This is freaking hilarious on so many different level. The sheer stupidity of Massachusetts Democrats and Governor Duval Patrick is unprecedented. I mean in order to rig the presidential elections in favor of a Democratic candidate the state of Massachusetts has essentially disenfranchised its own electorate. 1) Can you imagine if Sarah Palin won Massachusetts in 2012 because she got more national votes and the state had to giveaway its electoral votes? Liberals would burn down the state legislature and hunt for Patrick's head! 2) If you apply this law in retrospect to previous elections just for the sake of comparison, the results are nothing short of LOLs. In 2004, John Kerry would have lost his own state based on the fact the GWB was leading the popular vote. Don't these dumbs Democrats realize that not every single election is going to be an anomaly like 2000? 3) Also the electoral votes of one state will be determined by the decision of voter in other states. That is lunacy in purest form. How long before recounts in all states and lawsuits bring down the American democracy? I could see voter fraud and election rigging in one state nullify the entire election process. My God how do these people go around claiming to be sane and having the reasoning and logic to run a freaking state? 4) The "covenant" states including Massachusetts, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, and Washington are all Democratic strongholds so this conspiracy plays out one of two way. If a Democrat wins the popular vote then they'll get behind and give their electoral votes and even defend their Constitutional right to do so. However, if a Republican win the popular vote then all hell will break loose where the very people who voted for this stupidity will bring about federal lawsuits trying to stop the election process. Either way the Dems are creating a win-win situation. I only hope 2012 shows these morons why 5-years-olds are better equipped to run their states! Full details on national popular vote and article below: Spoiler
No they haven't, and this doesn't favor a Dem or GOP candidate. Why? The whole point of this is to make the national vote leader win elections. In this setup, no one would care who won individual states anymore. 2) If you apply this law in retrospect to previous elections just for the sake of comparison, the results are nothing short of LOLs. In 2004, John Kerry would have lost his own state based on the fact the GWB was leading the popular vote. Don't these dumbs Democrats realize that not every single election is going to be an anomaly like 2000? [/quote] What are the LOLs? In this set up, who cares if Kerry wins or loses MA? It's totally irrelevant to the election. This has been a growing concept in a lot of states. What exactly are the negatives?
Did you even read the actual article in linked at the bottom of my post? 1) This "covenant" is between only a handful of blue states. Not every single state is going to adopt the measure which means the voters of the non-participating states will actually get to decide the outcome of the electoral votes in participating states. Do you not see the flaw here? Voters in Texas could very well determine who wins Massachusetts. 2) Let me present a simple scenario, lets say in 2012 Massachusetts votes for Obama but say Palin ends up winning more national votes then under this law, Massachusetts has to give its electoral votes to Palin regardless of how the people of Massachusetts actually voted for Obama. Don't you see the stupidity and even violation of voter rights in this scenario? Again I must emphasis the point, popular national vote only work if EVERY state participates in the same method. However, red states aren't stupid enough like Massachusetts to vote for such measures. Also every state has a right under the Constitution to determine how it distributes its given electoral votes so there is no chance a national mandate, law, or judicial decision can force all states to participate. Finally, the cleverness of implementing this scheme is that the participating states are obligated to follow this law only if enough of them actually enact it. Meaning that if enough states to make 270 electoral votes participate then each state with such law has to honor it otherwise everyone goes back to the old rules of electoral college system. This is sneaky stuff where participating states can elect to withdraw from the agreement on or before July 1st of an election year. Please tell me this is not a clever win-win for the Democrats? I also understand why so many Republicans in blue states support this idea. They know there is no downside whatsoever because now they don't have to win in a Democratic state but rather just get enough republican voter turnout to skew the votes in favor of the Republican presidential candidate. Furthermore, not a single red state is going to join this covenant so there is no chance of backfiring against Republicans at all. If you still can't see the flaws then I'll holdout till 2012 when "WTF moments" will surely make you understand.
