While the Republican Party, the Tea Partiers, and the political pundits on the right are almost giddy with anticipation of the 2010 election results that promise a sea change in the ideological make up of the House and Senate, trouble is brewing for 2012. An evil wrapped in pretty paper that even many conservatives and even more independents actually think might be a good idea is bubbling to the surface. That evil is eliminating the Electoral College.
Massachusetts just passed a law that they will no longer use the electoral college for their votes. They voted to give all 12 of their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the national popular vote. If enough states would do this in the next two years it might be impossible to beat Obama, or any future democrat candidate for president.
The argument that is made is that it is an archaic system that can block the will of the people by allowing a candidate to win the presidency while getting less popular votes. This has happened four times in our Republic's history. The first time was in 1824 when John Quincy Adams, who actually lost both the popular vote and the electoral college vote to Andrew Jackson, but since neither won the mandatory 131electoral vote it went to the House to decide giving Adams the victory.
The second time was in 1876 when Rutherford Hayes won the election by one electoral vote but lost the popular vote by 250,000 to Samuel Tilden. Later in 1888 Benjamin Harrison defeated Grover Cleveland with a 233 to 168 electoral votes while losing the popular vote by 90,000. In 2000 George W. Bush won in a 271 to 266 electoral college vote but lost the popular vote by 540,000.
There are many who believe that those situations are not fair, that they are not democratic. How can we live in a democracy and not embrace the will of the people? First of all, we do not live in a democracy, but in a Constitutional Republic. Not one time in the Constitution is the word democracy found. In the founders writings and in the recorded comments from them the only time democracy is used is in a derisive manner as something to be feared and avoided at all cost. History had already proven to our founders that true Democracies always fail and always usher in an oligarchy and tyranny.
The left has been pushing this idea of ending the electoral college for decades with good reason. It would virtually guarantee that they would have a lifetime strangle hold on the presidency. All they would have to do is is win the election in the ten or eleven largest cities in America and everyone else's votes would be wasted. Our founders worked and fought throughout the summer of 1787 to put so many layers of checks and balances in our form of government to make sure that ALL Americans would have as equal a say in their government as humanly possible.
The Senate was formed to be the voice of the more wealthy Americans, it was also determined to give the small states equal voice by distributing to every state the very same 2 Senators. The House was divided by districts so that the citizens of large states voices would not be diminished. This was designed to have an equal representation for equal amounts of people, where states with larger populations would have more congressmen and states with less population few congressmen. This is why a fair and honest census is important to assure that your voice is heard equally. It was this distribution of power that brought about the most repugnant rule ever in our Constitution, the 3/5th rule, where slaves were assigned the value of 3/5ths of a person for congressional district distribution. This was a compromise and the only way to get the Southern states to ratify the Constitution by giving them a much larger population than they had of free men who could vote. This assured the South that the North couldn't garner enough votes in the House to outlaw slavery.
The electoral college was designed so that every American would have a say in the election of their president and the big cities wouldn't dominate the election. We saw a wonderful example of just how that works in 2000 with Bush and Gore.
Counties won:
Gore – 677
Bush – 2,434.
Square miles won:
Gore – 580,134
Bush – 2,427,039
Population of counties won:
Gore – 127 million
Bush – 143 million
See the map for yourself: http://fs.huntingdon.edu/jlewis/Outlines/BushCountyMapMandate.htm
If the electoral college was not in place 78% of those counties in America could have stayed home and not bothered voting. If we get rid of this protection for our free republic it would only be a matter of time that they all would just stay home, as all would be lost before the election began.
There would be no reason for any president to ever go to any place other than the biggest cities because all would be won or lost there. It would be the greatest fear of Thomas Jefferson come true. In fact the greatest fears of all of our founders come true.
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The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).
ReplyDeleteEvery vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections. It would no longer matter who won a state. Elections wouldn't be about winning states. No more distorting and divisive red and blue state maps. Every vote would be counted for and assist the candidate for whom it was cast - just as votes from every county are equal and important when a vote is cast in a Governor's race. Candidates would need to care about voters across the nation, not just undecided voters in a handful of swing states.
The current winner-take-all rule (i.e., awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in each state) used by 48 of the 50 states ensures that the candidates do not reach out to all of the states and their voters. Candidates have no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, campaign, or care about the voter concerns in the dozens of states where they are safely ahead or hopelessly behind.
