Thompson, along with former Illinois governor Jim Edgar (R) and former Iowa governor Chet Culver (D) are part of a bipartisan coalition that has endorsed the National Popular Vote that would go into effect if states representing 270 electoral votes pass legislation.
The National Popular Vote bill has been signed into law in seven states — Maryland, Hawaii, Washington, Illinois, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Vermont and the District of Columbia — representing 29 percent of the necessary votes for the compact to go into effect.
I’m very disappointed that he seems so unaware of the purpose of the Electoral College, and is so willing to subvert the Constitution.
But he still would have been a better president than Barack Obama.
Maybe he’s planning on moving to CA or NY so he get the benefit from such a plan? Or maybe it’s a stroke?
The biggest problem I see with a national popular vote is Florida 2000 being repeated on a nation wide basis, complicated by each state having different standards for election procedures and equipment. So not a bad idea in concept, but overwhelming practical complications.
Very disappointing (is he a pod person now?) Next we’ll have internet voting but only republican votes will be validated. After all, everybody in the world should have a say… it’s only fair.
You’re a racist if you say otherwise.
The Constitution in its wisdom lets states choose their electors, and NPV is an example of states doing just that.
A national popular vote tie would not be any messier than Florida 2000 — it’d be another jump ball for the Supreme Court to decide — and it would be much less likely to occur. Ties are more likely on the state level, and in a close election there will be multiple states where a tie would throw the result in doubt.
I think the point is that federalism was specifically chosen by the founders to allow for greater regional diversity. This was seen, in part, as a hedge against “tyranny of the majority.” Fred needs to reread the Federalist Papers.
Actually, this bill would’ve turned election 2000 into chaos, if not a low-level civil war. It would mean that the electoral votes of the other 49 states would swing depending on who their state legislature thought should have won a couple counties in Florida.
When the Florida and US Supreme Courts ruled on the issue, their standards were whether the recounts were appropriate or unfairly targeted, etc. Long after the election had been decided, a group of newspapers conducted their own analysis and found that only one disallowed scenario could’ve put Al Gore in office.
Now imagine the situation under the popular vote bill, where the popular vote is very close and a dispute arises in Florida. Who gets to decide the winner? Well, each and every state legislature or governor based on their personal preference of what to believe about those missing chads in Florida.
Republican legislatures would conclude that Bush had won, Democrat legislatures would claim Gore had won, and the election would be decided by which party has control of more state houses. It would have nothing to do with either the winner of the election in any particular state (even Florida) or who really won the popular vote, which can’t be reliably determined to that accuracy.
But it gets worse! If the Republican legislatures start to swing ahead, Chicago will find a truckload of heretofore overlooked ballots and immediately certify them. So will St. Louis, Philadelphia, DC, and Boston. Suddenly even small, highly partisan non-battleground, non-disputed states can get into the act and swing national elections, just by cranking out fraudulent ballots and registering every carved name in Arlington.
It hands power to most corrupt cities and districts in the nation, since any oversight will be at the state level (and a Blogo will swear a Rham Emanuel really is finding ever more truckloads of uncounted ballots), and makes all those corrupt local officials important at the national level, with expectations of massive rewards.
Under our current system perhaps only a few districts or states turn out to be critically impoirtant in a near tie, and that is usually discovered after the fact, but under this proposed system every district might be critically important, with their importance determined by how many fraudulant votes they can generate and how many valid ones they can supress. Since states set their own standards regarding absentee ballots and the like, who knows how far they’ll go?
Would all Democrat legislatures immediately grant all felons the right to vote and start busing people directly from the prisons to the polls?
I’ll give one strange argument in favor of our current system. If a monster snow storm blankets the North East on election day, would Democrats really want the outcome determined by the fact that their core region couldn’t get to the polls? At present, such a storm would supress local turnout in proportion to the local voter demographics, so instead of 30,000,000 to 15,000,000 for the Dems, it would be 15,000,000 to 7,500,000 for the Dems, yet having no effect on the electoral college vote. But the storm cost them 7.5 million in the popular vote, putting a Republican in office merely because local weather conditions affected turnout rates in a way that created an invalid statistical sample of voter preferences.