The fact that the "covenant" is made up of only blue states right now is irrelevant. And I think your complaint about non-participating states deciding the outcome is by design. This is simply a proposal to create a compact to nullify the electoral college system. So yes in a system where the popular vote the electoral result of massachusetts alone becomes irrelevant. How is that a violation of voter rights. Under this compact (when they hit a majority of electoral votes in the compact) your vote counts as much as any other state. How the hell does that violate anyone's voter rights? If anything the status quo is unfair as my Democratic vote in Texas is pretty much meaningless whereas if I voted in Florida or Ohio my vote would have 10 times the value. Clearly you have no clue what you're talking about. This compact only goes into effect when enough states (with enough electoral votes) join to create a majority. Then all of those states would cast their electoral vote in favor of the winner of the popular vote, thereby electing our president on the basis of popular vote. This is a workaround to kill the electoral college without a constitutional amendment. And you said it yourself, the constitution allows states to determine how they use their electoral vote so if a majority of states (with a majority of electoral votes) joins this compact they are free to do whatever they want. Finally, the cleverness of implementing this scheme is that the participating states are obligated to follow this law only if enough of them actually enact it. Meaning that if enough states to make 270 electoral votes participate then each state with such law has to honor it otherwise everyone goes back to the old rules of electoral college system. This is sneaky stuff where participating states can elect to withdraw from the agreement on or before July 1st of an election year. Please tell me this is not a clever win-win for the Democrats? Let me reiterate THE COMPACT DOES NOT GO INTO EFFECT UNTIL A MAJORITY OF STATES JOIN. This is just a workaround to kill the electoral college. I dont understand your partisan ramblings at all. Who gives a **** if red or blue states join this. All it needs is a specific number of states with a specific number of electoral votes and the electoral college gets killed off by a workaround.
No - this movement has been going on for years. I'm pretty familiar with it. No - the covenant only takes effect if states with 270 votes all pass it. At that point, it takes effect in all the pariticipating states. Until then, it does nothing. So it's either all or none - either there's a true national popular vote or nothing changes. If 270 EV's join in, then the system that the rest of the states use is irrelevant and you have a national vote. No. This would only happen if enough states agree to it, in which case they are just declaring Palin the overall Presidential winner due to the national popular vote. At that point, no one will care who "won" MA. Not true - it only requires states with 270 combined electoral votes to matter. If that happens, then the other states are automatically irrelevant. Candidates will campaign nationwide to win the popular vote, and it won't matter how other states allocate their EV's. That's not true either. It's not a red/blue state thing. It's an influence thing. The EC was designed for a number of reasons such as keeping the influence of small states and due to the reality of travel/mass communications in the 1700's. One problem with it today is that it makes the election about a handful of toss-up states. Ohio and Florida get all sorts of attention. California, Texas, Utah, and Vermont are completely irrelevant in a Presidential campaign - the only reason candidates come to Texas is to raise money. Right now, Obama's policies can be designed for the good of Ohio and Florida. In a national popular vote, it matters if Obama loses Texas 60-40 or 55-45, so its in his interest to campaign and build policies that benefit the entire nation. It's a nidea to make more states relevant, though current toss-up states will be opposed to it as will some small states (although many like Utah and Vermont are already irrelevant). The group of states mentioned in the article may be blue states, but it's not a Dem idea and doesn't favor Dems at all. No one is forcing any state to participate. The 270 EV states wouldn't care if the other states participate or not. No, it's not a clever win for the Democrats. In fact, it has nothing to do with Democrats and doesn't particularly favor them. Except that's not true. It's a fairly recent measure, and has made a lot of progress over the course of the last 4 years, including in some Red states. It hasn't passed in any yet, but it's getting there. It's up for consideration in a number of red states like Mississippi, Oklahoma and Nebraska, and has passed at least one house in a lot of purplish states like Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, etc. In the course of just 4 years, it's gone from 0 participating states to covering 73 electoral votes. It's probably something that would take another 10 years or so to happen, but we definitely appear to be moving in that direction. It's possible that it could occur without the consent of any red states, but I'm guessing some big ones will jump on board when they realize the idea is in their best interest anyway. But at the end of the day, if states with 270 EV's pass it, it has the effect of making the elections national anyway, with or without the red state participation.
He seems to be obsessed by the idea that a few blue states have initially joined. That must mean it's partisan and a Democratic conspiracy of some sort. If he ever looked at the logic of it, he'd realize it's just a work around from having to use a Constitutional Amendment to eliminate the electoral college. But instead, he goes off on a weird partisan b****fest.
Thanks for the substantial posts, Major, I remember reading about this movement years ago. Quick question, and it's not rhetorical: could you quickly break down the pros and cons of a popular national vote instead of using the EC? The negatives of the EC are pretty obvious. One conservative argument I've heard against the popular vote is that campaigning will happen in cities and areas of large population density- large cities tend to be liberal and vote democratic. (For ex: didn't Houston go for Obama?) I think the biggest difference is that we'd see a lot more big spending on national TV ads than target local and regional TV ads.
