need is less power in the hands of the President and more for Congress (especially the House of Representatives), since there you get proportional representation. Of course, then the nation might get bogged down in indecision. But based on recent events, I'd say we've erred on the side of too much centralized power.
If absolutely everyone could vote on absolutely everything (at every division of every level of every government everywhere), then people by necessity would only vote on stuff they really cared about. That is one of the outside-the-box ideas driving open source projects like Metascore.
I like your sig ;-)
I made it up myself. Thanks for keeping it alive; I rotate my own all the time and it is cool that one has taken root elsewhere.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
The States can change the constitution. If enough...two thirds I believe, agree on an amendment it becomes law. The Federal government only has as much power as the States give it. The problem is that the two party mafia system means that the State Legislatures have more interest in supporting their party than the interest of their people. And then there's the corporate interests.....
Regarding your sig: I prefer to use the Konami code in my sigs but then deliberately make an error somewhere. It's funny because people can't help but correct you :D
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.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
This thing is NOT a compact BETWEEN states. It is a decision made by Iowa itself, as itself, under its authority to govern its own elections, which is an authority guaranteed to it in the Constitution.
Iowan's would be free to change this rule at any time they so desired and go to some other way of selecting their electors. Thus Article 10 is not even germane.
Now, there MIGHT be objections on 14th Amendment grounds. Someone in Iowa who voted for the looser could argue that they were deprived of the benefit of their one vote. Especially if that candidate won more than 50% of Iowa itself. That one would be sticky because their vote DID still count, but since technically they are voting on who to send to the EC it would certainly be an argument with enough validity to raise a court challenge, and it could well prevail.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
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.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
That's the whole point of the electoral college - so neither the heavily populated areas or the rural areas get to "dictate policy". If we used a straight majority of the popular vote wins system, then the heavily populated areas would always carry the vote and "dictate policy". This is the essence of what makes the USA the United States. It's not a democracy, it's a republic. The reason this matters is because we as humans are fairly easily swayed to think a certain way by our peers. There's a huge percentage of the population that will think (and vote) a certain way, merely because everyone around them thinks and votes that way. So what happens when the people in the big cities are thinking and voting in a way that is going to be worse for the country as a whole? And even if it's not necessarily a "good or bad", "better or worse" decision, there's still no reason that the group-think in those areas should be given preferential treatment over the group-think in other less-populated areas.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
This is a great idea that makes PERFECT sense. This is how we know the government will never let this happen!
Politicians need to concentrate on a few states to get elected. They care about a few states, not the whole country. After they get elected they owe favors to a few people in those few states. This corrupted system is something they count on to win elections.
Watch how many people get high paying jobs from the Obama "bailout". People are already getting jobs like "spending czar" with 150k salaries. He owes money and favors and you can be damn sure he is going to spend tax dollars repaying these favors. Any one who argues with him all of a sudden is wrong, "silly", "ridiculous", "trying to destroy the economy beyond repair" etc.. etc..
Why get the whole country involved? It is much easier for corruption to rule in the current electoral system.
#1 is factually not true. The United States is not a 'union of states'. It is a group of sovereign states and a COEQUALLY SOVEREIGN Federal Government, which is NOT 'composed of the states', there is no such 'russian doll' structure to it. I suggest for edification on this topic Federalist Papers #s 1-12 or thereabouts. Hamilton described it perfectly when he said that the powers of the federal government are NOT rooted in the sovereignty of the states, that the Federal Government is itself originally sovereign in the same fashion AS the states. This is actually a significant, though subtle, distinction. It explains the fact that a state cannot override a federal law and it explains why a state cannot unilaterally secede from the Union (because it isn't a participant in the Union). The Union is of the PEOPLE, not the states.
#2 is just silly. We can recount votes in any or all states, ergo we could do a national recount, were that necessary. Other countries do recounts all the time. Furthermore there is no reason to assume that such a recount would need to be done in every district, only those where it was considered likely there was fraud or error.
So I'm not finding any of this argument all that weighty at all. Besides, by your logic we should just throw up our hands and admit that elections are impossible and stop having them.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
Half the states had a large number of slaves who could not vote but counted as 3/5 of a person determining how many electoral votes the state got. States also didn't trust each other, and it was highly impractical for one state to audit the results in another state. One state could unfairly skew the popular vote if they said that 90% of their votes went for candidate A when a smaller percentage actually did. These problems are no longer issues.
