What If We Found out Gore won, tomorrow.

[minty_green]

*Originally posted by Rmat *
Of course the constitution can be changed, and a good reason to change it might if one of its features no longer “works” (as you put it). Please identify some respect in which the EC once worked but no longer works.

Yeah! Damn that 13th Amendment!

[Rmat]

*Originally posted by minty green *
**

*Originally posted by Rmat *
Of course the constitution can be changed, and a good reason to change it might if one of its features no longer “works” (as you put it). Please identify some respect in which the EC once worked but no longer works.

Yeah! Damn that 13th Amendment! **

Excuse me? The thirteenth amendment? Did someone mention the Electoral College?

[minty_green]

Sorry, confused your argument with that of Chance.

[Milossarian]

**Besides, the constitution has been changed before; it’s designed to be. As the country changes, its needs change. Just because something works two hundred years ago doesn’t mean it will work forever

**
Uh, and as I said, changing the Constitution will require the consent of a great many of those little states whose power you want to take away.

Ain’t

Gonna

Happen,

Ever.

[elucidator]

I toady that, Milo

Just imagine: what wouldn’t Jesse Helms do to prevent such an occurance?

Assemble his respective grandchildren and feed thier household pets into a woodchipper, serving each child his/her respective gerbil puree? Without a moments hesitation.

Nail his pecker to a tree, and set the tree on fire. Perhaps not.

Somewhere in between these.

[Hazel]

*Part of a post by Milossarian *
**
If you can shrug and instantly dismiss that voters on more than 80 percent of our country’s land mass didn’t want Gore for president, that’s your prerogative. Just as it’s mine to not particularly care that America’s urban-dwellers wanted a Democrat, as they seemingly always do.

If you hate the electoral college, that’s your view. I like it. It serves a purpose, in helping to better ensure that a presidential candidate adheres to policies supportable by people throughout the nation, IMO.

Regardless of how you feel about it, there it is, in the Constitution. And it would take two thirds of both Congressional houses, or the legislatures of two-thirds of the states, to vote to overturn it.

Good luck selling that in Wyoming, the Dakotas, etc. **

If you take a map of America and color all the counties where Bush came out ahead one color, and all the counties where Gore came out ahead another color, you will discover that Bush “won more counties”. I have never understood why anyone thinks this means anything whatsoever. “80% of the land mass wanted Bush”??? Counties? Land mass? This makes absolutely no sence. What counts – the only thing that counts – is votes.

Everyone in the so-called Bush counties did not vote for Bush. Everyone in the so-called Gore counties did not vote for Gore. The Gore counties contain people who voted for Bush, and vice versa.

And it’s quite true that scrapping the electoral college would be a hard sell in Wyoming, the Dakotas, etc. Naturally, the people there do not want to give up a method that gives them an unfair advantage.

[Hazel]

*Part of a post by Chance the Gardener *
**
Consider how much attention was paid to both the states of New York and Wyoming this past election. How many campaign stops were there from either candidate in these states? Wouldn’t you think candidates would be wild to snag New York’s 33 electoral votes? You might think so, yes, but no one bothered. Bush knew he didn’t stand a chance there, while Gore knew he had it locked up from day one. Likewise, no one paid attention to Wyoming, since Gore didn’t have a prayer there, while it was clearly Bush country.

On the other hand, Bush and Gore campaigned in New Hampshire, Iowa, Oregon, Wisconsin—while not your biggest vote-getters, these states were up in the air. The fact that they actually were considered “in play” made them targets for campaigns.

If a state has three electoral votes instead of one, it’s still not going to draw a lot of attention unless a candidate feels he has a shot at winning. Likewise, if a state has, say, 54 electoral votes, no candidate will waste energy there unless he feels like he’s got a shot at winning—or unless he feels he’s got that state locked up. Vote-rich states don’t get much attention unless the vote there could be close. Illinois, Pennsylvania and Ohio, rich in electoral votes, saw lots of campaigning for this reason. Likewise, Texas, New York and California, also rich in electoral votes, saw little campaigning.

The electoral college does nothing to draw campaign attention to smaller states, while giving too much influence to those smaller states. As to attention paid to the several states after the elections: isn’t that what Congress is for? **

Yes, yes, yes! Absolutely right! Why don’t people get this?

[JepSnertRF]

What we should do is respect and obey the laws that exist, for the sake of upholding a System of Law. But, in the process, work to change those laws as prescribed by the founders. It seems like a sound idea to eliminate the electoral college and let the citizens votes be heard, it would also inspire more voter participation.

[Stratocaster]

*Originally posted by Hazel *
I have never understood why anyone thinks this means anything whatsoever. “80% of the land mass wanted Bush”??? Counties? Land mass? This makes absolutely no sence. What counts – the only thing that counts – is votes.

