Posted on 01/25/2012 5:32:51 PM PST by Lmo56
Last Thursday’s GOP presidential debate was a doozy. Some of the commercials weren’t bad, either. My favorite was the ad from the National Popular Vote movement, promoting legislation in the 50 states to guarantee that the people, not the electoral college, choose our president.
Mind you, I’ve always found it kind of fallacious to worry that our current system elevates popular-vote losers to the presidency: that’s because popular votes cast in a state-by-state contest for 270 electoral votes do not reflect the national will. Rather, they reflect the results of a competition in which candidates tailor their messages and deploy their resources according to the rules of the electoral college; they would do everything differently if the goal was a popular-vote majority.
So when Al Gore got about 500,000 votes more than George W. Bush in 2000 but still lost, I was pretty much unmoved. Complaining about that — as opposed to the different issue of the Supreme Court’s decision in Bush v. Gore — was like griping that your basketball team lost even though it made more free throws.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Fred Thompson is pimping that crap these days.
However I do think we need to fix our primary system but that doesn’t have anything to do with NPV.
Gore’s alleged popular vote “win” was error prone.
Consider that it was 0.51% of the vote.
Consider that it excluded absentee ballots in states that weren’t going to be affected by those votes.
Consider that it excluded the 3,000 disputed military ballots in Florida even though the Supremes ruled those votes valid (Katherine Harris held to her original tally).
IF you had the election decided by popular vote, you’d have to do a precinct by precinct recount nationwide and wait until all absentee ballots had been received (or at least until that waiting window closed).
Deciding the president by popular vote is a flawed idea
Not if it’s an informed electorate, with skin in the game. If we all paid 10-20% (and I mean ALL) there woudn’t be the farting around with the money, three years without a budget and no accountability. Make it enough to make people pay attention. Half of them don’t care now because the other half of us dumbbells are paying the freight.
And NEVER allow government average wage be higher than private sector. NEVER, ever.
Depends on whether CNN gets to count the votes or not.
Assuming that the GOP wins in 2012, the voters in the states that have already passed this weenie law are gonna be APPALLED.
That is because the DEMs will have won these [RELIABLY] Blue states [at the state level] and journalists will point out that [had the law ACTUALLY been in effect], THEIR electoral votes would have been STRIPPED from the DEM winner in their state and awarded to the GOP ...
As a result [if the GOP wins in 2012] I think the residents of these Blue states will DEMAND repeal of this stupid law ...
Democracy is killing our republic. The 17th was a terrible mistake. To go full popular vote for the President will only hasten our doom.
I look at it like this: The World Series goes to the team that wins the most ~games~ in the series, not the total number of ~runs~ in the series.
Bundling the votes into “games” by states effectively decentralizes the vote and gives rural America a voice that they otherwise would lose, submerged by the big cities. It forces candidates to get out and win the states, not just set up a national campaign broadcast center and do it all on TV.
I like it this way. :-)
I have a problem with some of their polling results...
Consider my state, South Carolina:
A survey of 800 South Carolina voters conducted on January 17–19, 2011 showed 71% overall support for the idea that the President of the United States should be the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states.
Voters were asked "How do you think we should elect the President: Should it be the candidate who gets the most votes in all 50 states, or the current Electoral College system?"
By political affiliation, support for a national popular vote was 64% among Republicans, 81% among Democrats, and 68% among others. By gender, support was 81% among women and 59% among men. By age, support was 81% among 18-29 year olds, 71% among 30-45 year olds, 72% among 46-65 year olds, and 63% for those older than 65. By race, support was 68% among whites, 77% among African-Americans, and 74% among others (representing 4% of respondents).
The survey was conducted by Public Policy Polling, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 1/2%.
Check your state's poll the NPV home page (scroll down a little, polls are on the right). Do the polling results jibe with what you know about your state?
The real problem is with our primary system where a handful of states decide who our candidate will be before the rest ever get a chance to vote.
Personally I would go with 5 primary dates with 10 regionally diverse states voting on each date. It would still thin the field but give be a better representation of what we really want.
“And NEVER allow government average wage be higher than private sector. NEVER, ever.”
That shouldn’t be hard. The number of lower skilled thus lower paid folks in government service is not in proportion to the number of that kind of folks in the private sector, at least for the Federal Government.
Make sure the government has the same proportion of lower skilled thus lower paid folks as the private sector and the average wage will fall right into line.
I agree. Out here in Washington for example, we don’t really get to have any say in the selection of our party’s candidate. A wider set of primaries, on just a few dates, would be better.
“Deciding the president” by national popular vote ignores the role of the states. The Constitution and thus the Federal Government and thus the Presidency were not established by national popular vote, but by the States, with the people’s participation being within each State.
The major drawback I see with that is it would favor the candidate with the deepest pockets even moreso than what we have now. By streaming the initial primaries one at a time a shoestring hopeful can bet it all early.
If his message resounds and he gets a strong early showing, support (and money) will likely start flowing and fund the next state in line. If not, then he's out of the way of those that were better received.
The electoral college system was intended from the start to give every state a certain amount of say in who the president would be, based simply on the fact that it is a state. The rest of the say is based on the population of the state (no matter what the voter turnout was in that state). This is true “federalism.” A pure popular vote would not only move recount issues into all 50 states, it would essentially enslave the “flyovers” to the big cities.
I would argue that the 16th through 19th were terrible mistakes. Too bad only one was repealed.
The electoral college exists in part to prevent high population areas from dictating to the rest of the country. Why should the voters of LA, Chicago, and New York have more clout than several states combined?
The top ten cities in the US have more population than the states of Iowa, Arkansas, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Idaho, Utah, Oklahoma, Wyoming, and West Virginia combined. Why should New York city be able to tell people in Montana how to live? How can a person living in the middle of LA know what’s best for someone living in West Virginia? The electoral college to some extent helps to even out political clout among different demographics.
All that said, I think the powers of the presidency should be cut way, way back. I don’t think the office of the president should ever initiate legislative agenda. An increasingly powerful presidency diminishes states rights and dilutes the influence of many separate demographics.
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