Tag: Electoral College

We Can Do So Much Better

Years ago I did a post about the electoral college and why we need to get rid of it and go to national popular vote.  I have nothing good to say about the EC and I believe it cheats the people from being the sole deliverer of a candidate……I am not alone….there are many of us that want to see a better democracy than we have now……

There is a national attempt to eliminate the EC….it is called National Popular Vote Compact……..and Rhode Island has become the latest location to do what they can to eliminate the EC…..

From Think Progress…….

Both houses of the Rhode Island General Assembly voted to add their state to the National Popular Vote Compact, a plan to effectively abolish the Electoral College and ensure that the winner of the popular vote becomes president in future elections. The bill now moves to Gov. Lincoln Chafee (D), who says he supports it.

Under the compact, states whose total votes equal at least 270 electoral votes — the amount necessary to elect the president — must pledge to award their electors to whoever wins the popular vote in the nation as a whole, even if that person does not carry their state. The compact does not take effect until the requite number of states have signed onto it, and must also be approved by Congress before it can take effect.

One effect of this compact, in addition to preventing a situation like 2000 where the loser of the popular vote ultimately moved into the White House, is it would also shut down attempts to rig the Electoral College itself. Earlier this year, Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus said that “a lot of states that have been consistently blue that are fully controlled red” should rig future presidential elections by allocating their electoral votes by congressional district. Such a plan would not only take advantage of gerrymandering that benefits Republicans, it would also be limited to blue states currently controlled by Republican state governments.

Americans need to get behind this attempt…….we can make a better government and a better voting experience….amd I am all in favor of a better experience and a better country.  How about you?

You Want Change?

In 2008 we all fell for the con job of change and hope…..we have had neither in almost 3 years and now we are about to enter into the 2012 primary season…..and once again I hear the word change being thrown around but this time it is from the Right.

I have written a couple of post on a way to achieve REAL change not the veiled promises of bought and paid for politicians…….You Want Change?  Then read these posts first…..http://t.co/18gNDYo

That one post has other post referenced…please read them…they will help explain where I am coming from….

There are others who feel as I do….that this system of picking our leaders is useless and antiquated…….

The following criteria are listed in [an] LWV study:

  • Ensure majority rule. Most major political races currently can be won with only a plurality.
  • Encourage minority representation, where minority is defined by either party or cultural
  • affiliation.
  • Encourage fair gender representation.
  • Produce fair and accurate representation of diverse political views in legislatures.
  • Increase voter participation.
  • Encourage geographical representation.
  • Encourage “sincere” voting, as opposed to “strategic” voting.
  • Maximize effective votes/minimize “wasted” votes.
  • Provide a reasonable range of voter choice.
  • Prevent fraud and political manipulation.
  • Encourage competitive elections

–League of Women Voters in Oregon, Criteria for Evaluating Election Systems, Election Methods: Review of Alternatives and Oregon, Proposals, Executive Summary

All these are reasonable and logical and rational changes that could go a long way to changing the way that we are governed….the system we have now is NOT doing the people of the US any good….it only perpetuates the exploitation of the voter……

Like I have said…there are several others that have valid ideas for giving the people the final voice in the governing of the country…..try this one on……http://t.co/7U8uCSZ   ……..A group named “Get Out Of Our House (GOOOH)”…..personally I think that they are on to something here….

Anything has GOT to be better than the joke, the circus that we have now!

Thoughts?

America’s Big Joke

Oh there are many things that are a joke in the US…..FinReg, health care, the two party system, our educational system….but the biggest joke is…….the electoral system for electing a president.  The punch line is that if we eliminate it then our democracy will fall into mob rule…..

Anybody that has read my site knows that I am NOT a big supporter of the electoral college, in fat I feel that it is time to eliminate if completely…….but here is my post from 2008……..http://bit.ly/kPOplE

Not much has changed in the past couple of years….it is still an antiquated system from a long gone era of our country’s history……..

I received the below in an email from a friend in New Mexico….it deals with the bastard system known as the Electoral College……

The symbol of modern democracies is the right granted to its citizens to vote. As if voting were the end goal of the freedom of expression and self determination of a people. Unfortunately this is the extent to which the arbiters of U.S. policy allow for its citizens to exercise their right to conduct change. It is a ritualistic undertaking that takes place once every four years in which the masses are genuinely encouraged to exercise their responsibility as a participatory body. As if waking from a deep 4 year slumber we are suddenly compelled to ignite our desire for political action in an overwhelming national expression of deep political concern which has been conspicuously absent for the preceding 4 years.