The state that you belong to means much more than random "happenstance." Roads, education, welfare, etc. -- all the boring stuff that government spends most of its time managing -- are all tied to the state. Those are the interests that you have in common with everyone else in your state, and that, I believe, usually overshadow or at least equal your interests associated with other groups. Where states are not bound by common interest in important areas, they can evolve by splitting/realigning (West Virginia did this; California sometimes talks about it).
Whether these regional interests really outweigh interests associated with other arbitrary groups is open for debate. I think they're at least on a similar level -- in any case, like I said, preventing abuse is hard enough when voting is based on residency; doing anything more would probably be unenforceable. And I think it's essential that some measure of broad appeal, beyond strict popularity, be used in the formula that determines which candidate is best.
The discussion of rural states was just an example. I'm not suggesting that "rural" people deserve special treatment. I'm saying that small states, despite their small size and regardless of their demographics, deserve to have their interests as entities represented.
No state is allowed to MAKE anything but gold or silver into legal tender. This however does not say anything about what they ACTUALLY have to pay their debts in.
The Federal Government made Federal Reserve Notes legal tender, not the states. And they made them tender for ALL debts, including those of the states.
Thus no state is violating Article I Section 10. A state would have to issue money which was neither gold nor silver and 'make it tender' (that is make a law that says it has to be accepted in lieu of anything else as payment) in order to violate Section 10.
I know, it was a nice theory and it sounds good when you just rattle it off, but you can rest reassured that this one small section of the Constitution is still intact. Of course if you look at the NEXT sentence, then you'll start having new problems ;)
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
In its place? An oligarchy? Either the people chuse their government or they don't! Its kind of binary. If you put the Senate and the upper chambers in each state legislature into some 'other category' where they're say chosen by what? Themselves?
Ummmm... I'll pass on that, thanks though!
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
Wouldn't it also violate the concept of one person, one vote? Here's what I mean.
Let's say Iowa does that, and follows the national popular vote. Okay, but doesn't that mean any person, not in Iowa, voting in the election, influences Iowa's vote? In a sense, someone in New York would not just be voting for their state's electoral votes, they'd be voting for Iowa's electoral votes too.
Can anyone imagine if we simply let the second place "winner" just take the vice-president slot?
Remember even at our founding we had some of the best education in the world AND they new it.
...too bad we haven't stayed that way.
It seems that the best education in the world has deterioated somewhat...
As if the original post wasn't bad enough (affect/effect).
You said it when you assumed that by not giving Iowans disproportionate representation, that people in big cities would be telling Iowans how to live their lives. If you assume Iowans are not exercising their disproportionate influence to receive disproportionate benefits from the federal government, then there is no reason to assume that city centers would do so either if voting was made equitable among all citizens (as opposed to among pieces of geography).
It's not disproprotionate; it's setup so that 100 people aren't tramped on by the wishes of 100,000. That's what each state gets EQUAL representation in the Senate. There, population doesn't matter. Of course there's a problem now with direct election of Senators; now now state GOVERNMENT is represeted in the Federal government.. which is why the feds have been scooping up the power since then.
Of course the larger states only give concessions to the smaller states when they need something of the smaller states; that's how things should be. Instead of dictating, larger states are forced to compromise, and partake in quid pro quo. If the larger states don't want to give more money to the smaller states, they need to stop asking for things the smaller states may not want... which again would put the power back into the state, not the feds.
Regarding Vermont, you're right, I was mistaken. Amend that to Delaware, New Jersey, New Hampshire, etc. then for the small states that forced this inequitable result.
Sorry, did NJ, DE and NH hold a gun to the larger states head? Looking at it from the smaller states side... why would NJ, DE or NH WANT to join a union where they will promptly be ignored precisely because they ARE smaller? Would you ever enter into a completely one-sided contract? I doubt it.
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.
"No State shall make any Thing but Gold and Silver Coin a tender in Payment of Debts"
Yes, exactly, no State can issue currency unless its backed by Silver or Gold. The clause in no way limits the Federal Government from issuing fiat currency.
