Katherine
Posted on 06/16/2008 11:03:54 AM PDT by NewMediaJournal
The constitutional amendment process is a complicated and lengthy affair. This is because we cannot be certain what consequences might arise from a seemingly minor alteration of the Constitution. To be sure, exchanging the electoral-vote system for direct election would adversely impact the entire constitutional and political structure of the United States.
To begin, our Constitution is dedicated to securing everybody’s rights. This requires that we be concerned not only with size, but with the character of the majorities voting our president to office. There are many ways in which our Constitution is configured to prevent simple majorities.
▪ The federal system prevents less populous States from being engulfed by more populous States.
▪ A bicameral legislature divides responsibilities between House and Senate on grounds other than those of population.
▪ Power is invested in a non-elective judiciary.
▪ Each State has a minimum of three electoral votes in the Electoral College.
(Excerpt) Read more at newmediajournal.us ...
Award electors based on the returns for the Congressional Districts.
It's not that hard. You just get the ACLU to invent a new constitutional right that sounds good to the chattering classes. Within 10 years five left-wing old farts will have discovered that right in the Constitution.
34 states have ten or less Electoral votes. A move to abolish the Electoral system is DOA.
Which is precisely why the Leftists want to scrap the Electoral College. They want the country to be run from the New York/LA/San Francisco axis. Thay want the small states to be bulldozed by the coastals. Lock up those three cities and Chicago can go hang.
Enough said.
Every state has the capability to choose that option if they so desire. (IIRC, two states already do this.) Under the Constitution, the federal government doesn't have the power to force it on them.
This is interesting — didn’t just about every DemocRAT howl about abolishing the Electoral College after the 2000 election? That the popular vote should be the only one that matters?
Gee...they’ve had 8 years...what’s the problem?
The electoral college takes lots of power away from the mainstream media that is heavily concentrated in the bluest of the blue areas of the country.
In my opinion, the American people are not qualified to elect the president. The electors should be appointed by state legislatures, not elected by the people. Also, the vote of every state should be equal. That would instill recognition of our nation as a Federal Republic of sovereign states.
IIRC there is nothing in the US Constitution that provides citizens the “right” to vote in a Presidential election, but that the Electors are appointed by the state legislatures. The states themselves hold the elections to select the Electors, each of them in its own way.
Katherine
That was the original purpose of the Senate, before the Constitution was amended for direct election of Senators. The idea was to set the various branches of government at odds with each other- the H of R elected by population, Senators appointed by states and the Electoral College a form of weighted voting by the states.
“Also, the vote of every state should be equal.”
That wasn’t the deal when they made the deal, and it would have no chance of becoming law today. Just like it had no chance then.
The World Series is decided by number of games won, not number of runs. Same idea.
We need to return to the Framers' design. Repeal the 16th & 17th Amendments, and place limits on the Supreme Court's authority so that it can't commandeer the Constitution.
Do you think the Democrat primary was more of a "mess" than the Republican's? Just look who the Republican candidate is and the strength of his support among the rank and file and you'll see a real "mess". The "winner take all" Republican primaries in early, atypical, liberal states are what got the Republicans in this pathetic situation. It is obvious this practice should be eliminated immediately.
And the individual games are decided by the number of runs, not the number of hits.
And football games decided by points (based on touchdowns, field goals, etc), not the number of yards gained.