**Yes, yes, yes! Absolutely right! Why don’t people get this?

**Did you actually read the entire thread, or only those portions that would allow you to vent? If there is absolutely “no sense” behind the Electoral College, perhaps you can explain why.

“The only thing that counts is votes” is a nice little catch phrase, but it isn’t terribly clear. I take it you believe a simple plurality is the only proper way to settle elections, and that this conclusion is self evident. Well, in this case, that’s called begging the question. And that ain’t any way to debate an issue, either.

Refer to the November issue of Discover, the article, “May the Best Man Lose,” for one source describing the problem with using a plurality as the means of electing your public servants.

From that article:

**In a democratic election between two candidates, the winner is the person with the majority of the votes. But when three or more candidates run, things are seldom so simple. The winner often amasses only a plurality, not a majority, of the votes. (Bill Clinton, for example, won the presidency with 43 percent of the vote; Jesse Ventura won the Minnesota governorship with 37 percent.) The plurality winner could be everybody else’s least favorite candidate and could even lose to each of the other candidates in a head-to-head battle. As Saari puts it: “The plurality vote is the only procedure that will elect someone who’s despised by almost two thirds of the voters.”

**
The Electoral College is one method–and certainly not the only method–of diminishing the tendency of a simple plurality to ignore the wishes and preferences of a majority of the voting populace.

Refer also to “Math Against Tyranny,” also from Discover, which explains the specific benefits of the Electoral College:

**Individual voting power is higher when funneled through districts–such as states–than when pooled in one large, direct election. It is more likely, in other words, that your one vote will determine the outcome…A voter therefore, Natapoff found, has more power under the current electoral system…A well-designed electoral system might include obstacles to thwart an overbearing majority. But direct, national voting has none. Under raw voting, a candidate has every incentive to woo only the largest bloc.

**
I will state again, there are certainly arguments to be made against the current system. But to suggest that there is no “pro” argument is just wrong.

[2nd_guest]

As Gore said just this week: We are a nation of laws. We aren’t going to revisit it. By that he meant we are Not a nation of laws.

[DoctorJ]

I live in one of those piss-ant states that supposedly benefits from the electoral college (Kentucky). By my quick calculations, we make up 1.400% of the population, and we are responsible for 1.495% (8/535) of the electoral vote. (OK, so maybe we don’t benefit that much.)

However, the EC renders my vote useless. Why? Because Kentucky was a lock for Bush almost from the beginning. As a result, very little campaigning was done here. If I had rounded up several thousand of my friends and had them all go vote for Gore, it would have made no difference; all eight of our votes would still go to Bush.

Compare that to 1996, when Kentucky was one of the closer swing states. Both candidates paid plenty of attention to us then–in fact, Clinton campaigned here the day before the election. (I shook his hand that day.)

Therefore, my vote in 1996 was worth far more than my vote in 2000. Someone in Florida or another swing state in 2000 had a vote worth far more than mine. If Gore could have pandered to Florida in such a way that it got him 5,000 extra votes there, even if it cost him half a million votes in Kentucky, it would have been in his interest to do so.

The winner-takes-all aspect of the electoral college system negates the advantage it might hold for the small states in favor of an enormous advantage for swing states. I don’t think a simple plurality system is the way to go, but we could do something to distribute the voting power a bit more evenly.

Dr. J

[elfkin477]

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Chance the Gardener *
**

On the other hand, Bush and Gore campaigned in New Hampshire, Iowa, Oregon, Wisconsin—while not your biggest vote-getters, these states were up in the air. The fact that they actually were considered “in play” made them targets for campaigns. **

Intresting, I wonder if others felt this was not the case. Usually the canidates make their presence felt in NH, but this time…the only one I heard about visiting the state was Nadar. Gore’s lack of presence (except when he was campaigning during my graduation, the creep) is more understandable since NH has been a conservative state back to days of yore, but Bush’s absence is more puzzling. I think it is the reason that he barely won the state (and lost VT for that matter, which voted democrat for the first time according to npr) From my presective, there was little effort to campaign made by either canidate, and far less than by their predecessors, but I suppose they were somewhere else this election?

[KSO]

The reality is that only a handful of states are EVER up for grabs in a particular election so there’s no point in a candidate wasting time and money in a state he can’t win. Doctor J feels his vote didn’t matter because Kentucky was going for GWB no matter what. The converse was true in Connecticut–Gore had it locked up without setting foot in the state (actually, he did, and royally screwed up my commute one morning but that’s a different story). If anything, the past election demonstrates the importance of going for votes in the smaller states that are on the fence–had Gore won Tennessee or Arkansas, Florida wouldn’t have mattered.

P.S. I don’t know where NPR is getting their info, but Vermont went for Clinton/Gore in 1992 and 1996. Prior to that, the last Democrat they went for was LBJ in 1964.