Remember your civics, state governments and the federal government are two autonomous governing bodies. The Constitution, specifically Article I Section 10, was about delineating the separation of powers between them.
The sun beams down on a brand new day, No more welfare tax to pay, Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light...
The closer we get to the NWO the sooner they will tip their hand too much and even the drools will pick up on it, then it becomes a target rich environment..sport!
People don't vote because people are generally lazy and apathetic about things outside their immediate sphere of reference.
This is why I don't like Australia's mandatory voting system. Apathetic voters tend to be uninformed voters. Uninformed voters tend to make poor choices. Forcing apathetic people to the polls degrades the overall quality of the choices made by the electorate.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Hopefully, this reminder will have the Effect of Affecting your poor spelling and will also help you to distinguish between common vowels in english.
-- "At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1" -- PC Magazine, Nov. 1994
So?
There's still only one president. Why should he listen more (on a per-person basis) to Iowans than to Californians, just because there are more Californians?
What you may be arguing for is a limit to the reach of federal power, which is a separate issue. I don't see how the way the president is elected indicates what kind of power he/she does or doesn't have.
Sounds pretty unconstitutional to me...
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
A popular vote will always mean the minority can be oppressed by the majority.
A democracy will always mean that the minority can be oppressed by the majority (and for all of you "but US is a Republic" dimwits who might be reading this and are itching to reply already - US is both a democracy and a republic, because it's a democratic republic; please consult with your English dictionary before replying, thank you).
In practice, as you have noted, there are mechanisms in place to ensure that voice of the minority is not suppressed. Two-house parliament is a very old one, but seems to work in practice for a lot of democratic states out there. Meanwhile, as far as I know, the electoral college is unique to the US, and it is rather unclear whether the minor benefits it gives (on top of those already provided by two-house system) outweighs the major problems and complications it introduces. There must be a good reason why no other country out there - and not just unitary states, but federations, too - uses it, even when otherwise borrowing liberally from US government structure - maybe because it's the most broken thing about the latter?
Maryland passed this law years ago. But does anyone care? No.....
How can a state pick 51% of an executive? And 49% of another? They pick a SINGLE executive, not two, three or more.
What? My state has fifteen electoral votes. Seems it'd be pretty easy to split those to at least a close approximation of the popular vote of the state.
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.
I've heard this argument over and over and it has absolutely never made any sense to me whatsoever. How, exactly, would that work? With a direct popular vote, the doofus in Wyoming has just as much say as the doofus in New York. What's the problem? How would this "unfairly" weight anything, and if you can show me that it does, can you also show me how that's significantly different from what's going on now? The candidates care about the New York vote, the California vote, the Texas vote. You know, the big hitters. Nobody cares about the Wyoming vote or the Hawaii vote. How would it be different without the electoral system?
I ask in all seriousness, because I've never understood this argument, and it just keeps getting tossed out there like it's axiomatic.
Right now, all I know is that living in a heavily red state, I might as well not bother going to the polls, because my vote will not be counted. Someone decided that where I happen to live is the most important thing about me. I have much more in common with people from my general age range, or income range, because I share very definite things in common with them about the future, taxes and spending, etc. Considering my vote in a group with those people would make some sense.
But I share nothing in common with a bunch of retired yahoos from south Georgia, or soccer moms out in the far-off suburbs -- yet my vote is rolled right in with theirs for no good reason I can see. How is that rational or fair?
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
Who knows, maybe the midwest states will form a super-state (specifically for voting) combining all of their electoral votes, thereby outnumbering the *high population* goatse states.
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?
This is probably the most concise yet clear summary of the fundamental problem with electoral college that I've seen to date. Congratulations, sir!
The only fraud was submitting fake registrations. There is not the slightest evidence of any actual voter fraud. In other words, the registrations were faked to get the registration income, not to vote.
Infuriate left and right
I can't even understand why there's a discussion on this. If you believe that everyones vote should be equal, then you should be against the electoral college. It's a variant of the pigeonhole principle.
