To the left, a feature, not a bug.
De Toqueville wept.
(h/t Carin)
Search
Archive Calendar
| M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | ||||
| 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 |
| 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
| 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | |
Archives
Categories
- A Government That Can Force You to Buy Health Insurance Can Make You Do Anything (3)
- a protein wisdom philosophy primer (3)
- academics (25)
- armadillo (8)
- Friday Fiction 100 Word Challenge (51)
- from the protein wisdom conceptual series (136)
- identity politics (33)
- If Republicans Win the Senate in 2014 (1)
- in which celebraties comment on current events (67)
- language / intentionalism (88)
- legal (6)
- My brief conversations with inanimate objects (130)
- NSA / FISA (46)
- One Term to Serve, the 2012 Revival (6)
- Overheard in a Fallujah bunker (27)
- Poems from 196x, Revised by the Ghost of Richard Brauti (27)
- protein wisdom's DNC coverage (30)
- protein wisdom's RNC coverage (29)
- protein wisdom: the movie Lists (20)
- Provocateurism (16)
- real-time empirical observations (51)
- red pills found behind the sofa cushions (42)
- Scenes from my driveway (61)
- Talking back to 80s music (41)
- The Martha Stewart Chronicles (58)
- The protein wisdom interviews (10)
- The protein wisdom original poems (142)
- Uncategorized (20,046)
- Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, abridged (34)
Recent Comments
- In The Mailbox: 02.28.23 (Afternoon Edition) : The Other McCain on Hey, longtime pw readers…
- In The Mailbox: 12.23.22 : The Other McCain on Patrick J. Carroll truly IS a sad, embittered psychopath
- Danger on Patrick J. Carroll might be a psychopath
- Danger on Patrick J. Carroll might be a psychopath
- In The Mailbox: 07.18.22 : The Other McCain on Patrick J. Carroll might be a psychopath
Seriously. When 45 states secede from the United States of New York and California, what are the socialists going to do for money?
print more
Ask Solzhenitsyn.
This may be a stupid question, but wouldn’t it take a constitutional amendment to end the electoral college?
California might remember they have a shitload of oil off of the coast and start drilling again. But they’d have to shoot all the enviromentalists first.
“”The real essence of the issue is in a democracy the person that gets the most number of votes should win. And everybody’s vote should count equally,” Golisano said. “When you have the winner-take-all rule that you have in the Electoral College, all the votes don’t count equally. So that’s why I’m involved.”
there’s the problem. helps to know what type of gov’t you live under.
Lee, it would, unless you made an end run around the EC by having the legislatures of the resepective states pass laws requiring that their electors be instructed cast the ballots of their states for the winner of the nation-wide popular vote.
The state plans would only impact how they deliver their electoral votes, so no. They basically say that all their EV’s go to the popular vote winner. The EC would still technically exist, but would be rendered moot if everyone did this. Which they won’t.
Sad but true: the only majority that ultimately counts is the one with more guns and the will to use them. Government is force.
Stupid question 1) Is De Tocqueville a surname or part of a title?
Stupid question 2) Would Alexis weep or would he be more likely to snicker knowingly?
Stupid question 3) What would Montesquieu do?
If all the states did this, it would be terrible.
If only a handful of states did this – and those early adopting states would have to be monumentally stupid – it could be quite hillarious when California and New York would have given it’s electoral votes to Bush twice.
And then promptly changed their mind and repealed the law anyway.
Which they won’t.
It doesn’t matter whether or not every state does this. The threat is if enough states decide to do this. Given how these movement chip away a little bit at a time, the end is practically inevitable.
only a handful of states did this – and those early adopting states would have to be monumentally stupid – it could be quite hillarious when California and New York would have given it’s electoral votes to Bush twice.
How many more states need to join before that is moot? It’s wrong to look at it through the prism of past elections, because our entire process will look completely different if such a thing took effect.
Haven’t a few states already done this? Colorado I thought changed their winner take all system, didn’t they?
It’s not winner take all. It’s winner of the NATIONAL popular vote – no matter how your state voted.
