It would be easier to abolish the states than to do that.
Posted on 08/28/2004 11:34:36 PM PDT by Former Military Chick
When Republican delegates nominate their presidential candidate this week, they will be doing it in a city where residents who support George Bush have, for all practical purposes, already been disenfranchised. Barring a tsunami of a sweep, heavily Democratic New York will send its electoral votes to John Kerry and both parties have already written New York off as a surefire blue state. The Electoral College makes Republicans in New York, and Democrats in Utah, superfluous. It also makes members of the majority party in those states feel less than crucial. It's hard to tell New York City children that every vote is equally important - it's winner take all here, and whether Senator Kerry beats the president by one New York vote or one million, he will still walk away with all 31 of the state's electoral votes.
The Electoral College got a brief spate of attention in 2000, when George Bush became president even though he lost the popular vote to Al Gore by more than 500,000 votes. Many people realized then for the first time that we have a system in which the president is chosen not by the voters themselves, but by 538 electors. It's a ridiculous setup, which thwarts the will of the majority, distorts presidential campaigning and has the potential to produce a true constitutional crisis. There should be a bipartisan movement for direct election of the president.
The main problem with the Electoral College is that it builds into every election the possibility, which has been a reality three times since the Civil War, that the president will be a candidate who lost the popular vote. This shocks people in other nations who have been taught to look upon the United States as the world's oldest democracy. The Electoral College also heavily favors small states. The fact that every one gets three automatic electors - one for each senator and a House member - means states that by population might be entitled to only one or two electoral votes wind up with three, four or five.
The majority does not rule and every vote is not equal - those are reasons enough for scrapping the system. But there are other consequences as well. This election has been making clear how the Electoral College distorts presidential campaigns. A few swing states take on oversized importance, leading the candidates to focus their attention, money and promises on a small slice of the electorate. We are hearing far more this year about the issue of storing hazardous waste at Yucca Mountain, an important one for Nevada's 2.2 million residents, than about securing ports against terrorism, a vital concern for 19.2 million New Yorkers. The political concerns of Cuban-Americans, who are concentrated in the swing state of Florida, are of enormous interest to the candidates. The interests of people from Puerto Rico scarcely come up at all, since they are mainly settled in areas already conceded as Kerry territory. The emphasis on swing states removes the incentive for a large part of the population to follow the campaign, or even to vote.
Those are the problems we have already experienced. The arcane rules governing the Electoral College have the potential to create havoc if things go wrong. Electors are not required to vote for the candidates they are pledged to, and if the vote is close in the Electoral College, a losing candidate might well be able to persuade a small number of electors to switch sides. Because there are an even number of electors - one for every senator and House member of the states, and three for the District of Columbia - the Electoral College vote can end in a tie. There are several plausible situations in which a 269-269 tie could occur this year. In the case of a tie, the election goes to the House of Representatives, where each state delegation gets one vote - one for Wyoming's 500,000 residents and one for California's 35.5 million.
The Electoral College's supporters argue that it plays an important role in balancing relations among the states, and protecting the interests of small states. A few years ago, this page was moved by these concerns to support the Electoral College. But we were wrong. The small states are already significantly overrepresented in the Senate, which more than looks out for their interests. And there is no interest higher than making every vote count.
Making Votes Count: Editorials in this series remain online at nytimes.com/makingvotescount.
-PJ
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It would be easier to abolish the states than to do that.
I think they understand very well.
Spoken like a true socialist Democrat...
We do know, without question, that the losing candidate outpolled the winning one in the nation at large. In modern times this was unprecedented, but it had almost happened three times within living memory: in 1960, when J.F.K.'s plurality was barely a hundred thousand votes;
http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:aKZv3w0Rk8EJ:www.newyorker.com/talk/content/%3F011224ta_talk_hertzberg+1960+JFK+lost+the+popular+election,Electoral+College&hl=en
That's precisely what they want; however there are two problems with that. First the constitution only allows the state legislature to determine the method by which electors are chosen (not referenda). Second, even if referend were allowed, this one is on the date that the electors are chosen. According to federal election law, the method by which a state selects electors must be written in staute at least six days prior to the date the electors are chosen. This referendum could be designed to create even more controversies by creating the potential of Supreme Court decsions affecting how the state allocates its electors.
