Posted on 08/20/2007 7:50:44 AM PDT by SmithL
AMERICANS DON'T like the Electoral College. It's unwieldy, it seems anti-democratic and it has given rise to one of the more despicable facts of modern presidential campaigning: rather than addressing the concerns of the entire country, major-party candidates choose to do most of their post-primary campaigning in just a few battleground states - Ohio and Florida happen to be the most popular ones right now. So, in the face of a proposed California ballot measure that means to erode it, allow us to explain why the Electoral College system is worth defending - at least until someone comes up with a nonpartisan, effective means of abolishing it.
The ballot measure, known right now only as No. 07-0032, was filed by Thomas W. Hiltachk, managing partner of Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk. This is the law firm for the California Republican Party. The measure would do away with the custom of awarding all of California's 55 electoral votes to the winner of the statewide popular vote. Instead, 2 electoral votes would be given to the statewide winner and the rest would be given to whoever won in each of 53 congressional districts. Because 19 of California's 53 districts are represented by Republicans, and 22 districts voted for President Bush in 2004, this initiative would probably offer around 20 electoral votes to a Republican in the 2008 presidential election.
"What can be more fair than this?" said Kevin Eckery, spokesman for Californians for Equal Representation, which is the nominal entity sponsoring the initiative. "Everyone's voice is going to be heard. It could even help third-party candidates, like the Green Party, in a place like San Francisco."
Please. This is nothing but dirty politics. . . .
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
You are damned right it is undemocratic. What this bozo doesn’t seem to comprehend is that we live in a Representative Republic, not a democracy!
They speak for all Americans?........not me!........
“AMERICANS DON’T like the Electoral College.”
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Oh, really? Now there is the classic opening statement from the Peoples Democratic Republic of San Freakcisco. Yes, I would agree that far-left liberals who want their big-city mindless masses to convert the voting system to squash the conservative bastions of America...THAT is WHO does not like the Electoral College syste...and I would certainly not call them Americans.
Nice try pinkos.
That's a bold statement. It doesn't surprise me that this idiotic assertion is not backed up by fact. But then again, "Americans" have only started "not liking" the Electoral College when Bush won in 2000. I'm wondering... had Kerry been able to steal the election in Ohio and win an electoral majority without winning a majority of the popular vote, would these same "Americans" be so gung-ho about changing a system which has served us very well for the past 200+ years?
me neither. the last thing I want is to have the president chose by NYC, San Fran, and LA.
Note that it’s in a currently dependable Democrat voting state they’re hesitant to get rid of the thing they claim to disapprove of. They’d be just fine getting rid of it in Arizona or Tennessee.
Imagine if the total nationwide vote count was really close. Then you would have to recount every single ballot in the country, as opposed to just having to recount in one state.
Don’t assume the SF Chronic is actually defending the Electoral College. They just want a nationwide “reform” undertaken rather than piecemeal.
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“For instance, the efforts of John Koza - a genetic programming professor at Stanford University - to circumvent the Electoral College in favor of having each state ensure its electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote merit attention.”
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Of course libs want to trash the Electoral system. Then national candidates will concentrate on a handful of large (liberal) cities and to hell with flyover country.
A more appropriate opening sentence would be: “Americans don’t understand the Electoral College.” Ask the average person on the streets of New York or San Francisco what is the Electoral College and they will ask you where is it located and what is the tuition to attend.
There were a lot of people singing its praises when King William was pulling in less than 50% of the popular vote.
Excuse me, correct me if i am wrong but if every state used
this new California system to pick electors,given the
present ideological makeup of this country, a demoncratic
president would NEVER be elected.
or texas
Are you kidding..Electoral College is THE party campus..it is my parents alma mater..they met there at a tailgating party before the big homecoming game against Hogwarts..besides..this year so belongs to Electoral College..they are this year's Boise State..They should easily go undefeated during the regular season..that should get them a BCS spot..I see them beating Texas in the Fiesta Bowl 37-36..GO EC!!!!!!!!!!
I've asked people who want to do away with the Electoral College if they'd like to do away with the Senate as well, since it was structured the way it is for the same reasons - I get a blank stare, or, in the case of the more arrogant libs - denial that they have anything to do with each other.
That is a BIG PING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The only thing that bugs me about the Electoral College is that being a Massachusetts resident, I know my vote doesn’t count at all. That can be frustrating. But I understand its purpose.