To simplify, let's say that you apportion 1 electoral college vote per 500,000 voters (I know there's all kinds of weightings and politics and blah blah blah, but let's keep it simple for the moment). Then, let's posit two states, Abaska and and Ansasba (pronounced An-saw-ba, like the sas in Arkansas, not the one in Kansas). Abaska has 423,912 voters, and Ansasba has 683,214 voters. So, Abaska gets 0 electoral votes and Ansasba gets one. So, the vote of an Ansasban voter is DIVIDE BY ZERO, ABORT times the vote of an Abaskan voter.
Hmmm, let's simplify that a little more. Let's say Abaska has 999,999 voters and Ansasba has 1,000,000, so Abaska has 1 electoral vote and Ansasba has 2. So, that makes an Abaskan voters vote worth 50.00005% of an Ansasban voters. Let's call this the worst case scenario (the real worst case scenario is the case in the previous paragraph where the Abaskan voters vote is worth nothing, but no-one is going to let that happen because it would be a political disaster and would expose how massively flawed the system is, so the ~50% scenario is more realistic).
Of course, in the real world, you can't actually get hold of all the numbers. No-one is actually sure beforehand how many voters there are going to be or even what the exact population is, but we can still look at some real world numbers. Wyoming has a population of 532,668 and 3 electoral college votes and Texas has a population of 24,326,974 and 34 electoral votes. So, that means that Wyoming has 177,556 people per electoral vote and Texas has about 715,499 people per electoral vote. So, assuming number of voters is proportional to population, a Texans vote is worth 24.8156881% of someone from Wyoming (Wyomingan? Wyomingite?). YIKES! This turns out to be the real world worst case scenario Texans has the worst rate of electoral votes per population and Wyoming has the best. So, it becomes pretty clear that the apportionment used in the real world is less fair than the hypothetical example above where one electoral vote is apportioned per X number of people (except for good old DIVIDE BY ZERO).
Either way, it's pretty obvious that, in either system, you never get a situation where everyone's vote is worth the same except when the proportion of votes cast verus electoral votes happens to be the exact same across all all electoral votes. The odds of that happening are so staggeringly high that it's barely worth thinking about. Of course in both direct apportionment and in real world magical thinking logic something like 90% of voters are going to be pretty close to each other (say 10 to 15%) in terms of the value of their votes. Lots of people might think that's not too big a deal when we already have a system where elections are routinely won with a 1 or 2 percent margin while the margin of error seems to be more like 5%. If the whole thing is a joke anyway, why even bother? But if you do actually care about democracy, then you shouldn't want the electoral college, or you should at least want to fix it.
So, let's fix the electoral college. First of all, we have to have proportional representation. So, we need to have 1 electoral college member for every X voters. We actually need to make that X members for every voter who actually casts a vote. So we count up the vote and then figure out how many electors we need, then assign the electors. The other thing we need is the smallest value of X (X >=1) we can reasonably manage. In fact, we can get X=1 exactly. All we have to do is draft people to do it. The best pool of people for that is the voters, we just have to set up the law so that the voters are volunteering for the electoral college by voting. Also, they should be legally barred from voting differently than their constituents (with X equal to 1, that means themselves). It would be inconvenient and costly t
I'm from Iowa and this sounds assinine. Why would I even go vote? LA, New York, and a few other metros will decide it all anyway. I'm already feeling a bit disenfranchised as it is as a Libertarian, this would just seal the deal.
If they want to abolish the electoral college, have a proper discussion and pass an ammendment to do it. Don't send electors to the college and have them not follow the vote of the pople of the state they are supposed to represent. Electors are technically allowed to vote for who they want (a few elections back several Ross Perot electors voted for someone else instead against the voter's wishes...). If this passes and is activated I fully forsee some electors "rebelling" and voting for the winner of the people of the state, and not some "national winner" vote.