So, If michigan joins,and goes for Huckabee, but the popular vote goes for Obama … michigan electors go to Obama.
How many more states need to join before that is moot?
A dozen or so.
That’s the threat of it. If you think there’s a credible threat of that – I don’t know.
But to the extent that 1 or 2 states decide to do this to ‘start the ball rolling’ all by themselves, I’m not terribly terribly worried.
1 or 2 states doing this by themselves would basically voluntarily bone the hell out of themselves and render themselves electorally impotent.
And my guess is, after a few years of that, their example will discourage other states from trying and eventually they’ll give it up themselves.
So… y’know.. if it’s Kentucky or Texas I’m against it. If Cali wants to give it a shot – alone – I will stay quiet and snicker.
But yeah – you get a dozen, maybe 2 dozen states on board and now you got a problem.
The only place I’ve seen this seriously proposed in was California. And they’re wacky enough to do it. I’m not sure many other states are wacky enough.
To that extent I’m all for a little laboratory democracy. My guess is after the next GOP POTUS or two they’ll switch back and you won’t hear a peep again for 20 years.
Because, if Cali was the only state to do this… Cali would have given all 50 or whatever of it’s electors to Bush twice. Which would have absolutely no practical effect on anything anyway – it’d just be funny.
A significant number of states adopting this plan would indeed fundementally change the whole structure of our national politics. Probably for the worse.
But some rogue kook state giving it the old college try (heh) would do nothing but make an ass of itself.
Nebrasaka and Maine employ proportional schemes One of ’em (NE, I think) awards EC votes by Congressional district (with the state-wide winner getting both Senate votes. Not sure what the other does. The only time the winner hasen’t taken all that I know of is when BHO got 1 of Nebraska’s electoral votes.
Carin, abolishing the EC just isn’t going to happen. The small states have no incentive to do it (they’d get even less attention than the get now. And the big states have no reason to do it. The big cities would probably like to do it because it would hugely magnify their influence.
The fact is that the electoral college doesn’t overturn the “popular will,” it magnifies it.
That’s why you have to look at this, also, and ask – who would be the first states?
If this is really something to worry over. Does anyone see Rhode Island hopping on board early? They’d have to be too daft. No candidate will ever do so much as fly over the state again.
Provincialism – which I usually find quite annoying and stupid – is a strong ally here. The pork barreling types from the smaller states (of which there are more of) will be instinctively against such a thing as well.
I’m just not seeing a very real danger of this going anywhere. It’s kind of a ‘grab some popcorn and laugh at the town idiot’ thing.
To be honestly, I’m offended by the existence of the movement. The founder of Paychex is going on some sort of national tour to build support. And, given how stupid people are … I worry.
Maine has I believe 3 votes, and 2… uh… ‘districts’ lets call them. Counties, whatever.
It awards them independantly, with 1 vote going to the winner of 1 district, 1 vote going to the winner of the other district, and 1 vote going to the statewide winner.
Usually these proposals include language to make sure they won’t go into effect until enough states put their heads in the nooses separately to make sure they all swing together.
There was some hulabaloo back in ’92 or whatever, that Ross Perot actually won 1 electoral vote. From Maine. He carried 1 county of it’s two, or else came damn close.
I don’t entirely recall if he actually got the vote, or if it was just real close and they told him to fuck off on the recount because they were busy washing their hair or walking their goldfish or something.
“It’s winner of the NATIONAL popular vote – no matter how your state voted. “
Oh. That’s bullshit.
May as well just declare that states are irrelevant then.
We could rename ourselves the Socialist Aggregate of America. Probably need a new flag that’s illegal to burn, too.
Having refreshed, let me add I’m of the same mind as Entropy @16.
Well, Carin, you wanna know how to kill it? Show all your democrat friends the infamous red-state, blue-state maps from ’00 and ’04 and wax rhapsodic about how great it would be if the Republican candidate could actually see all those votes for him in CA’s central valley reflected in the way the state proportions it’s electoral votes. And my, western PA is awfully red too, isn’t it?
The truth is that the Dems are well and truly fucked if the EC and winner take all goes the way of the dodo bird.
