My, my, it sure is wonderful to live in the Soviet Republic of Marylandistan. Story here.
Under this new law (which, thank God, doesn’t actually take effect until enough other states to constitute a majority of the Electoral College (hereafter EC) adopt similar measures), it does not matter who the citizens of Maryland vote for in the presidential election, Maryland’s EC delegates will go to the candidate that wins the popular vote of the country at large. To use 2004 as an example, Maryland overwhelmingly voted for Kerry, 56% to 42%. Maryland’s 10 EC votes were thus awarded to John Kerry. If this new plan had been in effect, Maryland’s 10 EC votes would have been awarded to George W. Bush, as Bush won the overall popular vote nationwide. Thus, the desire of the majority of the citizens of the state, to elect John Kerry, would have been thwarted. In short, the Maryland legislature overturned 220 years of precedent and flew directly in the face of the will of the founding fathers who set up the EC system specifically at the behest of smaller states, to ensure that they weren’t overlooked in the election process. Conceivably, every single voter in Maryland could vote for, say, the Republican candidate, and if the Democrat got more votes nationwide, Maryland’s EC votes would go to the Democrat. So you tell me, does this measure disenfranchise the voters of Maryland, or not? Sure, we’re allowed to vote, but it doesn’t matter who we vote for, Maryland’s EC votes are going to go the way a majority of the people in America vote, 294,000,000 of whom are not Marylanders.
Marty the Boy King promised to do Maryland what he did to Baltimore. He’s only been in office for 2 months, and already my asshole is sore. Can I get some more lube please?
Would moving salve your problem? Of course, if you stay, you could organize your neighbors & community against him…head on.
(apply directly to the swollen tissue…)
Sounds odd. If you’re going to eliminate the Electoral College and decide Presidential elections by popular vote, why not just do so directly? Amend the Constitution if that’s what it takes.
I have to agree that this sounds like simply a back-door approach to eliminating the EC by altering its mission to something it wasn’t designed for. I’m not sure it’s really outrageous enough to justify the ass-rape rhetoric (hmmm, now I’m wondering if I should rephrase “back-door approach”), but it does sound potentially unconstitutional.
This part of the complaint is silly, though. The new legislation doesn’t make Maryland subject to the diktat of a centralized controlling bureaucracy: quite the opposite, it’s supporting an increase of political power to the direct popular vote.
There is no greater tyranny than the tyranny of the majority. The voters of Maryland will be directly and absolutely disenfranchised by this action. They are now at the whim of California, God help them.
Has it never occurred to you that the EC, like the Senate, was a very bad idea? Just because it was a necessary political compromise at the time doesn’t mean we have to hang onto it forever.
But the tyranny of the majority is not the same thing as a Communist tyranny—in fact, the tyranny of absolute direct democracy is pretty much the exact opposite of the tyranny of centralized state dictatorship.
Which is why I thought Weirddave’s complaints about “Soviet Marylandistan” didn’t fit the situation, even if his outrage is justified. (Shouldn’t that be “Marystan”, anyway, since “-stan” just means “land of”?)
Maybe so, but I think a reasonable case can be made that if we want to get rid of the EC, we should get rid of it openly by amending the Constitution to eliminate it, rather than by arbitrarily rewriting its function. You don’t have to be a strict constructionist to admit that the legislation in question pretty much nullifies the entire purpose of the EC’s existence.
I’m all for getting rid of the EC. But for one state to do it unilaterally is just asinine. It just disempowers that state’s citizens relative to the other states. I was raised in Maryland and I hope this sinks like a lead zeppelin.
To be fair, though, as Dave pointed out, the legislation won’t take effect until enough other states pass similar legislation so that the popular-vote mechanism will, in essence, take over the entire function of the EC. So Maryland is not actually adopting this policy unilaterally; it is just promising to adopt the policy in the future when enough other states do likewise.
Kind of like individual countries ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, but the Protocol not actually going into effect until a certain number of countries ratified it.
Not remotely. The Constitution gives states the power to choose their electors however they like; for a while, some states did it by the state legislature, or by Congressional district, but eventually nearly every state converted to winner-take-all. This measure is eminently constitutional, and I personally am very much in favor of it.
Meh. Forgive me. That’s more of a general complaint about the direction the state is taking, you have to either live here to understand, or I’d have to take time I don’t feel like taking to explain the comment in the context of many of the statements and initiatives proposed or adopted by the new administration. Just ignore it.
Fine. If you believe that, have the balls to make your case and then amend the Constitution and be done with it. Stop trying to back door it. I don’t think the EC was a necessarily bad idea. And BTW, what’s wrong with the Senate now?
IIRC, BG is in favor of doing away with all per-state instead of per-person forms of electoral representation. Axe the Senate and the EC altogether and replace them with a proportional-representation voting system.
Those of us here in little Rhode Island are a bit wary about this!
As you should be. BG’s proposals would pretty much devastate your interests. I see the phrase “Tyranny of the majority” bandied about often, but in this case it would absolutely be the truth.
Oh, that does make sense now. BG seems to be absurdly in favor of systems where the government can force the populace to do the “right thing”(whatever that is. Whatever he says, I suppose). In order to enact such a tyranny of the majority, of course he would have to demolish all of the protections that the founding fathers put into place to prevent such a thing from happening.
OK, so constitutionally they CAN legislate that. (BTW is there a hard and fast ruling as to whether the electors can be BOUND to cast their votes for the designated candidate?) I dunno about this measure, though.
The thing is, does this mean that the “winner of the popular vote” that they’ll be boosting with a winner-take-all allocation will STILL be as in most US elections, just “whoever’s the largest single vote-getter” regardless of the proportion of the plurality, only nationally instead of state-by-state? Because ISTM then they would not be making the result any more efficiently representative of the will of the people. If that’s the case I’d rather go direct vote (WITH run-off; or at least a minimum threshold of plurality on first round).
(Serious aside: NOTHING obligates the several states to allocate their electors on a winner-take-all basis, using a “largest single vote-getter” criterion for who’s the winner; individual states can mandate runoffs to produce a true majority winner, or allocate by Proportional Representation, or whatever. But they don’t because they perceive that whoever goes first will be playing a weaker hand…)
The suspicion arises as to whether this has been passed knowing it’s doomed, as a “George W. Bush should have never been President” proclamation. Look, I’m all for collecting funds to build a series of giant letters running the length of the National Mall spelling out that sentiment, with the celebrated “How could 58+ million people be so dumb?” carved in topiary shrubbery at the foot of the installation. But this is a bit much.
It still seems to me that a system of absolute direct democracy, even if it does qualify as a “tyranny of the majority”, is exactly the opposite of a system “where the government can force the populace to do the ‘right thing’”.
Tyranny of the majority and tyranny of the central bureaucracy may both be bad things, but they’re not the same thing.
I’ve done that many times in GD. As for Maryland trying to “back door” it, the idea is new to me. Not sure I like it, but that it is being attempted at all should tell you something about the level of frustration on this issue.
It still seems to me that a system of absolute direct democracy, even if it does qualify as a “tyranny of the majority”, is exactly the opposite of a system “where the government can force the populace to do the ‘right thing’”.