United States Government Printing Office recognizes 50 nationalities to the 50 united States of America; those nationalities among yours are Iowans, Floridians, and the factions within that have land patent to subdivide into the United States (notice the difference betweed United States, the United States, towards the united States of America). America is an original nationality that was overlayed by Columbians in the district of Columbia; the reason American doesn't appear in the USGPO nationality publishing is because of perview; American being the oldest nationality of papal rule from Rome for this soil in direct competition to indians (Floridians, Iowans,...), America is in a position to supplement the lesser nationalities that neighbor Americans. The United States (plural) de jure are in competition with other nationalities on what is called "restrictive appearance" or psychological/mentally "United States", or what Thomas Jefferson referred to as "these United States" (not The United States); this is accorded through district Courts of the United States in The First Judiciary Act where is distringuished this, and U.S. Navy created a corporation called United States District Court as for Title 27 3002 15(b) US'ians to bring their persons into subject from the municipalities/municipal corporations posing as federal cities because the controlling interest of the town common-stock reached 51% or more from that federal corporation (United States) to incorporate the property/land patent to rent from the united States of America.
I hope you are soarly confused, because the more you are confused then the more you are willing to accept what a bunch of attornies will say to you when they drag you before a tribunal where the constitution has no meaning (church-state municipal corporation sole) to plead guilty for entering into commerce with it in a grant of trust (speeding ticket aka letter of indulgence) that generates 95% of the revenue for an under-used quasi-government function that is non-productive if not a miserly burden on all productive patrons neighboring it. I would suggest you found your own township to the pen of your kin and tend that to the county before entering any communiciple joinder to that federal corporation or its municipality that arrainged you for its indulgence (speeding ticket).
You should wonder how the United States can leave the Continental United States to re-enter the ports to lease land from the United States. Also, you should wonder how you yourself could travel from Iowa to Florida on federal highway as a stone-skip away down the pond. Shouldn't you go through the territories between Iowa and Florida first or do you just magistratively arrive in Florida from Iowa because the magical federal highway took you there? It's all about diction and prudence, wherever the chop sui jurant puts his corporate sole in direct competition of his court (politic) to a Court (corporate) by an inland waterway attached to a port of entry through articles of association of the federal (street address, federal corporation designator IA/FL, etc)
While I agree that the Electoral college is a farce that spits in the face of democracy, other posters are correct that the Iowa method doesn't fairly represent either.
I think that the states that have amended their constitutions to divide their electoral votes to the same percentage as that state's popular vote have the best solution.
SO if 30% of people vote for candidate A and 70% for candidate B and the state has 10 electoral votes, then 3 would go to candidate A and 7 to B.
Seems right to me.
Anyway, it beats the Katherine Harris method of giving the votes to whomever you damn well please (ie where ever the biggest bribe came from)
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?
It is interesting that the comments in this thread tend toward the Republican view for the most part. I remember hearing similar talk from the Democrats in the '01 Presidential election.
That's one of the problems with changing this: By definition only those who lost are actually motivated to do it. The ones who have the power to make headway won't try because they'd have to take the long view and fight for something that won't benefit them directly.
Er.. make that the '00 election. Blah..
Instant runoff is a crappy implementation of a decent idea.
Condorcet methods are a better implementation of the same idea: you rank your candidates in order, but the winner is decided all at once through some fancy math, instead of over several rounds of runoff simulations. The result is a more sensible outcome (IRV has some scenarios where third parties are just as spoilerish as they are today), less data to transport (IRV basically makes it impossible to count ballots locally and transmit the totals to a central location), and more control by the voter (you can give the same rank to two or more candidates if you want).
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Shouldn't they instead put their seven vote behind the popular candidate IN THEIR OWN STATE? If this passes there will not be any reason to campaign in Iowa ever again. But maybe that's the reason...
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..."
A republic is only a form of government without a monarchy. You speak too soon about the merits of a republic when you do not even realize its definition.
Senators will just become beholden to the party platform of whichever party controls the state's legislature.
paintball
I'm guessining this is presumably Iowa considering National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which has already passed into law in Maryland, New Jersey, Illinois and Haiwaii. Currently, this compact has 50 of the 270 electoral college votes required to cause it to happen. Iowa would add another 7.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1861/10/25.htm
...as opposed to our currently fixed elections.
