Talk Elections

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact)

While wandering around Wikipedia, I found this pretty interesting initiative, or "how to get rid of the Electoral college without amending the constitution". Here I don't wont to start another Electoral College vs Popular Vote debate, we already have enough.
What I find interesting is having you opinion about whether or not it could realistically reach the 270 EVs necessary to become effective. Personally, I feel quite optimistical about that : More than 60% of citizens support it, five States have already passed it and 7 others could follow. The 270 EVs target isn't impossible to reach, and the procedure is far more simple than a Constitutional amendment : though a simple State bill.

What do you think ?

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=36980.0

It scares the hell out of me. Ideally, Congress would pass a law preventing this system.

If the electoral college must go, it would be better if we just abolished it. I won't support anything like this, however.

Well, but that one has no poll. :P



This would make no sense. States are sovereign to choose the way they elect their Electors, passsing a bill against that would mean ruining the ewhole meaning of the Electoral college (thus making it even more silly than it already is).

How exactly would a piece of legislation override the Constitution?

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I tend to support this, btw. Even if it'd make presidential elections less interesting.

Given that the Constitution says:
"No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

How can this compact be enforceable without Congressional consent?  It effectively takes away the electoral votes of states not part of the compact

Not at all. They still retain all the electoral votes they previously had.

Isn't that sort of what the current system is?  Each state's electoral votes going to the one with a plurality of the popular vote?

Read about it again....

There's a lot of doubt in me that this would work, but it could, given that the required number (271) be reached within the next ten years.

However, such a situation isn't really a big possibility, and I feel that these measures have only been taken due to the Gore fiasco in 2000.

In conclusion, it could work, but it's not really necessary.

This system wouldn't be activated until enough states with a combined majority of EVs ratify it. And once it gets ratified, it will essentially mean electing our President directly by PV. If this ever gets ratified and won't get overturned or ruled unconstitutional, except a formal repeal of the Electoral College to follow shortly afterwards. I don't see what's so scary about it, unless one of course supports the EC.

What bothers me is a popular vote without a runoff if no candidate reaches a majority. Non-parliamentary leadership posts, such as the President of France, face such a runoff. The EC provides for a runoff in the House. Even the constitutional amendment proposal of 1970 (Bayh-Cellar) to provide for direct election had a runoff provision is no candidate received 40%.

I'm not sure that a runoff of the type that Bayh and Cellar proposed is better than no runoff at all.

Anyways, no winning candidate has received less than 40% of PV since 1828.

Lincoln received 39.7% of the PV in 1860, and in 1828, Jackson won with 55.9%, not less than 40%.

Anyway, I think this system is wrong, because if it gets passed (which I doubt it will), the states that haven't signed the compact are going to be totally irrelevant to the election.

Incorrect, it changes absolutely nothing. Every state still retains their electoral votes and they are all able to distribute them as they see fit.

     While they do get to distribute them as they see fit, it seems rather disingenuous to me to say that it changes absolutely nothing. As Rochambeau pointed out, this would be essentially the same thing as replacing the electoral college with a nationwide popular vote; in other words, how the other states distribute their electoral votes would be rendered trivial. Maybe it wouldn't make a difference most of the time, but it would make a difference in elections like 2000.

Still, the system remains identical. Each state will have a method for determining electors (in this case a majority going to the natinoal popular vote). That doesn't make any state any more irrelevant that it already was.

     In theory the system remains identical. In practice it is being traded out for a nationwide popular vote, because the same system will now produce a result according to that criterion. It is like taking a soda machine outside of a gas station, stocking it with candy instead, & then insisting that the machine is identical & therefore nothing is changed.

     My point is that it may be the case that it in fact does not make any state any more or less relevant (though that seems highly doubtful). Any idea of the system remaining unchanged is a red herring, though.

^^^^

This is quite a convoluted solution to fixing quite a retarded problem. :P

You summed it up very well. ;)

Not any less relevant than states now that vote for the loser.

Actually, under this system, even a vote in Utah matters.

Aren't 35 of the states already irrelevant to the election already?

I wouldn't say that the states are irrelevant. You could claim that voters in states that are not competitive for a particular election may feel like they have less impact, but the EVs of the states certainly matter.

As for the non-signatory states, I would think that they would not be irrelevant either. They would be disenfranchised, since this is clearly a way to resolve a constitutional matter without amendment. That the compact has found a loophole that they believe can be exploited, does not make states who feel that the intent is otherwise feel any less disenfranchised.

