Amen, Brother Vodka.

As political junkies, most here understand the power behind the EC. But most aren't junkies like we are. The 2000 election should have been a great example of why the EC is important, but unfortunately, it quickly devolved into "Bush was Selected--Not Elected".

Good luck on beating back this stupid amendment.

"Who is going to spend money on our local TV stations, when all they'll buy you is a single vote more than the other guy?"

Are you sure many people would view that part as a bad thing?

Well if you prefer a policy of all or nothing where roughly 47% of your population is disenfranchised because the law says that because a few thousand more who bothered to vote for the other candidate their 47% of the vote becomes essentially null and void, then sure. I think every state should go to this, frankly. I can see why Republicans would prefer otherwise. With people like Tom DeLay arbitrarily redrawing the maps and when the EC allows the voice of the people to be ignored and Bush to be elected, then why wouldn't you be against something like the Amendment 36?

Britton makes me channel Dan Ackroyd: "Jane, you ignorant slut."

"Disenfranchised" has a meaning - and it isn't "my vote didn't count because the other guy won."

Because you prefer a system whereby 10 metropolitan areas can impose their will on the other 99% of the land mass. Sorta like how 90% of the country used to impose their will on the 10% that had differently hued skin.

Glad to see you weighing in on this, Stephen.

http://8636.blogspot.com/

OTOH, wouldn't it be nice if *California* did this? Then we could permanently install a sign on the WH lawn: "Owned by the Republican Party." Cause the day the GOP candidate can start counting on 20 or 25 EC votes from Cali, instead of 0, is the day things change in this country.

Dear Britton,

Before you start talking about disenfranchisement, perhaps you should read up on American history and the electoral college. Small states such as Delaware and Rhode Island were quite afraid of disenfranchisement and insisted that the electoral college be instituted so that they would not lose their voice. This is still true today.

As for "roughly 47% of your population is disenfranchised," in America we run a winner-take-all election. If 47% of the people voted for the loser, then they lost. Ask all those Republicans who voted for Bush in 92 and the others who voted for Perot. Were they disenfranchised, even though their combined vote total was more than what Clinton received? Should Clinton have been forced to have a coalition government? In 1860, Lincoln got only 39% of the popular vote. Should he have led a coalition government? My personal feeling in both cases is no.

Because of the electoral college, candidates must have nationwide appeal if they are to win. With just a popular vote, candidates would only have to please a narrowly defined constituency in a dozen or so large cities. This isn't good for democracy.

Finally, as VP pointed out, there are some plausible scenarios where Bush could win the popular vote and lose the electoral college. There was some thinking in 2000, days before the election, that that would be the case for Bush then. The conservatives then were saying, oh well, that's the way the system works. Which is why there wasn't a lot of sympathy for Gore 6 weeks later. If it does happen this time, again our attitude would be oh well, that's the way the system works. Then we will begin tearing into the horrible campaign Bush ran and dissecting every misstep. Of course, regardless of Colorado's decision, it is what the Dems will be doing come November 3.

Studio B on FNC has a section on this right now.

I wrote about this on my blog twice recentely. Vodka Pundit nailed the issues with this.

I didn't vote on Amdendment 36. As a non-resident of the state for the last 12 years, I chose not to vote in any of the local issues of the state.

It is great to see you coming out against Amendment 36! My husband and I live in Golden and we will be voting against this ridiculous amendment--we are spreading the word, too. I hope my fellow Coloradans really do their homework.

I think it's telling that the anti-36 group calls itself "Coloradans Against A Really Stupid Idea." And I sure won't be voting for this cockamamie idea.

The only way it'd even be anywhere in the same room as "fair" would be to do it the way Nebraska and Maine do it...award one elector to the winner in each Congressional district, and then the extra two to the winner of the state as a whole. Awarding proportions of the whole ball of wax based on the popular vote won't make the nut.

And consider this: if 36 passes but, by some miracle, Kerry wins the popular vote in this state...would that mean the Donks would start agitating to overturn 36 so that their boy could get the extra 4 electoral votes? Madness!

My co-blogger Wongdoer wrote about this idiocy two months ago and showed why the idea would have to be improved to only be stupid. George Will wrote a great column on this too.

The ignorance of people who feel they are disenfranchised under our winner-take-all system is astounding. Every person who was every subjected to a poll tax or reading test in the 1950s or 1960s should be incredibly insulted by comments like Britton's. Those folks who were actively prevented from voting know the difference.

And the sense of entitlement apparent in Britton's post is disgusting -- just because you like X doesn't mean you are disenfranchised if X loses. Would you say your vote doesn't count if you vote for (example) Ken Salazar for Colorado senator and Pete Coors wins? If not, then explain the difference here. It's not like if Salazar lost 51-49 he would have claim to be Senator for 49% of the next three Congressional terms.

