Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Then your wish has already been granted since Ohio and Florida don't cover the necessary amount of electoral votes to decide elections! Solved. As you were.
You are denying the very clear reality that a few large swing states decide elections.
I happen to benefit from this living in one of the said swing states, but the fact of the matter is there are about 200 Electoral votes that are reliably blue and 170 that are reliably red. As a result you end up having a few states with a good amount of electoral votes like Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Virginia basically picking the president.
As to the rural vs urban divide I often see that rural states benefit the most from the electoral college. This is just silly, rural states are often solid one way or another and the rural states that are contested just don't have enough electoral votes the merit the attention that is given the the big more urban swing states mentioned above. As such rural states get summarily ignored.
National popular vote disconnects voters from the states they live in, essentially, by disconnecting them from the electoral votes their states cast. It's a bad idea because even though the electoral college isn't perfect, the electoral college does serve a valid purpose. It's not the electoral college's fault that the two major parties put through legislation ON THE STATE LEVEL to construct a winner-take-all system. The winner-take-all system is the problem, and it can be addressed on the state level. But rather than work to do that, some people would prefer to simply do an end-run around the Constitution, gutting its electoral college system, because they know that amending the Constitution would be much more difficult.
No state in their right mind would get rid of winner take all. That would make their state entirely irrelevant. Besides your basically asking Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio to give up their role as the 3 states that generally get to pick the president. They would never do that since it benefits them greatly to have that king of power.
My favorite line in this article, "States shouldn't be electing presidents. Citizens should be."
Indeed.
Have you looked at it the other way: if we go with popular vote candidates will consintrate only on the states with the highest population. I don't know if there is an asnwer but I doubt you will see the electorial college die in the near future.
Have you looked at it the other way: if we go with popular vote candidates will consintrate only on the states with the highest population. I don't know if there is an asnwer but I doubt you will see the electorial college die in the near future.
Nita
That is more or less already what happens. Except that candidates only concentrate on high population marginal states. Basically rather then NY, TX and CA. People concentrate on PA, OH, and FL which are all states in the top 10 in population. Even if a small population state is close (like say Montana, New Hampshire) it just will not get much attention because even under the electoral college the votes there are often not enough to make a difference.
With the Electoral College and federalism, the Founding Fathers meant to empower the states to pursue their own interests within the confines of the Constitution. The National Popular Vote is an exercise of that power, not an attack upon it.
The Electoral College is now the set of dedicated party activists who vote as rubberstamps for their party’s presidential candidate. That is not what the Founders intended.
Wrong. The founders intended for each state to send delegates to Washington in any way that each state felt necessary to represent their interests.
Quote:
The current state-by-state winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but since enacted 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, ensures that the candidates, after the primaries, in 2012 will not reach out to about 76% 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.
You might think that the system is unfair, and I can understand your point to an extent. It certainly doesn't feel like a democracy sometimes when it feels like my vote is useless because my states electoral votes are already handed out to one party or the other. But it is consistent with the view of the federation of states, that each state would vote for president as a reflection of the interest of their state. If a national popular vote was ever intended, not only would it be mentioned in the constitution, but it would have been discussed by the several founding fathers who did become presidents.
Quote:
More than 2/3rds of the states and people have been just spectators to the presidential elections. That's more than 85 million voters.
Policies important to the citizens of ‘flyover’ states are not as highly prioritized as policies important to ‘battleground’ states when it comes to governing.
States have the responsibility and power to make all of their voters relevant in every presidential election and beyond.
