A Vote to Quit the Electoral College

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A Vote to Quit the Electoral College

Submitted by Rob Richards on Thu, 08/31/2006 - 8:44am.

I pulled this excerpt from an LA Times legislative update column. I think this is a great step. The argument about candidates only going to cities may be true but it's not like in the past they've gone to very many places. This would make them have to campaign in more places, I believe, than the current system. Couple this with some campaign finance limits and we'll be on our way back to a real democracy again.

Legislators pass a bill that could launch a national movement to elect the president by popular vote.

By Nancy Vogel, Times Staff Writer
August 31, 2006

SACRAMENTO — Lawmakers sent Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger a bill Wednesday that would make California the first state to jump aboard a national movement to elect the president by popular vote.

Under the legislation, California would grant its electoral votes to the nominee who gets the most votes nationwide — not the most votes in California. Get enough other states to do the same, backers of the bill say, and soon presidential candidates will have to campaign across the nation, not just in a few key "battleground" states such as Ohio and Michigan that can sway the Electoral College vote.

"Frankly, the current system doesn't work," said Assemblyman Rick Keene (R-Chico), the only Republican to vote for the bill. "Presidential candidates don't bother to visit the largest state in the nation…. California is left out."

If Schwarzenegger signs the bill — AB 2948 by Assemblyman Tom Umberg (D-Anaheim) — California will be the first state to embrace the "national popular vote" movement, though legislation is pending in five other states: New York, Illinois, Missouri, Colorado and Louisiana.

The California legislation would not take effect until enough states passed such laws to make up a majority of the Electoral College votes — a minimum of 11 states, depending on population.

The governor's office said Schwarzenegger has not taken a position on the bill.

Many Republicans spoke against the legislation, arguing that it was an "end run" around the U.S. Constitution and would drive presidential candidates to campaign in big cities and ignore rural areas.

"Those who are running for president," said Assemblyman Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield), "are going to talk to Los Angeles and San Francisco."

Rob Richards's blog
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California had 12.4 million

Submitted by The Fire Inside on Thu, 08/31/2006 - 9:29am.

California had 12.4 million people vote in the 2004 Presidential Election. Both New York and Texas had 7.3 million each and Florida 7.6 million. That's a whopping 34.6 million of the voting public in four states.

To give a little perspective, it would take Washington (3 million), Oregon (2 million), Idaho (1 million), and Nevada (1 million) combined just to equal either New York, Texas, or Florida (and we would still be a little short).

Our state (along with the others mentioned, and numerous others which weren't mentioned) would be completely irrelevent in national politics. You could argue many of these states are already irrelevent, but that isn't because of the system.

Sign onto a popular vote and you've just institutionally relegated our state to second-tier status.

I disagree. We live in the

Submitted by Rob Richards on Thu, 08/31/2006 - 1:22pm.

I disagree. We live in the communication age, we don't need to see our candidates in person anymore. We can learn everything we need to know online, in newspapers, on TV. Call me a populist if you want, but I think if this change allows the majority of the people to choose the president then it's a change we're ready for. I don't think it's wise to simply stick by our two hundred year old system, as a society we've changed tremendously since it was created, and we have to adapt our system to the times we live in lest we are stifled by it. The founders probably never imagined how connected we would be in such a short amount of time.

I'm afraid that you have it...

Submitted by Rick on Thu, 08/31/2006 - 3:38pm.

...exactly backwards, TFI. If there were no electoral college, then the candidates would have to focus on population centers. Wow -- Seattle, Tacoma, Bremerton -- how many is that? And there would be the discussion of more topics than just those that are important in the battleground states.

Seattle, tacoma and

Submitted by Norm on Thu, 08/31/2006 - 4:18pm.

Seattle, tacoma and bremerton are chump change, and you know that Rick. Our whole country would be decided by Los Angeles County, New York City, and other large population hubs, Seattle doesn't even stack up. I'm going with TFI on that one, I don't want this country to be decided by large metropolitan areas. Our country is made up of some very great places, and leaving the decision in the hands of a handful of cities does not seem like the right approach to me, and I'm just in a little old Olympia, imagine how the farmers in E. Washington would feel about that one.

I don't know anything of a sort.

Submitted by Rick on Thu, 08/31/2006 - 5:06pm.