1) instant run-off voting
2) require everyone to vote as in Australia
3) standardize voting technology with a paper trail
4) abolish the electoral college
5) double the number of Senators, assigning the 2nd 100 by population
6) term limits for the Supreme Court
#1 encourages third party participation. We should be more scared of single issue voters than of low information voters, hence #2. #3 is instead of my real preference for completely paper ballot technology - screw computers! The electoral college has evolved into a mechanism for the Coke and Pepsi parties to limit their ad buys to markets they deem competitive. The Senate is the most biased of the branches of government - it is atrocious that Wyoming has the same representation as California, with dozens of times as many people. My daughter was born in Wyoming and attends college in California - why should someone in Laramie have vastly more impact on decision making than someone in South Central L.A.? And finally, the key issue of every presidential election is which party gets to cram their extreme Justices down our throats for the next generation. Wouldn't it be better if the key issue was actually some question of public policy?
Actually, what I'm advocating is a continuation of the structure in which the President listens equally to Iowans and Californians, even though there are fewer Iowans.
:) Actually, I prefer to limit (but not wholly remove) federal power over the states, state power over the cities, and city power over ME. It's the best way to make sure the decisions are made by the people who understand the situations. :)
People are so individualistic nowadays, it's harder to get them to understand the notion of being part of a group to be viewed equally with another group. I wonder if part of the reason why the states issue was once such a no-brainer was because the notion of the family as a societal structure used to be so much stronger. I'm going to look like I go on a tangent here, but I'm actually not. Well, maybe I am.
People say that it used to be that blacks and women were not allowed to vote. This is not strictly true. In many (most? all?) states, blacks could vote at one time or another. But let's put that aside and look at women. Women were always allowed to vote. Notably, widows were always allowed to vote.
Why widows? Why only property owners? (People tend to equate property ownership with Rich White Men, but really that was only true during a short period of time in the South. We have a saying up here: Land-rich and Money-poor.) The idea was that each family had a vote. To ensure that each family had a vote, all you had to do was to give the vote to the person in society who represented a family... the male property-owner. (Younger men who didn't own had not yet married and settled down.) There were exceptions, but it worked pretty well.
So when would women vote? Typically, the man would vote as a representative of his family, as our senators vote as representatives of our state, in a situation where all families were equal despite their size or wealth. If he died, the vote would pass to his wife, the "XO" of his family and automatic successor to the leadership role. (It was also under these conditions that the widow would hold title to his property etc.)
It is important to note here that the family has, throughout history, represented a bunch of people working as one entity with its own goals and dreams. Today, in many cases, the only place where you see something similar is if you work for a large company, which is usually a sadly sterile version of the concept, but it will have to do.
Back to states: Part of the changes in modern society have included the breakdown of the family as a unit into individualism, and I theorize that each person has more difficulty viewing a collective of persons as a whole, as a result. Even the husband/wife unity is strained with different cars, different phones, different hobby rooms... different lives. As a result, how do you explain to someone how one state should be equal to another, when his or her worldview is centered around the individual as the sole societal unit?
Let's try it this way. Pretend that, to each state, the number of people it has is its riches. Pretend that a state is a person with its own dreams and goals, and it's population is its money. This country has 50 people in it. The House of Representatives is basically an aristocracy. The richer you are, the more pull you have. However, the Senate is a different story. In the Senate, you are treated equally, no matter how much money you have.
As mentioned above, each state has its own needs and reasons for the laws it writes. Arizona and Montana have different water needs. Maine and Florida have different reasons to carry guns. Each state has different priorities, and the more populous ones merely have more people in them asking for the same thing.
So should we ditch the old system, where each state is treated like a person despite its richness or poorness, or should we devolve into an aristocracy of population count?
As for the limit to federal power, I advocate that too.
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?
How about we dole out votes by how much you actually contribute to society? Sure, that's a vague phrase there that requires elaboration, but the idea that people who choose to be ignorant, uniformed and much more knowledgeable about the American Idol contestants that the candidates and issues should have an equal say to those that make the effort to understand it all and make a positive difference in many people's lives is horrific.
Democracy is a beautiful until you take a good look at it up close. We're nowhere near it in the US yet, but the closer we get, the more screwed up things getting.
Iowa has now gone from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic era! In addition to creating a new technology called Instant Messaging (using a rock carved with words & thrown at the recipient), Iowa plans on fighting a new demon called "democracy".
More news at 11 but nobody gives a rats a$$
Why on earth would a state give up its voting sovereignty?? Seriously, follow the leader??
Anyway, there would still have to be a constitutional amendment at some point to remove the electoral college.
