This article was in the Boston globe and is something to consider:
A better way to elect a president
By Scot Lehigh
Published May 6th 2008 in Boston Globe
IF THERE’S one constitutional idea whose time has come and gone, it’s the Electoral College.
That arrangement for electing a president is a throwback to a different age, designed as a solution to circumstances that no longer exist.
But the antique system continues to present problems of its own.
Consider just two:
First, it poses the regular danger of a president who wins the Electoral College but not the popular vote, depriving the country of a chief executive who is viewed as fully legitimate.
That, of course, happened in 2000, when Al Gore won the national vote, but George W. Bush eventually prevailed in the Electoral College.
But we’ve had three other elections in which candidates who didn’t win the popular vote nevertheless ended up in the White House: John Quincy Adams in 1824, Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, and Benjamin Harrison in 1888. In the last case, Harrison actually replaced a sitting president, Grover Cleveland; four years later, Cleveland won a rematch.
Second, the Electoral College lends disproportionate general election influence to a handful of swing states, which become pivotal in each and every close election, while much of the rest of the country is neglected.
But trying to amend the constitution is a Herculean task.
That’s why the campaign for a national popular vote holds such promise. It’s a way of sidestepping the Electoral College without amending the Constitution.
Here’s how the plan would work. Individual states pass legislation to join an interstate compact, under which member states will award all their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. When states representing 270 electoral votes — the number needed to become president — have signed on, the plan goes into effect. Thus it’s in the power of state Legislatures and governors to catalyze the move.
So far, the bill has been introduced in 47 states. It has been passed into law in Illinois (21 electoral votes) New Jersey (15), Maryland (10 ), and, just last week, Hawaii (4), and is under active consideration in any number of others. In Massachusetts, the bill has a majority in both the House and the Senate, says Pam Wilmot, executive director of Common Cause of Massachusetts.
If the plan goes into effect, it would change the nature of campaigns in a big way. Right now, it doesn’t matter if a candidate wins a state by 10 votes or 10,000; once you have a majority, every additional vote is essentially wasted. Thus there’s little point of campaigning in states that lean strongly for either party.
“Presidential campaigns do not visit, do not run ads, do not care about nonbattleground states,” observes Barry Fadem, president of National Popular Vote, the nonprofit organization promoting the idea.
Indeed, according to that group, in the 2004 general election, 99 percent of all the advertisizing money expended on the presidential race was spent in 16 states — with two-thirds of it targeted for just five states.
But in a true national election, that wouldn’t be the case. Each vote would count just as much as any other in determining the outcome. That means it would be just as important for a candidate to attract extra votes in a state he or she was already expected to win as it would be to concentrate on a swing state. That is, it would matter just as much for a Democrat or Republican to attract an extra 1,000 votes in Massachusetts, a predictably Democratic state, or in Texas, a predictably Republican state, as it would be to battle for extra votes in a swing state like Ohio.
“Neither political party is going to be able to say, as they have in every other election, we don’t care about the following states,” says Fadem.
By expanding the effective playing field, a direct national election would also probably change the mix of issues that candidates focus on, with national concerns taking clear precedence over matters dear to populations in the swing states but less vital to voters in other places.
Common Cause thinks a broader campaign would also have the effect of boosting political participation across the country.
Now, this obviously won’t happen before the 2008 election, but Fadem’s optimistic view is that enough states will join to put it into effect for 2012.
It’s a big change, but an outdated arrangement shouldn’t govern something as important as presidential elections. It’s time we graduated from the Electoral College. This is an idea both Democrats and Republicans should get behind.
Nearly everyone agrees, the Electoral College is an anachronism and should be replaced by a popular vote of the national electorate but I believe the only course that will be constitutionally viable is through a Constitutional Amendment.
Article V states that there are two ways to amend the Constitution, the second is through the “application” of 2/3 of the States’ Legislatures. That’s 34 (if you round up) out of 50 State Legislatures. And it seems that the effort to pass the proposed work-around “bill” in all those Sates, is fundamentally the same effort, so why not simply get all those legislatures to call for Convention to amend the Constitution, instead?
The Constitution has been amended before to change the nature of “voting” in this country, and therefore another amendment on this basic issue wouldn’t be entirely new. It would be a shame to spend all this effort on something that may not, in the end, pass muster with the Supreme Court. The Court on the other hand, can do nothing about the amendment procedure.
