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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?
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.
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.
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.
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.