Would these people really elect Pat Robertson because he turned aside a hurricane? Would Democrats blame their snow-storm induced loss on global
warmingclimate disruption and claim it was a plot by Big Oil?Aside from the small state, large state issues, if the Founding Fathers had thought direct election was a good idea, they’d have trivially written it into Article II. They could’ve simply assigned a popular vote weighting factor for small states, but perhaps they knew a thing or two about hijinks, corruption, and vast geographic differences in how easy it is to get to the polls. City folks stroll down the block. Hill folks walk uphill both ways five miles through the mud, while keeping an eye out for Indian attack. How best to ensure regional and state-wide variations in voter turn-out (bad statistical sampling) more closely reflects the preferences of all the citizens?
Its simple. When the Founders went on television to announce the Constitution, there intent was that presidential candidates would required to campaign in all 57 states . . .
Ladies and gentlemen, tonight’s “Genius Comment Award” goes to Paul Malenkovic.
Well the Constitution is like a hundred years old. People can’t understand the archaic language.
Here’s a quick thought. What are the residents of _insert_state_here going to do to seek legal redress when their state overwhelmingly votes for candidate A but their electors all vote for candidate B?
Given my previous hypothetical where the election winner is picked by state legislatures, and that its those same state legislators who are voting for this measure, shouldn’t the headline read “State politicians of both parties vote for bipartisan measure to give state politicians absolute power to decide all Presidential elections”?
Sounds like the ERA of the ’10s.
Ann Coulter said it was a mistake to give women the vote and was against Fred. Here I was doubting her lately. This is what DC does to people.
The Electoral College is the set of electors who vote for presidential candidates. Under the current presidential election system, 48 states award all of their electors to the winners of their state.
There is nothing in the Constitution that requires states to allow their citizens to vote for president, much less award all their electoral votes based upon the vote of their citizens.
The presidential election system we have today is not in the Constitution. State-by-state winner-take-all laws to award Electoral College votes, are an example of state laws eventually enacted by states, using their exclusive power to do so, AFTER the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, Now our current system can be changed by state laws again.
Unable to agree on any particular method, the Founding Fathers left the choice of method for selecting presidential electors exclusively to the states by adopting the language contained 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.
The current system of electing the president ensures that the candidates, after the primaries, do not reach out to all 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. The reason for this is the state-by-state winner-take-all method (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.
Presidential candidates concentrate their attention on only a handful of closely divided “battleground” states and their voters. In the 2012 election, pundits and campaign operatives agree already, that, at most, only 14 states and their voters will matter. None of the 10 most rural states will matter, as usual. Almost 75% of the country will be ignored –including 19 of the 22 lowest population and medium-small states, and 17 medium and big states like CA, GA, NY, and TX. This will be more obscene than the 2008 campaign,, when 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 (OH, FL, PA, and VA). In 2004, candidates concentrated over 2/3rds of their money and campaign visits in 5 states; over 80% in 9 states; and over 99% of their money in 16 states.
2/3rds of the states and people have been merely spectators to the presidential elections.
Policies important to the citizens of ‘flyover’ states are not as highly prioritized as policies important to ‘battleground’ states when it comes to governing.
Because of the state-by-state winner-take-all electoral votes laws in 48 states, a candidate can win the Presidency without winning the most popular votes nationwide. This has occurred in 4 of the nation’s 56 (1 in 14 = 7%) presidential elections. The precariousness of the current state-by-state winner-take-all system is highlighted by the fact that a shift of a few thousand votes in one or two states would have elected the second-place candidate in 4 of the 13 presidential elections since World War II. Near misses are now frequently common. There have been 6 consecutive non-landslide presidential elections (1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, and 2008). A shift of 60,000 votes in Ohio in 2004 would have defeated President Bush despite his nationwide lead of over 3 million votes.
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 National Popular Vote bill is a state-based approach. It preserves the Electoral College and state control of elections. It changes the way electoral votes are awarded in the Electoral College. It assures that every vote is equal and that every voter will matter in every state in every presidential election, as in virtually every other election in the country.
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.
Under the National Popular Vote bill, all the electoral votes from all the states that have enacted the bill would be awarded, as a bloc, to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The bill would take effect only when enacted by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes — that is, enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538). The bill would thus guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes.
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.
States have the responsibility to make their voters relevant in every presidential election. 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.
