Posted on 02/10/2008 6:30:24 PM PST by neverdem
If John R. Koza gets his way, American voters will never again have to wonder about the workings of the Electoral College and why it decides who sits in the White House.
Koza is behind a push to have states circumvent the odd political math of the Electoral College and ensure that the presidency always goes to the winner of the popular vote.
Basically, states would promise to award their electoral votes to the candidate with the most support nationwide, regardless of who carries each particular state.
"We're just coming along and saying, 'Why not add up the votes of all 50 states and award the electoral votes to the 50-state winner?'" said Koza, chairman of National Popular Vote Inc. "I think that the candidate who gets the most votes should win the office."
The proposal is aimed at preventing a repeat of the 2000 election, when Al Gore got the most votes nationwide but George W. Bush put together enough victories in key states to win a majority in the Electoral College and capture the White House.
So far, Maryland and New Jersey have signed up for the plan. Legislation that would include Illinois is on the governor's desk. But dozens more states would have to join before the plan could take effect.
The idea is a long shot. But it appears to be easier than the approach tried previously _ amending the Constitution, which takes approval by Congress and then ratification by 38 states.
The Electoral College was set up to make the final decision on who becomes president. Each state has a certain number of votes in the college based on the size of its congressional delegation.
Often, all of a state's electoral votes are given to whomever wins that state's popular vote. For instance, even someone who wins New York by a single percentage point, 51-49, would get all 31 of the state's electoral votes.
This creates some problems.
One is that candidates can ignore voters in states that aren't competitive. If the Democrat is clearly going to win a state, the Republican has no reason to court its minority of GOP voters there and instead will focus on other states.
Another problem is the possibility of a result like that in 2000, where one candidate gets more votes overall but the other candidate gets narrow victories in just the right states to eke out a majority in the Electoral College.
National Popular Vote says its plan would change all that.
"What's important to the country is that it would make presidential campaigns a 50-state exercise," said Koza, a Stanford University computer science professor.
Here's how it would work:
States forge an agreement to change the way they allocate general election votes. The agreement would take effect once it's been approved by states with a majority in the Electoral College, or 270 votes.
At that point, the states would begin awarding their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, regardless of who carries each state.
If the candidates tied in the popular vote, each state would give its electoral votes to the candidate who carried that particular state _ basically the same system used now.
There are critics. The downside, they argue, is that a close presidential election would require recounts not just in one or two key states, but throughout the entire country.
They also say it would further reduce the influence of small states as politicians focus on such places as voter-rich California, New York and Texas.
"Any way you look at it, I think smaller populations have a greater voice under the current system than they would under a national popular vote system," said North Dakota state Rep. Lawrence Klemin, a Republican who voted against joining his state in National Popular Vote's agreement.
Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich has not decided whether to sign his state's legislation to join the plan, his office said. When he was in Congress, Blagojevich co-sponsored a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College in 2000.
Legislation endorsing the National Popular Vote plan was passed in California and Hawaii but vetoed by their governors. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said it would run "counter to the tradition of our great nation, which honors states' rights and the unique pride and identity of each state."
Koza believes the agreement proposal would standardize the way states award their electoral votes, give every voter equal influence and keep candidates from ignoring some states in favor of battleground states like Ohio and Florida.
He noted that neither presidential candidate visited Illinois in 2004, even though it has a population of about 12.8 million.
"The Republicans wrote it off and the Democrats took it for granted," Koza said, "and that's typical of two-thirds of the states."
On the Net:
National Popular Vote: http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/
Reality (ignoring voter fraud) was just the opposite.
He's a very smart guy. But he's kind of an oddball. I believe he can't stand being touched by other people and has a 1,000 computer cluster in his home in Palo Alto.
And property ownership, too ?
The first nail in the coffin of the Republic was the 17th Admendment (Direct election of senators)
The second was a permanent income tax, the third & final will be the abolition of the electoral college.
I would favor a Constitutional Amendment providing that 435 of the Electoral Votes would be awarded by Congressional district; the remaining states would have the option of deciding how they wanted to cast the remaining two.
Large states would probably aware the two bonus votes winner-take-all. A state with one congressional district might subdivide itself into three regions, such that each region effectively gets one Electoral Vote (if the overall winner also wins in all three regions, he'd get both bonus delegates; if he won two, he and his opponent would split the bonus delegates; if he only won in one region, his opponent would get both bonus delegates). Likewise, a state with two congressional districts could subdivide each district in half so there would be four regions with one EV each.
Such subdivisions would be entirely optional; the key point would be that a candidate who won a certain number of congressional districts in a state would be guaranteed to get at least that many Electoral Votes.
BTW, the small-state subdivisions could get complicated in a multi-way race, since in that scenario it would be possible for a candidate to win the plurality of votes in the state without winning the plurality of votes in any third of it. That issue could be resolved by giving states some authority over how to cast even district EV’s in the event that no candidate gets the majority of votes in a district.
The most annoying reference you will ever come across in political discussions. Is synonymous with: "I'm much smarter and deeper than others. I understand what really matters, while the masses only wish to be fed and entertained."
Since were not using it anymore, can I have one of the original copies of the U.S. Costitution? I want to get one before they start shredding them to sell in pens-like they do with old currency.
Like wow, man. That's really deep.
Ya know, I’ve seen two or three different iterations of this half-assed scheme, and not one of them yet passes Constitutional muster.
If you don’t like the Electoral College, then get thee busy drafting an Amendment to the Constitution that will pass in Both Houses of Congress and 2/3rds of the States.
It’s hard to do for good reasons...
bump for later
Math isn’t Koza’s strong point. Winning 51-49 isn’t winning by one percentage point, it’s winning by two. But you can win the state’s electoral votes with much less than one percent of the vote, as Mondale did when he carried Minnesota in 1984 by 4,000 votes out of 2 million cast, or Bush did in 2000 in Florida (officially a margin of 537 votes out of 6 million, but only after Democrat officials fraudulently narrowed the margin).
Actually it would have to be ratified by 3/4 of the states.
Great. We’d still be recounting the 2000 election if we had to recount EVERY SINGLE FRICKIN’ BALLOT IN THE COUNTRY INCLUDING THE IGNORED ABSENTEE VOTES AND THE SMALLEST “IRREGULARITY”.
Not only would this be a bad idea, I would like to go back to the states electing senators, rather than a popular vote.
Are they willing to acknowledge that Bush CLEARLY won in 2004 and Gore only had a 0.51% margin of victory in the tallied vote in 2000’s “popular vote”? That is well within any margin of error in such a count.
Oh God. Not this again.
“Why not add up the votes of all 50 states and award the electoral votes to the 50-state winner?”
WHY even have an electoral college “vote” at all then?
And we have a constitutional amendment to prevent a third term co-presidency but it is being ignored. Bill has already said he’ll sit in on Cabinet meetings.
3,000 military votes for Bush were approved by the Florida Supreme Court but Katherine Harris held to her original tally when she certified the count. Floriduh wasn’t as close as the Left claims.
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