Wouldn't that just throw a monkey wrench...

[Yonivore]

...into the 2008 Presidential election.

Calif. plan could sway 2008 race (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070731/ap_on_el_pr/california_votes)

[DarkReign]

Well, if California does it, then every other state should as well.

Because as it stands, Republicans would win the Presidency every election if every state besides Maine, Nebraska and the gold mine that is California continues as is.

Im no fan of the Electoral system, but this even more contrived. A state can do whatever it wants with its allotted electoral votes.

But base it on %, not district. Didnt Congress already re-district entire regions to "better insure" incumbents re-election to Congress? Now States want to divy their electoral votes in the same manner.

Its a type of rigging. Why do it by district? If youre going to split the votes, do it on %.

If 40% of your states population votes Dem, then 40% of your electoral votes goto the Dem candidate. So on and so on...for whomever is on your states ballot.

In the event of unequal "ties" (such as a percentage not divisible by total electoral votes without splitting a single vote), THEN use which candidate got the majority of the districts and award that candidate the remaining vote in question.

[xrayzebra]

Well, if California does it, then every other state should as well.

Because as it stands, Republicans would win the Presidency every election if every state besides Maine, Nebraska and the gold mine that is California continues as is.

Im no fan of the Electoral system, but this even more contrived. A state can do whatever it wants with its allotted electoral votes.

But base it on %, not district. Didnt Congress already re-district entire regions to "better insure" incumbents re-election to Congress? Now States want to divy their electoral votes in the same manner.

Its a type of rigging. Why do it by district? If youre going to split the votes, do it on %.

If 40% of your states population votes Dem, then 40% of your electoral votes goto the Dem candidate. So on and so on...for whomever is on your states ballot.

In the event of unequal "ties" (such as a percentage not divisible by total electoral votes without splitting a single vote), THEN use which candidate got the majority of the districts and award that candidate the remaining vote in question.

Congress doesn't divy up the area for Congressional
districts. The individual states do that on their own.
Texas did it and got challenged by the dimm-o-craps.
And the courts agreed some districts disenfranchised the
minorities(?) so they had to redo some.

[George Gervin's Afro]

I'm all for it. Let's divy up all electoral votes for all states..I agree with Yoni for a change... !

[George Gervin's Afro]

I say democrats in texas propose the same thing.... I really like this idea...

[xrayzebra]

I'm all for it. Let's divy up all electoral votes for all states..I agree with Yoni for a change... !


Yeah! let's fix something that isn't broken. I know
Rhode Island and other small states are just itching to
change it so someone else can elect their President.
Don't you?

[Yonivore]

Well, if California does it, then every other state should as well.
Why?


Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress...
There's no requirement the State's choose their electors in the same manner. In fact, the constitution allows them to pull them out of a pigs ass if they so desire.


Because as it stands, Republicans would win the Presidency every election if every state besides Maine, Nebraska and the gold mine that is California continues as is.
I would venture to say that Republicans would win the Presidency if every state went the way of Maine and Nebraska also.


Im no fan of the Electoral system, but this even more contrived. A state can do whatever it wants with its allotted electoral votes.

But base it on %, not district. Didnt Congress already re-district entire regions to "better insure" incumbents re-election to Congress? Now States want to divy their electoral votes in the same manner.

Its a type of rigging. Why do it by district? If youre going to split the votes, do it on %.
Why do it by district? Because all elections are local.


If 40% of your states population votes Dem, then 40% of your electoral votes goto the Dem candidate. So on and so on...for whomever is on your states ballot.
Still wouldn't help Democrats. They only way they win is if the presidency becomes a national election and, as occurred in 2000, majority wins.


In the event of unequal "ties" (such as a percentage not divisible by total electoral votes without splitting a single vote), THEN use which candidate got the majority of the districts and award that candidate the remaining vote in question.
Why not just realize the Presidency wasn't meant to be an office whose occupant was picked by the population at large? Just as the 17th amendment stole power from the states, this idea of letting a popular vote decide the presidency is ruining the executive.

[George Gervin's Afro]

Yeah! let's fix something that isn't broken. I know
Rhode Island and other small states are just itching to
change it so someone else can elect their President.
Don't you?