If anything, states should seriously be considering withdrawing their ratification of the Constitution. It's worthless toilet paper now and they actually do have the power to withdraw ratification at any given time. We no longer operate as the Union as intended by the Constitution. By the end of Obama's 4 years, there will be no states - we'll be a giant messy blob ripe for squashing.
Many states no longer want to deal with their own funding and just want the fed to give them all the money they need. Those idiots in CA are the worst. I like Arnold, but his governing is a joke. He has no balls to stand up and take control of his state.
This is a truly scary time for these United States of America.
Because in the new scenario, there is a real incentive for politicians to campaign for safe states' votes.
With the current situation, there is no incentive for anyone to campaign there. All policy is designed to swing the swing states. So this popular vote compact will change that. There will be incentive for Republicans to campaign in California, even though they might be 20 points behind because they will gain votes which will tilt the overall balance in the popular vote.
No thanks - direct democracies are too politically unstable. For a current example, take a look at Israel - every party running gets a number of seats in Parliament proportional to their share of the popular vote, so they're forever forming, dissolving, and then re-forming these deadlocked coalition governments. If I were to change anything, it would be to return the Senate to its original purpose of representing the state governments themselves by having those governments elect senators instead of the current popular vote system (I guess that means repealing the 17th amendment?), because the House already represents the people directly and incorporates frequent elections in order to mirror changes in the popular political sentiment. And maybe I would limit Supreme Court judicial appointments to 18- or 36-year terms because this business of waiting for judges to die off seems a little too static to me. Otherwise, I think the US federal government does a good job balancing popular representation (and the popular need for political, legal, and judicial change) against governmental stability (and the practical necessities of avoiding frequent and expensive statutory and regulatory change, as well as giving our executive leadership and foreign policy some continuity).
I'd also rather see state election laws reformed. We should be able to develop some kind of non-partisan system/algorithm for creating congressional districts, for instance, and I'd love to see states eliminate laws favoring the two incumbent parties (i.e., do away with state-funded primaries - government shouldn't be in the business of operating referendums on behalf of private organizations).
But that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
I'm proud of my Northern Tibetian Heritage
I was shocked to find out just how varied the laws are from state to state regarding whether felons can vote.
In some states, your rights are restored automatically once you're out of prison and off of parole or probation. In other states, you have to get the governor to restore your rights. Where I live (Arizona), it's somewhere between those two extremes, but you definitely have to go through a process to get your civil rights restored.
In predominantly red states, there's a lot of incentive to make it as difficult as possible for felons to resume voting, mainly because felons who vote tend to vote Democrat, not Republican. (That's not universally accepted wisdom, but it is echoed in one of the articles I'll link to in a second.) On the other side of the debate, statistics show that felons who vote are 50% less likely to be re-arrested.
So, here are some articles that deal with the topic of felony voting:
From Time, Why Can't Felons Vote?
From the Washington Post, Why Can't Ex-Felons Vote?
And finally, Some Felons' Voting Rights Left Behind Bars
There are some pretty choice quotes in each of those articles, and I recommend reading all three.
As for Iowa, it seems that Governor Tom Vilsack issued an executive order in 2005 which restores voting rights to felons who have completed their sentences; prior to that, Iowa was one of the states that required ex-felons to apply to the governor's office to restore their voting rights. Digging deeper, though, it appears that this was a one-time clemency deal, and people who hadn't completed their sentences prior to July 4, 2005, are required to go through the old system or a new, streamlined (mostly automatic) system to apply to have their rights restored.
it acts as a firewall keeping Iowa from contributing more than its share of votes to the national election. The electoral college allows them to contribute X # of votes, they can't mysteriously come up with several million popular votes of people who don't exist or didn't vote. Each state is constrained by the percentage of their population to the rest of the country.
Popular vote is NOT the way to go without allowing the election to be stolen by the most industrious voter manufacturing organizations. The Electoral college does provide some safety, even it if is an archaic sounding thing. How often have the electors NOT voted the way they were supposed to?
There will be no need for masses of Democrats to move to Texas, or for masses of Republicans to move to California to swing the electoral college.
Her lips were softer than a duck's bill, but her quacks