What principal of governance states that the so called right to vote is the end goal of a democratically run state? Why is this symbol presented to us as our crowning glory over all other backward states? The reason is because the right to vote is essentially inconsequential, the policy makers know this fact very well, but they make concerted efforts to deceive the population into thinking that CHOICE, in and of itself, is sufficient. But when the choices are between two evils, which they certainly are, then whether we choose a hydra over a minotaur to run a country hardly matters at all.

While it is true that the historic precedent of allowing its citizens to vote in an electoral system isn’t unique to modern societies, it is unique with respect to powerful states. In the past a powerful state was synonymous with a totalitarian state, with its inherent cruelties being much of the cause for its supremacy in the world. But a genuine shift has taken place in the modern world in which internationally powerful states (most notably England and the United States) are recognized as being free states in the sense that its citizens direct the actions of its leaders and not vice versa. With the invention and advancement of mass media techniques policy makers have discovered that it no longer matters whether or not people are given the freedom to choose, so long as we limit their options and opportunities. The options are limited to a meaningless two party system in which we are offered a choice that ranges between absolute evil and opportunistic cut throat capitalism – the spectrum of choice is so narrow it’s rendered meaningless. It’s the difference between destroying the world in 50 years or 75, what will you decide? And the opportunities are limited to a leap year ritual that requires citizens to place an “X” beside their favourite TV personality, and then to quietly and obsequiously go back to work and allow the rulers to rule and the citizens to work day in and day out until then next ritual gathering.

When has change ever occurred over the course of a single night? Whether we are speaking of personal change or national, changes of radical undertaking have always been gradual, repetitive, concerted, and even painful. The notion that we can participate once every four years and then promptly go back to watching television soap operas or the latest buzz in Hollywood is a testament to our complacency. The U.S. electoral system is a mastery of the elements of deception into fooling people into thinking that change can occur suddenly and without significant effort. If it were a viable system then the options for alternatives would be greatly diversified and it would not be limited to a single day every 1300 days.

Samuel D.

By using E-Democracy, that is using the internet and such, we can eliminate this caveman type of political system…..we can then go to a real democracy, one of people participation in ALL aspects of the governing of their country….

As sucky as the system is now….why not try something new?  The Electoral College is a dinosaur and needs to be in a museum……if you want change then change….and this is an excellent place to begin!

We Need Election Reform

For years many of us have been calling for some form of election reform….they have heard our calls…but their idea of reform is to control the funds that are given to campaigns…..everyone is yelling about the cash that is spent on and by campaigns….it is a legitimate concern but there is more to election reform than the amount of money that is thrown around….

There has been a movement since 1867 to try and control the amount of money in campaigns that in turn gives some  more influence in politics than others…..and the recent ruling by the US Supreme Court has crapped all over that movement, when they ruled that corporations could directly donate to campaigns…this will give corporations unbridled influence and in turn will give even more than now, more say in what will be considered by the Congress and the Prez as important issues of the day.

I am, among others, talking about such other things, beyond campaign funds, like term limits, accessibility to third parties to the electoral process, etc…….

On term limits the Cato Institute has some very good points in favor:

Lesson One. Term limits stimulate political competition. That is accomplished in a variety of ways, from increasing the number of open seats and special elections to lowering the reelection rates of incumbents. Many former incumbents return to private life, and a significant number run for other offices, thereby stimulating political competition at other levels. There is also evidence to suggest that campaigns may be less costly in a term-limited electoral environment. Under term limits, California’s state campaign spending since 1992 is 44 percent lower than from 1984 to 1988.

Lesson Two. Term limits increase legislative diversity. The prospect of shorter political careers is also changing the characteristics of people who choose to seek public office, encouraging political participation by nonprofessional politicians. Hence, the occupational makeup of state legislatures is gradually moving away from the traditional preponderance of ex-lawyers and ex-political aides. In California in 1995 there were only 3.4 percent self-described full-time state legislators, down from 36 percent in 1986, and three times more legislators are now business people than were previously.