Texas is slowly creeping back to a 50/50 state so to say that 55% of texans prefer a (R) and the other 45% favor a (D) then those electoral votes aren't proportionally fair. The same way it isn't fair in california for (R)...

[xrayzebra]

Texas is slowly creeping back to a 50/50 state so to say that 55% of texans prefer a (R) and the other 45% favor a (D) then those electoral votes aren't proportionally fair. The same way it isn't fair in california for (R)...

Don't you just love Liberals. One minute they are
real democratic belivers, one man, one vote, and winner
take all (the democratic way)and then the next.....no.....no.....no...we should split the vote for
President like how the percentage voted.
:drunk

[George Gervin's Afro]

Don't you just love Liberals. One minute they are
real democratic belivers, one man, one vote, and winner
take all (the democratic way)and then the next.....no.....no.....no...we should split the vote for
President like how the percentage voted.
:drunk


hey ray it's the republicans in california who are trying to pass this..

[fyatuk]

At least their trying to do something interesting, to correct a problem as they see it. I'd hate to see it in Texas since both parties in Texas have large pedigrees with gerrymandering.

Personally, I'd love to see proportionate representation (for each state individually of course) in the House instead of district assignments. But it doesn't make sense to assign electors on a truly proportionate rate. That would end up being an extra step on what would be a straight popular vote, so why not just make it a national popular vote at that point?

[Oh, Gee!!]

just have a nationwide across-the-board popular vote. person with the most votes wins.

[Yonivore]

just have a nationwide across-the-board popular vote. person with the most votes wins.
Gives too much power to the populated states. Elections would be won by successfully campaigning in the five most populous states.

The authors of the Constitution knew what they were doing.

[boutons_]

Fuck the electoral college.

Direct, proportional election of the President, most votes nationally wins.

====================

Votescam

By Hendrik Hertzberg
The New Yorker

06 August 2007 Issue

At first glance, next year's Presidential election looks like a blowout. But it might not be. Luckily for the incumbent party, neither George W. Bush nor Dick Cheney will be running; indeed, the election of 2008 will be the first since 1952 without a sitting President or Vice-President on the ballot. At the moment, survey research reflects a generic public preference for a Democratic victory next year. Still, despite everything, there are nearly as many polls showing particular Republicans beating particular Democrats as vice versa. So this election could be another close one. If it is, the winner may turn out to have been chosen not on November 4, 2008, but five months earlier, on June 3rd.

Two weeks ago, one of the most important Republican lawyers in Sacramento quietly filed a ballot initiative that would end the practice of granting all fifty-five of California's electoral votes to the statewide winner. Instead, it would award two of them to the statewide winner and the rest, one by one, to the winner in each congressional district. Nineteen of the fifty-three districts are represented by Republicans, but Bush carried twenty-two districts in 2004. The bottom line is that the initiative, if passed, would spot the Republican ticket something in the neighborhood of twenty electoral votes-votes that it wouldn't get under the rules prevailing in every other sizable state in the Union.

The Tuesday after the first Monday in June is California's traditional Primary Day. But it's not the one that everybody will be paying attention to. Five months ago, the legislature hastily moved the Presidential part up to February 5th, joining a stampede of states hoping to claim a piece of the early-state action previously reserved for Iowa and New Hampshire. June 3rd will be an altogether sleepier, low-turnout affair. There may be a few scattered contests for legislative nominations, but the only statewide items on the ballot will be initiatives. More than two dozen have been filed so far, ranging from a proposal to start a state-run Internet poker site to pay for filling potholes to a redundant slew of anti-gay-marriage measures. Few will make it to the ballot. Many are not even intended to; they're a feint in some byzantine negotiation, or just a cheap attempt to get a little attention-for a two-hundred-dollar fee, anyone can file one. (Actually getting one on the ballot requires more than four hundred thousand signatures, and the outfits that collect them usually charge a dollar or two per signature.) Initiative No. 07-0032-the Presidential Election Reform Act-is different. It's serious. Its backers have access to serious money. And it could pass.