The only reason why it's a "problem" is that it didn't let Gore win, and everyone knows that.

The real problem is how the states that form this compact still can't get over it, and just move on (it should be noted that all 5 states in this compact voted for Gore).

Actually, a majority of the American people/voters supported getting rid of the EC as early as the 1940s. Oh, and both candiadtes would have ran different campaigns in 2000 if the goal was to win the PV.

No, it's a problem because it's an outdated system made for an America 221 years ago, which is so different form the one today that it's not even funny. It's purpose is long gone. The last time it was even relevant was in the 1820s. What I mean by that, is since then, people started voting in every state (save South Carolina), and, the elector's job became one to cast a vote that was already predetermined. Not their original job of reviewing the candidates, and voting for the best interest of the country.

incorrect, it's a problem because it's stupid.

Again, the only reason why it's considered "stupid" (particularly, by the proponents of this bill) is that it prevented their candidate of choice from winning the presidency. We all know that no one was complaining about the electoral college before 2000, and in the (just as possible) event that Bush lost despite winning the popular vote, these same states would be the greatest proponents of the electoral college.

Nobody was complaining about the Electoral College before 2000 ? ::)
Everybody knows it's retarded since a Century, but the obviously the Status Quo is stornger than any evidence, so that for three times we allowed the American People to be governed by someone they didn't want. I find really disturbing that you accuse liberals of being partisan while you are the one defending an unfair system that allowed your candidate to win.

The main problem with using the popular vote is that we don't have a national ballot with voter registration requirements that are the same everywhere.  Granted, voter eligibility more uniform than it was even fifty years ago. much less than at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, but if ever want to go to the popular vote, we'd need to have it truly uniform.  The main problem with the electoral college can be solved by simply amending the Constitution so that the number of Electors each State gets is proportional to the umber of Representatives alone.

Thanks for paying attention :P

Perhaps we can say it like this, TC: The election of 2000 only highlighted a big problem that was bound to happen again in modern times eventually. I don't care one bit about Gore, it's just an inherently flawed system.

Here's what I propose. Have a national popular vote plan with weighted votes. All the voters vote as usual. However, the smallest state is the most important. Here's why: a state has 30,000,000 votes and the smallest state has 600,000 votes, this means that the smallest state has a voting power of 50. So, what do we do? Take any state and calculate its votes by dividing the state's votes by the smallest state's votes and you get a result. Now, each candidate "loses" its voting power by dividing its votes by the result and you get a weighted vote.

In state A, with 30,000,000 votes, you have the Democrat getting 18,000,000, the Republican getting 10,000,000 and the Independent 2,000,000. In state B, with 600,000 votes, the Republican gets 350,000, the Independent gets 150,000 and the Democrat gets 100,000. But, all the votes for state B, which is the smallest state of the country, stay the same. The other 49 states have less votes.  So, in state A, the Democrat gets 360,000, the Republican gets 200,000 and the Independent gets 40,000 votes. 

I don't see why underenfranchising voters is a good thing.

Indeed. It would just replace a system which indirectly violates the "one man one vote" principle with a system that blatantly violates it.

True, that's not my intention! We need the one man, one vote principle!

Except that with your system a vote from one Wyoming guy has 72 more weigh than one of a Californian.

What about nowadays? Don't the small states have more voting power than the large states? WY has 3 EV and CA has 55. That means that WY has 17 times more the voting power of CA.

If you correctly read my previous post, that's exactly what I said.

One would think that having a fair electoral system would be more important than drawing colorful maps...

Indeed. If I were a petty selfish political junkie, I'd obviously support the Electoral College. But I like to think I'm a political junkie who cares about justice.
Of course, Vander blubb has a valid point there. :P

That doesn't mean the fact that we have an electoral college (EC) instead of a national popular vote (NPV) doesn't affect elections in other ways.  Yes, it's true, the 2000 election was the first since 1888 where the winner of the NPV lost the EC, but in 2004 the winner of the NPV came within 60,000 votes of one state (Ohio) of losing the EC, and similar outcomes occurred in 1976 and 1960.  With the elections turning on just a couple of states like that, don't you think that means campaigners will tend to focus on those states more, to the detriment of "safe states"?

Indeed, even in elections that aren't so close, we still get a major emphasis in campaigning on these "swing states," where almost the entire focus of the campaign is just winning those few states, to the detriment of the voters of all others.  There is no incentive to try to turn out the vote in safe states.