I think the main advantages of the national vote are: 1. Taking away "targetted campaigning". It gets rid of the need for Bush to suddenly become a protectionist for steel mills in Pennsylvania, or for Obama to court Cubans to win Florida. Instead, you have to campaign to win votes all over the country. 2. Logic just seems to make sense that the candidate with the most votes wins. The EC just sort of seems archaic and unnecessary now. As far as public opinion goes, Dems, Republicans, and Independents all support it in concept (not this particular bill, but the idea of a national vote = winner). The advantages of the EC are: 1. In the case of a 60,000,000 to 59,999,958 vote, it's going to be HELL to do a national recount. The logistics would be a total nightmare without some kind of consistent national system. Chances are highly unlikely that you run into the problem, but I don't know of a good solution for the one time it happens. 2. It guarantees representation to small states. While no one campaigns there, a state like Wyoming still gets 3 EVs (one for each Senator and House Rep), which is disproportionate to its population. Some consider this good or bad, but a change to a national vote renders this irrelevant. I would argue that all those small states (except tossups like New Hampshire) are ignored anyway, so it's not a big deal - but I think they see it differently. I hadn't really thought of that. I'm not sure how that would play out, but I imagine there'd be strategy like the Obama/Clinton matchup. Obama let Clinton win the big places while he campaigned in all the smaller places. She won the big ones 55-45 while he won the smaller ones 70-30. Even within a city - especially the suburbs - there are still conservative votes to be won, so offhand, I don't have a sense of how much of an advantage it would create. But I hadn't really thought it from that perspective before. Definitely. One of the biggest differences is much more national campaigning. You'd see Bush going to California to win votes. You'd see Obama campaigning more in Texas. I think that's a good thing, but I could see why people would disagree. From my perspective, local campaigning is about pandering. If you're telling Ohio something different than you're telling Nevada, then something is wrong there, in my opinion. More of a national focus forces candidates to come up with a broader platform.
Actually this law actually favors Dems quite a bit. Consider how a president can win the popular vote and yet lose the electoral college. It happened recently of course with Al Gore who won the popular vote but lost the college. How did that happen? It's because each state gets at least 3 electoral votes no matter how small it's population is. Thus they have a lot more electoral votes per capita and the ability to influence an election. Those states have the ability to trump the national vote as they did in 2000. And the states with that ability overwhelmingly vote Republican. In other words, you won't see a Democrat lose the national vote and win the college. Because Democrats don't win the 3 or 4 electoral vote states, they win the big ones - California, Illinois, New York, and such. And they have to Win Florida, Ohio, or Pennsylvania to even have a shot. What Dem will ever win Oklahoma? North Dakota? S. Dakota? Utah? Wyoming? Thus what they have done is to prevent a Republican from winning Massachusetts if for example it's their home state. If Republican like Mitt Romney won Massachusetts they wouldn't need the popular vote to beat Obama. They'd likely get it from the electoral college. Massachusetts is basically saying they electoral college shouldn't matter, and that favors Dems.
I support the electoral college. We are a republic, not a true democracy. Our system is to balance national power against states. And eliminating the electoral college would give urban dwellers a lot of power. It may seem counter-intuitive to have this nation shaped that way. But there's a purpose. If we want to eliminate the electoral college, than we basically are violating the original covenant that drew the 13 colonies together in the first place...that is - what incentive does a small state have to join a Republic where their power would be substantially diminished? The U.S.A would have never existed without the college - it was the compromise made to build a nation.
I don't know of any facts that contradict your numerous assumptions off the top of my head, but I think you're wrong. The political landscape has changed a lot in this country throughout the last century. Republicans used to be progressive. The Democratic party used to be full of bigots and segregationists. And Republicans used to dominate the coastal states and Democrats the deep south. And this system wouldn't be about winning California or New York, it would be about winning the USA (which Bush did in 04), so I really don't think it's a pro-democrat thing. I don't think conservatives would hate this too much either from a winning standpoint, for many believe that the US is a center-right nation.
Obama only won 28 to McCains 22 states despite beating McCain by about 2 to 1 in electoral votes. In other words, Obama was 2/3 of the electoral college but only won 56% of the states. That's because McCain tended to win more of the small states and obama more of the big ones - a trend that has shaped the last 4 or 5 elections. If blue states adopt choosing the electoral votes based on Popular vote it does two things. It will increase voter turnout since showing up to the polls will matter more (it's not just a blow-out for a Democrat). It will take away the power small and conservative states have. And finally, it will make it easier for Dems to campaign. Think about it, they will only need to launch major turn out the vote efforts in places like Brooklyn to win elections. Because Urban areas are mainly democratic, getting urbanites to vote could drastically alter the political landscape. It would for the Republicans to move to the left in order to counter the new voting power Dems could bring in a national election - at least if they want to capture the presidency.