Lesson Three. Term-limited legislatures undergo positive institutional changes. As institutions, they become more merit based and less governed by an outdated seniority system. Term limits eliminate the possibility of entrenched legislative leaders dominating a legislative chamber. Leadership positions (especially that of Speaker) become less powerful as a more decentralized power structure evolves in response to the growing independence of term-limited freshmen legislators. Generally speaking, freshman legislators tend to ask tougher questions of bureaucrats and demand a higher level of performance from government agencies than did their predecessors.

Lesson Four. Term limits act as a natural campaign finance reform. Term limits diminish the value of a legislative seat to lobbyists and the special interests they represent in state capitals. That reduces the incentive for lobbyists to raise and to distribute the large “soft money” contributions so disliked by the political establishment. In states as dissimilar as Maine, Michigan, and Ohio there is evidence that lobbyists are unsettled by the term limits-induced need to build new political relationships from scratch.

Lesson Five. Term limits improve the quality of legislation. The continual infusion of fresh blood into state legislatures is improving public policy. By mandating frequent legislative turnover, term limits are bringing new perspectives to state legislatures, reducing the concentration on reelection, and thereby diminishing the incentive for wasteful election-related pork barrel spending that flourishes in a careerist legislative culture.

A good case for term limits……

What about third party politics?  Here is a doozy of a subject—-third party politics is almost non-existent in the US…yes there is a wealth of single issue parties but few get on ballots and even fewer are anywhere close to successful.  The biggest argument against this is that they point to Europe and their need for coalitions to govern…personally I think that is a lame excuse……they do not like the idea that a candidate could get less than 50% of the vote and still be the winner……and in the US they discourage any third party by making it all but impossible to get on a ballot…making it hard because of the number of signatures needed or the large sum of money to register the party…basically they give third parties ever obstacle they can imagine to keep them off of a ballot…..they cannot outlaw third parties outright because it would be anti-Constitutional, so they use legal trickery to do the same thing…keep third parties off of ballots…..

Personally, I think any party should be allowed on every ballot…it would make our system more democratic and make election watching far more interesting than it is now…..most people do not agree with me on this….they see ALL third parties as spoilers……..but they are the ones that think the two party system is the ONLY answer to a well run political system……apparently, they are not paying attention!

Whose Idea Was It Anyway?

Inkwell Institute

Professor’s Classroom

Subject:  American History/Political History

Paper #1

Note:  In writing this piece I was confronted with a couple other things that need to be analyzed…these are Representative Democracy and Bureaucracy…..please watch for these posts also…..

There has been many conversations on whether the electoral college is still a relevant concept or not….and whether it is still necessary or not……

The Electoral College was the Founders last ditch attempt to keep the reins of democracy out of the hands of the masses…..they did not want the people to get an overdose of democracy that would prove fatal, in the minds of the Founding Fathers….

The Framers of the Constitution were fearful of direct democracy and the “tyranny of the majority” it might produce. Consequently, they created a complex “filtering” process known as the Electoral College which was intended to insulate the selection of the President from the whims of the people. The Electoral College is comprised of “electors,” individuals who cast the electoral votes for their states. Originally, electors were free to cast their votes as they chose. Today, electors are “bound” or “committed” by state law to vote for the candidate who received the most popular votes in their state. With the exceptions of Maine and Nebraska, states give all of their electoral votes to the candidate who wins a majority of votes in the state. (The procedure for electing the President is outlined in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution.)

Each state has a number of electoral votes equal to the number of Senators and House Members it is eligible to send to the Congress. For example, the state of New York elects two Senators (as every other state does) and thirty-one Members of the House. New York, then, has thirty-three electoral votes. The total number of electoral votes in the Electoral College is 538–one for each of the one hundred Senators and 435 House Members plus the three allotted to the District of Columbia by the 23rd Amendment to the Constitution.

Electors are chosen by the political parties in each state. When voters cast their ballots in favor of a presidential candidate they are actually voting for the electors of the same party as that candidate. When a candidate wins the popular vote in a state, he or she wins that state’s electoral votes. Those votes are formally cast by the electors chosen to represent the winning candidate’s party in each state.