Nominally, the sponsor of No. 07-0032 is Californians for Equal Representation. But that's just a letterhead-there's no such organization. Its address is the office suite of Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk, the law firm for the California Republican Party, and its covering letter is signed by Thomas W. Hiltachk, the firm's managing partner and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's personal lawyer for election matters. Hiltachk and his firm have been involved in many well-financed ballot initiatives before, including the recall that put Arnold in Sacramento. They specialize in initiatives that are the opposite of what they sound like-the Fair Pay Workplace Flexibility Act of 2006, for example. It would have raised the state minimum wage slightly-by a lesser amount than it has since been raised-and, in the fine print, would have made it impossible ever to raise it again except by a two-thirds vote in both houses of the legislature, while, for good measure, eliminating overtime for millions of workers.

( http://spurstalk.com/forums/images/smilies/smilol.gif Repugs and their lawyers, DISHONEST motherfuckers! http://spurstalk.com/forums/images/smilies/smilol.gif )

"Equal Representation" sounds good, too. And the winner-take-all rule, which is in force in all but two states, does seem unfair on the face of it. (The two are Maine and Nebraska, which use congressional-district allocation. But they are so small-only five districts between them-and so homogeneous that neither has ever split its electoral votes.) It would be obviously unjust for a state to give all its legislative seats to the party that gets the most votes statewide. So why should Party A get a hundred per cent of that state's electoral votes if forty per cent of its voters support Party B? No wonder Democrats and Republicans alike initially react to this proposal in a strongly positive way. To most people, the electoral-college status quo feels intuitively wrong. So does war. But that doesn't make unilateral disarmament a no-brainer.

If California does what No. 07-0032 calls for while everybody else is still going with winner take all by state, the real-world result will be to give Party B (in this case the Republicans) an unearned, Ohio-size gift of electoral votes. In a narrow sense, that's good if you like Party B, but not so good if you like Party A (in this case the Democrats). Or if you think that in a democracy everybody ought to play by roughly the same rules. Nor, by the way, is Party B the only offender. Last week, the Democratic-controlled legislature of North Carolina, a state that has gone Republican in every Presidential election since 1976, enthusiastically took up a bill to do the same mischief as the California initiative. The grab would be smaller-it would appropriate perhaps three or four of North Carolina's fifteen electoral votes for the Democrats-but the hands would be just as dirty.

The California initiative flunks even the categorical-imperative test. Imagine, as a thought experiment, that all the states were to adopt this "reform" at once. Electoral votes would still be winner take all, only by congressional district rather than by state. Instead of ten battleground states and forty spectator states, we'd have thirty-five battleground districts and four hundred spectator districts. The red-blue map would be more mottled, and in some states more people might get to see campaign commercials, because media markets usually take in more than one district. But congressional districts are as gerrymandered as human ingenuity and computer power can make them. The electoral-vote result in ninety per cent of the country would still be a foregone conclusion, no matter how close the race.

California Initiative No. 07-0032 is an audacious power play packaged as a step forward for democratic fairness. It's the lotusland equivalent of Tom DeLay's 2003 midterm redistricting in Texas, except with a sweeter smell, a better disguise, and larger stakes. And the only way Californians will reject it is if they have a chance to think about it first.

[xrayzebra]

hey ray it's the republicans in california who are trying to pass this..

That doesn't mean I agree with it......leave well enough
alone.

[Oh, Gee!!]

Gives too much power to the populated states. Elections would be won by successfully campaigning in the five most populous states.


It works on American Idol.

[Oh, Gee!!]

or One State equals One Vote. He (or she) who wins a plurality of the states, wins the election.

[Yonivore]

It works on American Idol.
No it doesn't.

How many times can you vote on American Idol?

[samikeyp]

Why not just realize the Presidency wasn't meant to be an office whose occupant was picked by the population at large? Just as the 17th amendment stole power from the states, this idea of letting a popular vote decide the presidency is ruining the executive.

So you don't believe that everyone's voice should be heard? As a registered voter, shouldn't my vote count.

You don't like the popular vote, do you think the electoral college is the best way?

[Yonivore]

So you don't believe that everyone's voice should be heard? As a registered voter, shouldn't my vote count.
In the Presidential election? No.

