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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.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
The Electoral College was created because communication was so poor.
No, the electoral college exists because the Founding Fathers(tm) understood that most people count as complete and total idiots, and that idiots of a given bias will tend to group together.
Take the Fundies as a good example - They vote, and they all vote the same way. If you counted the popular vote, they would have considerably more influence than they do now; Instead, by lumping together in a handful of states, you end up with the winner of those states getting a good 70-90% of the vote, but that does their actual candidate no better than winning a mere 51% of the vote.
First, as to the whole "people pay attention to it" argument, I certainly haven't seen that. Did anyone pay attention the last couple elections -- were, what, 35 states clearly going one way or another anyways, so they only paid attention to the so-called "swing states." Now, that may give some states extra pull when they are close, but when a state like ND, Wyoming, and Montana aren't -- they are essentially ignored.
Second, and this is the most important reason in my mind, it discourages people from voting. On many occasions, I have heard people mention how it was pointless for a liberal to vote in ND, or alternatively, for a conservative to vote in Minnesota.
#1 is true only on paper, and we both know that (you even admit it yourself)
#2 a national recount is trivial, actually, since it's not really a national recount, but simply tens of thousands of individual precinct recounts. In other words, it's a parallel process. Sure, it would be expensive due to the manpower, but it's a trivial process.
Finally, the US doesn't apportion federal votes by population, but by slightly weighted version which gives additional weight to the least populous states (reps + senators). It would shift the balance slightly to change the voting. It's not a perfect system, but unless we start giving out fractional electors even a proportional representation electoral college could anoint a winner due to round-off error (which is already the case when the electoral and popular votes don't match). With the unbalanced weighting, even a split to 6 significant digits could result in a popular-electoral mismatch.
I would prefer a representative electoral system, but I'd be even more happy if there were a way to undo the gamemanship of the whole process.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I hope everyone in Iowa who votes for this realizes that Iowa's issues will be completely ignored after it passes.
Al Gore lost his election, I believe, largely because he did so little campaigning in the midwest. Seemed like all his stops were in LA, NY, and San Francisco.
All politicians will make sure to just cater to the big cities and will completely ignore Iowa, the Dakotas, and places like Arkansas just based on the numbers.
There's a reason the Senate has 2 members from each state, and why each state gets at least 2 reps in the House of Congress. It's to make sure no matter how low the population count is, there's still a voice. The electoral college, for its faults, gives the same assurance of importance to the lower-populated states.
Read the federalist papers.
The founding fathers questioned the education level NOT the intelligence of the people.
Education for elections is 100% based on communication. When it takes 6 months for a message to get from one side of the country to another you can't expect people to really know what is going on.
direct democracry eventually leads to a tyranny of the majority. We see that today in the class warfare (according to the "stimulus" bill, a $70k salary is now rich), EIC (receiving a tax refund despite paying no taxes), earmarks, pork, and the intergenerational theft that is deficit spending. Prior to the 17th amendment, Senators were not elected directly (which involves its own set of problems, cf Blagojagowhatever). Not being beholden to voters should, in theory, let them make difficult choices and say "NO", duties since abrogated.
A campaign stop in LA is going to generate orders of magnitude more exposure for a candidate than a stop in Des Moines. You are deluded if you think your vote in Iowa is going to draw as much attention from a candidate (or an elected official) as a voter in California.
Shut up and eat your vegetables!!!
Not sure why you posted as AC. That is a good point. America isn't a true democracy it is good thing that it isn't. A true democracy will ignore minority interests, and thats a bad thing. Catering purely to the popular vote means a lot of short term policies, and feel good policies. While the minority voice which may not be popular may be the right thing.
For this case Catering to Cities politics and Ignoring Rual issues. Which could mean better schools for the city, however a massive food shortage occurs as bad rural policies prevent profitability in farming, so the cities my not get the food anymore, or they may but the rest of the US may starve.
In simplest terms the benefit of a democracy is to insure if civil war does break out the established government will have more support, thus has better odds on winning the war.
The Democratic Republic with sufficient Minority interest taken. Makes sure the minority side doesn't want to start the civil war. Which is part of the reason for the American Civil War. Loosing the presidential election to Lincon made the south feel that their interest were not met so they wanted to separate from the Union.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
That is the current popular beleif but you really should read theFederalist Papers.
It IS true that SOME founding fahters felt that only land owners had enough connection with the country to make good decisions, there was a significant minority that wanted universal (male) sufferage from the begining. The compromise is that the states got to decide who voted.
While some Founding Fathers felt the people were idiots, most were concerned about the ability of farmers to get information rather than the ability to tihink about it.
