Bring U.S. closer to a real democracy

[aGameOfThrones]

President Barack Obama formally opened his 2012 campaign last week. Regardless of whom you’d like to see take the oath of office on Inauguration Day, 2013, we can all agree that it should be the candidate Americans actually elect.

Yet election rules now make it possible that the loser will win the presidency, because almost every state awards all its electoral votes to the candidate who wins the popular vote there. And given how electors are allocated, a candidate can collect a majority of electors, without a majority of the votes nationally.

These problems can be avoided, however, simply by changing the way that states allocate their electoral votes: States would agree to award their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the nation’s popular vote, not the state’s. So voters in every state would then become important to the final count.

This proposal, called the National Popular Vote plan, already has broad bipartisan support. But it could gain momentum if the public was allowed to vote on it – which the Constitution allows.

There have been various efforts to force the states to adopt some other rule – for example, amending the Constitution to abolish the Electoral College. But the problem is not the Electoral College. It is the choice that most states are making in allocating their electors. The culprit? The state “winner-take-all” state system used by 48 of the 50 states.

The National Popular Vote bill can ensure every vote counts – not just in swing states. It preserves the Electoral College, while guaranteeing that the candidate who receives the most votes in the 50 states and the District of Columbia becomes the president.

The plan calls for the states to pass a law that would award all their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the national popular vote. To ensure each state that the others won’t cheat, the bill enacts an Interstate Compact, binding all that subscribe.


http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0411/53434.html

[nate895]

How dare states have any vestige of their sovereignty!!!!

[acptulsa]

The House favors populous states and the Senate favors less populous states. Both influences are important. Interesting that you say 'democracy' instead of 'republic' in the thread title. The House can get too full of the 'tyranny of the majority', in this westerner's view. Oil companies went broke during the Great Depression because FDR intervened in Gov. 'Alfalfa Bill' Murray's business here in Oklahoma, easing the Depression for most of the country at the expense of making things go from very, very bad in the 'Dust Bowl' to worse. This led to corporate takeover of a bunch of farmland and mass migrations. The 55 mph speed limit saw Westerners falling asleep at the wheel out in the expansive West and killing themselves. You couldn't even make it to the next Eastern Utah restroom at 55.

As a westerner, I would vote to leave the electoral college as it is. More Republic-like, and less like two wolves and a sheep discussing supper.

[aGameOfThrones]

How dare states have any vestige of their sovereignty!!!!

Comment on the site from a Dem:


When our country was founded, the Founders all considered themselves citizens of the various States where they lived. And they formed a Federal form of government that preserved and protected the relative sovereign nature of these State.

Doing what these two want to do would mean that we would no longer be a Federal governenment. States would devolve into nothing more than precincts in a city -- artificial and almost arbitrary lines on a map with little cultural or historical meaning.

I would never favor their proposal, because I like the idea of a federal system, and in fact bemoan the fact that it has been watered down as much as it has in recent decades as the Federal government has forced its way into every nook and cranny of our lives.

Too much power is concentrated in Washington DC now. Let's not make it worse.

[aGameOfThrones]

The House favors populous states and the Senate favors less populous states. Both influences are important. Interesting that you say 'democracy' instead of 'republic' in the thread title. The House can get too full of the 'tyranny of the majority', in this westerner's view. Oil companies went broke during the Great Depression because FDR intervened in Gov. 'Alfalfa Bill' Murray's business here in Oklahoma, easing the Depression for most of the country at the expense of making things go from very, very bad in the 'Dust Bowl' to worse. This led to corporate takeover of a bunch of farmland and mass migrations. The 55 mph speed limit saw Westerners falling asleep at the wheel out in the expansive West and killing themselves. You couldn't even make it to the next Eastern Utah restroom at 55.

As a westerner, I would vote to leave the electoral college as it is. More Republic-like, and less like two wolves and a sheep discussing supper.

It's not my title, it's the title the author gave it.