SHOULD THE U.S. DO AWAY WITH THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE?

Doing away with the electoral college and electing a president based on the national popular vote would be a more directly democratic means of choosing the people's highest representative. It would mean that every citizen's vote would have equal weight regardless of the state that they reside in, and that is obviously more in line with basic democratic principles. There is already a movement that is gaining ground in bypassing the electoral college at the state level, thereby effectively eliminating it without the need for a constitutional amendment. For more on the NPV movement see our previous post on the subject (CLICK HERE) and visit the NPV website. - Editor

Should the U.S. do away with the electoral college to elect the president?

Yes: A direct popular vote would serve the will of the majority

By: Matthew Spearman , Duluth News Tribune
Published October 20 2008
Source: http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/article/id/76169/group/Opinion/

I do not want to tear up the Constitution of the United States of America — just the part about the electoral college.

Yes, the time has come for the electoral college to go. The will of the majority should be served in a majority-rule system. I cast my vote for who I want to be president, and the candidate with the most votes should become president. That’s democracy. Technically, that’s direct democracy. And that is what we need.

I believe the electoral college should be scrapped and replaced by direct popular vote for picking the president. I believe this for three reasons: It would ensure we do not face another Constitutional crisis as in 2000. It would allow my vote to be counted toward the person I voted for. And it would increase national voter participation.

Although in most elections, the candidate with the most votes also wins the most electoral votes, this is not always the case. This was not the case in the 2000 election in which Al Gore won 500,000 more votes than George W. Bush. The majority did not rule. Not only did the majority of the people not decide who became president, the electoral college did not adequately provide this function, either. Rather, the Supreme Court, a body that should never be involved in electoral politics, essentially decided the election. In 2000, we in the U.S. witnessed the failure of the electoral college — a Constitutional crisis.

One may say that the result in 2000 was the exception rather than the rule set forth by the founders in 1787. After all, the process has been stable for more than 200 years. However, in a democracy as important as ours, we should never have to face such a Constitutional crisis.

The more clearly we understand what the electoral college is and how it works, the farther away our votes travel from the candidates for whom we voted. The U.S. electoral college is a group of people (electors) who are designated to cast a vote for a certain candidate, dictated by the winner of the popular vote of a certain state. For example, Minnesota has 10 electoral votes and 10 electors. So when I cast my vote for president, I am actually voting for a set of 10 representatives or electors. If my candidate wins the state, those electors will vote for my candidate. If not, the winner’s set of electors will vote. In short, electors get to vote for the candidate, not me. And not you.

Direct democracy demands that every vote cast for a candidate count — and not count only toward a state’s electors. It allows my vote to count directly for the person for whom I voted.

One main argument for needing the electoral college is the protection of small states which otherwise could be ignored in a national campaign. This argument carried more weight in years past. Now, the electoral college does not protect small states. It protects swing states. There are solid blue states and solid red states, and then there are a number of swing states that have been the deciding factor in the past several elections.

Ironically, the elimination of the electoral college may protect the smaller states because candidates from either party would not write off red or blue states and would spend more time in those states because there are voters there. In each state, regardless of how it generally leans — red or blue — there are undecided voters, independent voters and intermittent voters. There also are those who often do not vote, but would if they believed it would make a difference. Blue voters in solid red states, or the reverse, would be more likely to vote if their vote counted directly toward the candidate.

The brilliance of our system, as put forward by the founders of our nation, is in its adaptability — and in our ability as a people to change that which no longer works in government. It’s time for that change to occur regarding the electoral college. It’s time to tear up that section of the Constitution and replace it with the direct popular vote of our highest official.

Matthew Spearman of Duluth is a special education teacher at the North Shore Community School.

A VOTE FOR SENSIBLE ELECTIONS: TIME FOR 'ONE CITIZEN, ONE VOTE?'

An insightful commentary from the Government Technology website. - Editor



A Vote for Sensible Elections


Jun 3, 2008, By Chad Vander Veen


Source: http://www.govtech.com/gt/366281?topic=117673

The other day I was going through my morning ritual of visiting certain news sites - in a certain order - to get a quick sense of what's going on in the world. One Washington Times headline, in particular, caught my attention: "Michigan primary revote chances diminish." How is it that in 2008 this nation still can't cobble together a decent, sensible system for electing people to office?

Though the race for the White House is certainly historic, it's also giving more Americans a good look at how dysfunctional our election process has become. The Democrats have gone out of their way to illustrate how cockamamie their system is. Florida, for example, moved up its primary to an earlier date, despite the Democratic National Committee's (DNC) threat to strip the state of its delegates if it did so. Florida did anyway, and now as of press time, the delegates haven't been awarded to either candidate, leading some party officials to call for a "do over."

But the DNC's problem speaks to a larger issue in American elections. Now, I'm as pro-states' rights as any person you'll meet, but it's high time this country seriously considers nationwide standards for electing candidates to national office. It doesn't matter whether it's a nationwide system of electronic voting or paper balloting - just that we design a simple process for casting a vote.