One article I read indicated that the proponents might decide whether to apply it to the 2004 election depending on whether it helps Kerry or not. Abviously if Kerry carried Colorado, DemocRATS would be shooting themselves in the foot if they applied it this year, and might cause Kerry to lose the Electoral College. If Kerry doesn't carry the state, the DemocRATS would be likely to want the law to apply this year. Of course that would be strange, because if Bush wins, it is unlikely for the referendum to pass.
... It is not my reputation that is crossing Jordan River on Nov 3rd ... Hope, the popular vote goes to the winner!
See my tagline.
In a direct election, every vote counts the same as every other vote for President. Sounds good on paper, but that also means every fraudulent votes counts as much as every legal vote.
In the Electoral College, because the Electors of the President on selected on a state-by-state basis, if one state has a corrupt election system, the votes in the other states are not affected.
Case in point: California has over 10 million voters. In the 2000 election is has been estimated that more fraudulent votes were cast in California than all of the the votes in several individual states. California does not require any identification or citizneship papers to register to vote - only the registrant's affidavit that they meet the requirments. In fact, an illegal alien case obtain a driver's license and receive a voter registration in the mail. That illegal alien could mail in the registraion and an application for a permanent absentee ballot, cast a vote, and never be confronted by a living human being!
Gore's popular nationwide vote margin in the 2000 election was largely provided by his margin in California.
If you want your vote to be cancelled out by one of possibly over 1 million fraudulent voters in California, then work hard to get rid of the Electoral College.
Our Republic is in serious trouble if the electoral college gets thrown out.
Thanks much. What's annoying is how the Democrats can conceivably nullify a lot of Republican states by 2008, the next Presidential election. They are relentlessly into rabid dog politics since they consider themselves the party of government.
GOP pols are more laid back and don't look at politics and government jobs as careers. Not the way the Dems do.
You and I are agreeing more and more.
It's making me nervous.
I don't buy the notion that Gore necessarily actually won the "popular vote". He carried some states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsisn due to vote fraud. There were precints in Philadelphia in which over 130% turnout. Gore's campaign manager was the son of the formere mayor of Chicago and the brother of the curent one. Chicago is known to have some of the most crooked elections in the US. The Electoral College is deliberately designed to thwart vote fraud.
The electoral college is one of the last vestiges of the old republic. You can see why Hillary and the NYT want to get rid of it. Think Rome, bread and circuses.
The only way we should change the system, if at all, is to have an ever MORE federalist electoral college:
Instead of winner-take-all states, how about the following:
A victory in a single congressional district = 1 EV.
A victory statewide = 2 EV.
This would open up areas within states to political competition. For example, in California there is a large number of conservatives, but the state they're slightly outmnumbered by libs. Same goes for upstate NY, southern illinois, North Florida, Western Pennsylvania, and many other places.
I've heard a lot of conservatives propose this idea, and the common counterargument is a growth in gerrymandering. My response: so what!
If congressional district lines were more important, wouldn't that make who controls the state legislature more important? And if that were the case, wouldn't that in effect devolve power away from the Federal Government and back to the states???
It would bring us back closer to the days when control of the state legislature was more important than federal seats! That was before the 17th Amendment, when senators were appointed by the legislatures.
If this happened in the last election, Bush would have won by by more votes.
30 states voted for Bush, which would give him 60 EV from state-wide races (senatorial representation). Al Gore would have gotten 40 EV. If everybody voted according to their congressional district, Bush would have 228 EV from the Congressional EVs.
That's 288 EV for Bush, 250 EV for Gore. If democrats wanted to increase their electoral prospects, they would have to strengthen their appeal at the LOCAL level. No longer can a presidential candidate put a slick gloss on a campaign, bite their lip, promise to "feel their pain", and ride on positive media coverage. Support would have to be built from the ground up. The executive branch would be weak, like the constitution intended. States would have more power as well.
Thoughts???
There are still the states. If you really want to eradicate the "old republic," you might as well do away with states entirely and have just one humongous national government over everyone.
-PJ
Awesome map. Where'd you get that from???
I imagine the logical next step is Hillary and the NY Slimes calling to abolish the entire U.S. Constition.
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