Carin, I’ll start worrying with you if this starts getting more serious.
But until and unless it does, I’ll opt out of pre-emptive worrying.
As Mark Twain said, I’ve seen a great many troubles in my life, most of which never happened.
This stuff isn’t novel. Such an unserious weak-tea movement as this has been around for decades at least (without checking), and I’d guess ever since they invented the electoral college, there’s been people too daft to comprehend it lobbying for a popular vote.
Stupid question 1) Is De Tocqueville a surname or part of a title?
Both. He was the son of the Comte (Count) de Tocqueville.
The truth is that the Dems are well and truly fucked if the EC and winner take all goes the way of the dodo bird.
Maybe at first, but not neccessarily.
Carin is right that this would alter the very structure of how we do national politics.
Most of those people in most of those places on that map are voting red. But the blues are concentrated. A candidate cannot canvas all that vast empty red, and he cannot round all those voters into an amphitheater.
On a retail politics level, when you remove the regional sort of federalism, it makes much more sense to go for the concentrated areas with the big popular vote payoff, and both candidates can much more safely totally ignore whole areas or regions with light population.
Now you’ve got a choice between 2 politicians who are both running for and pandering to the Chicago/New York/LA/Boston metro vote.
Pork will follow suite in the brave new world. Regional pol’s will still try to funnel pork into their own district to buy votes, but your POTUS type candidates will all be coming from those metro areas and funneling all the money into them, for maximum dollars-to-votes payoff. Likewise with ad campaigns and such. These things, in and of themselves, might not be the end of the world… since I’m generally opposed to the whole business in principle anyway. But given how politicians take from peter to pay paul, and we see now how the special interests fight over the carcass of the relatively few remaining tax payers, you can imagine how some poor hicks in remote nowheresville may as well be Ukrainian kulaks for what’ll happen.
But also, look at any state with a big city and note how many shenanigans go on in the city, and how the city’s precinct returns are always reported last, and how the most liberal of the precincts are the last of the last to report.
Now imagine 4AM, with 50,000,000 to 48,000,000, New York (or CA, or IL) comes in with 2,000,001 net for the dem. Even if it isn’t funny business, it’s bound to reek of it.
district to buy votes, but your POTUS type candidates will all be coming from those metro areas and funneling all the money into them, for maximum dollars-to-votes payoff. Likewise with ad campaigns and such. These things, in and of themselves, might not
Add that in with the trend toward Federal government power grab …and we’re fucked.
This particular movement has been around for a few years, and to me (at least) appears to be picking up steam.
Got this in my email today:
A national popular vote will turn the Nation Below Canada into Canada. Or France. End of story.
Jeff, go, drink their “free beer” and mock them. To their faces.
Oh yeah, definitely go. And bring a video recorder so we can watch.
Go gonzo!
It’s in DC, LTC John. Otherwise I most certainly would.
Drat. I would have loved to see you messin’ with them. Especially after a few free beers… Heh.
The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).
The bill preserves the Electoral College, while assuring that every vote is equal and that every voter will matter in every state in every presidential election.
Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections. Elections wouldn’t be about winning states. No more distorting and divisive red and blue state maps. Every vote, everywhere would be counted for and directly assist the candidate for whom it was cast. Candidates would need to care about voters across the nation, not just undecided voters in a handful of swing states.
In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). Support for a national popular vote is strong in virtually every state, partisan, and demographic group surveyed in recent polls in closely divided battleground states: CO– 68%, FL – 78%, IA –75%, MI– 73%, MO– 70%, NH– 69%, NV– 72%, NM– 76%, NC– 74%, OH– 70%, PA — 78%, VA — 74%, and WI — 71%; in smaller states (3 to 5 electoral votes): AK – 70%, DC – 76%, DE –75%, ID – 77%, ME — 77%, MT – 72%, NE — 74%, NH –69%, NV — 72%, NM — 76%, OK – 81%, RI — 74%, SD – 71%, UT – 70%, VT — 75%, WV – 81%, and WY – 69%; in Southern and border states: AR –80%, KY — 80%, MS –77%, MO — 70%, NC — 74%, OK – 81%, SC – 71%, VA — 74%, and WV – ‘81%; and in other states polled: CA — 70%, CT — 74% , MA — 73%, MN – 75%, NY — 79%, OR – 76%, and WA — 77%.
