[Peace-discuss] Here is an idea

[Robert Naiman]

It's quite true that it's not necessary to abolish the Electoral
College in order to ensure that the winner of the popular vote is
elected President. Under the Constitution, states can allocate their
electoral votes however they wish; they can allocate them to Mickey
Mouse. They can allocate them to the winner of the the national
popular vote. There is actually a project underway, the National
Popular Vote project, to get state legislatures to do the latter. Note
that this is different from distributing its electoral votes
proportionately, but the overall result would be the same, if all
states did it. The key issue is states moving collectively; if just a
few states move, the effects could be perverse (cf. current Republican
efforts in California to enact by referendum allocation of electoral
votes by Congressional District - which, if is is adopted unilaterally
by California and survives court challenges, could have the perverse
effect of making it more likely that the winner of the popular vote
would lose.) The NPV gets at this by only going into effect when it's
been passed by a group of states that account for a majority of
electoral votes. According to an article by in the October 1 Nation by
Rob Richie of FairVote, it's been passed by at least one house of
several state legislatures, including Illinois, and Maryland has fully
enacted it.

Richie says polls show 70% support a national popular vote.


On 9/29/07, Laurie at advancenet.net <laurie at advancenet.net> wrote:
> It may not be necessary to totally eliminate the Electoral College and
> electoral vote in favor of direct popular elections of the President and
> Vice President.  One could accomplish the same thing effectively by making
> each state distribute its electoral votes proportionately in accordance with
> the popular vote for each of the candidates or write-ins receiving a vote
> within that state.
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net [mailto:peace-discuss-
> > bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of John W.
> > Sent: Saturday, September 29, 2007 9:30 PM
> > To: Marti; peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> > Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Here is an idea
> >
> > At 09:04 PM 9/29/2007, Marti wrote:
> >
> > >Bush won the initial election because he was able to get the most
> > votes in
> > >Florida. Do I think the republicans fixed the election? Well yeah, but
> > at
> > >this point rehashing the subject is about as effective as eating sour
> > >grapes.
> > >
> > >Perhaps what can be considered is taking a good look at the electoral
> > vote
> > >and either modifying it or getting rid of it altogether so the
> > presidency
> > >goes to the person who gets the popular vote. That might help increase
> > voter
> > >turnout and it would discourage networks from calling the elections
> > before
> > >all of the votes have been counted.
> >
> >
> > Sounds good to me.  Go ahead and implement that system nationwide,
> > Marti,
> > in time for the next election if you can.  I don't imagine the
> > Republicans
> > would be able to figure out any way of corrupting an election based on
> > the
> > POPULAR vote. :-P
> >
> >
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-- 
Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org

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