Much of this year's caucuses and primaries have proven themselves totally archaic, so too is the U.S. Electoral College. The time when representative democracy was needed has long since passed. Today direct democracy is socially, technically and logistically feasible, even with punch cards or paper ballots. Think about it this way: The Nielsen system for rating TV shows - in which viewers write down what shows they watch and send that data back to Nielsen - is outdated, inefficient and just plain sucks. But it still works better than the way we vote for president.

Now I know we don't technically live in a democracy. We live in a republic. And those who defend the Electoral College say it's the republic's way of making sure less populous states don't get left out of the process. Under a strictly popular vote system, Electoral College defenders claim large population centers, like Los Angeles and New York, would unfairly skew the state voting results in their favor. The solution, then, is to ignore state lines altogether. Let every eligible American cast a vote, then tally 'em up. The person who receives the most votes wins. Who cares about awarding states? States aren't voting, Americans are.

Sounds simple. But seeing as the DNC can't even hold a simple election for itself, your vote for president may never actually count.

NPV MOVEMENT GAINING GROUND

Many people are not aware that there is a growing movement within the states to adopt a plan which would bring a more direct one person-one vote system of presidential elections into practice in the United States, eventually replacing the existing outdated and less democratic electoral college system. All but seven states have legislation in at different stages of development which would allow such a National Popular Vote system to come into being without the need for a constitutional amendment. Read the following article to learn more, and visit http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/ to track the movement's progress. - Editor

The Path to a National Popular Vote

By David Sirota, Creators SyndicatePosted on December 28, 2007, Printed on January 15, 2008http://www.alternet.org/story/71785/

Right now, many are frustrated about Iowa and New Hampshire voters having such oversized influence in America's presidential elections. In a few months, as the general election campaign unfolds, we will be similarly frustrated about Ohio and Florida. Who arbitrarily gave this handful of states the disproportionate power to determine our national political path?

When it comes to the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, the answer is the parties. They decide which states select nominees first. In the general election, the culprit is the Electoral College. Most states award their electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis. By no matter what margin presidential candidates win your state, they get all your state's electoral votes. That means if you don't live in a "battleground" like Florida or Ohio whose statewide vote is perpetually up for grabs, you are ignored.

The nominating system is easily modified. Parties can add early primary and caucus states if they choose. Changing the general election, on the other hand, looks much harder. The Electoral College and its negative consequences seem locked into the Constitution.
But the operative word is "seem."

The group National Popular Vote has developed an ingenious path around this constitutional obstruction: States can pass legislation mandating that all of their presidential electoral votes go to the winner of the national popular vote -- regardless of the election outcome in their own state.





Maryland Governor O'Malley Signs National Popular Vote law



If, say, Democrat-dominated Vermont signed on to the plan and a Republican won the national popular vote, Vermont would award its electoral votes to the Republican candidate, regardless of an overwhelming Democratic vote inside Vermont. If Republican-dominated Utah signed on to the plan and a Democrat won the popular vote, same thing -- Utah's electors would go to the Democrat.

The key element is the clause ensuring the plan does not take effect until states representing a majority of all electoral votes sign on. That way, the system only launches when it has enough electoral votes behind it to guarantee the winner of the national popular vote is the winner of the presidential election. No one state acts alone, and therefore neither political party gets an undue advantage.

This plan would immediately change presidential politics for the better.
As just one example, take the closely divided city of Indianapolis. It is currently ignored by presidential candidates because both parties know there is almost no chance Indiana will vote anything other than Republican in a presidential contest. Under the national popular vote plan, however, Indianapolis would suddenly be just as worthy of candidate attention as a similarly sized, closely divided city like Columbus, Ohio. That's because geography would cease to determine the importance of a vote. In the national popular vote system, a vote is a vote, regardless of where a candidate gets it.

The public is clamoring for this kind of fix. A 2007 Harvard University study found almost three-quarters of Americans favor a national popular vote over the current system. The problem is Republican operatives who are trying to steer this public opinion into support for a partisan scheme to rig elections for good. Under the banner of democracy and fairness, these apparatchiks began crafting plans to push a ballot initiative in California unilaterally awarding the state's electoral votes by congressional district, rather than by winner-take-all. In other words, California's 53 congressional districts would each be like a separate state with one electoral vote going to whichever candidate won the presidential contest in that district. Experts agree the result would likely be Republicans gaining 22 electoral votes without doing a thing.

Not surprisingly, these Republicans are not pushing the same plan for red states like Texas, North Carolina and Georgia, where Democrats could make similar gains on a district-by-district basis. But that hypocrisy is secondary, because to bill the scheme as a pro-democracy reform is to lie through one's teeth. Consider that if the 2000 election had been decided on a district-by-district basis, George W. Bush's margin of Electoral College victory would have actually grown, despite the fact that he lost the popular vote.

Thankfully, the California initiative was torpedoed by GOP infighting, but you can bet it will be back soon. That is, unless states step up now. By passing national popular vote bills in the upcoming 2008 legislative sessions, state lawmakers can bring America closer to getting the democracy our civics books pretend we already have.

David Sirota is a nationally syndicated weekly newspaper columnist for Creators Syndicate. He is the New York Times bestselling author of Hostile Takeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government and How We Take It Back (Crown 2006). He is also a senior fellow at the Campaign for America's Future and a board member of the Progressive States Network. His second book, The Uprising, is due in the Spring of 2008.

© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/71785/