The 2000 presidential election was an artificial crisis created because of Bush’s lead of 537 popular votes in Florida. Gore’s nationwide lead was 537,179 popular votes (1,000 times larger). Given the miniscule number of votes that are changed by a typical statewide recount (averaging only 274 votes), no one would have requested a recount or disputed the results in 2000 if the national popular vote had controlled the outcome. Indeed, no one (except perhaps almanac writers and trivia buffs) would have cared that one of the candidates happened to have a 537-vote margin in Florida.
Anyone concerned about the relative power of big states and small states should realize that the current system shifts power from voters in the small and medium-small states to voters in a handful of big states.
Under National Popular Vote, when every vote counts equally, successful candidates will 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.
Support for a national popular vote is strong in every smallest state surveyed in recent polls among Republican voters, Democratic voters, and independent voters, as well as every demographic group. Support in smaller states (3 to 5 electoral votes): Alaska — 70%, DC — 76%, Delaware –75%, Idaho – 77%, Maine — 77%, Montana – 72%, Nebraska — 74%, New Hampshire –69%, Nevada — 72%, New Mexico — 76%, Oklahoma – 81%, Rhode Island — 74%, South Dakota – 71%, Utah – 70%, Vermont — 75%, and West Virginia – 81%, and Wyoming – 69%.
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, Hawaii, and Vermont.
The 11 most populous states contain 56% of the population of the United States, but under the current system, a candidate could win the Presidency by winning a mere 51% of the vote in just these 11 biggest 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 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. With the current system all of a state’s electoral votes are awarded to the candidate who receives a bare plurality of the votes in each state. The sheer magnitude of the national popular vote number, compared to individual state vote totals, is much more robust against manipulation.
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?”
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). The recent Washington Post, Kaiser Family Foundation, and Harvard University poll shows 72% support for direct nationwide election of the President. Support is strong in virtually every state, partisan, and demographic group surveyed iin recent polls in closely divided battleground states: CO– 68%, 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%, ME — 77%, NE — 74%, NH –69%, NV — 72%, NM — 76%, RI — 74%, and VT — 75%; in Southern and border states: AR –80%, KY — 80%, MS –77%, MO — 70%, NC — 74%, and VA — 74%; and in other states polled: CA — 70%, CT — 74% , MA — 73%, MN – 75%, NY — 79%, WA — 77%, and WV- 81%.
Most voters don’t care whether their presidential candidate wins or loses in their state . . . they care whether he/she wins the White House. Voters want to know, that even if they were on the losing side, their vote actually was directly and equally counted and mattered to their candidate. Most Americans consider the idea of the candidate with the most popular votes being declared a loser detestable. We don’t allow this in any other election in our representative republic.
The National Popular Vote bill has passed 31 state legislative chambers, in 21 small, medium-small, medium, and large states, including one house in AR (6), CT (7), DE (3), DC (3), ME (4), MI (17), NV (5), NM (5), NY (31), NC (15), and OR (7), and both houses in CA (55), CO (9), HI (4), IL (21), NJ (15), MD (10), MA(12), RI (4), VT (3), and WA (11). The bill has been enacted by DC, Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, Vermont, and Washington. These eight jurisdictions possess 77 electoral votes — 29% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect.
See http://www.NationalPopularVote.com
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, along district lines (as has been the case in Maine and Nebraska), or national lines (as with the National Popular Vote).
The National Popular Vote bill would end the disproportionate attention and influence of the “mob” in a handful of closely divided battleground states, such as Florida, while the “mobs” of the vast majority of states are ignored. 98% of the 2008 campaign events involving a presidential or vice-presidential candidate occurred in just 15 closely divided “battleground” states. Over half (57%) of the events were in just four states (Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and Virginia). Similarly, 98% of ad spending took place in these 15 “battleground” states.
The current system does not provide some kind of check on the “mobs.” There have been 22,000 electoral votes cast since presidential elections became competitive (in 1796), and only 10 have been cast for someone other than the candidate nominated by the elector’s own political party. The electors are dedicated party activists of the winning party who meet briefly in mid-December to cast their totally predictable votes in accordance with their pre-announced pledges.
Ugh, activist spammer crapping on every site on the net.