FWIW:
Value of an individual vote under the Electoral College relative to a vote using Direct Election:
State | ECV/DEV
Alabama 103%
Alaska 228%
Arizona 102%
Arkansas 116%
California 85%
Colorado 107%
Connecticut 112%
Delaware 199%
D.C. 301%
Florida 88%
Georgia 95%
Hawaii 158%
Idaho 144%
Illinois 91%
Indiana 94%
Iowa 127%
Kansas 116%
Kentucky 104%
Louisiana 105%
Maine 165%
Maryland 97%
Massachusetts 101%
Michigan 93%
Minnesota 106%
Mississippi 110%
Missouri 102%
Montana 159%
Nebraska 151%
Nevada 128%
New Hampshire 166%
New Jersey 95%
New Mexico 132%
New York 90%
North Carolina 97%
North Dakota 236%
Ohio 93%
Oklahoma 107%
Oregon 103%
Pennsylvania 91%
Rhode Island 210%
South Carolina 105%
South Dakota 197%
Tennessee 98%
Texas 84%
Utah 110%
Vermont 250%
Virginia 94%
Washington 93%
West Virginia 144%
Wisconsin 97%
Wyoming 281%
Example: a vote in Wyoming is worth 3.3x that of one in Texas ... reducing Texas’ overwhelming 45-to-1 voter advantage over Wyoming to 14-to-1.
The Founders were very careful to set up a government that was not a democracy. Democracies as a form of government are unsustainable, for the very reasons we are seeing today. With the 17th Amendment, the interests of the States are not represented in the Federal government. In effect the balance that the Founders sought was shifted too far to the people, who, inevitably in a democracracy, found themselves with the ability to vote themselves goodies from the public wealth and did just that. Now we find ourselves with an out-of-control Federal government.
Congressman Billybob
Latest article, "Gravity: Not Just a Good Idea, It's the Law"
The math is correct but candidates still completely ignore those of us in small states.
Not quite so completely, and not so many ... but switch to general election and nearly all states _will_ be ignored outright.
the d’RATS howl about the elector college until it benefits them.
I pointed out that had the tables been reversed in 2000 and it was gore who won by ....blah blah, blah, they would be howling that the electoral college did it’s job etc, etc.
It just depends who is on the short end.
I also point out that republicans by their nature would not have howled as the immature d’RATS have for the last 8 years.
True. In fact, Charles Krauthammer pointed out on Inside Washington right after the vote count (and before the tiresome appeals process began) that a month before the election, conventional wisdom had just the reverse happening — that Bush would win the popular vote, but that Gore would carry the day in the Electoral College - and Gore had been out there explaining that while it might SEEM unfair, it was how the system worked.
But then, if nobody realized by now that Gore is the one of the biggest hypocrit monkeys out there, they haven’t been paying attention.
Precisely. If a state were to decide to have its legislature pick its electors, it would, IMHO, be perfectly legal and constitutional for them to do so.
This is the easy way to gain seats at the table for us conservatives. Think we will see change we can believe in?
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110005511
The Founding Fathers had more wisdom then we give them credit. The Electoral College is designed to prevent cliff hanger President elections and give a certainty to who was elected. Imagine having the Presidency hung in the balance for months by countless law suits and hanging chad issues. What we experienced in Florida in the 2000 election would be magnified many times on a nationwide popular vote.
IIRC, that option was written out of subsequent Texas Constitutions.
All those countries that say our process is stupid when Algore won the popular vote, are very small and do not have our population. If Europe were a country and electing one President, I am sure they would favor something like that so that countries like Germany, France and Spain would not have all the power over smaller countries like Holland, Belgium or Switzerland.
Nebraska and Maine already do some version of that. Let it up to the states how they wish to allocate their electoral votes. The Constitution does not and should not be changed re the electoral vote process.
So move to WY.
Exactly. Here in Canada, there are always calls for reform to the Westminster first-past-the-post system but those calls always come from the losers. The fringe lefties whined when the Conservatives won with 45% of the popular vote, but when their socialist party formed a government with 36% their silence was deafening.
I intend to.
And it should be.
Dismantling the Electoral College in favor of a Popular Vote would be aking to changing the rules for the World Series so that the champion wasn't the team that won the most games, but the team that scored the most runs.
In addition, the Electoral College confines electoral fraud within state borders. Rather than polluting the vote in Illinois, Michigan and Pennsylvania, the Chicago, Detroit and Philadelphia voting fraud would pollute the total popular vote.
And just how would anybody propose to do a re-count...???
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