Posted on 02/09/2007 4:55:25 AM PST by Alia
snips:
He's baaack! Sen. Ken Gordon is at it again. After failing to undermine the Electoral College in the last session of the state legislature, he's hoping to have better luck this year with a Democratic majority in both houses and a Democrat as governor. Senate Bill 46 would include Colorado in a compact of other states that pledge to cast all their electoral votes for whichever presidential candidate gets the most popular votes, nationally, regardless of who gets the most votes in our state.
In other words, Coloradans would sacrifice their own choice for president to a scheme designed to kill the Electoral College.
North Dakota's House voted 60-31 Thursday to defeat the plan. In the Montana Senate, it lost 30-20.
The votes were lot closer than I would have thought.
maybe ESPN should be concerned why the World Series is won by the team who wins the most games. By thier logic it should obviously be won by the team that scores the most total runs.
So, why even vote if your state's electoral votes go to a nationwide winner? Well, because in a really close election, your one vote could be the one vote that put your candidate into the majority?
That already is a lame argument on a state basis, but in a vote of 120 million people, we think that one vote will change the election?
And if it does, how do we do the recount to see?
There's a really big problem with these laws. Do any of these people actually KNOW when the final popular vote counts are certified in this country for presidential elections?
I believe if they look, they will see that there were still votes being counted months after the election was over. Each state has rules about the vote spread that allows them to certify results before all the votes are counted (for example, there's no need to rush the absentee ballot counts if there are 10,000 absentee ballots and the winner is ahead by 100,000 votes).
But if you have to wait until the nationwide popular vote count is certified before you grant your electors, how are you going to force California to certify a state-wide popular vote, with all recounts done, in time for your Colorado electors to be properly instructed?
There's many good reasons for electoral college, one of them is that it makes each state responsible for counting their own votes and picking their own electors. It doesn't matter if Colorado has liberal voting laws with 3-week pre-election voting, or if Oregon has no-questions-asked absentee balloting, while some other state might require 2-month advance registration and in-person that-day voting.
Because each state's voters are equally effected by the law, and their laws only effect their own choice of electors.
If you passed a law allowing nationwide popular vote to govern, a state could easily make it simpler for more of their own people to vote, giving them more absolute power to pick the presidency. And the bigger states would have an easier time of it, and cities would be overrepresented moreso than they are now.
That's not true. The winner of the presidential election would be determined by voters in Chicago, Seattle and Philadelphia. All 110% of the voting-age population in those cities.
Do you have a link to those articles? I tried to google them a while back but wasn't successful.
The "Every Vote Equal" equates to numerous things: 1. It establishes the MSM as the definitive ad campaign for a candidate. 2. Given CPReform, limits how much and the amounts of locations a politician can put up posters/run ads. Some cities have already adopted a "no campaign poster" bill for "public properties". So, in effect, it will be up to citizens to put up campaign posters on their properties.
If red states overwhelmingly put up Republican posters, and the media shows it; the blue states will vote overwhelmingly "blue" in sheer reaction.
The social consequences of this "every vote equal" can be leading to social disorder of great magnitude. Can you imagine what college campuses would be like? To offset this, US colleges should abolish "campaign posters" on public properties, too.
I smell a warzone mentality brewing.
And I haven't even gotten into the "ownership versus welfare" issues.
The "Every Vote Equal" has a seductive appeal, i.e., it appears more democratic. The problem is that it ignores our history and the formation of the country. It also erodes federalism and local control. This clever strategy of circumventing the Constitition must be defeated.
I think of a farmer I know in Tulare County, CA. He has a lot of property upon which he grows food to feed the people who live in dense populations in CA. They could vote to give them a President who decrees "all food is free". And I know my farmer friend would set fire to his own fields.
Crudely constructed analogy; but we indeed did have this conversation in 2002.
The leftist leaders don't give two rats about starving people. They know they will be fed, and their supporters will die for the "cause".
Back in the 1950s there was a thorough study in Congress of the pros and cons of the electoral college...they concluded that it was best to keep it as it is. The electoral college helps keep the two-party system alive in all the states (or almost all of them).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.