The bill has passed 31 state legislative chambers, in 21 small, medium-small, medium, and large states, including one house in AR, CT, DE, DC, ME, MI, NV, NM, NY, NC, and OR, and both houses in CA, CO, HI, IL, NJ, MD, MA ,RI, VT, and WA . The bill has been enacted by DC, HI, IL, NJ, MD, MA, and WA. These 7 states possess 74 electoral votes — 27% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect. Based on the current mix of states that have enacted the National Popular Vote compact, it will take about 25 states to reach the 270 electoral votes needed to activate the compact. Such a group of states would essentially represent a majority of the American people.
http://www.NationalPopularVote.com
In the 2012 election, pundits and campaign operatives already agree that only 14 states and their voters will matter under the current winner-take-all laws (i.e., awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in each state) used by 48 of the 50 states. Candidates will not care about 72% of the voters– voters in 19 of the 22 lowest population and medium-small states, and big states like California, Georgia, New York, and Texas. 2012 campaigning would be even more obscenely exclusive than 2008 and 2004. In 2008, candidates concentrated over 2/3rds of their campaign events and ad money in just 6 states, and 98% in just 15 states (CO, FL, IN, IA, MI, MN, MO, NV, NH, NM, NC, OH, PA, VA, and WI). Over half (57%) of the events were in just 4 states (Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and Virginia). 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. Voter turnout in the “battleground” states has been 67%, while turnout in the “spectator” states was 61%. Policies important to the citizens of ‘flyover’ states are not as highly prioritized as policies important to ‘battleground’ states when it comes to governing.
The bill would take effect only when enacted, in identical form, by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes–that is, enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538). When the bill comes into effect, all the electoral votes from those states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).
The Electoral College that we have today was not designed, anticipated, or favored by the Founding Fathers but, instead, is the product of decades of evolutionary change precipitated by the emergence of political parties and enactment by 48 states of winner-take-all laws, not mentioned, much less endorsed, in the Constitution.
The bill uses the power given to each state by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution to change how they award their electoral votes for president. It does not abolish the Electoral College. Historically, virtually all of the major changes in the method of electing the President, including ending the requirement that only men who owned substantial property could vote and 48 current state-by-state winner-take-all laws, have come about by state legislative action.
Under National Popular Vote, when every vote counts, successful candidates will continue to find a middle ground of policies appealing to the wide mainstream of America. Instead of playing mostly to local concerns in Ohio and Florida, candidates finally would have to form broader platforms for broad national support It would no longer matter who won a state.
Now political clout comes from being a battleground state.
Now with state-by-state winner-take-all laws presidential elections ignore 12 of the 13 lowest population states (3-4 electoral votes), that are almost invariably non-competitive, and ignored, in presidential elections. Six regularly vote Republican (Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, and South Dakota), and six regularly vote Democratic (Rhode Island, Delaware, Hawaii, Vermont, Maine, and DC) in presidential elections. Nine state legislative chambers in the lowest population states have passed the National Popular Vote bill. It has been enacted by the District of Columbia and Hawaii.
The 11 most populous states contain 56% of the population of the United States and a candidate would win the Presidency if 100% of the voters in these 11 states voted for one candidate. However, if anyone is concerned about this theoretical possibility, it should be pointed out that, under the current system, a candidate could win the Presidency by winning a mere 51% of the vote in these same 11 states — that is, a mere 26% of the nation’s votes.
With National Popular Vote, big states that are just about as closely divided as the rest of the country, would not get all of the candidates’ attention. In recent presidential elections, the 11 largest states have been split — five “red states (Texas, Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, and Georgia) and six “blue” states (California, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and New Jersey). Among the four largest states, the two largest Republican states (Texas and Florida) generated a total margin of 2.1 million votes for Bush, while the two largest Democratic states generated a total margin of 2.1 million votes for Kerry. 8 small western states, with less than a third of California’s population, provided Bush with a bigger margin (1,283,076) than California provided Kerry (1,235,659). The 11 southern states provided Bush with a bigger margin (4,653,558) than the 6 states with the largest Kerry vote margins (4,428,268) in 2004.