National popular vote is not the way to go. Can you imagine what a mess a close election would be on a national scale. I think a better way would be for every congressional district to have their vote counted separately. If the California vote is won by a single vote that candidate still gets all 55 electoral votes. Under this system if you have to have a recount, it is a lot smaller number of votes. In the contested Florida election a recount would not have been necessary. Al Gore won the contested district by a landside and he would have gotten those votes.
Hello Brian and welcome aboard…….Your idea is worth consideration…I am for any system but the electoral one……but I fear it is here to stay…..especially now!
Ive read most of what is posted here. I too believe the Electorial College needs to go, BUT I propose that the ONLY way to vote is to have EACH VOTER COUNT….THAT is the only way !! EACH VOTE BE COUNTED AND ALL VOTES COUNTED, ADDED UP, waaalllaaa a winner !
Welcome Tim and thanx for the comment……I agree and as far as primaries go…there should be regional primaries with 4 weeks between each and elewction should be a national holiday….I think more people would go to the polls that way….
I completely disagree. Popular vote of the President would be a huge step toward making our Chief Executive the King or Emperor that George Washington would not allow himself to become.
The Federal system, as originally conceived, included a careful and deliberate balance of power between the States and the Federal governments, and between branches of the Federal government. According to that original design, the people got to vote directly ONLY for their House reps. There was no popular vote for Senators (the States appointed them until the 17th Amendment), or for President (the State legislatures appointed electors for the Electoral College, until populist/progressive reformers engineered separate arrangements in each of the states to force the choice of electors to conform to the results of a popular vote). Under the original plan, Senators would be the direct federal representatives of their respective State governments, while the President would be, in effect, selected by other, temporary representatives of the State governments.
The indirectness of the President’s election was important. In our system, political authority flows upward from the people. The officials who are directly elected by popular vote have the most authority and moral legitimacy to rule. The balance struck was that the authority and power would be dispersed among hundreds of House Reps. No one representative could claim more than a small fraction of Congress’ total authority to rule. In the Senate, authority was one step removed: Senators would be appointed by the State Legislatures or the Governors, who themselves might be directly-elected. The balance was that the Senate, being a smaller group that stayed in office longer than the House, would be more able to come to consensus based on a broader, more long-term view that took the welfare of States as States into account. The President’s authority was TWICE removed from that of the people, as he or she would be elected by the Electoral College, the members of which would be appointed by the various State legislatures, which in turn would be popularly elected. So the President owed his or her office to the States, but only indirectly, and there was no direct debt or connection at all to the authority of the people. This reduction in the President’s authority counterbalanced the key strength inherent in the office: the ability to act forcefully and swiftly.
Suppose the President actually WERE elected directly by the people? Then, the entire population would have invested the nation’s political authority in a single representative, who, by coincidence, would also command the nation’s military and all of its law enforcement and regulatory apparatus. As I see it, that is the recipe for crowning a democratically-elected emperor. How long do you think it would take for Congress and the Courts to become rubber-stamps of someone with such authority, or to be rendered irrelevant altogether, regardless of what the Constitution says? We have already seen glimmerings of this in the behavior of our present self-styled “unitary executive.”
I think we made a big mistake when we enacted the 17th Amendment, providing for direct election of Senators, and a potentially bigger mistake when all of the States were persuaded to tie their Electoral College selections to the results of popular Presidential elections. In each case, the careful balance of power set up by those who created our federal government was disturbed, and in each case, I think the results were unfavorable in the long run. Appointment of Senators and doubly-indirect election of Presidents were intended to keep them humble and clip their wings a little bit. The directly-elected Senators and all-but-directly elected Presidents we have today are too arrogant, and we pay the ever-escalating price for that arrogance on a daily basis.
Morning Sterling…..it is early and I have not had much coffee…so please forgive if I get this wrong…but are youy basically saying that the process of selecting a president should be out of the hands of the people?
Sorry guys…told you it was early the above question was for James. BTW thanx for the visit and the comment.
Sorry I have been away so long; tending to other things in life.
I am saying that the original design of the Constitution specifically provided for popular election of Representatives but not of Senators or the President. There were reasons for this, and none of the rationales I have read so far in support of direct election of the President mentions, much less discusses those reasons. The US government was created as an interlocking system of checks and balances; before changing that system, it is prudent to understand how the system works, whether there is a true dysfunction, and how best to deal with the underlying malady, instead of merely placing a bandage on the supposed lesion. I think, for example, that the 17th Amendment was such a bandage, and that the treatment hasn’t worked out so well: the wound has only festered under the dressing.
