Posted on 10/21/2008 11:14:49 AM PDT by AT7Saluki
...The system is a relic of the early days of the republic when electors were supposed to be independent agents exercising their judgment in choosing a presidential candidate from a list of several contenders.
Today, electors are party loyalists who almost always vote for their party’s nominee.
On Friday, a group of legal scholars, political scientists, and systems specialists gathered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a conference on the Electoral College. Their focus? How to better engineer the system...
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
I feel constrained to point out that there is no such thing as the “national popular vote”.
In fact, why even bother with the popular vote? Maybe we should just have the UN General Assembly appoint a committee of international journalists and college professors to pick the new monarch?
Any state that does that effectively takes itself out of the selection process and gives up its power.
There is no way the left could get an amendment passed, too many states would have to vote against their own interests.
However, there’s always the Supreme Court - they could just “interpret” the EC out of the Constitution.
Not just no, but hell no!
Our Electoral College system is part of our republican form of representative government. Its one aspect of our Republic that makes the USA different from a pure democracy.
Liberals and socialists want to move America towards pure democracy and mob rule. NO THANKS!
Please reread my post. I said that some states have promised to award their Electoral votes to the candidate that receives the most votes nationally regardless of whether or not that candidate received the most votes in that state.
This will never happen. The states would have to ratify a change to the constitution. The small states will NEVER let this happen. And they shouldnt. If the states are so hot to change, they should simply change the state’s rule on how the votes are assessed.
The Founding Fathers were very wise in creating the Electoral College as it gives certainty to the presidential election process. Imagine a close national election, perhaps one rife with voter fraud, the election of the President could be hung up in the courts for months if not years arguing about hanging chads etc. The odds that electors will not vote as directed by the popular election outcome in their state is not real issue. Some times the Electoral College, like in the 2000 election will elect a President who did not necessarily win the national popular vote, but since that is not our system it is also a non issue.
that isn’t true. In 2004 Bush got more votes than John Kerry. In 1984 Reagan didn’t need the electoral college to defeat Walter Mondale.
Kind of the same way they think of the 2nd Amendment.
They know that regardless of their polls, McCain still has an advantage in the electoral college. McCain can lose two Bush states..New Mexico, and Iowa, and still have 274 against Obama’s 264. Obama is in the position of trying to pluck VA or CO to win...they are traditionally RED states. Very difficult to do, no matter what Rasmussen and Gallup says.
Drive By Media hit squad.
If we counted the “popular vote” alone, we’d still be recounting the 2000 tally county by county, looking for irregularities.
The difference between Al Gore and George W. Bush was 0.51% (just over half of one percent) of the vote.
On the other hand, there would have been no “problems” in Ohio.
The media is worried sick the Obambi is going to lose the battleground states. Much easier just to push the numbers (98% support in some communities). With the electoral vote, it doesn’t matter that one candidate got 80% or 52% of the vote in a state or city.
But even with that, California outside of the large cities votes conservative.
Why settle on just the electoral college and go ahead and scrap the entire U.S. Constitution instead?
The liberal mind looks at ways to further its agenda, and when I read about altering the U.S. Constitution from the likes of MSNBC, it riles my blood to boiling.
Isn’t it sinful of us to support the law of this land when it is inconvenient?
Perhaps THIS explains why Obama is running ads in California and Massachusetts? They’re worried about the Electoral College, and are trying to run up big margins in the states that they feel they’ve got locked up?
Bunk. In some states the electors were selected by their state legislatures rather than by popular vote, but at no time were electors selected and told "do whatever you think is best". Just look at how the electors cast their votes. They go to their state capitals and each state sends its choices to Washington. If they were meant to be independent agents they would have traveled to Washington and voted there, along with any horse trading needed to get the votes. At no time did the electors (with a few exceptions of disloyal electors) cast votes other than how they were directed by either the people or the legislature.
You folks can engineer all you want but without changing the constitution by allowing all 50 states to vote it will never change.
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