The National Popular Vote, if it is ever passed (which it won’t be) will function exactly once. When a state that went for one candidate by a significant degree casts its votes for another presidential candidate the statute will become toxic in that state and be withdrawn.
Finally, toto, you are an idiot.
And it won’t accomplish what it intends. Since New Hampshire’s electoral votes will go to whoever wins the most popular votes, and since the most popular votes are going to come from New York, Boston, Chicago, LA, Houston, Dallas, Miami, and Seattle, why would any politician waste time in the boonies?
At present the voters of New Hampshire get to decide how to cast their state’s disproportionate number of electoral votes. Under the proposed system they wouldn’t even be consulted.
Actually, this bill would’ve turned election 2000 into chaos, if not a low-level civil war. It would mean that the electoral votes of the other 49 states would swing depending on who their state legislature thought should have won a couple counties in Florida.
No. In 2000 the candidates were over 500,000 votes apart in the popular vote (which is what NPV looks at), so there would have been no question about the outcome.
Note: if NPV had been the law in 2000 the candidates would have run very different campaigns, and we’ll never know how it would have turned out. But Florida 2000 and the Franken-Coleman Senate race do illustrate that very close elections are much more likely in a single state than in the nation as a whole (by the principle that a tie becomes less likely the larger the total number of votes).
When a state that went for one candidate by a significant degree casts its votes for another presidential candidate the statute will become toxic in that state and be withdrawn.
No one knows or cares who the electors are or who they vote for. Can you name any of the electors from your state?
The morning after the first NPV election the papers will say “X wins presidency” because X got the most votes, and people will move on to the sports page. It’s only when the winner of the popular vote doesn’t win the office that there’s controversy, and NPV prevents that.
Since New Hampshire’s electoral votes will go to whoever wins the most popular votes, and since the most popular votes are going to come from New York, Boston, Chicago, LA, Houston, Dallas, Miami, and Seattle, why would any politician waste time in the boonies?
Today the situation is reversed: most votes come from New York, California, Texas, etc., but why would any politician waste time on them since those states’ electoral votes aren’t in play? The electoral college makes voters in non-swing states (whether they are small or large, urban or rural) utterly irrelevant.
This is great for Ohio, Florida, and a few others (including New Hampshire), but it’s arbitrary and serves no positive purpose. Citizens’ votes in a Presidential election should have equal value.
Citizens’ votes in a Presidential election should have equal value.
It was never intended that the citizens vote for president. The president was supposed to be elected by the states.
Unable to agree on any particular method, the Founding Fathers left the choice of method for selecting presidential electors exclusively to the states by adopting the language contained 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.”
All men are created equal, but by the time they’re old enough to vote some are decidedly more stupid than others.
Representative republic only works if you choose properly.
I think the popularity of the EC system among Republicans and conservatives is truly bizarre. Regardless of the theoretical advantages of the EC, in practice today the system is broken and in danger of generating awful results.
True enough the EC prevented that lunatic Al Gore from seizing the presidency in 2000, but who knows how the popular vote could have turned out without the distortions the EC forces upon a presidential campaign?
Look what almost happened in 2004. If 100,000 Ohio votes went the wrong way John Kerry could have become president despite Kerry losing the popular vote by 4%!
Not only does the EC system drive candidacies to pander to crooked local interests such a ethanol and crop subsidies, it drives candidates to focus all their energies on the handful of voters in ‘swing states’ and ignore the rest of the U.S. population.
So what if the Democrats are mad for bringing a popular vote system into being for electing president. Just because they want it doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing. Hell maybe we can even con them into giving something else up so they get a popular vote system. How about a line-item veto amendment?
it drives candidates to focus all their energies on the handful of voters in ‘swing states’ and ignore the rest of the U.S. population.
Are you aware you just said the Electoral College system drives candidates to focus all their energies on the most centrist and independent voters in regions of the country where partisan allegiance is most evenly balanced and both party’s values must be understood and addressed, and ignore the committed wingnuts and True Believers on either side who would vote for Their Guy even if he was a snake and the opposition St. Peter?
And you see this as a problem? A more direct mob rule by whomever can program the largest number of zombies is preferable?