Here's what has happened in recent elections:

http://archive.fairvote.org/tracker/?page=27&pressmode=showspecific&showarticle=230

http://www.america.gov/st/washfile-english/2007/August/20070820155635bpuh0.4478418.html

As for the Framers, a lot of them did favor an NPV system, but there was an issue with the southern states wanting representation for their free blacks and slaves, without having to let them vote:

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/elector1787.html

James Madison on his views at the Convention (he referred to himself in third person):


This is a good source on the issue:

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/electoralcoll.htm

True, it's a potential problem in that more extreme candidates could win with a small percentage of the vote in a 3 or 4 or more major candidate race, but such problems have rarely befallen governor's races, senate races, house races, state legislative races, etc. Every other election in the US almost without exception uses the popular vote, so I don't see how the Presidency is unique enough to need its own separate system of election.

And to the extent that it does need a unique system, I don't see what's so special about geographical boundaries on a map that makes that a better way of classifying the importance of one's vote as opposed to any other characteristic. Why not have each race, gender, religion, class, etc. have a certain number of electoral votes?

I think that the presidency is unique compared to other offices in the country. It's the top executive post, and as I point out many other countries recognize that it's wise to require the national executive to command a majority.

Parliamentary democracies don't have direct election of the prime minister, but do require a majority of member votes. The EC in many ways acts like a parliament electing a prime minister with a majority required. If that fails the top candidates face a runoff in Congress.

Just because FPTP is adequate for representative seats does not make it the best model for the chief executive. For those with concerns about the extra election cycle, a modern runoff can use IRV to accomplish the same goal without the extra cycle.

Mass becomes the 6th state to join this unconstitutional compact, the 6 states account for 73 of the 270 EV needed to bring the compact into force.

Good, if only California could join them they'd be almost at the half of their path. :)

I wonder how they would feel about their electors going to a President-elect Palin :P

I've long thought the same thing, but applied to a situation where Obama might lose in 2012. Would IL really be willing to see its electors go against the favorite son?

In a right world, any State should be willing to "give" his electors to the candidate the people has chosen.

No, the notion of electors is akin to delegates at a convention or members within a parliament. People elect those delegates from individual constituencies to represent themselves, not to represent the whole of the public outside the constituency. A delegate at a nominating convention is there to vote for the candidate supported by a majority in the district - particularly on the first ballot. A parliamentary member would be expected to not vote for another party's prime minister, even though a majority of the nation supported that other party.

My point is that even if the legislature has determined that they want to select electors based on the popular vote, many in the public will feel cheated if they didn't get to see their electors reflect the will of the public in their state. I would anticipate that this feeling would be stronger when a candidate is from that state.

Maybe, but the Presidential election isn't a legislative election. The Electoral College isn't a permanent body with legislative power, it's made simply for the sake of electing the President. And I don't see why the people shouldn't be able to choose its president directly. The reason given by founding fathers made sense at the time, as the people probably wasn't mature enough for direct democracy, and electors could be a mitigating factor. But now, there aren't anymore : they simply reflect the will of the people in their State. Or more exactly they unexactly represent the will of a more or less great plurality of the voters of each State. What's the point of that ?

And my answer remains that a directly elected president should come with a majority vote requirement and a runoff of the top two in case of no majority. Either the system is modeled on delegate selection like the current EC, or it should be a true majority vote system like France. I find the NPVIC to be the worst of both worlds.

NPVIC is inperfect, but still a progress compared to the current electoral college. But once it will be passed, I'd not be surprised than after a couple of decades an Amendment establishing national popular vote will be ratified, probably with a runoff provision.

Well, this would need to solved with education. If the NPVIC comes into effect, then electoral votes are purely symbolic.

There is a fair amount of speculation that an Obama-Palin contest in 2012 would encourage Bloomberg to jump in and spend a billion or two.  Bloomberg could possibly win several states perhaps NY, NJ, CT, FL, and/or CA. This might result in no candidate getting 270 EV which, under the 12th amendment, would then send the election to the House.  However, if the National Popular Vote Compact had passed, then the 12th amendment would never come into play.  Thus this multi-state law would render a Constitutional Amendment null and void.
States can not avoid the Constitution by joint laws, hence it would seem the National Popular Vote Compact would be quickly judged unconstitutional.

So much stupidity in one post...

Since you bother posting the same thing twice, I will too.