Deconstructing the EC will have to come first, then the Senate. They can feign ignorance till then.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Look at Pennsylvania,California,Michigan,Illinois,Washington
and Oregon, all demoncrat states electorially.They would be neutered.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/vote2004/countymap.htm
California Republicans feel the same way - 22 Congressional districts in 2004 vote for Bush - almost HALF - and it means nothing.
Yet the dummicrats scream like mad when felons are “disenfranchised!”
Yep, undemocratic just like the Framers intended. Republicanism all the way!
I like the idea of electoral votes being allocated by district. That way vote fraud in one precinct can change at most 3 electoral votes instead of all of the electoral votes in a state.
The strategy of the Democrats, one that is working well for them, is to pander to the “disadvantaged”, the ones they keep that way. They are concentrated in pockets in the inner cities. So, to win votes be they Electoral or popular, they simply keep pandering to those people.
However, the Electoral College makes this more difficult but not impossible. Some liberal states want the majority popular vote in their state to get all the electoral votes rather than have them apportioned according to county and precinct votes. That would effectively eliminate the Electoral College in practice. Eliminating the Electoral College would eliminate America as it was founded.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
***That’s a bold statement. It doesn’t surprise me that this idiotic assertion is not backed up by fact. But then again, “Americans” have only started “not liking” the Electoral College when Bush won in 2000.***
Right after Bush was elected, Hitlery started saying that we should not have an electoral college. If we hadn’t had an electoral college, her husband would NEVER have been president because he never won the popular vote. But that didn’t stop her highness, Shrillary. They are such liars.
OK. Did anyone run the numbers across the country for the last four Presidential elections, and see where this would fall?
With the passage of the 17th amendment, federalism has weakened to an anemic state.
We need less democracy not more. The system was designed to have a seperation of powers and natural checks and balances. Let me give you an example.. If governor’s could appoint senators like before, instead of elections.. we’d find the Senate much much more pro states rights.
The one place that seems to protect rights at the end of the day is the supreme court.. like cancelling anti free speech parts of the campaign finance reform act. The supreme court another un-elected body.
um...Maine & Nebraska already award electoral votes by congressional district. and it seems like a good method.
Awarding electoral votes is a state issue. States can do damn near whatever they want in this respect.
Since electors are awarded to each state based on the number of House seats plus the number of Senate seats (always two) the district method allocates one electoral vote to each congressional district.
The winner of each district is awarded one electoral vote, and the winner of the state-wide vote is then awarded the state’s remaining two electoral votes.
I’m thinking if Pres. Bush had this going for him in all states, he wins both elections in an electoral landslide.
Oh it is from California. No wonder. I love the electorial college. The last thing I want is a more powerful centeralizes National government. Bring back the FEDERAL government of the great REPUBLIC. I do not want to be ruled by the city folks. No way.
When Judge Bork was being attacked at his hearings the Swimmer asked him how he could say “one man, one vote” is not the law of the land. Judge Bork answered that if this country wanted “one man, one vote” they could enact it as legislation and then the Senate would be illegal. Captain Oldsmobile when into Ralph Cramden “humma, humma, humma” mode. Precious.
Your analysis agrees with mine.
This result stems from the fact that Democrat strength is concentrated in big cities where they would win electors 95 to 5, and Republic strength is diffused across the country where they would win many more seats with 60-40 majorities.
Take away the ability of Democrats to take bag entire states by winning big in the metro areas wwhile losing everywhere else, and they’d never win another national election.
I wouldn’t leave it EXACTLY as it is.
I’d repeal the direct election of Senators and leave their selection up to the State legislatures, the way the Founders intended.
by John Samples, director of the Center for Representative Government, Cato Institute.
Critics have long derided the Electoral College as a fusty relic of a bygone era, an unnecessary institution that one day might undermine democracy by electing a minority president. That day has arrived, assuming Gov. Bush wins the Florida recount as seems likely.
The fact that Bush is poised to become president without a plurality of the vote contravenes neither the letter nor the spirit of the Constitution. The wording of our basic law is clear: The winner in the Electoral College takes office as president. But what of the spirit of our institutions? Are we not a democracy that honors the will of the people? The very question indicates a misunderstanding of our Constitution.
