Basically, the title says it all. Do you think that American’s (because they ARE American citizens) should be able to vote in US presidential elections? Why or why not? As a bonus, assuming you think they should, how would or could they be worked into the current electoral college system?
This isn’t about whether they should be US states, just about whether they, as US citizens, should be able to vote in US presidential elections. I’d do it as a poll, but I honestly don’t know how to set that up and really I want more of a debate in any case.
To give them the vote would require a Constitutional amendment, same as the last time we gave non-state US citizens a Presidential vote.
And if we’re going to be talking about amending the Constitution to change the way we vote, I’d like to see the Electoral College system scrapped entirely, with every citizen (no matter where they live) having an equal voice.
[QUOTE=Chronos]
To give them the vote would require a Constitutional amendment, same as the last time we gave non-state US citizens a Presidential vote.
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Well, that’s why we haven’t (sort of…there is also the whole, to paraphrase, ‘they don’t think like us’ thingy). I’m asking if we should. On this, however, there is, as you pointed out, precedence.
Are you suggesting we should lump this together with giving American citizens (well, except in the case of AMERICAN Samoa) the right to vote, or just wanted to talk more about the EC? I think they are two separate issues, and we can deal with them separately. We COULD allow those territories to vote in US elections using the process we already have in place…same as DC.
With the acknowledgment that an amendment or convention would be required, and agreement with Chronos that a more complete solution would be scrapping the Electoral College, but assuming that isn’t done…
This gets complicated because of Puerto Rico. The majority of the citizens in this category live there, and there’s a non-zero chance they might become a state in the future. Any plan would need to work with or without such a change.
I’d support putting them all into a pseudo-unit and giving that unit the proportional number of electoral votes. If Puerto Rico gets statehood, the remaining population is low but more than half that of Wyoming, so it wouldn’t be ridiculous to leave it voting.
Oh, and you might want to ask to fix the typo in the thread title. See this ‘helpful’ guide.
Of course I think all American citizens should have a say in who the President is.
The trick is in exactly how to manage to make that happen. We don’t currently have any way for their votes to be counted, after all. My vote as a Virginian only counts, because Virginia is a State, and it has ELECTORS.
I used to think we should do away with the Electoral system as well, but now I’m not so sure. Or rather, I am coming to appreciate that doing away with it would be a LOT more complicated than just changing the Constitution so that everyone votes, and whoever wins gets to be the Prez. The entire structure of the national government is in one way or another, linked to the fact that we are a REPUBLIC, rather than a Democracy. So the entire structure, even the CONCEPT of the United States would have to be changed.
Republic and democracy are not mutually exclusive. A republic is anything that is not a monarchy. It’s possible to have a democratic republic (the US), a democratic non-Republic (the UK), a non-democratic republic (the USSR), and a non-democratic non-republic (pre-revolutionary France).
The territorial residents should be allowed to choose which state to apply their presidential votes. Half should choose Ohio, half should choose Florida.
American Samoans are not US citizens (they are US nationals), the rest are.
There is no discrimination because voting status is tied to residency, not place of birth. The second a Puerto Rican moves to New York, they can register to vote. The second a life long Nebraskan becomes resident of Guam they cannot directly vote for president.
Any 51st state would be unlikely to be accepted by the political party least benefited by it. As the territories mostly lean Democratic, Republicans are unlikely to support adding more Democrat votes at this time. In the past (like pre-Civil War admission of slave/free states), they often admitted pairs of states, one from each category.
Every time someone post this, there is at least a 90% chance that words will be randomly capitalized.
The US is not a direct democracy, but then there aren’t really any of these in the world (Switzerland is closest). We are a republic by virtue of electing our head of state, and are also a representative democracy.
They may technically be two different issues but it would be really difficult to separate them. Our presidential election system is based around the idea of state residency. So it’s difficult to create a way for people to vote if they American citizens but don’t reside in a state.
If you take changing the Electoral College off the table, I guess the best solution would be an expansion of the 23rd Amendment model. Create pseudo-states for the purposes of voting for Electors. Due to the low population of some of these territories, I’d be willing to accept combing them into a single voting district.
The concept you seem to be reaching for is virtual representation. The idea is that there are democratically elected officials that govern you and they’re looking out for your best interests - even if you weren’t able to vote for those elected officials yourself. The theory is that as long as somebody is voting for them, they represent everybody.
But claiming this as a pillar of the American political system is pretty debatable. The theory was first put forth by the British Parliament to explain why the Americans should be okay with not voting for members of Parliament. The Americans, as history records, did not agree with this position.
Admittedly it did show up (if not by name) in subsequent American politics as a justification for why poor people, black people, native people, female people, and young people didn’t get to vote. But history has again shown that the direction of American politics has been away from virtual representation.
But one of the pillars of the American political system is that the public doesn’t vote for President, the electors vote for President, and the people don’t pick the electors, the states pick the electors. It happens that, since 1864, each state has picked their electors based on the popular vote in that state for president, but that’s not a constitutional thing. A state could say, “Sorry, no vote for President…the governor/state legislator picks the electors”, and that would be consistent with American history.
I don’t know what you mean by “pillar.” The term “pillar” has no legal or constitutional relevance.
The Electoral College is certainly a quirk of the American political system, one that a huge proportion of voters, non-voters, citizens, non-citizens, Americans, and foreigners are surprised to learn and confused by it.
At one time, state legislatures chose U.S. senators. That was changed for the better to be done by popular vote. Was that a pillar? Does it matter? It was certainly an improvement and fits right along with principal trend in American history—that our government and political system and electoral system is becoming more democratic, more inclusive, and prefers to move political power in the hands of the people rather than the states.
Count all “US territories and overseas citizens” as one district, give them three electoral votes, call it a day. Yes, we should amend the Constitution so that all US citizens get to vote for President, not just state residents.
Only if you look at history as a static point in the past. If you look at the direction of American history, it’s always towards more voting. As you noted, states that had their legislatures pick electors all changed over to having popular voting pick electors.
That’s what I was thinking. We don’t need to scrap the EC in order to do this under the existing system. Simply create an entity and have all of the island territories put into it, with a consummate number of (voting, fully authorized) congressional seats and EC votes.
Oh, and make the people in American Samoa fully citizens. They have one of the largest proportions of military/ex-military, why hasn’t anything been done to make them full citizens like the other island territories (it’s a rhetorical question…I know WHY, just that we should fix this)??
The big question is Puerto Rico. If you add together the District of Columbia, Guam, the Northern Marianas, and the Virgin Islands, you have a combined population of around 1,024,000. Three electors would be what a state of equivalent size would receive.
But the population of Puerto Rico is around 3,726,000. A state of that size would receive six or seven electors. Puerto Ricans should get the same amount of Electoral College representation that other Americans get.
If/When Puerto Rico becomes a state (which I think it SHOULD, assuming the people there want to), then they would come out of the island territories group and it would be as you say. Otherwise, I think they should pool with the other island territories. Yeah, it’s not optimal…but I think it’s something we COULD do, without a major rewrite of the Constitution or the political voting system. Of course, this won’t happen because it wouldn’t be in the Republicans best interest, but this question is what we SHOULD do.
I’ll admit my knowledge of American Samoan politics is pretty limited. (Is Uncle Duke still running things?) So I don’t know if American Samoans want changes in their current political status.
Well, they can become a state if they want six or seven electors. Otherwise, they’re lumped in with the other territories. Not sure why a territory of almost 4 million isn’t a state already. Maybe the country was too racist to allow that to happen in 1898, but that was a long time ago. Looks like a change of some sort will come this year, even though Puerto Ricans voted for Statehood in 2012 as well.