With 350 million people, there's just too many ways to fuck it up. That's why the Electoral system is so smart.


You don't like the popular vote, do you think the electoral college is the best way?
Yes, I do.

Your vote counts where it is supposed to count; when picking your U. S. Representative. He or she is the person that represents you. Senators were (until the 17th amendment fucked that up) supposed to represent the states. The executive, was supposed to run the federal government and represent the country abroad and was supposed to have been picked by electors chosen from the states in the way they deemed best.

It's worked for a couple of centuries. Too bad the people keep wanting to monkey with it.

[Oh, Gee!!]

No it doesn't.

How many times can you vote on American Idol?

five

[Yonivore]

five
So, there's no real way to determine if, in fact, the person selected received the most votes from individual people.

And, if you went the American Idol way, are we going to have to empanel three idiots to trash the candidates on stage?

[xrayzebra]

So you don't believe that everyone's voice should be heard? As a registered voter, shouldn't my vote count.

You don't like the popular vote, do you think the electoral college is the best way?

I really don't know what you mean in your post. But your
vote does count in presidential elections. It is just that
your vote is cast for a delegate. Also remember that we
have the three branches of government. And only one
is the representatives directly elected by the popular
vote. The others, one by delegate and the other by
appointment, with affirmation. So using the opinion of
some on here we should vote for the Supreme Court
justices. Right?

[Oh, Gee!!]

So, there's no real way to determine if, in fact, the person selected received the most votes from individual people.

that takes me back to the year 2000 (and 2004)


And, if you went the American Idol way, are we going to have to empanel three idiots to trash the candidates on stage?

are you volunteering?

[samikeyp]

I really don't know what you mean in your post. But your
vote does count in presidential elections. It is just that
your vote is cast for a delegate. Also remember that we
have the three branches of government. And only one
is the representatives directly elected by the popular
vote. The others, one by delegate and the other by
appointment, with affirmation. So using the opinion of
some on here we should vote for the Supreme Court
justices. Right?

Hey! Thanks for the Government lesson...I knew I was missing something in High School! :lol (I keed)

So using the opinion of
some on here we should vote for the Supreme Court
justices. Right?

God no...we screw up enough elections....let's not add anymore! :)

My point is this....while I agree with Yoni about the populous states having the power in a true majority system, I would like to see some tweaks in the electoral college.

Just my .02

[boutons_]

"Yoni about the populous states having the power in a true majority system"

is why direct election is the fairest, one person, one vote for the president.

No disenfranchising distortions about districts, or states, or less/more populous, red/blue, plus it would make the election national instead of having campaigs attacking only the swing states.

[sabar]

"Yoni about the populous states having the power in a true majority system"

is why direct election is the fairest, one person, one vote for the president.

No disenfranchising distortions about districts, or states, or less/more populous, red/blue, plus it would make the election national instead of having campaigs attacking only the swing states.Actually campaigns would then just campaign in the most populous cities and states because the "swing" factor of less populous areas is insignificant.

Either way works. Candidates only campaign a few select swing states in any system. Theoretically a representative vote and a popular vote should yield the same result, but the problem with a representative vote is something the foundinf fathers did not forsee, party loyalty overriding what the constituancy wants. As long as they throw in enough pork, they still get re-elected.

[Cant_Be_Faded]

I also love how this advertisement was on the same linked webpage:

http://l.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/us/news/editorial/9/5f/95fe4b978a3c5cae17bf4b5b2c362d8d.jpeg

[clambake]

just have a nationwide across-the-board popular vote. person with the most votes wins.
wouldn't be fair to all the redneck garbage in the middle. i'm still hoping they will one day evolve, or expire.

[boutons_]

"just campaign in the most populous cities and states because the "swing" factor of less populous areas is insignificant."

maybe, what's wrong with that? The campaigns put their $$$ now on electoral votes. Putting their $$$ where need to get the most citizens' vote is more purely democratic and representational. The citizens elect the president, not their reps.

Why the distorting artifice of the reps and states?

The president is the president of all the citizens, not the president of the states or of president of citizens reps.