Senator Bill Nelson.... ready for the next Senate session
to Introduce Amendment for Direct Election of President.
Posted on 12/23/2008 4:37:28 PM PST by CalifScreaming
According to this story in the Tampa Tribune of December 22, U.S. Senator Bill Nelson will again introduce a constitutional amendment in January, to abolish the electoral college. Nelson had introduced it in June 2008 as SJR 39, but it made no headway.
SJR 39 is worded this way: “Sec. 1. The President and Vice President shall be jointly elected by the direct vote of the qualified electors of the several States and territories and the District constituting the seat of Government of the United States. The electors in each State, territory, and the District constituting the seat of Government of the United States shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the legislative body where they reside.
Sec. 2. Congress may determine the time, place and manner of holding the election, the entitlement to inclusion on the ballot, and the manner in which the results of the election shall be ascertained and declared.”
(Excerpt) Read more at ballot-access.org ...
Sec. 2. Congress may determine the time, place and manner of holding the election, the entitlement to inclusion on the ballot, and the manner in which the results of the election shall be ascertained and declared.
Four reasons for why this particular proposed will never be adopted (not that there aren't more reasons):
1 - The balance struck by the Electoral College would be destroyed.
2 - Every Presidential election would have the entire country be one giant Florida.
3 - This proposal would allow the Territories to vote in Presidential elections.
4 - This proposal would transfer over to the Congress the authority the States have over Presidential elections.
No it isn;t time to get rid of it. It is about states’ rights, and having a larger base of people candidates have to be concerned about, rather than just a few states or a few big cities.
And besides, since when has an idea that a whole bunch of democrats wanted been a good one? Why are you so on board to give them what they want? You think they know better about the Electoral College than the founders?
Whyever do you say that?
The Founding Fathers had good reasons for employing the Electoral College, as opposed to direct popular election.
Do you know what they were?
Why are they no longer applicable?
This of course would require an amendment to the Constitution, a process which our Founding Fathers wisely made difficult. If they had not invented the Electoral system, a candidate could ignore the views of millions of voters in smaller states. He could campaign almost exclusively in the big states and major cities, and get elected. Voters who are residents of states such as Hawaii, Alaska, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Montana, Wyoming, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Kentucky, West Virginia, Delaware, Vermont, Maine, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire would be completely disenfranchised. If this were to happen, we would no longer have a republic of 50 sovereign states. We would have mob rule.
Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) displays his ignorance of the Constitution and his lack of understanding of how our republic was originally formed.
1 word
ACORN
He is a real moron. They could never get the votes from the small states to ratify.
Senator Bill Nelson.... ready for the next Senate session
to Introduce Amendment for Direct Election of President.
The 17th Amendment broke it. Need to start over, but that will never happen.
Who cares? The Constitution has been dead for some time now. But dare I say you won't find one man in this country willing to fight for its return. Too many "risks".
Certainly an elaboration of the justification of that that post/rationale is forthcoming.
Please ping me to it.
In the Congress we have today - there are NONE wise enough to question the wisdom of our founders..
NONE.
BUMP!
I did some playing around with the NY and California numbers. You're shy about 6,762,007 people, based on this year's vote total. Make it California, Texas, and Nevada and that gives you 63,022,977 people, which tops the 62,612,951 votes needed to win this year's popular vote.
Granted, I'm going by population numbers of these 3 states, but it still makes the point that 3 out of 50 states could have given Obama the votes needed to win.
Under the electoral college system, it would take Cali, Texas, NY, Florida, Penn, IL, Ohio, Michigan, GA, NC, and NJ to get to 271. Obama missed that by 2, with Texas and Georgia being the exceptions.
11 out of 50 sounds better to me than 3 out of 50.
Regardless of what the Founding Fathers intended, I do not believe the foresaw the day in which a few states - CA, NY, FL, TX, OH, MI, PA - would determine who would become President/Vice President. It is flat out not right that a slight majority “steals” the votes of the minority. And that is what happens with the current electoral college. If each state had to apportion electoral votes based on actual voting, no problem. But for one candidate to steal the votes of the other based on gaining a slight majority is just wrong.
The majority “steals” the minority’s votes in every election. The majority wins and the minority loses. Abolishing the Electoral College won’t change that fact.
Bingo. A candidate winning 70:30 margins in the ten largest metro areas would win the election everytime. Meaning, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Detroit, Miami, Philadelphia, St Louis, Washington DC, and Atlanta. At an average of 8 million votes in each metro area, this means 56 million votes.
Whoa!
Direct election by popular vote would give these same states even more leverage. They would represent an even higher proportion of the population and the vote than they do now, with the electoral college.
As it stands, because of the way electoral votes are distributed, high-population states are under-represented. And low population states are over-represented.
This is because every state starts with at least 3 electoral votes -- regardless of size (two senators and the minimum one Congressman).
Wyoming, Montana, North & South Dakota have only three electoral votes apiece -- for a total of twelve. Their combined population in 2000 was 2793K -- so that each electoral vote represented 233K population.
Indiana, by itself, also has twelve electoral votes...and a population over 6 million. Better than double the previous four states combined -- but Indiana has no more clout in the electoral college than they do. Indiana's proportion is one electoral vote for every 507K residents.
Then, we come to massive California -- 54 EV and a population of 33872K, a proportion of 627K per EV.
Thus, a vote cast in Wyoming (494K pop) is almost four times more powerful than a vote cast in California.
Another problem with direct election by popular vote is that it nationalizes vote fraud. As it is, the impact of the vote manufacturing factories in Chicago, Detroit and Philadelphia, et al, is limited to their respective states alone.
But, with a national popular vote, they could produce "whatever it takes".
View the electoral college as a means of stacking the deck in favor of candidates who have some measure of broad inter-regional national appeal, rather than factionalized appeal to only specific segments of the population.
View it also as analogous to the World Series. It's not the team that scores the most runs who will win the Series. It's the team that wins the most games...
Something to consider:
Pennsylvania has two main urban areas -— Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
We elected a governor based on those two urban areas and all he did was pander to them with tons of money in order to get re-elected.
In other words, the red areas are paying to support the blue areas of Pennsylvania more than ever.
This is what would happen if we abolished the electoral college.
Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) would abolish a key feature of the Constitution, the limitation of the federal government’s power. Under the Constitution the federal government has enumerated, not unlimited powers. The states retain substantial power. That’s exactly what the founding fathers intended.
By eliminating the Electoral system, Nelson and other radical leftists would undermine the states’ sovereignty in favor of an all-powerful federal government. This fits well with socialism, collectivism, and central planning. Apparently Nelson and his liberal allies have learned nothing from the collapse of the Soviet Union or the horrors of other dictatorships, such as National Socialism under Hitler.
Or perhaps Nelson thinks socialism is best, as opposed to freedom.
It’s ironic that Nelson’s plan to abolish the Electoral system would disenfranchise his own constituents, the citizens of Florida.
As long as 13 states say no then he can introduce and congress can pass as many amendments as they want to but they won’t be adopted.
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