Posted on 12/29/2004 5:15:20 PM PST by CHARLITE
Amendment would provide for direct popular election
Dateline: December 27, 2004
Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) has announced that she will introduce legislation to abolish the Electoral College system and provide for direct popular election of the President and Vice President when the Senate convenes for the 109th Congress in January.
“The Electoral College is an anachronism and the time has come to bring our democracy into the 21st Century,” Sen. Feinstein said in a press release. “During the founding years of the Republic, the Electoral College may have been a suitable system, but today it is flawed and amounts to national elections being decided in several battleground states.
“We need to have a serious, comprehensive debate on reforming the Electoral College.
"I will press for hearings in the Judiciary Committee on which I sit and ultimately a vote on the Senate floor, as occurred 25 years ago on this subject. My goal is simply to allow the popular will of the American people to be expressed every four years when we elect our President. Right now, that is not happening.”
In further denouncing the Electoral College system, Sen. Feinstein pointed out that under the current system for electing the President of the United States:
Candidates focus only on a handful of contested states and ignore the concerns of tens of millions of Americans living in other states.
A candidate can lose in 39 states, but still win the Presidency.
A candidate can lose the popular vote by more than 10 million votes, but still win the Presidency.
A candidate can win 20 million votes in the general election, but win zero electoral votes, as happened to Ross Perot in 1992.
In most states, the candidate who wins a state’s election, wins all of that state’s electoral votes, no matter the winning margin, which can disenfranchise those who supported the losing candidate.
A candidate can win a state’s vote, but an elector can refuse to represent the will of a majority of the voters in that state by voting arbitrarily for the losing candidate (this has reportedly happened 9 times since 1820).
Smaller states have a disproportionate advantage over larger states because of the two “constant” or “senatorial” electors assigned to each state.
A tie in the Electoral College is decided by a single vote from each state’s delegation in the House of Representatives, which would unfairly grant California’s 36 million residents equal status with Wyoming’s 500,000 residents.
In case of such a tie, House members are not bound to support the candidate who won their state’s election, which has the potential to further distort the will of the majority. “Sooner or later we will have a situation where there is a great disparity between the electoral vote winner and the popular vote winner. If the President and Vice President are elected by a direct popular vote of the American people, then every American’s vote will count the same regardless of whether they live in California, Maine, Ohio or Florida,” Sen. Feinstein said.
In the history of the country, there have been four instances of disputed elections where the President who was elected won the electoral vote, but lost the popular vote – John Quincy Adams in 1824, Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, Benjamin Harrison in 1888 and George W. Bush in 2000. According to some estimates there have been at least 22 instances where a similar scenario could have occurred in close elections.
“Our system is not undemocratic, but it is imperfect, and we have the power to do something about it,” Sen. Feinstein said. “It is no small feat to amend the Constitution as it has only been done only 27 times in the history of our great nation.”
If we had a national popular vote, I predict that presidential candidates would spend all their time campaigning in that portion of the U.S. that lies within a nine-hour drive of Columbus, Ohio.
Yes, but there are quite a number of small # EC flyover states. I don't know how long the trend has been, others have a better grip on this than I, but these small states have been voting as a block and together they have a large enough number of EC to out weith the blue coasts. If you look at the red/blue map of how counties voted it's pretty obvious that urban areas is where the 'blue' is concentrated. If we went to a straight popular vote the candidates would only campaign in maybe the 7 largest cities. We're having our own version of that here in WA state. One county - King - is large enough and liberal enough and had enough fraud to override the rest of the state.
Bush, a border governor, should be our ally particularly in the environment of the War on Terror but he's not. Not. At. All. He's a baldfaced liar and scoundrel who's every bit as open borders as the know-nothings from the north east and the fly over country who insist it's "no big deal" to let a few hundred-thousand illegals flood across monthly. Right. Come down here, folks. We're on the verge of losing our culture, our heritage, you're on the verge of losing mightily as the state becomes overrun with non-English speaking peoples, born among the cleptocrasies and corruptions of Central and South Asia and America, who choose to live in urban ghettos rather than assimilate into westernized American society. Coupled with the militant multi-culturalism you can't lift a finger to mainstream these people even if they were or become legalized. It isn't CUTE, people. This is SERIOUS.
The Framers also never envisioned a "democratic process" in which people were qualified to vote simply by reaching the age of 18. Most states required people to own property before they could vote.
I would move to another state if I were you. I don't understand why others can't seem to grasp this concept.
If your state is overrun by liberal politicians, and the illegal aliens who love them; just move. That's what I would do.
Each state's Electoral votes = the number of Representatives they have + the 2 Senators.
Can't even keep the ones you have/had like San Diego (F-A-S-T slipping away), or Philly before WW2 ended.
That's an excellent point, and it illustrates how a national popular vote may actually work against a state like California. Because Congressional districts and electoral votes are allocated based on population and not voter registration, California would still have 55 electoral votes even if the state was comprised of a dozen registered voters and the remaining 30 million people were all illegal aliens.
Imagine what is happening in the state of Washington on a national scale.
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