Under the original rules of the Electoral College, as established by the Constitution, electors cast separate votes for President and Vice-president. Whoever received a majority of electoral votes would be the President and the runner-up would become the Vice-President. However, a problem arose in the election of 1800 when Thomas Jefferson and his running mate Aaron Burr each received 73 electoral votes. When no candidate receives a clear majority of electoral votes, the Constitution specifies that the House of Representatives shall choose the President. It took the House thirty-six ballots to finally select Thomas Jefferson as the third President of the United States. To avoid a repeat of such problems, the 12th Amendment to the Constitution provided for presidential and vice-presidential candidates to run as a team, not individually.  (thanx to thisnation.org for some of the content)

This plan put to rest the notion of the great unwashed masses ever controlling the government….and that was a major concern of the elitists that founded this country…..how to keep the people at arms length when it comes to the reins of government….they found a good direction and it began with the electoral college….

In my opinion, the electoral college has out lived its usefulness….As it is today it favors the two party system to the exclusion of any third party, whether a popular party or not…the EC assumes that the people are too stupid to actually participate beyond a normal election…unfortunately I would agree with that assessment, but not because of stupidity but rather a lack of education…….

Researching this post lead me to other parts of the political system that I feel compelled to add thoughts on…….

Next in the series will be Representative Democracy……….

Time To Junk The Electoral College

I have written on this several times and have had numerous great comments both pro and con–below is from an article written by Jonathan Soros for the Wall Street Journal.

The Electoral College was created in 1787 by a constitutional convention whose delegates were unconvinced that the election of the president could be entrusted to an unfiltered vote of the people, and were concerned about the division of power among the 13 states. It was antidemocratic by design.

Under the system, each state receives votes equal to the number of representatives it has in the House plus one for each of its senators. Less populated states are thus overrepresented. While this formula hasn’t changed, it no longer makes a difference for the majority of states. Wyoming, with its three electoral votes, has no more influence over the selection of the president or on the positions taken by candidates than it would with one vote.

We often forget that the power to appoint electors is given to state legislatures, and it is only because they choose to hold a vote that Election Day is at all relevant for us. Nowhere is a popular election constitutionally required. And, as the 2000 election reminded us, the winner of the popular vote is not guaranteed to become president.

The Constitution is no longer in line with our expectations regarding the role of the people in selecting the president. Yet several previous attempts to eliminate the Electoral College through a constitutional amendment have failed, scuttled by the difficulty of the process itself and the tyranny of small-state logic.

Fortunately, a constitutional amendment is not necessary. Rather than dismantling the Electoral College with an amendment, we can use the mechanisms of the Electoral College itself to guarantee popular election of the president.

To understand how the proposal works, one needs to understand two basic principles. First, that state legislatures are basically unfettered in how they choose to appoint electors. And second, that groups of states can enter into binding agreements with one another in the form of so-called interstate compacts. There are many examples of such compacts, including the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the interstate agreement that guarantees a driver points on a Virginia driver license when he or she speeds in Maryland.

Under the proposed National Popular Vote compact, state legislatures would agree to choose electors who promise to support the winner of the nationwide popular vote. For example, if a Republican were to win the overall national popular vote, even if New Yorkers favored the Democrat, New York’s Electoral College votes would go to the Republican. The compact will go into force when states representing 271 Electoral College votes have entered into it to guarantee that the winner of the popular vote will become president.

It is ironic that the most common objection to the National Popular Vote compact is the suggestion that it is antifederalist. In fact, interstate compacts lie at the very core of federalism: individual states combining their powers to solve a problem. In this case, they would be joining forces to allow their citizens to act as one nation in the selection of their president.

Efforts Against Electoral College Manipulation

Green Party leaders said today that the outcome of the 2008 presidential election may be affected by the antidemocratic apportionment of Electoral College votes, with the popular vote misrepresented by the winner-take-all system of assigning votes to electors.

“We’re in danger of seeing the 2008 election stolen again, as in 2000 and 2004,” said Clyde Shabazz, Green candidate for the US House in Michigan (13th District) (http://www.migreens.org). “In Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004, we witnessed the obstruction and manipulation of votes by election officials and possible tampering with computer voting machines. But equally insidious is the malapportionment of Electoral College votes, which disenfranchises whole sections of the voting public.”

A civil action to protect the voting rights of presidential electors and the voters they represent was filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia (1:08-cv-01294) on January 28, 2008, by Asa Gordon, chair of the DC Statehood Green Party’s Electoral College Task Force and executive director of the Douglass Institute of Government (http://members.aol.com/digasa/dig.htm).
The civil action seeks enforcement of the ‘Mal-Apportionment Penalty’ provided in Section 2 of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, which mandates a reduction of a state’s presidential electors and congressional representatives if “the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States… is denied… or in any way abridged.”
The civil action was filed on July 28, 2008, to commemorate the 140th anniversary of the adoption of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution. Since the debacle of the 2000 presidential election, the Green Party in partnership with the Douglass Institute of Government has led the way in educating Americans about their constitutional “right to vote” under the provisions of 14th Amendment, Section 2.