Supporters of National Popular Vote find it hard to believe the Founding Fathers would endorse an electoral system where more than 2/3rds of the states and voters now are completely politically irrelevant. 9 of the original 13 states are ignored now. Presidential campaigns spend 98% of their resources in just 15 battleground states, where they aren’t hopelessly behind or safely ahead, and can win the bare plurality of the vote to win all of the state’s electoral votes. Now the majority of Americans, in small, medium-small, average, and large states are ignored. Virtually none of the small states receive any attention. None of the 10 most rural states is a battleground state. 19 of the 22 lowest population and medium-small states, and 17 medium and big states like CA, GA, NY, and TX are ignored. That’s over 85 million voters. Once the primaries are over, presidential candidates don’t visit or spend resources in 2/3rds of the states. Candidates know the Republican is going to win in safe red states, and the Democrat will win in safe blue states, so they are ignored. More than 85 million voters have been just spectators to the general election. States have the responsibility and power to make their voters relevant in every presidential election.
What you misunderstand is that, the electoral college is working completely as intended. But more importantly, the focus we have on the president is SO FAR OFF what was intended by the founders when creating the presidency. The president was supposed to have practically zero power. The Supreme Court was supposed to have practically zero power. The power in our government was supposed to be almost entirely vested in the Legislative branch, which was designed to be a balance between small states and large states. The president was never supposed to have any power not handed to him by the legislative branch. His only authority was in dealing with the military, and being a diplomatic head-of-state. And originally, the use of the military as it is used today would have been unthinkable. And making agreements behind closed doors with foreign nations would have been practically treasonous.
The reality is that, the founding fathers intended for the election process of the presidency to be a compromise between small states and large states. In that, the electoral votes are equal to the total number of Representatives and the total number of Senators in each state.
The problem with the national popular vote is that it completely removes any such balance between small and large states. You are effectively making the presidency, the equivalent of the Speaker of the House of Representatives. You are wanting to turn this country from a federation of states, to a single democratic nation with complete authority. When in reality, the founding fathers wanted to keep the federal government a trivial part of our daily lives, not the behemoth it has become.
I would advise you read a little about the growth of the federal government. The living document theory, the dormant commerce clause, and the legality of the 14th amendment. You could probably use a history lesson on the Civil War. The differences between the Confederate constitution and our own constitution and the intents of those changes. And the actual purpose of the 10th amendment. You should also learn a little about the differences between a Republic and a Democracy, and find out how the founders felt about democracy. You might also read about the real Abraham Lincoln, and the dangers of a highly centralized government.
Come back to me in a couple days after you've read about some of these issues and tell me if you still feel the same way.
No state in their right mind would get rid of winner take all. That would make their state entirely irrelevant. Besides your basically asking Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio to give up their role as the 3 states that generally get to pick the president. They would never do that since it benefits them greatly to have that king of power.
But of course. Everybody that benefits from a special status wouldn't like that changed. For example: if someone is exempt from paying taxes, would they agree one day to start paying like everyone else? Of course not! However, its the American people who should change the way US elects its president. The winner takes all is a twisted system that allows candidates who lost elections, be declared winners.
I think states should have vote in in proportion to the surplus they send to the federal government. The welfare recieving red states should not have a vote at all.
Wrong. The founders intended for each state to send delegates to Washington in any way that each state felt necessary to represent their interests.
You might think that the system is unfair, and I can understand your point to an extent. It certainly doesn't feel like a democracy sometimes when it feels like my vote is useless because my states electoral votes are already handed out to one party or the other. But it is consistent with the view of the federation of states, that each state would vote for president as a reflection of the interest of their state. If a national popular vote was ever intended, not only would it be mentioned in the constitution, but it would have been discussed by the several founding fathers who did become presidents.
What you misunderstand is that, the electoral college is working completely as intended. But more importantly, the focus we have on the president is SO FAR OFF what was intended by the founders when creating the presidency. The president was supposed to have practically zero power. The Supreme Court was supposed to have practically zero power. The power in our government was supposed to be almost entirely vested in the Legislative branch, which was designed to be a balance between small states and large states. The president was never supposed to have any power not handed to him by the legislative branch. His only authority was in dealing with the military, and being a diplomatic head-of-state. And originally, the use of the military as it is used today would have been unthinkable. And making agreements behind closed doors with foreign nations would have been practically treasonous.