I am saying that the people who wrote our Constitution rightly distrusted direct democracy and its potential to produce a tyranny of the majority. They definitely wanted no Kings or Emperors here, which is why they created a Republic in the first place, and why they provided for direct election only of Representatives in the second case. We should be as suspicious as they were of calls to change our system toward direct democracy, and we should be doubly suspicious of proposals that avoid the proper way of changing our system — constitutional amendment — and instead depend on some extra-constitutional maneuver made possible by a supposed constitutional “loophole.” As the original Constitution did not provide explicitly either for direct or indirect popular election of the President, contorting our system to make direct election possible contravenes at least the spirit of the Constitution; as I see it, such a change may be legally permissible by individual acts of the 50 state governments, but respect for the Constitution should compel us to require that it be implemented by proper Constitutional Amendment or not at all.
You need to ask yourself why the process of selecting the President was taken out of the hands of the people in the first place, how and why it came to be even partially in their hands, whether this has proven to be a good thing, and whether we should continue down that path or turn around and get back to something that is closer to the original design. I think part of the answer lies in the fact that the originally intended size and scope of the Federal government were much smaller than they have become in the modern day. The people who wrote the Constitution did not expect or intend the Federal government to have such an immediate presence in or impact on the everyday life of the American people as it has today. If, for instance, the US Federal government were as distant and relatively ineffectual as the United Nations are, would we care who was President, any more than most of us care (or KNOW) who is Secretary General of the UN? Conversely, if the UN started laying taxes on us and enacting law that would affect all of us on a more or less daily basis, wouldn’t we eventually demand to have a direct say in the election of that body’s leader? My point is that I understand why more and more people want to elect a President directly, but all this says to me is that the State level of government is less and less acting as the buffer between the Federal level and the ordinary citizens that is was originally supposed to be. The pressure to elect the President directly seems to grow as the autonomy and authority of the States diminishes. Instead, I would like to see the role of the Federal government diminish to the point where we would all be comfortable if there never again were a popular election of the President — that it would be fine with Americans for the various State legislatures to choose the delegates to the Electoral Convention and for this process to occur without any more publicity than the UN gets when its delegates elect their Secretary General.
By all means, let’s entertain the idea of changing our system, but let’s also put in our due diligence with respect to both the originally planned system and the modified system we now have, before we rush off to change things. I would like, for instance, to discuss and understand what has changed about direct democracy to make it more admirable and trustworthy today than it was in the days of the Constitutional authors. Frankly, I can’t see it. I am a big believer in this principle: When the people act to restrict or remove freedom — exercising tyranny of the majority — they can be overruled by the mechanisms of a republican form of government. When the government restricts or removes freedom, it can be overruled by an act of the People. But concentrating the political power and legitimacy of the entire people in a relatively few representatives, or in the single person of an elected executive, just seems like a bad idea, because, if the history of human nature is any indication, such concentrated authority won’t generally serve to CHECK tyrannical excess, but rather to ENGENDER and PURSUE it.
Are you, or any who support direct election here denying the potential of that approach to produce an “elected Emperor”? What makes you think that isn’t exactly what we would get within an election cycle or two? We’re already close to it now. Presidents, like Emperors before them, always want a “mandate.” It would seem to me that any mechanisms we can put into the system (or leave in the system) to deny our high officials the mandates they crave, to make them more humble, and to bring them to heel, would be beneficial to the health of our nation. The Electoral College process — especially as extra-constitutionally adapted to respect the results of statewide popular elections — is definitely not without faults. But I would ask everyone to consider whether those faults compel us to risk changing the system to bestow as much or more “authority to rule” onto the President than onto Congress. To be sure, Presidents often act as if this were the case, anyway, and Congress lets them get away with it far too often. But do we want to make the primacy of the Chief Executive a formal feature of our government? I fear that direct Presidential election will achieve precisely that — fundamentally altering our form of government without Constitutional amendment, which we are unwise ever to contemplate, and foolish to tolerate.
Hi James….I understand that others are not the News Geek that I am…..thanx for the interesting comment and it is something to consider…..but if the majority wants the “elected” emperor why not allow it? This system seems to dictate what is best for the people, they have little choice on the decision. The founders are portrayed as infallible, I do not believe that for a minute. Did these men intend on the Constitution to be “sacred” or was it merely a starting point to get the country moving.