The Electoral College Is Coming

A measure that would push the Electoral College to the fringes of American politics has been an unlikely beneficiary of this year’s protracted presidential primaries.

Buoyed by a long presidential primary season that focused attention on states that usually are overlooked in the calculus of winning a nomination, states as far-flung as Massachusetts and Hawaii have passed or are considering legislation that would guarantee that the candidate who got the most votes nationwide would win the White House.

If lessons from high school civics classes on how the Electoral College operates had dimmed, the 2000 election brought them back to life as Al Gore won the national popular vote but lost the presidency to George W. Bush in the Electoral College after the Supreme Court settled the dispute over Florida‘s vote count. That’s because almost every state casts its electoral votes based on the winner of the popular vote in that state.
The U.S. Constitution provides that states can choose how they allocate electors. Under the group’s plan, the new method of casting electoral votes would take effect when states with a combined 270 electoral votes—the number necessary to elect a president—join the national popular-vote compact
National Popular Vote was founded by Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Koza. The group says the measure should have bipartisan support, pointing to the near-miss of the 2004 election. Bush was re-elected when he won the popular vote by more than 3 million ballots. But a switch of only 60,000 votes in Ohio would have swung that battleground state to John Kerry, who would have won in the Electoral College.

And Republicans have supported it, including Illinois State Sen. Kirk Dillard (R-Hinsdale), a co-sponsor of the Illinois bill, which Gov. Rod Blagojevich signed in April.

Apart from partisan politics, the Electoral College has supporters. Walter Berns, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, notes that the current system helps small states keep some clout on the national scene.
Still, even some opponents of the Electoral College are skeptical. Burdett Loomis, a political science professor at the University of Kansas, favors amending the Constitution to abolish the Electoral College. Supporters of the National Popular Vote campaign say is that’s too difficult because an it requires approval by two-thirds of Congress and three-quarters of the states.

This is a shorten post from an original article published in the Chicago Tribune. Time for this archaic piece of crap to be eliminated.

What Do You Really Know About The Electoral College?

The Electoral College actually elects the next president of the United States, not the popular vote. Here are some facts about the Electoral College:

* There are 538 members of the Electoral College, allotted to each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia based on their representation in the U.S. Congress. The smallest states have three members while the largest state, California, has 55. Washington, D.C., which has no representation in Congress, has three, the same as the smallest state.

It takes 270 electoral votes to win election. The electors are pledged to one candidate or the other but there is no federal law requiring them to vote that way. There have been several incidents in which a “faithless elector” has voted for someone other than the major candidates.

* In 48 states and the district, the candidate who wins the popular vote wins all of the state’s electors. Nebraska and Maine have a proportional system of awarding electors.

* Electors, who are picked by the respective political parties, make two selections — for president and for vice president. They may not vote for two candidates from their own state.

* Because a candidate could run up a big vote count in some states but lose others by narrow margins, the winner of the popular vote might not have the most electoral votes. The Electoral College has three times picked the candidate who lost the popular vote — Republicans Rutherford Hayes in 1876, Benjamin Harrison in 1888 and George W. Bush in 2000.

* The Electoral College meets in each state to cast its votes on a Monday early in December after the November popular election. The votes are then tallied in a joint session of Congress on January 6 of the following year.

* If no candidate receives a majority of the electoral votes, the House of Representatives chooses among the top three candidates with each state having only one vote. If no vice presidential candidate receives a majority, the Senate decides between the top two candidates.

* The House has twice decided the outcome of the presidential race — in the 1800 and 1824 elections. The Senate decided the vice presidency once, in the 1836 election.

* This unique system was the result of a compromise by the writers of the U.S. Constitution in the 18th century between those who wanted direct popular election and those who wanted state legislatures to decide. One fear was that at a time before political parties, the popular vote would be diluted by voting for an unwieldy amount of candidates.

There you go sports fans, absolutely everything that you never wanted to know about the Electoral College.  IMO, it is still an out-dated system that needs to be eliminated.