Republicans & Conservatives: Archives

There is a detailed discussion of this possibility in the comments for today on http://www.electoral-vote.com/

If every state in the country did this, I’d think it was a damn good idea.

If a state that does this is a solid Democratic state, then I’d be against it.

If the state that supports it is a solid Republican state, then I’d be all for it.

If the state is a swing state, as Colorado seems to be, then I’m downright frightened by it. The electoral-vote.com analysis brings up the very real possibility that if the candidates are separated by less than four or five electoral votes, and if the Colorado measure passes (they have 9 EV’s), then we can pretty much expect that the 2004 election will also be decided by the Supreme Court. Yikes!

-Cf

Sounds like a good way of essentially phasing out the electoral college.

I believe these votes should be divided and awarded to the appropriate candidate. To have all of a states votes go for one candidate is wrong. In Missouri, the two major cities dictate how the rest of the state are represented and live their lives. This is wrong. How can a population dependent on the government, possibly know what is best for people who are dependent on themselves? or vice versa? Let our voice be heard!

Matthew, it has that potential but at this point it appears to be a very, very small potential. Balko assumes the electoral college map will remain close to what electoral college vote predictor is currently projecting. I have followed electoral college vote projector results daily, (have a dynamic tally on my personal site) and it has swung wildly between Kerry and Bush ever few days for weeks now.

It is much more likely that the electoral college majority will be larger in favor of one candidate or the other in a month from now, very likely in favor of Bush, if he can hold his own in the debates ( make that 1st debate, viewers will drop off precipitously after the first debate next Thursday).

Wow. This is a frightening scenario.

But since all of California’s 55 votes is decided by those that live in and around the SF Bay area and those that live in the inner city of Los Angeles. It sounds more and more appealing

I wonder what the national electoral vote would look like, since based on all graphs I have seen, 80% of the land area is in the red and 20% in the blue.

It would certainly make for a different race and have everyone scrambling if this takes hold.

If you really want to make sure that presidential candidates forget about Colorado then you should vote for the proposed change in EC vote.

Why do I say that: because Colorado has a relatively small number of votes and the presidential candidates would then focus on buying their in the the large states and cities. Imagine if a candidate only had to visit New York and California and then promise tax breaks to everyone in big cities to get their votes. It is possible to literally buy enough votes through promises that Colorado and all of the square states would get to pay more taxes while the urban areas gave their votes and reaped the benefits….
Just imagine!!!!!!

To KCTIM
the Missouri vote are definitely not driven to the same point by the two cities. Kansas City and St Louis are quite different (as the Governors election showed). The presidential race is also breaking differently between the two cities. Missouri is good example of why the Electoral Collge is still valuable!

Great thought provoking post, Matthew. I personally think that getting away from block votes would be a positive step. Angus, however makes a good point, also.

An issue that somehow really needs to be addressed is voter ignorance, though. The money spent on campaigns would be put to much better use in a truly in depth issue oriented education. This should be a function of our education system and offered at no cost at convenient times and locations, or even the internet. Perhaps maintaining continuing education units as a requirement for voting? The duty of our candidates should be to inform, not inflame.

Christopher, why such a partisan stand? Do you only care about your party interests or a better democracy?

Perceptions are important in politics, and I think more folks would feel like they were actually part of the process. When you already know your guys are going to lose (or win) the entire state, then why bother? It might be the ultimate solution for the real disenfranchised voters — minority parties in politically lop-sided states.

It would complicate strategy for the national parties, though that’s not necessarily a bad thing. As it stands now, this state is never visited by either presidential campaign because they, and we, already know the outcome.

> It is possible to literally buy enough
> votes through promises that Colorado and
> all of the square states would get to
> pay more taxes while the urban areas
> gave their votes and reaped the
> benefits….

Considering that the exact opposite is currently true (that for example, New York City pays way more in federal taxes than it gets back in services, while most small red states get far more back than they pay for), I am all in favor of eliminating the electoral college all together and forcing the candidates to actually go to the places where the people actually are. It’s ridiculous that the Presidential candidates never campaign in New York, LA, Chicago, Houston, Boston, DC, Atlanta, etc. etc. There are more people in the city of New York than in the 10 smallest states combined (20 if you count the metropolitan area). On the Republican side, there are more people in Houston than in the six smallest states combined. And yet the candidates don’t ever compete in either of these cities.

-Cf

It depends on how you divide the vote in the states. If you do it like Nebraska and Maine already do (i.e. overall winner gets the state’s two votes based on its two senators and the whoever wins the congressional district takes that vote) Bush would have won more electoral votes in the last election since he won more congressional districts than Gore and the two votes that each state gets would have gone the same way they did in 2000. If you try to divide votes bases on proportional representation, you have a big problem. Take the simplest example. Wyoming has three electoral votes (two senators one congressman) Presumably you could divide the state into thirds, but it would still be “lumpy”. A candidate with 33% of the vote would get nothing (he would need 33.334%) I have not done all the math on this one, but I suspect Bush would have won by this count too, since he tended to win big enough in smaller states to take all (he would have taken all three of Wyoming’s votes, for example) and showed well enough in big states to cut into the Gore majorities. Bush would have taken 23 of California’s 54 electoral votes, for example, instead of zero. On the other hand, Gore would get 12 of Texas’ 32, instead of zero, which is exactly balanced by the 12 votes Bush would have taken in New York. The other challenge would be rounding errors and small parties. What happens when a party doesn’t get enough votes for an electoral vote? Do we divide it among the winners?