With National Popular Vote, big cities would not get all of candidates’ attention, much less control the outcome.. The population of the top five cities (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Philadelphia) is only 6% of the population of the United States and the population of the top 50 cities (going as far down as Arlington, TX) is only 19% of the population of the United States. Cleveland and Miami certainly did not receive all the attention or control the outcome in Ohio and Florida in 2000 and 2004. A “big city” only campaign would not win.
For example, in California state-wide elections, candidates for governor or U.S. Senate don’t campaign just in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and those places don’t control the outcome (otherwise California wouldn’t have recently had Republican governors Reagan, Dukemejian, Wilson, and Schwarzenegger). A vote in rural Alpine county is just an important as a vote in Los Angeles.
If the National Popular Vote bill were to become law, it would not change the need for candidates to build a winning coalition across demographics. Any candidate who yielded, for example, the 21% of Americans who live in rural areas in favor of a “big city” approach would not likely win the national popular vote. Candidates would still have to appeal to a broad range of demographics, and perhaps even more so, because the election wouldn’t be capable of coming down to just one demographic, such as voters in Ohio.
The current state-by-state winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes maximizes the incentive and opportunity for fraud. A very few people can change the national outcome by changing a small number of votes in one closely divided battleground state. Your argument is exactly backwards and simply wrong.
The potential for political fraud and mischief is not uniquely associated with either the current system or a national popular vote. In fact, the current system magnifies the incentive for fraud and mischief in closely divided battleground states because all of a state’s electoral votes are awarded to the candidate who receives a bare plurality of the votes in each state.
Under the current system, the national outcome can be affected by mischief in one of the closely divided battleground states (e.g., by overzealously or selectively purging voter rolls or by placing insufficient or defective voting equipment into the other party’s precincts). The accidental use of the butterfly ballot by a Democratic election official in one county in Florida cost Gore an estimated 6,000 votes ? far more than the 537 popular votes that Gore needed to carry Florida and win the White House. However, even an accident involving 6,000 votes would have been a mere footnote if a nationwide count were used (where Gore’s margin was 537,179). In the 7,645 statewide elections during the 26-year period from 1980 to 2006, the average change in the 23 statewide recounts was a mere 274 votes.
Senator Birch Bayh (D–Indiana) summed up the concerns about possible fraud in a nationwide popular election for President in a Senate speech by saying in 1979, “one of the things we can do to limit fraud is to limit the benefits to be gained by fraud. Under a direct popular vote system, one fraudulent vote wins one vote in the return. In the electoral college system, one fraudulent vote could mean 45 electoral votes, 28 electoral votes.”
Hendrik Hertzberg wrote: “To steal the closest popular-vote election in American history, you’d have to steal more than a hundred thousand votes . . .To steal the closest electoral-vote election in American history, you’d have to steal around 500 votes, all in one state. . . .
For a national popular vote election to be as easy to switch as 2000, it would have to be two hundred times closer than the 1960 election—and, in popular-vote terms, forty times closer than 2000 itself.
Which, I ask you, is an easier mark for vote-stealers, the status quo or N.P.V.[National Popular Vote]? Which offers thieves a better shot at success for a smaller effort?”
So cut out the fraud, not the reason we have a representative republic rather than a true democracy, and why the framers formed the electoral college in the first place.
I’ve seen those red state / blue state maps. And if you think all of those red states are going to agree to be ruled by the few blue states simply because the blue states stockpile client voters in the major city centers, you’ve got another think coming.
Talk to me about your National Popular Vote once the borders are effectively closed, we have politicians willing to check IDs to see if voters are actually eligible to vote, and so on. And then I’ll still tell you to get bent.
Jesus H. Christ. The election for president was never ever intended to by equal votes. Hell, the president isn’t even elected by the people –not even by The People esxcept as a last resort.