The reality is that, the founding fathers intended for the election process of the presidency to be a compromise between small states and large states. In that, the electoral votes are equal to the total number of Representatives and the total number of Senators in each state.
The problem with the national popular vote is that it completely removes any such balance between small and large states. You are effectively making the presidency, the equivalent of the Speaker of the House of Representatives. You are wanting to turn this country from a federation of states, to a single democratic nation with complete authority. When in reality, the founding fathers wanted to keep the federal government a trivial part of our daily lives, not the behemoth it has become.
Wrong. The founders DID NOT intend for each state to send delegates to Washington. Electors meet in their state capitols.
Prior to arriving at the eventual wording of section 1 of Article II, the Constitutional Convention specifically voted against a number of different methods for selecting the President, including
● having state legislatures choose the President,
● having governors choose the President, and
● a national popular vote.
After these (and other) methods were debated and rejected, the Constitutional Convention decided to leave the entire matter to the states.
Unable to agree on any particular method for selecting presidential electors, the Founding Fathers left the choice of method exclusively to the states in section 1 of Article II of the U.S. Constitution-- "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors . . ." The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as "plenary" and "exclusive."
The constitution does not prohibit any of the methods that were debated and rejected. Indeed, a majority of the states appointed their presidential electors using two of the rejected methods in the nation's first presidential election in 1789 (i.e., appointment by the legislature and by the governor and his cabinet). Presidential electors were appointed by state legislatures for almost a century.
Neither of the two most important features of the current system of electing the President (namely, universal suffrage, and the 48 state-by-state winner-take-all method) are in the U.S. Constitution. Neither was the choice of the Founders when they went back to their states to organize the nation's first presidential election.
In 1789, in the nation's first election, the people had no vote for President in most states, only men who owned a substantial amount of property could vote, and only three states used the state-by-state winner-take-all method to award electoral votes.
The current 48 state-by-state winner-take-all method (i.e., awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in a particular state) is not entitled to any special deference based on history or the historical meaning of the words in the U.S. Constitution. It is not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, the debates of the Constitutional Convention, or the Federalist Papers. The actions taken by the Founding Fathers make it clear that they never gave their imprimatur to the winner-take-all method.
The constitutional wording does not encourage, discourage, require, or prohibit the use of any particular method for awarding the state's electoral votes.
As a result of changes in state laws enacted since 1789, the people have the right to vote for presidential electors in 100% of the states, there are no property requirements for voting in any state, and the state-by-state winner-take-all method is used by 48 of the 50 states. States can, and frequently have, changed their method of awarding electoral votes over the years. Maine and Nebraska do not use the winner-take-all method.
The Founding Fathers in the Constitution did not require states to allow their citizens to vote for president, much less award all their electoral votes based upon the vote of their citizens.
The Electoral College is now the set of dedicated party activists who vote as rubberstamps for presidential candidates. In the current presidential election system, 48 states award all of their electors to the winners of their state. This is not what the Founding Fathers intended.
With the Electoral College and federalism, the Founding Fathers meant to empower the states to pursue their own interests within the confines of the Constitution. The National Popular Vote is an exercise of that power, not an attack upon it.
The Electoral College is now the set of dedicated party activists who vote as rubberstamps for their party’s presidential candidate. That is not what the Founders intended.
The National Popular Vote bill preserves the Electoral College and state control of elections. It changes the way electoral votes are awarded in the Electoral College.
The current state-by-state winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but since enacted 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, ensures that the candidates, after the primaries, in 2012 will not reach out to about 76% 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.
More than 2/3rds of the states and people have been just spectators to the presidential elections. That's more than 85 million voters.
With the current state winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes, winning a bare plurality of the popular vote in the 11 most populous states, containing 56% of the population, could win the Presidency with a mere 26% of the nation's votes.