I guess one could make the case that since the “founding fathers” were from the elite portions of society that they intended that those people would alwyas remain in control.
Sorry if that is incoherent it is way early and so little sleep….I look forward to your response.
The point of the government was not to give the majority what it wanted in every case — that’s what they called the “tyranny of the majority” and many today call “mobocracy.” The point of the government was to secure individual liberty — the ability of every person to pursue happiness in the way that HE or SHE defined it — without undue interference from their neighbors or the people who ran the government. Democracy was not an end in itself. In fact, it was recognized as a very dangerous thing, to be used sparingly and carefully as just one tool to help “secure the blessings of liberty.”
It’s possible for the people to throw all of that away and rush headlong into the embrace of a dictatorship. That’s what happened in Chile late in the last century, for instance. Chile once had a strong middle class, and solid, well-established democratic traditions. Then they leaned heavily socialistic, the middle class disintegrated, there was a financial crisis, and a military dictatorship arose out of the social rubble. It could happen in the US, too, especially if we let our central principle become “majority rules.”
Harnessing democracy in the service of liberty is tricky. You want to be able to use Democracy to guarantee and increase freedom, but not to give away freedom or take people’s freedom away without just cause. That means that you can’t start and end with “majority rules.” Rather, you need a system that elicits the wisdom and registers the preferences of the majority but provides for the majority will to be overruled when it would have the effect of persecuting individuals unjustly. When deciding where and when to overrule popular sentiment (or the acts of government officials and agencies that are being driven by such sentiments), it helps to have a set of clearly drawn lines that are redrawn rarely, if at all. For us, that set of lines is provided by the Constitution.
I don’t believe that the Founders were infallible, either — neither did they, which is why they provided for Constitutional Amendment on the one hand and then came back a few years after the initial ratification to append a Bill of Rights — but it is also true that thoughtful and educated people in every generation have rediscovered and confirmed the wisdom embedded in the clever design of the Constitutional system. It isn’t just a case of a bunch of elites creating a self-perpetuating system of elite privilege, and it IS the case that provisions that seem confusing or even wrong at first blush or when viewed in isolation eventually make a lot of sense after one has studied the entire system for a while. I think it is the obligation of each new generation to come to a thorough understanding of that system before changing it. And, as I have said, the latest proposals for scrapping the electoral college and instituting direct election of the President do not seem to demonstrate such understanding — for instance, about the “balance of political authority and legitimacy” between the branches of the Federal government — so what confidence can we have that they are wise prescriptions?
I think we need to see the Constitution as a series of obstacles to those who would rule — obstacles designed to constrain and contain ambition, and make difficult the kind of thoughtless acts or outright mischief that would be all too possible if we were ruled only by a dictator, or by the results of periodic “majority rules” elections. Our country rebelled against a monarchical regime that was widely perceived as despotic: many of the most significant reasons for this are detailed in the Declaration of Independence. If the Constitution is designed to do ANYTHING, it is to prevent the rise of an American King or Emperor who can confiscate everyone’s property, command their behavior, or unilaterally drag us into war. You ask, “if the majority wants the ‘elected’ emperor why not allow it?” Sadly, the answer is that if the majority truly wants such a thing, no Constitution will stop it. But generation after generation throughout history have realized that dictatorships and Empires are a bad idea. That realization is central to the Constitution, and we need to think long and hard before we abandon it; if we do, this country may be called the United States of America, but it won’t be the USA any more. So this is a very important topic, which is why I’ve taken the time to write these several longish posts here, and I thank you for entertaining my point of view.
The one thing I hope people take away from all this is enough respect for the Constitution and the generations that have kept it to DEMAND that people who are proposing changes thoroughly justify those changes in terms of the goals that the Constitution was designed to promote, and that they clearly point out and acknowledge when fundamental goals are being replaced by others, or simply abandoned. Democracy is NOT and should never be an end in itself. The fact that so many people today seem to think so, and that our Constitutional system was designed with democracy as its dominant feature, is very troubling to those who have studied the sad trajectories of democracies around the world throughout history, not to mention the origins of our own government.
James you have made many interesting points and I am working on a piece along these lines, would you allow me to use you comments in that piece? It will be a argument on this. Please let me know. PLease do not worry I would not print it without your approval of what I write on your comments.