But that's just looking at the 2008 election. Bush won the popular vote in 2004. HW Bush won in 92, and Reagan dominated before that. Clinton was actually sort of a comeback for the Democratic party in terms of popularity. I don't think this law will come to fruition any time soon, but thinking that it's clear favoritism towards the Democratic party is short-sighted imo. And to use your own analogy, while Obama did win 2/3 of the EC, he didn't win 2/3 of the popular vote. I really don't know where I come down on this law, but it would be interesting to try out at least. The political campaigns are pretty crappy nowadays with their pandering to localities. Hopefully there would be more consistency in their platforms with a national popular vote, and people could be more accountable to their BS....hopefully.
I disagree, if this compact does anything then it focuses more attention on cities and urban areas where Democrats already enjoy a strong voter base. Now instead of flying to Florida or Pennsylvania for special interest groups, the candidates will focus solely on bigger cities like NY, LA, Chicago etc... Just as an example, look at Montana which has a population of around 900K, all of a sudden it's easily trumped by any number of cities throughout the country. This renders small states pretty much worthless in a popular election system. Furthermore, every presidential candidate has limited time and limited resources to campaign. Now that means that the best bang-for-the-buck would be targeting the high density urban areas where each dollar has the potential to earn more votes. This is the problem our founding fathers understood when they decided to implement a electoral college. Additionally, Republican candidates would pretty much abandon the heartland and rural areas altogether to join the Democrats in the hunt for every last urban vote. The idea is counterintuitive to me because the electoral college allows for every state to matter to a certain degree. Yes, some states have recently been more of focal point because of their "swing" status but overall each candidate still campaigns a broader campaign to win votes. Through a national popular vote, we are basically implementing another "numbers" game where 270 is replaced by 50 Million or whatever creates a majority. A candidate can now just work on adding the numbers of each major city ie x-million in NY, y-million in LA, z-million in Chi etc... Pretty much the rest of the country is ignored beyond the top 20 most populated urban areas. Again Bush would go to California and try to sway votes from urban areas because he is already getting the rural area near Sacramento and in northern California. Obama would simply continue to campaign in larger cities because he gets more votes per dollar spent. You can say goodbye to small town hall meetings and rallies when a better investment would be a major citywide campaign.
Yes, that's my point, Obama won 53% and yet only took 2/3 of the electoral college! Do you realize that when Republicans have taken 53% of the popular vote they usually collect 80% of the electorate? In 1984 Regan took 59% of the national vote and 98% of the electorate. That's because national trends get repeated across states for the most part. But when an election is really close, things get skewy. In a head to head match-up in this generation, a Democrat can not win a presidency with 48% of the vote. There's no way to do it. But a Republican can and did it in 2000. Think about it - under what scenario could that happen? You think a Democrat could win Texas and yet lose the popular vote? That's not going to happen. But a republican can lose all the big blue states, like New york, california, illnois, and lose Florida and Pennsylvania and yet still find a way to win because they get a bonus for the number of states they win. Most of the states in the U.S. are small red states. Because you get more electoral votes per popular vote there that gives the advantage over a democrat which is going electoral votes from big population numbers. Think of what happens also if it's meaningful for New Yorkers to vote - you'd get a few million more democrats showing up which would pad the democrat popular vote but do nothing for their electoral count. Republicans on the other hand....even if the red states came out more in droves - there's just less people in the red states. This country is actually center left, but politically it's center right because of the electoral college and the way congress is built.
I see your point on that now. Republicans nowadays can still win the EC w/o winning the popular vote, but Democrats must win the popular vote in order to win the EC. That seems true in the current state of the nation...but that just seems like the system is favorable to the Republicans, not that a popular vote system would be favorable to the Dems. For all the supposed New York Dems that would come out of the wood work to vote, there is also a big state Republican to match. The state with the most Repiblucans in the union is California. And as for many claiming this country as center-right, I think it's more than a structural thing. IMO, people mean "most voters in the USA consider themselves conservative leaning".
A lot of people don't vote in Blue states because they know their state will go Blue anyway. The only big red state is Texas. That's shocking. The dynamic is because conservatives tend to be in rural areas and liberals in urban ones. And most people do consider themselves conservative leaning but that's a tricky question. I consider myself to be conservative leaning as well for instance.