The crucial question is, if again this year one candidate wins the popular vote for choosing a leader to represent all the folks, but, the electoral college throws the other candidate into office, can this still be called a democracy?

Or should we as voters simply delegate all our decisions to representatives and not worry about how they represent us?

The crucial question is, if again this year one candidate wins the popular vote for choosing a leader to represent all the folks, but, the electoral college throws the other candidate into office, can this still be called a democracy?

Yes. I think I learned that way back in high school civics class when we discussed how it was quite possible for one candidate to win the popular vote but lose the election.

Or should we as voters simply delegate all our decisions to representatives…

Assuming you’re referring to the Electoral College, yes. If the law changes and elections are decided solely by popular vote, no.

…and not worry about how they represent us?

Unless the losing candidate tries to steal back the election, as Gore did, there’s nothing to worry about.

The Electoral College is a fascinating tribute to the brilliance of our founding fathers.

In civics, we learned that the Electoral College was put in place because of the difficulties that people had getting to polling places back before roads. Now we not only have cars and transportation, we have that super highway ‘the Internet’. So it was that each state decided how it would determine it’s electoral votes. Eventually they all adopted the winner take all method. As a result, it served another great American tradition that Republicans hold dear and which is State’s rights.

For that reason, I disagree with anyone that thinks that the states with the most populated cities should be the sole deciders of who will be the President of the entire union and deem all the other states irrelevant. That is why the popular vote is useless and the reason it is called the United States of America.

Although Colorado is well within it’s right to determine how it’s electoral votes will be distributed, I certainly hope this does not take hold across this great nation.

In addition, I agree with Nototh. Especially if this is all because of some great fear that the Electoral College will elect someone that does not get the popular vote!

You win a congressional district, you get the electoral vote for that district. That would make a district of 120,000 people have the same importance as one with 1,000,000 people in it.

If Colorado is allowed to assign proportional electoral votes, fine, so long as New York does it too.

For fellow poll-junkies, I recently came across this site (run by a Democratic pollster) which has some interesting non-partisan observations about polling. It suffers a little from a John Kerryesque failure to cut to the point occasionally, but it’s still pretty informative.

Here it is.

Maybe Bush and Gore should have been made to share the White House.

Each state should have the same number of electoral votes regardless of population. Why should all the city folks determine the election. Each state, regardless of size or population, should have the same say.

revolutionnow,
Currently most of the states in play in this electoral vote are considered small just like the past. So us city folks have been having to put up with the mid-west farmers to elect our president.

It would be wise for the larger states to divide their electoral votes not for political gain, but for the fareness. By forcing the candidates to pay more attention to their population, their issues would take center stage.

> Christopher, why such a partisan
> stand? Do you only care about
> your party interests or a better
> democracy?

I was just being honest. I stated my order of preference. Please reread my post and notice that my first preference was totally neutral (that is, I favor “a better democracy”). Right now, the electoral college is skewed very heavily towards giving small-state voters greater power than big-state voters. Scrapping it entirely would end that imbalance and make our democracy better.

Any system where one state splits their vote and another does not is inherently going to be unfair. Therefore, given the choice between unfairness in favor of my party and unfairness to the detriment of my party, I choose the former. It’s only natural.

But the best solution is, by light years, to scrap the electoral college and go to a straight popular vote. I will never change this position.

-Cf

Homiebrah wrote:
> That would make a district of 120,000 people have
> the same importance as one with 1,000,000 people
> in it.

Homiebrah, all electoral districts have the roughly same number of people, that’s how our country works. That’s why several states have only one congressman and two senators. The congressionally-based electoral votes are not the problem. It’s the senatorial electoral votes that cause the great discrepancy. Each senatorial electoral vote in California represents like 15 million people, while each senatorial electoral vote in Wyoming represents like 300,000 people.

MAW wrote:
> In civics, we learned that the Electoral College
> was put in place because of the difficulties that
> people had getting to polling places back before
> roads. Now we not only have cars and transportation,
> we have that super highway ‘the Internet’.

MAW, it was indeed brilliant of our founding fathers to set things up the way they did. But, as you so clearly explained, we no longer have the difficulties they had in the 18th century.

Revolutionnow wrote:
> Each state should have the same number of electoral
> votes regardless of population. Why should all the
> city folks determine the election.

Revolutionnow, that idea is ludicrously undemocratic. Under your system, a vote in liberal Vermont would count at least 60 times as much as a vote in conservative Texas. A hundred thousand Vermonters could cancel the votes of 10 million Texans. Do the math. Think about it.

Also, please note that some states are very large but have lots of country folk in it. Just think about California, Texas, Ohio, Florida, Georgia - these are huge states with big urban areas in them, but which also include millions of country folk whose voting power, under your system, would be eviscerated.

-Cf

Well, I think it is a good idea. Why not get rid of the Electoral College all together?

OR: divide the electoral votes proportionally BUT GIVE THE TWO ‘ADDITIONAL’ ELECTORAL VOTES to the winner…