Posted on 11/09/2004 12:43:37 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
The mini-drama that played itself out Wednesday morning over Ohio's vote was eerily reminiscent of the turmoil in Florida that greeted the nation four years ago. And while the suspense was short-lived and the results clearer in Ohio in 2004 than in Florida in 2000, it should never have happened.
The time has come — after the second election in a row where the results in one state ultimately determined the outcome of the election — for the nation to drop out of the Electoral College.
President Bush amassed a 3.5 million-vote margin nationwide over Sen. John Kerry, and at the same time garnered the most votes ever cast for a presidential candidate. That should have been enough to seal his victory.
Yet a swing of 1 percent of Ohio's more than 5.5 million votes cast would have put Ohio's 20 electoral votes in Kerry's column, made him president-elect, and pushed the 2004 campaign into the same demoralizing funk that inflicted the electorate for the past four years when Democrat Al Gore won the popular vote contest but lost the Electoral College.
Confidence that every vote counts is a bedrock principle of American democracy, even if, as a republic, our Constitution binds us to the anachronism of voting for electors rather than candidates. The old reasoning that the campaigns would ignore small states and spend all their time and money in the largest, voter-rich states simply no longer holds true.
Instead, the candidates spent the campaign in a dozen or so states where polls showed the race was closest. In the end, the votes cast by 1.8 million Georgians for the president were worth much less than the 2.8 million he got in Ohio.
For the better part of 50 years, polls have indicated a majority of Americans think the Electoral College is outdated. After two close elections where its existence has contributed to voter distrust of the system, it's time to end it.
Bad. Bad idea.
We're not. That's not some minor technical debate. I like how they try to use Bush's win as evidence that the EC should be abolished, as if they'd give a crap if Kerry won electorally.
Interesting that he makes such an inane statement without supporting it with facts or figures. Of course it still holds true!
What a great idea. Just imagine a close election nationally where we have to recount the ENTIRE NATION. Fighting over all the overseas ballots, absentee ballots, provisional ballots, etc. It would be four years before we determined who the winner was...
>Bad. Bad idea.
I agree, it's definitely a BAD idea... the founding fathers knew how important this was, and had good reasons to come up with the EV.
In my old Libertarian days, I abhorred the Electoral College, as it pushed marginal parties to zero national representation.
(if you're into math, the LP was in the nullspace of the electoral map...)
But as I've gotten older and wiser, I've come to love the EC as a brilliant extension of checks and balances. I disagree that "every vote counts" is the cornerstone of the American republic. I place much more value in the idea of protecting the minority. That's the point of the College, and the Great Compromise, and the First Amendment, which protects the right of faith and opinion for the least among us.
Look at how the EC took Bill Clinton's bare plurality and 'smoothed' it into a runaway victory. The College requires that any winning candidate has both enough support and a enough range of support.
If our schools taught any civics, maybe a generation of Americans would understand why the EC was and is necessary. But hell, i went to a private Jesuit school and didn't learn about it.
I get a bad, bad reaction to any suggestion of dibanding the Electoral College, Cinci.
All the stumping and speechifying would be barraged on the major population centers (Cities. Not states) like LA, San Fran, Manhattan, Seattle, Atlanta, Dallas/Ft.Worth, Chicago, Detroit, Boston)
Once you have those. You don't need anything else.
Bad, bad, bad idea!
Jack.
Yep.... rotten idea. Figures Hillary supports it.
The pained pretense of objectivity. . .for those who have eyes. . .they will see.
It is not pretty however. . .
The Electoral College MUST stay; and the only way to guarantee that; is to NEVER vote for a Demrat for anything - ever. (yes. . .not even dog catcher)
Bump!!
Oh yeah. Good idea. Then NY and CA and FL would decide every election.
To hell with the rest of the country.
Sorry, but if that's done then all the populated cites where the liberals want to live together would be electing our President. I for one like the system the way it is.
Here's an even better idea, one that will, far from letting big cities control the elections, will do just the opposite.
Keep the electoral college system, but require that to win a state's electoral votes, you must win in a majority of the counties in a given state's popular vote count. So not only do you just count it at the state level to figure out how the electoral votes go, but also count it down to the county level to see how many counties a given candidate wins. It would dilute the clout of big cities and give more power back to suburbia and rural areas.
Also, go to the "automatic system" rather than the EC. State's electoral votes automatically go to the winner--to eliminate the faithless electors...
I'd like us to return to the original thought....The States pick their electorates from the best of the best. You send these electoral college folks out to a big room and let them tell us a while later who they picked.
No campaigning, no liberal propaganda.....and hopefully an end to lawyers running the country
Just what I want. Presidents elected by the states with the most population, which means the blue states, not the red. Just what the liberals want, actually. However, if one were to use this election as an example, at least the liberals would have had a chance under the electoral system, as it came down to one state (Ohio) that cinched the election for the Pubs. If Kerry would have won Ohio, he would be President. It all hinged on one state, electorally. However, if it had been based on the popular vote, Bush, with his 3.5 million lead in the popular vote, would for sure have won, not Kerry. So Kerry's best chance to have won would have been under the electoral system, not the popular vote. Last election, Gore would have won, but that was last election, this is now. So it still would be a crap shoot under either electoral or popular vote. The difference would be (under popular vote) is that all the small states with small electoral numbers, would be totally ignored and have minimal political effectiveness, as Colorado figured out in voting down the referendum to do proportional parceling out of electoral votes. Good thing they figured out that they would lose any clout and voted wisely against the proposal.
Another Democrat Party paper calling to end an institution that keeps shutting them out of national power. Vane, transparant and hopeless.
Bump!
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