Geez. Why don’t you get yourself a pair of handcuffs, strip naked, get a number tattooed on your ass, and put yourself on the block? At least if you sell yourself to one master instead of 105 million, you have a chance of appealing to his humanity.
Carl, I’m pretty shocked at your needless personal attack and rant. Cool off.
The simple fact is the brutal math of the Electoral College forces candidates to campaign in States where the vote is fairly close. And just because a State has a close vote doesn’t mean it’s full of sensible non-partisan moderate voters. It’s bizarre you would ever come to such a conclusion.
Do you really believe that Florida, Ohio, and Virginia are filled with human virtue while Texas and California are full of nuts? How shallow.
It’s absurd that the numerous conservatives of California, such as in the San Diego area, or the numerous liberals of Texas, such as in the Austin area, are ignored and their votes don’t even matter because of the absurdities of the Electoral college. Those are the disenfranchised people you accuse of being wingnuts and true believers. How shameful.
But the most dangerous aspect of the Electoral College is the temptation it provides for voter fraud. At the scale of the national level popular vote, successful voter fraud is virtually impossible to pull off. But with the Electoral College, all it might take is a few thousand (or even less) votes acquired through fraud or bribery in a single State to swing an entire national election. Just look at the election of 1960.
“A more direct mob rule by whomever can program the largest number of zombies is preferable?”
Zombies? Really? Is that your opinion of the American voter? You might as well bow down to a King then, since any belief in popular sovereignty has died in you.
It was never intended that the citizens vote for president.
Nor was it intended that there be political parties. But we have parties, and citizens do vote for president. But most of them are ignored by the candidates because they don’t happen to live in one of a few battleground states.
The simple fact is the brutal math of the Electoral College forces candidates to campaign in States where the vote is fairly close. And just because a State has a close vote doesn’t mean it’s full of sensible non-partisan moderate voters. It’s bizarre you would ever come to such a conclusion.
And if the national popular vote ever gets implemented. They’ll only have to campaign in a handful of major metropolitan areas. Forget states, and long live the city-states. You idiots can decry battleground states getting attention, but if you get your way; then the only places getting attention will be New York, Chicago, LA, San Francisco, Phoenix, Houston, Dallas, Philadelphia, and of course Washington DC. If you live in a town with less than a million votes, too bad. If you are in a rural area, who will care? (until the city states run out of food)
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 obscurely far down as Arlington, TX) is only 19% of the population of the United States.
Suburbs and exurbs often vote Republican.
Evidence as to how a nationwide presidential campaign would be run, can be found by examining the way presidential candidates campaign to win the electoral votes of closely divided battleground states, such as in Ohio and Florida, under the state-by-state winner-take-all methods. The big cities in those battleground states do not receive all the attention, much less control the outcome. Cleveland and Miami certainly did not receive all the attention or control the outcome in Ohio and Florida in 2000 and 2004.
Because every vote is equal inside Ohio or Florida, presidential candidates avidly seek out voters in small, medium, and large towns. The itineraries of presidential candidates in battleground states (and their allocation of other campaign resources in battleground states) reflect the political reality that every gubernatorial or senatorial candidate in Ohio and Florida already knows–namely that when every vote is equal, the campaign must be run in every part of the state.
Even 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 Los Angeles cannot control statewide elections in California, it can hardly control a nationwide election.
In fact, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland together cannot control a statewide election in California.
Similarly, Republicans dominate Texas politics without carrying big cities such as Dallas and Houston.
There are numerous other examples of Republicans who won races for governor and U.S. Senator in other states that have big cities (e.g., New York, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts) without ever carrying the big cities of their respective states. It is certainly true that the biggest cities in those states typically vote Democratic. However, the suburbs, exurbs, small towns, and rural parts of the states often voted Republican. If big cities controlled the outcome of elections, the governors and U.S. Senators would be Democratic in virtually every state with a significant city.
Under a national popular vote, every vote everywhere will be equally important politically. There will be nothing special about a vote cast in a big city or big state. When every vote is equal, candidates of both parties will seek out voters in small, medium, and large towns throughout the states in order to win. A vote cast in a big city or state will be equal to a vote cast in a small state, town, or rural area.
If you are in a rural area, who will care?