A statistic that I think would be useful in assessing this idea is this: How many states that have adopted the NPV statute have ever seen their electoral votes go to an electoral college winner who lost the popular vote? My guess is 0. I haven’t done the research, but I’d hardly be surprised to find that the support for this movement correlates very highly with having voted against W. in 2000.
At the end of the day, this is just a liberal power grab dressed up in arguments that are almost always non sequiturs. Take, for example, the nonsense about campaign dollars being focused on swing states. Does anyone think that the people of Utah mind that the Republican does not have to waste money campaigning there? Ditto New Yorkers and the Democrat? Proponents of NPV act as if being wooed is the same thing as having power, but it is not. Having electoral votes disproportional to population is having power, and the low-population states have that whether or not they are wooed. It just happens that one candidate typically aligns naturally with them and the other does not, so they vote for the former. Where the candidates campaign is entirely beside the point.
If there is a pathology in the swing-state phenomenon, it should be dealt with at the state level by allocating electoral votes by county or region. Ed Rendell is fond of saying that Pennsylvania has Philadelphia at one end, Pittsburgh at the other, and Alabama in the middle. It’s silly for such a state to have to give all of its electoral votes to one candidate. But, of course, the state does not have to do that. It could give them proportionately to the state’s popular vote, or it could give half to the middle of the state and the other half to the urban areas. Etc. But for the state to give its electoral votes proportionally to voters in California, Texas, New York and Illinois if just plain nuts.
Except for those who get their map of the U.S. off the cover of an old edition of The New Yorker, this is still a continental nation, with two houses in the legislature to balance population and regional interest. The Electoral College puts that principle into the selection of a chief executive. If we scrap the Electoral College, shouldn’t the antidemocratic Senate, with its nasty fillibusters standing in the way of the will of the People, be next?
It’s time to let the people of this country decide who will be the President and not the electoral college.
I am so tired of hearing about red and blue states and which states matter in the election and which ones don’t. The media calls the election before the popular vote is reported. This has to stop.
Every election this outdated process upsets me. In 2000
it was confirmed that a change for the better needs to be made. We need a national popular vote instead of a state by state vote. It would be wonderful to KNOW that my vote really does count.
thank you nancy for the visit and the comment…..I agree and I would like to see regional primaries as a way to break the importance of one state over another.
thanx Lawrence for the comment and your input….the problem with your question about the senate is that they are elected by the people, or at least that is the claim, and would be up to them to eliminate it. Personally, I would not mind a unicameral form of government.
Lobotero –
Do you think the President should have a veto? Just how much of a mobocrat are you?
Nancy –
Your vote does count. Assuming McCain carries his home state, if you are a Republican in Arizona, your vote counts because your state’s electoral votes go to your party when you and those of like mind vote. If you are a Democrat, then, as it turns out, your views on the presidency are opposed by a majority of your neighbors. Your vote counts, but your side loses. It happens.
The Electoral College expresses the will of the LOCAL majority. Why is that majority any less important to you than the one that takes into account folks in Alaska, Kentucky and Maine? Why do you not believe that the majority IN your state should speak FOR your state so that the state’s interests (as perceived by a majority of its residents) are protected against those guys on the coasts who want what you have and are prepared to vote themselves a piece of it?
My point is that what it means for a vote to “count” is not as clear as you think, and that being outvoted within a state is no more or less having your vote not count than being outvoted in a national popular election.
The only philosophical basis for a national popular vote is the belief the Founders were wrong to think that a continental nation would have regional interests that need to be protected (or that their view, if once correct, is now outdated). I doubt there are many farmers or ranchers who are willing to let city folk make all of our laws by reason of their sheer numbers. Are you a farmer or a rancher? If not, could it be that all you are asking for is that farmers’ and ranchers’ votes “not count” when you want cheap milk?
Political interests are not held in proportion to population, and national success may depend on certain minorities (e.g., farmers and ranchers) having voting power disproportional to their numbers lest, for example, the mob kill the agricultural goose that lays their golden eggs. That’s not to say that the balance always works out just right. Putting corn in our gas tanks is lunacy, attributable I suspect to the importance of Iowa to Presidential elections. But NPV throws the baby out with the bathwater.
A mobocrat? That is rich and if you would like to get into a insult slinging session let me know. Why are you afraid of the people being in control? BTW, we have come a long way since the Founding Fathers and they were not infallible. Election results are almost instantaneous we NO longer have to wait for the results from the “territories”.