Remember even at our founding we had some of the best education in the world AND they new it.
We had the highest literacy rates.
We had very little religious fundamentalism compared to Europe.
We had easily the highest political participation in the world.
Even at the begining the US citizens were acknowledged as being the most "sane" of any western country....too bad we haven't stayed that way.
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.
You've also got a situation where the size of the HoR has been artificially limited at 435 for something like 70 years for no real good reason.
The math on it is easy...
1. Do the census.
2. Divide each state's population by the smallest state's population.
3. Take that number, and round the remainder up to the next whole number.
I'd imagine Obama's MoV would have been higher in the EC if the House was truly proportional. Al Gore would have won in 2000. Bush's electoral margin would have been higher in 2004, etc. etc.
But better than this, too, would be to split each state up the way that Maine and Nebraska do. A candidate gets an electoral vote for each congressional district he/she wins, and the winner of the popular vote in the state gets the two for the senators' EC votes. /Would also like to see direct elections of the senate ended to go along with it. //Indirect democracy yields better people than direct democracy does.
As we continue our train wreck... uh, I mean ride into a centralize powerful federal government, I think the problem you point out does, in fact, exist.
The latest example is that Obama has moved census bureau under the power of the executive branch; it's quite plainly supposed to be under the authority of the legislative branch.
Why? The census can do many things, including force redistricting, and some people like the idea of, instead of counting everybody, using statistics to estimate populations. It'll be interesting to see what districts suddenly get estimated to grow.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
I personally speak with my representative at least once a year.
What's your point? I've met my representative twice in the last year but that doesn't change anything I said about gerrymandered districts or the fact that the overwhelming majority of them are re-elected, oftentimes by such lopsided margins that the election really is a formality.
I live in a district that is very republican...yet my representative is a Democrat, Jim Marshal.
Kudos for you. Most of us aren't that lucky. Here's a short list of reforms off the top of my head that I would like to see with regards to the House of Representatives:
1) No more gerrymandering. Districts should be drawn in a non-partisan way that ideally respects (within the limitation of having to have them mostly the same in population) existing political and/or geographical lines. My community is regularly sliced into pieces to add more Republicans to this district and more Democrats into that district. The net result of this is that we have no voice in Washington and serve only to further the agenda of the respective political parties.
2) Representatives or those running for the position shouldn't be allowed to accept donations from those who reside outside of their district.
3) End the primary system. I'm not sure yet what I'd replace it with but surely we can do better than a system that's tailor made for the most partisan members picking those who get to stand in the general election? Maybe just let everybody who can meet a certain threshold (the signatures of 10% of the total number of people who voted in the last election?) be on the ballot. Then provide for run-off elections if nobody gets 50%+1 or use instant run off voting.
4) End the centralization of power around the leadership and seniority system in the House. I should be able to fire my Representative without worrying about my community getting dicked over because the new guy has no seniority. Likewise, I shouldn't have to worry about whether or not something that's in the best interest of my community also has the approval of the leadership.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
If your state does this, and they have less than 1 million votes, the state will almost certainly be passed over in the election.
I've got news for you: they already are.
With the electoral system, candidates focus on areas that would have close elections one way or the other based on electoral votes that the state provides.
I think the last election showed that you can win without doing that.
Rhode Island and Vermont? Hah they'll be lucky to ever see a Presidential candidate with such a system.
When's the last time a candidate spent more than 2 days in Vermont as it is?
I came here for a good argument
Fun is that in those tiny homogeneous European countries you have much more choice to whom you want to elect then in your huge friggin' landmass with diverse wants and needs.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
If democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what to have for dinner, then the American republic is a herd of sheep picking one of two wolves who will decide what is for dinner.
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.
so why are you guys so determined to spread "Democracy" to other countries , if you think it doesn't work ?
Well, the interesting fact is, if anything, it tends to go the other way. Witness this last election. Moderately close popular vote, blowout Democratic electoral vote. Yes, McCain would have still lose, but would have actually be in the race. (Despite the media pretending otherwise, the presidential election was basically figured out by September.)
However, the reason they object to it is that there are large 'red' states where, if the Democrats showed up, they could get quite a lot more popular vote. Like Georgia. Big cities in medium-sized red states.
This is because Democrats cluster in cities, and are much easier to reach, so if we actually started carrying about the popular vote, a few personal appearances would do a lot.
Whereas that's not so true in reverse. Maybe New York, a little.
Heck, just knowing the popular vote mattered might get a lot more voters out, and more turnout has always been bad for Republicans. (As that almost always means youth and/or poor voters.)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?