The bill would take effect only when enacted, in identical form, by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes--that is, enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538). When the bill comes into effect, all the electoral votes from those states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).
The bill uses the power given to each state by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution to change how they award their electoral votes for president. The National Popular Vote bill does not try to abolish the Electoral College. Historically, virtually all of the major changes in the method of electing the President, including ending the requirement that only men who owned substantial property could vote and 48 current state-by-state winner-take-all laws, have come about by state legislative action, without federal constitutional amendments.
The bill has been endorsed or voted for by 1,922 state legislators (in 50 states) who have sponsored and/or cast recorded votes in favor of the bill.
In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). The recent Washington Post, Kaiser Family Foundation, and Harvard University poll shows 72% support for direct nationwide election of the President. Support for a national popular vote is strong in virtually every state, partisan, and demographic group surveyed in recent polls.
The National Popular Vote bill has passed 30 state legislative chambers, in 20 small, medium-small, medium, and large states, including one house in Arkansas (6), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), Maine (4), Michigan (17), Nevada (5), New Mexico (5), New York (31), North Carolina (15), and Oregon (7), and both houses in California (55), Colorado (9), Hawaii (4), Illinois (21), New Jersey (15), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (12), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), and Washington (11). The bill has been enacted by Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, and Washington. These five states possess 61 electoral votes -- 23% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect.
See http://www.NationalPopularVote.com
Presidential candidates concentrate their attention on only a handful of closely divided "battleground" states and their voters. In 2008, candidates concentrated over two-thirds of their campaign events and ad money in just six states, and 98% in just 15 states (CO, FL, IN, IA, MI, MN, MO, NV, NH, NM, NC, OH, PA, VA, and WI). Massachusetts (the 13th largest population state, with 12 electoral college votes) and 19 of the 22 smallest and medium-small states (with less than 7 electoral college votes) were not among them. Over half (57%) of the events were in just four states (Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and Virginia). In 2004, candidates concentrated over two-thirds of their money and campaign visits in five states; over 80% in nine states; and over 99% of their money in 16 states, and candidates concentrated over two-thirds of their money and campaign visits in five states and over 99% of their money in 16 states.
ReplyDeleteTwo-thirds of the states and people have been merely spectators to the presidential elections.
The reason for this is the state-by-state winner-take-all rule (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but now used by 48 states), under which all of a state's electoral votes are awarded to the candidate who gets the most votes in each separate state.
The population of the top five cities (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Philadelphia) is only 6% of the population of the United States and the population of the top 50 cities (going as obscurely far down in name recognition as Arlington, TX) is only 19% of the population of the United States.
ReplyDeleteWhen presidential candidates campaign to win the electoral votes of closely divided battleground states, such as in Ohio and Florida, under the state-by-state winner-take-all rules, the big cities in those battleground states do not receive all the attention, much less control the outcome. Cleveland and Miami certainly did not receive all the attention or control the outcome in Ohio and Florida in 2000 and 2004.
Likewise, under a national popular vote, every vote everywhere will be equally important politically. There will be nothing special about a vote cast in a big city or big state. When every vote is equal, candidates of both parties will seek out voters in small, medium, and large towns throughout the states in order to win. A vote cast in a big city or state will be equal to a vote cast in a small state, town, or rural area.
For example, in California state-wide elections, candidates for governor or U.S. Senate don't campaign just in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and those places don't control the outcome (otherwise California wouldn't have recently had Republican governors Reagan, Dukemejian, Wilson, and Schwarzenegger). A vote in rural Alpine county is just an important as a vote in Los Angeles.
If the National Popular Vote bill were to become law, it would not change the need for candidates to build a winning coalition across demographics. Any candidate who yielded, for example, the 21% of Americans who live in rural areas in favor of a "big city" approach would not likely win the national popular vote. Candidates would still have to appeal to a broad range of demographics, and perhaps even more so, because the election wouldn't be capable of coming down to just one demographic, such as voters in Ohio.
Toto, those are lovely talking points for the left who want to destroy out Constitution and highjack the White House forever by only allowing the 5-7 largest cities New York, Chicago, L.A., Atlanta, Miami, and maybe a couple others put a stangle hold on the White House.
ReplyDelete