Now presidential elections ignore 12 of the 13 lowest population states (3-4 electoral votes), that are non-competitive in presidential elections. 6 regularly vote Republican (AK, ID, MT, WY, ND, and SD), and 6 regularly vote Democratic (RI, DE, HI, VT, ME, and DC) in presidential elections. Voters in states that are reliably red or blue don't matter. Candidates ignore those states and the issues they care about most.
Support for a national popular vote is strong in every smallest state surveyed in recent polls among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group. Support in smaller states (3 to 5 electoral votes): AK -70%, DC -76%, DE --75%, ID -77%, ME - 77%, MT- 72%, NE - 74%, NH--69%, NE - 72%, NM - 76%, RI - 74%, SD- 71%, UT- 70%, VT - 75%, WV- 81%, and WY- 69%.
In the lowest population states, the National Popular Vote bill has passed in nine state legislative chambers, and been enacted by 3 jurisdictions.
Of the 22 medium-lowest population states (those with 3,4,5, or 6 electoral votes), only 3 have been battleground states in recent elections-- NH, NM, and NV. These three states contain only 14 (8%) of the 22 medium-lowest population states' total 166 electoral votes.
Policies important to the citizens of ‘flyover’ states are not as highly prioritized as policies important to ‘battleground’ states when it comes to governing.
States have the responsibility and power to make all of their voters relevant in every presidential election and beyond.
Federalism concerns the allocation of power between state governments and the national government. The National Popular Vote bill concerns how votes are tallied, not how much power state governments possess relative to the national government. The powers of state governments are neither increased nor decreased based on whether presidential electors are selected along the state boundary lines, or national lines (as with the National Popular Vote).
The winner-take-all system is the problem, and it can be addressed on the state level. But rather than work to do that, some people would prefer to simply do an end-run around the Constitution, gutting its electoral college system, because they know that amending the Constitution would be much more difficult.
National Popular Vote DOES address the state-by-state winner-take-all system on the state level, using the power given to the states in the U.S. Constitution to decide how to award their electoral votes, without needing to amend the Constitution. States enact the National Popular Vote bill.
The normal way of changing the method of electing the President is not a federal constitutional amendment, but changes in state law. The U.S. Constitution gives "exclusive" and "plenary" control to the states over the appointment of presidential electors.
Historically, virtually all of the previous major changes in the method of electing the President have come about by state legislative action. For example, the people had no vote for President in most states in the nation's first election in 1789. However, now, as a result of changes in the state laws governing the appointment of presidential electors, the people have the right to vote for presidential electors in 100% of the states.
When the bill is enacted by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes-- enough Electoral College votes to elect a President (270 of 538), all the Electoral College votes from the enacting states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC. The bill would thus guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes.
National Popular Vote DOES address the state-by-state winner-take-all system on the state level, using the power given to the states in the U.S. Constitution to decide how to award their electoral votes, without needing to amend the Constitution. States enact the National Popular Vote bill.
The normal way of changing the method of electing the President is not a federal constitutional amendment, but changes in state law. The U.S. Constitution gives "exclusive" and "plenary" control to the states over the appointment of presidential electors.
Historically, virtually all of the previous major changes in the method of electing the President have come about by state legislative action. For example, the people had no vote for President in most states in the nation's first election in 1789. However, now, as a result of changes in the state laws governing the appointment of presidential electors, the people have the right to vote for presidential electors in 100% of the states.
When the bill is enacted by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes-- enough Electoral College votes to elect a President (270 of 538), all the Electoral College votes from the enacting states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC. The bill would thus guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes.
The National Popular Vote does address the winner-take-all strategy, by taking a bad strategy one step further. It disconnects voters from their states. And your assertion that voters don't care about that is FALSE. Voters do care, they just don't understand what the National Popular Vote does. It's a mistake, and it's an attempt to void part of the Constitution without actually going through the Amendment process so that people can fairly discuss and argue the issue. No amount of cut and paste is going to change these facts.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Reality
