Posted on 04/11/2006 9:17:25 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
Colorado lawmakers said it's time presidential candidates start paying attention to smaller states like Colorado, Wyoming and Utah and approved a plan Monday that would effectively circumvent the Electoral College in hopes of making them do that.
The proposal is being considered in four other states - California, Louisiana, Illinois and Missouri - and is part of a national effort to change the way the nation picks a president.
It calls on other states to enter into compacts that pledge that all their Electoral College delegates will vote for the winner of the national popular vote. It would only take effect if enough states agree to decide the election on a popular vote.
The state Senate Judiciary Committee approved the measure and sent it to the full Senate for debate.
Senate Majority Leader Ken Gordon, D-Denver, said the current system split the decision among electors from all 50 states and favors swing states like Iowa and Florida, which have local issues - such as Cuban immigrants in Florida or ethanol in Iowa - that don't apply to the rest of the nation.
"It definitely distorts the election," Gordon said.
Gordon said Democrat John Kerry would have won the presidency in 2004 if he picked up 60,000 more votes in Ohio, even though Bush won by 2.8 million votes nationwide.
Sen. Shawn Mitchell, R-Broomfield, said if Colorado approved the compact, candidates would be forced to campaign for the popular vote in big states like California, Texas, New York and Florida.
"The president is not the super mayor of Washington, Chicago or Los Angeles," Mitchell said.
John Koza, who is promoting the plan, said small states already were being ignored by the major candidates and a compact would force the candidates to address national issues. Koza said two-thirds of the advertising and two-thirds of the visits during the last presidential election were focused on five states and 95 percent of the attention went to voters in just 16 states.
Koza said the proposed change was constitutional because the U.S. Constitution leaves the decision on how to allocate electoral votes to the individual states.
Bob Loevy, a political science professor at Colorado College, said the move was an attempt to dilute the power of the Electoral College. He said it could backfire if small states approve the compact because it would force candidates to go to the most populous states for votes.
Lawmakers said it would be a disaster if there was a nationwide recount and the election was close, like the one that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court before President Bush was declared the winner by a margin of 537 votes six years ago.
"A recount would be politically divisive and catastrophic," Mitchell said.
This is a ploy to allow the rampant vote fraud in big cities (e.g. Chicago, Philadelphia) to affect more than their own states.
How will the pols in the state capitals explain this to their voters when the electorate votes one way and the electors vote the other way?...........
Bad idea. It means that in close elections, vote fraud in, say, Illinois, which could swing the popular vote nationwide, will affect the electoral votes of states that opt for this way of designating their ev's.
GMTA
HERE's THEIR REAL PROBLEM........
AMENDMENT XVII
Passed by Congress May 13, 1912. Ratified April 8, 1913.
Note: Article I, section 3, of the Constitution was modified by the 17th amendment.
The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures.
When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of such State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided, That the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct.
This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the election or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the Constitution.
This went down in flames in the last Presidential election. Wonder what part of "No" on behalf of Colorado voters they didn't understand. Caveat: Dems control the state Legislature.
Yep. That's our Colorado Dems - always looking out for the best interests of California and New York.
The United States of America is a Republic, not a democracy.
"The United States of America is a Republic, not a democracy."
It used to be a republic.
ping
This is a different plan than 2004. Colorado was then proposing proportional distribution of its electoral votes. Now they want to join with other states to give their electoral votes to the national popular vote winner.
Personally I would like to go to the Maine/Nebraska system of 2 EVs for the state and 1 for each House district. That way Chicago style vote hijinks at one location would be limited to changing 3 EVs instead of all of them for the state.
With the proposal in the article, Seattle's secret ballot warehouse which elected Governor Gregoire could change the vote for the entire nation even if Washington wasn't a tossup state.
Fat chance. The Electoral College is there to give voice to the smaller states.
Bingo! Right now, they go after the States with the most Electoral College vote, which also happen to be the States with the most VOTERS. This new plan scheme would still leave the States with the fewest voters dangling in the wind as "inconsequential".
The Dims smell illegal-immigrant amnesty in the air and want to harness all them illegal votes. That's why they took a bad Kennedy plan, which had near-blanket amnesty, and "amended" it to extend full-blanket anmnesty in hopes of pulling a fast one. That's why they are attending the protests and trying to sign up some more good illegal Dims to their base (in all its meanings).
This is a distortion that Kerry voters have been spreading since the day after the election. Bush won Ohio by an official tally of 118,601 votes. Pre-2004, this would have been described as "he would have won if he'd picked up 118,602 votes." But since the Kerry folks decided to try to minimize their guy's loss, they halved the margin by pretending that each additional Kerry vote would be a lost Bush vote. Kerry wouldn't have won if he'd picked up an additional 60,000 votes in Ohio; he'd have won if he'd managed to sway 60,000 voters away from Bush to himself.
So some States would form some type of treaty among themselves that could nullify the popular vote of the citizens of their state? This would then make the value of the votes in their state effectively zero.
Dumb, Dumb, Dumb.
Wouldn't applying this to 2004 mean that Ketchup Boy would have gotten his sorry anti-American ass kicked by an even wider margin ??
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