Tonight the election was called for Obama before all the votes were counted. How can you say everyone’s vote counts? The National Popular Vote people hope in 2012 the President will be elected by a national vote not the electoral college. That too is my hope.
Lobotero –
“Mobocrat” is not an insult. It’s just short-hand for “the people being in control,” which I’m afraid of for the same reason the Founders were. That’s why we have checks and balances.
I am not relying on the Founders as authority. I agree they were fallible. I am saying that in my opinion they were correct on this issue for the reasons they gave.
The time it took to get the results from the territories had nothing to do with the electoral college weighting. Protection of regional interest was the object. As I said in my first post, all of the NPV arguments are non sequiturs.
NPV supporters seem never to state, much less defend the major premises of their arguments. Imagine starting your last post with the statement “The electoral college was weighted as it is, and the states chose winner-take-all allocations, because it took a long time for returns to come in from outlying regions.” That would seem a reasonable thing to say before pointing out that the time it takes to get national election returns has changed as if that fact were relevant. And yet you don’t say it, and if you said it, you know quite well that you wouldn’t be able to defend it, since it is false.
Meanwhile, poor Nancy thinks that the outcome of the popular vote could not have been called by the same time last night if we had NPV. That’s just wrong. The networks would have been able to reach that conclusion based on exit polling. How do you think they were able to call it for Obama the instant the polls closed in the West, before any votes there had been counted? Indeed, it would have been over earlier because we wouldn’t have had to wait for Ohio for the clear national NPV trend to have emerged. This vote not counting thing is an illusion, a psychological artifact. All votes count in the current system; it’s just that some voters lose, and some outcomes – like who has the majority of NPV – are predictable long before the votes are officially counted.
I’m not saying you folks aren’t on to something, but that something, in my opinion, is that the state’s electoral votes should be awarded in proportion to the state’s popular vote. That way, a state that is 50-50 would vote 50-50. At least, an argument can be made for that position, and I suspect that the reason for the current system is that the party controlling the state legislature sees it as a way of maximizing the national vote for its party, and not as a matter of philosophical principle. On the other hand, if one is a member of a minority within a state, one’s interests need defending from the local mob, and the need to carry swing constituencies – the Hispanic and Jewish votes in Florida and New York, say – may have some pressure-relieving benefit, although that case can be argued both ways.
But a national NPV? That makes no sense at all. If it did, those who support it would be able to figure out, state, and defend their premises. Or answer questions about whether they support the presidential veto.
Lawrence–thanx again for the follow up…and ok with the mobocrat thingy….I apologize for taking that as an insult, if it was not intended. You have given me lots to consider and I will read it all slowly for I may have missed something. Have you had these conversations with the NPV people?
Ok you ant to know if I support a presidential veto—yes I do and I also would support the line item veto when there is proper domestic spending, then there would be fewer earmarks, at least in my opinion.
Lobotero –
I have not discussed this with the NPV people. I have been to their website, which does not invite discussion. In my view, that is because they are not about discussion – they are about promoting a proposal that will further their liberal agenda. Please understand that I have no objection to people promoting their agenda – that’s what politics is about. But I also see no point in arguing with folks about policy when their purpose is not to decide but to promote.
The tip-off for me is always the swing-state thing. Here’s what NPV says about small states:
“Non-competitive states—with or without a bonus of two extra electoral votes—simply do not matter in presidential politics.”
But that’s just silly. Those non-competitive states with their bonus of two extra electoral votes were crucial to W. in 2000. It may be in any given election that nobody COMPETES for their votes, but the votes count, and they can decide elections. Anyone who treats contested states’ votes as the only ones that “matter” just doesn’t understand how the game works, or wants to fool people about how it works.
Take last night for example. It was “all over” when Ohio was declared for Obama. But it was only “all over” because the people in all of the others states had or would vote as they were predicted to do. The voters out west were not disenfranchised. The electoral votes in the far West gave Obama the election. How can the voters there feel disenfranchised just because the outcome was free from doubt? Their votes were not ignored; they were PREDICTED, but they counted jsut as much as anyone else’s.
Is it morning? Hi Lawrence thanx for the heads up on the NPV thing….the truth is that I have not been to their site yet. I posted the original article because I thought it would make discussion and so far I have been right.
If I get through to the NPV people would it be alright if I give them your addy? You seem to be well informed and have an opinion and I would like to find someone with as much knowledge as you on the subject.