Nobody cares today, because most rural areas are in states that reliably vote one way (Wyoming) or another (Vermont). Under NPV those voters would start to matter, and campaigns would target them. Maybe not with campaign appearances, but with TV, radio, newspaper and Internet advertising, grassroots organizing, phone banks, etc. A Republican candidate would, for the first time, care about how he was polling in solid-red states, and a Democrat would care whether he was winning a blue state by 10 points or by 20.
A vote in Wyoming should matter as much as one in Ohio.
None of the 10 most rural states (VT, ME, WV, MS, SD, AR, MT, ND, AL, and KY) is a battleground state.
The current state-by-state winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes does not enhance the influence of rural states, because the most rural states are not battleground states.
Carl, I’m pretty shocked at your needless personal attack and rant. Cool off.
Heavens, that wasn’t a personal attack but more of a light ribbing. When you get personally attacked by the Pham Punishment Squad you’ll know it. The tire marks all up and down your shattered spine will clue you in, as will the coyotes gnawing at your entrails.
just because a State has a close vote doesn’t mean it’s full of sensible non-partisan moderate voters.
Sensible, no. Nobody has a sure-fire test for sensibility in voters. But, yeah, a close vote certainly does imply the state is full of moderate voters, or at least equally balanced between partisan voters squaring off over issues that have deep significance to both sides. Unless you’re an innumerate idiot. Whoopsie! Sorry about the “personal attack.” It just slipped out. A cool compress may help…
It’s absurd that the numerous conservatives of California, such as in the San Diego area, or the numerous liberals of Texas, such as in the Austin area, are ignored
No it’s not. It’s what happens in a republic. Only God knows when each sparrow falls, and can make sure every last person of whatever soi-disant label isn’t tragically ignored. Here on Earth, governing choices must be made and, sadly, some voters will indeed have their tender wishes ignored and their dreams of hope ‘n’ change cruelly crushed.
I personally believe the greatest bastion of liberty in the United States is federalism — the fact that states must compete for my allegiance, because I can freely move to another state any time, and the states collectively have very limited power to coerce my behaviour.
I don’t want to be governed by a national majority any more than I’d like to be governed by a world majority, e.g. by the UN.
I want to be governed by the smallest possible state — ideally a “state” consisting of just myself, but that’s impractical — and I want the freedom to move to whatever state I find most congenial.
If I’m a conservative in California, which as it happens I am, I would rather move to Texas if I can’t stand the California Way any more, than hope to band together with other conservatives in Austin and attempt to enforce the Texas way on everyone. Believe it or not, I respect Jim’s right to live in the delusional Worker’s Paradise he believes is just one more try from being finally realized by the Magic Negro. Live and let live, I say. Let Jim take over California if he can and I’ll move to Texas when the youngest graduates, and we’ll agree — admittedly this is a sticking point currently — not to try to force our values on each other through the Federal government.
Zombies? Really? Is that your opinion of the American voter?
Not exactly. “Morons” or “Self-centered clueless idiots” is closer to the mark, as a short characterization of my opinion of the average American voter.
You might as well bow down to a King then
Gladly, if I could pick the king. As it happens, however, I recognize the brutal fact o’ life that all the rest of you feel the same way, and you might pick kings I would really hate. So I am reluctantly willing to compact with the rest of you clowns to not have a king, or rather allow each man to be his own king, within his own castle — those of his concerns that don’t strongly affect anyone else — to the greatest possible extent. If we absolutely must decide something as a group, we agree that no one should have a bigger say than anyone else, and we agree to use the least possible central coercion to achieve the narrowest contrual of our aims. It’s called liberty. A very refreshing drink. You should try it.
Nobody cares today,
Geez, Jim, how can you be so wrong? Iowa? Colorado? South Carolina? New Mexico? Duh. You’re right that most sparsely-settled states tend to vote Republican — something in the water, I believe, or possibly the deep blue wide-open sky — and so aren’t “battleground” states. But that’s a mere historical accident, and no fact o’ nature.
A vote in Wyoming should matter as much as one in Ohio.
I see you’re unhappy about the existence of the Senate, then. Also the Bil of Rights, huh? Why should the vote of one man, a property owner, matter more in the decision of what to do with his home than the votes of millions of others who’d like to see a new shopping mall built there? Undemocratic!
12 of the 13 lowest population states (3-4 electoral votes) 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.