And your farmer is already out of the game, so he (or she) only stands to gain by a shift away from the current system. From Citizens for True Democracy:

Does the Electoral College protect small states? Would campaigns ignore small states if we abolish the Electoral College?
In a word: no. To begin with, the Electoral College does not force candidates to focus on small states. The best example of this is the 2000 election. How much attention did either major-party candidate pay to small states? With a few exceptions (New Mexico, West Virginia, Arkansas, Maine, Iowa), the answer is: very little.
Instead, Gore and Bush focused almost exclusively on "toss-up" states, regardless of their size. This is a by-product of the Electoral College's winner-take-all system (which is actually a matter of state laws). There is no reason for a candidate to focus on a state where one candidate already has a significant lead. Even if states like Texas (which was obviously "safe" for Bush) or Massachusetts (clearly "safe" for Gore) have millions of undecided voters, it is inefficient for candidates to spend time or money in these states because Gore will not win a plurality in Texas, and Bush will not win a plurality in Massachusetts.
The result is that between 10 and 15 "swing" states received 95 percent of the attention -- including TV and radio ads, candidate visits, and well-organized local campaigns -- in the last two months of the campaign. This is grossly unfair to the vast majority of people that live in big and small states alike.
A system of direct presidential elections, as advocated by Citizens for True Democracy, would solve this problem. Especially in relatively close elections, no candidate or party would ignore any region, not even sparsely populated ones. Direct presidential elections would render current campaigns obsolete. Instead of launching national media campaigns every four years, parties would have an overwhelming incentive to develop PERMANENT local campaign infrastructures, and to play integral roles in local and state politics. Such a revitalized system would reinforce the important connection between national politics and people's everyday lives.

Basically, you're saying that you'd prefer it if 15 OTHER states get to choose who our president is.

Yes, yes I would. Because

Submitted by Norm on Thu, 08/31/2006 - 6:20pm.

Yes, yes I would. Because those 15 still give more of a chance than what is being proposed here. I said it before, I'll say it again, I do not want Los Angeles, New York and Chicago deciding who should lead the country. I already know that my state is going to go liberal/democrat, I don't want the whole country to go that way. We've already determined that we are either going to get a liberal/democrat in office, or a conservative/republican in office, if we dropped the electoral college we would always go liberal/democrat. I think the lil guy who has owned a farm all his life should have a choice. I've watched my Grandfather suffer because of higher property taxes, more ecological rules, not to mention the state constantly on his back to sell his land. If the whole country went liberal I'm sure he'd be forced off his land and it would be turned into some "peace property", then I'd get to watch him go crazy and start killing politicians, I'd rather not have that happen.

Citizens for True

Submitted by The Fire Inside on Fri, 09/01/2006 - 2:03am.

Citizens for True Democracy:

Citizens for True Democracy understands that the US is a republic, not a democracy. In fact, that is exactly our point -- we think that America should become a democracy.

California, Texas, parts of the Midwest (Michigan, Ohio, Illinois), Florida, and the vast majority (if not all of) the Northeast are going to carry the weight.

Washington, Oregon, Nebraska, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Minnesota and so forth really wouldn't be able to compete. Some combinations of entire states can't match the metropolitan areas of cities such as Los Angeles, Dallas, San Francisco, Houston, New York or Philadelphia.

So yes, I do enjoy states such as Iowa and New Hampshire having the ability to influence national leadership around election time. And should Washington ever start to drift another political direction, we too would force attention to be paid in this direction of the country.

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.

Or in a democratic election, only 51 of the people need to be kept happy.

In this case, if you keep the largest metropolitan regions of the country happy, you can win election after election.

Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue: 3.2 million.

New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island: 18.7 million.

Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana: 12.9 million.

Chicago-Naperville-Joliet: 9.4 million.

By adding Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton's 2 million, the combined Seattle-Portland areas would only equal Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown's 5.2 million.

In 2000 I attended the

Submitted by stevenl on Fri, 09/01/2006 - 6:07am.

In 2000 I attended the ceremony in the Legislative Building State Room where the Washington State electors cast their votes for Gore. Something about the whole event seemed odd, off, wrong, even though it all happened according to plan. (For the record, I didn't vote for Gore or Bush). And in the following month that very room was wrecked, giant shards of skylight glass impaling the furniture, etc., as a result of the quake. Sort of symbolic in some way, I guess.

The Electoral College debate is a good one to have, but I'd like to propose an even broader one. Why do we need to have a President at all? Given the potential amount of damage just one individual can cause, perhaps the time has come for us to think of alternatives to the office of U.S. C.E.O.

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