You have given me a lot to think about on this subject, which is cool because I like a challenge. I appreciate your comments and your discussion on the subject.
Lobotero-
No, I’m not interested in a direct contact with NPV. But I have no problem with you quoting my posts with attribution to “a commenter on my blog” or some such. I have posted to a log of blogs, and I almost always use my real name as here, so it’s not shyness, exactly, but I sense that these people are political operatives, and I’m just not looking to engage with them. I would, however, be interested in their replies to you, however, so I hope you will post any you get.
Meanwhile, I wanted to offer one more way of looking at the swing state argument. Consider a match play golf tournament. One team consists of Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, and you. The other team consists of Sergio Garcia, Ernie Els, and me. The matches are Tiger against me, Phil against Sergio, and Ernie against you.
Obviously, the “battleground state” is Phil vs. Sergio. But that match is so important precisely because Tiger and Ernie are sure to win. Their “votes” cancel out, and they make the Phil/Sergio match worth watching, but they are hardly “disenfranchised” just because they have easy, predictable victories. If we replaced Phil with my pet goldfish, your team would probably win the tournament. So it “matters” that Phil is a sure winner, and his performance “counts,” however boring the match.
My point is that there is nothing “irrelevant” about foregone contests. They are boring, and the participants don’t have the narcissistic joy of being the “deciding” factor. But game wins in tournaments are fungible, and not being the most interesting winner is not the same thing as not being a necessary and, therefore, relevant, winner.
As I said, feel free to offer up anything I have written. I prefer that you quote as paraphrasing often misses important details, but don’t hesitate to correct any typos, etc., in the process as if I had got them right the first time.
Are you familiar with the Monty Hall Paradox? If not, Google it. The NPV “swing state” guys remind me of the people who insist there is no benefit in switching because the odds are 50-50 that the car is behind either remaining door. There is a psychological push toward that conclusion, but it’s just plain wrong.
Please call me “Larry.”
Thanx Larry and I will quote you word for word, I too hate being taken out of context. I appreciate all the thoughts that you posted and you have given me something to research now that the election is over with. For that I thank you.
You will be hearing from me…please call me chuq (Pronounced chuck). I do appreciate your comments and I hope you will stay engaged.
Majority rule = Mob rule. If socialism is so great, why to governments have to build walls, place armed guards, and opress the people to keep it in place? why the berlin wall?
Hello Charles and thanx for the comment…….now I ask why does a country that is proud of their democracy not want the people to participate beyond every 4 years…..the socialism that everyone is so afraid of…was socialism in name only had nothing to do with actual socialism….it was however authoritarian state capitalism.
Lobotero,
If, as you say and I agree, the power and right to determine how electors are selected is expressly given to the individual State legislators as a plenary power there does not seem to be any other alternative than convincing each individual State to adopt your system. Please understand that I am, at this time, making no judgments regarding your proposed system, I am only stating that if a constitutional amendment were drafted and ratified to this effect it would be trampling on a State right and we have already fought one internal war over that.
An additional question I have is as follows:
You make references in other responses to “Our Democratic Form of Government”. Do you make this reference because it is what you believe to be so or simply because it has become the accepted term for our “Representative Republic”. In either case you do yourself and your cause a disservice as by definition a true Democracy must always degenerate into chaos and mob rule.
Basically, all I am saying is that I do not like the idea of someone voting for me…..Andrew Jackson got screwed and some say Gore did too. There is the possibility for political trickery, maybe not in my lifetime, but it is there anyway.
I am sorry Sam but in my haste I deleted your comment…would you please resend it for me…thanx.
I didn’t save it but in essence my question was just exactly where in the constitution are individuals granted the right to vote for the POTUS? There is no constitutional right to do so as the power to determine how electors are selected / delegated is granted to the individual state legislatures. As there is no constitutional way to circumvent this right it would be up to the individual states to make this change. Additionally, it would seem by extension that any attempt to constrain or restrict a state legislature’s ability to change how and when they do so would also run afoul of the constitution, having said that, I really see nothing wrong with each individual state deciding to allocate electors proportionally according to the way that their individual populations vote. If that is how the people of each individual state wish to go it would seem to be a simple matter to have it placed on a state wide ballot and resolve the matter however, I do not see a constitutional amendment requiring all states to allocate their electors in the same manner being able to pass muster.
THanx for the re-post and I apologize for my screw up….you are right…there is no mention of it….the founding fathers never intended for there to be participatory democracy…..