James Madison’s famous Federalist No. 10 makes clear that the Founders fashioned a republic, not a pure democracy. To be sure, they knew that the consent of the governed was the ultimate basis of government, but the Founders denied that such consent could be reduced to simple majority or plurality rule. In fact, nothing could be more alien to the spirit of American constitutionalism than equating democracy will the direct, unrefined will of the people.
Recall the ways our constitution puts limits on any unchecked power, including the arbitrary will of the people. Power at the national level is divided among the three branches, each reflecting a different constituency. Power is divided yet again between the national government and the states. Madison noted that these twofold divisions — the separation of powers and federalism — provided a “double security” for the rights of the people.
What about the democratic principle of one person, one vote? Isn’t that principle essential to our form of government? The Founders’ handiwork says otherwise. Neither the Senate, nor the Supreme Court, nor the president is elected on the basis of one person, one vote. That’s why a state like Montana, with 883,000 residents, gets the same number of Senators as California, with 33 million people. Consistency would require that if we abolish the Electoral College, we rid ourselves of the Senate as well. Are we ready to do that?
The filtering of the popular will through the Electoral College is an affirmation, rather than a betrayal, of the American republic. Doing away with the Electoral College would breach our fidelity to the spirit of the Constitution, a document expressly written to thwart the excesses of majoritarianism. Nonetheless, such fidelity will strike some as blind adherence to the past. For those skeptics, I would point out two other advantages the Electoral College offers.
First, we must keep in mind the likely effects of direct popular election of the president. We would probably see elections dominated by the most populous regions of the country or by several large metropolitan areas. In the 2000 election, for example, Vice President Gore could have put together a plurality or majority in the Northeast, parts of the Midwest, and California.
The victims in such elections would be those regions too sparsely populated to merit the attention of presidential candidates. Pure democrats would hardly regret that diminished status, but I wonder if a large and diverse nation should write off whole parts of its territory. We should keep in mind the regional conflicts that have plagued large and diverse nations like India, China, and Russia. The Electoral College is a good antidote to the poison of regionalism because it forces presidential candidates to seek support throughout the nation. By making sure no state will be left behind, it provides a measure of coherence to our nation.
Second, the Electoral College makes sure that the states count in presidential elections. As such, it is an important part of our federalist system — a system worth preserving. Historically, federalism is central to our grand constitutional effort to restrain power, but even in our own time we have found that devolving power to the states leads to important policy innovations (welfare reform).
If the Founders had wished to create a pure democracy, they would have done so. Those who now wish to do away with the Electoral College are welcome to amend the Constitution, but if they succeed, they will be taking America further away from its roots as a constitutional republic.
Source: http://www.cato.org/dailys/11-10-00.html
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LOL. After Al Gore lost the presidency because of the electoral college, you kept hearing the Dems saying how horrible it was. Now that a law may be passed to dilute it’s effect in CA, a democratic state, suddenly the SF Chronicle is horrified.
These people are so transparent.
Suppose instead of election a man were qualified for office by petition signed by four thousand citizens. He would then represent those four thousand affirmatively, with no disgruntled minority, for what would have been a minority in a territorial constituency would all be free to start other petitions or join in them. All would then be represented by men of their choice. Or a man with eight thousand supporters might have two votes in this body. Difficulties, objections, practical points to be worked out— many of them! But you could work them out. . . and thereby avoid the chronic sickness of representative government, the disgruntled minority which feels— correctly!— that it has been disenfranchised...Whatever you do, do not let the past be a straitjacket!
The Chronicle: We're against changing the process until we can figure out a way to make sure democrats win.
Thanks for posting. That is an interesting article.
How about "Americans don't like one state having 55 electoral votes."
California has 55 votes, Texas has 34, New York has 31, Florida has 27 Pennsylvania and Illinois have 21, Ohio has 20, and the rest are less than 20 each.
California's Electoral College votes are in a league of their own. Perhaps the answer is not to apportion California's Electoral Votes, but instead to divide California into two states?
-PJ
This is exactly what Nebraska and Maine do. It is the only way to apportion Electoral Votes to more closely reflect the popular vote without changing the Constitution.
I fully support these efforts and think the practice should be spread to all 50 states.
Well said.
The Founding Fathers set up the Constitution so that Senators were appointed by the State Legislature. You prefer we go back to that method?
LOL!! These shameless scumbag Democrats at the SF Chronicle defend the electoral college only when they could get hurt by a change like the one proposed in their own state. Previously, they could be heard whining all across the country about how unfair the electoral college is.
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