I’ve seen several blog and Facebook posts about the National Popular Vote proposal.
As we all know, the Electoral College was a compromise between two extremes in selecting a President. The NPV is at one end and “gerrymandering” is at the other. In gerrymandering, the rural areas would have a highly outsized influence while the NPV would favor big cities. The argument being made by the pro-NPV people is that only 22%-33% live in the biggest cities of the country. What the proponents fail to tell you is that there are the suburbs around the biggest cities. In fact, according to the US Census Bureau estimates, 250 million of the estimated 310 million population live in and around urban areas. That’s nearly 81% of the population. This is where the NPV proposal falls flat.
However, I’m going to throw the NPV proponents a bone: instead of using the new House of Representatives to vote on the President in case of a 269-269 tie, the NPV should be used. I’m all for using the NPV as the first tiebreaker but not using it to elect a President.
Another argument the pro-NPV people make is to say that using the NPV would force presidential candidates to go to more places than they go now, cities in the “battleground” states. If you’re expecting the NPV to help the least populated states, that help won’t come. Candidates for President still wouldn’t visit the Dakotas, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, etc. because their population is still too small to make a difference electorally. Sure, some mid-sized cities might get a visit or two from candidates.
Finally, this proposal ignores the power of the Internet. Voters can go online to get information about the candidates. Candidates don’t have to go everywhere because of this. To then-Senator Obama’s credit, he visited Portland, Oregon twice in 2008. I’ve heard he’s going to visit here soon again. But, you can go online to get all the information you need. With cable news outlets, the news cycle is practically 24/7. You can see videos of a candidate’s appearances at campaign events.
The NPV proposal was probably a good idea before the turn of the last century (1900). Now, it wouldn’t work.
May I present an idea in lieu of NPV and an Electoral College .. Have a weighted popular vote.. Weighted by time one has been eligible to vote. I know some might have a knee jerk reaction against such an idea, but it makes good sense when you think about it.
Currently our electoral system dumbs down to the least experienced in our society picking the president. This is unprecedented in any other aspect of our society. We always value the wisdom that experience brings.. We demand it in our Teachers, Lawyers, Doctors, pilots etc.. Few of us would ever consider turning the responsibility of deciding how our household would be run to our teenagers.. Why? We instinctively know they simply haven’t lived long enough to have to wisdom to make good choices. Yet, our country electoral system does EXACTLY that, simply because everyone’s vote counts as ONE and there are more Young blood than old blood in the society.. there is twice as many 18 year olds than 65 year olds. In fact according the 2010 census there are more 18-19 year olds than there are of all those over the age of 65.. Needless to say the vote of the teenagers out weighs the vote of the elders… Yet it’s the elders who have the wisdom of life’s experiences.
Now consider if we had a weighted voter system.. Weighted by length of time the individual was eligible to vote. and we employ a weighting scale along the lines of an increase of ones vote weight by .05 per year..There by every voter starts out with a value of ONE and it is increased by ONE every generational period..(twenty years).. so a 18 Year old would have an effective vote weight of ONE, and a 38 year old would have a weight of TWO, twice that of an 18 year old.. A 58 Year old would have a vote weight of THREE, or three times that of an 18 year old and yet only 50% more than a 38 year old.. carried to it final age group.. a 98 year old would have a vote weight of FIVE.. for five generations of lifes experience to draw upon..
Now at first glance you might think this is unfair and that this would put to much preference with the elderly, and this would be true if we were talking small numbers.. like a handful of people in a room, but in our Presidential politics the dynamic is quite different. There simply isn’t enough elderly alive to counter balance all the 18 year olds. In fact when this proposal is applied to the 2010 census data we find a perfect bell curve, that the power of the electorate falls to the 40-60 year olds and the 18-40 are in balance with the 60-100..
And such is a non-discriminatory weighting system.. Unlike our current electoral college which a persons vote is weighted by “WHERE” they live.. This weight would be predicated on how long they live.. and we all grow old.. So as one may feel the vote is prejudicial against young people.. All young people become old people .. So no discrimination between Race, Sex, Religion, political affiliation or Venue..Every one starts out young and grows old… And with that age comes the wisdom of life’s experiences.. And isn’t time we put a little “Wisdom” back into our election process?
Feel free to pass this idea along..
Interesting concept……I need some thought before I get totally on board. I will pass it along to others….thanx for stopping by and hope to see you again…..