I think the bigger issue is vote dilution, which occurs when a legally cast vote is offset, in whole or partially, by an illegally cast vote.

There were many stories of college students in Wisconsin in 2000 who claimed to have cast a half dozen votes or more for Al Gore, simply by going from one polling place to another.

Take a look at changes in the voting system which the democrats support, and most if not all of them have one thing in common -- they would make it easier to cheat.

Even if they pass this, it will just tie things up in the courts. If you read the constitution on this one it specifically says that the state legistlatures will specify how the electoral vote is awarded.

Article II section 1 clause 2

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.

Proponents might think this is going to set off similar actions in other states, but it's totally unrealistic to think so.

For one thing, small states would never consider it because it would guarantee them disproprotionate influence ahead of more populous states.

Say most of the states do this and in effect reduce their influence to a couple EV. Suddenly, the power bloc of Wyoming and Montana have more voting power than, oh, Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania...combined. Would any governor or state legislature in their right minds give that away?

The same is true for large states. If mid sized states like Colorado start to split, why not just stay a behemoth if you're California, Texas, or New York? If a majority of the smaller states are split, that one big state essentially decides the outcome.

We have the electoral college for many reasons, first of which is that it works. It gives the victory to the candidate with support from across the country, and forces them to campaign outside of the main population centers. It also is self-correcting in the case of a closely contested vote or statistical tie (like 2000). Gore got the popular vote by like 0.3%...well under the accidental ballot spoliage rate. So the winner is the candidate with broader support...George W. Bush.

If it ain't broke, don't break it.

Wow, it sure is nice to listen to people who know what the electoral college is for. All I ever hear is "why not go with the popular vote?" And suggestions that it is undemocratic to run the popular vote through this additional filter. And it's the small population states residents I hear saying it, too.

But hey... they're the same ones who pay more attention to elections for the House because they only have one seat, and less to the Senate because there are two seats.

Personally, anything that keeps me from being ruled by California and New York is a *very* good thing.

Might I throw another wrench in this awful plan.

Yes the main parties would leave Colorado alone, but a third party could come in, concentrate on Colorado alone, and get ten, even twenty percent of the vote. That's one to two electoral votes. Enough to possibly sway an election.

People care about this one. It is the one post on my blog that people keep coming back to.

Recently, I wrote a little screed about this. To my mind, if this dumb idea gains ground in other States, it'll result in more Third Parties gaining power, since it will alter our system's balance vis. Duverger's Law.

A knee jerk reaction might say 'good' to that, but consider that we still have some rather disturbing third parties out there. I don't relish the idea of a semi-Parliamentary system developing that has to form coalitions with the ACP, NLP, ANP, etc.

Not mentioned is the stupidest thing about the initiative, that it would apply retroactively to this election! I agree that it's a bad idea to make Colorado uncontested for future presidential elections. It could also impact future candidates' promises that conveniently benefit swing states; Colorado would lose those benefits.

I'm a supporter of the electoral college system, and voting for the losing candidate is in no way disenfranchisement.

Greg,

I did indeed mention that Amendment 36 would apply to this election. Read it again.

One issue I seem to miss people commenting on is the fact numerous winner take all electoral districts reduce the value of vote fraud.

Vote fraud may, for example, be a problem in Southern California, but only California's electoral votes will be affected by it. Once the vote frauding side has won California by a single fraudulent vote, the value of each additional fraudulent vote in California is 0. No further electoral outcomes are changed.

If you had direct national elections, or move in that direction in any state, vote fraud becomes more valuable. The worst scenario is direct national elections. In that case, concentrated vote fraud in any area of the country would affect the outcome of the entire election everywhere. You would see a tendency towards a rush to the bottom, where heavily red and blue voting areas each permit as much vote fraud as possible to offset each other - an arms race of fraudulent voting.

I noticed that support for this initiative started drastically losing support about the time people started getting their little voting handbooks in the mail. Before that, I think the only people who really knew about it were the ones who supported it. I don't think anyone (save for the die hard liberals in Boulder County because it suits their needs) wish to make a constitutional move down the slippery slope towards a popular vote deciding who's in charge. I agree with Julie - I'd rather not have the folks in California and New York bearing most of the weight in these elections, thankyouverymuch.

Well I guess what would also need to change is not just that the EC votes are split but how much a state gets in EC votes, which to me is the bigger issue. I am sorry, I know most people on here don't want to have California and New York "dictate" who runs the country, but if the EC remotely divided votes according to population, they would. So states like Montana, Ohio, Wyoming, Wisconsin have disproportionately more pull in the outcome of this election than states like California and New York, which I think get balanced reasonably well with Texas. As someone who lives in one of the largely populated metropolitan areas you seem to fear dictating over less populated states who get a disporportionate amount of power, I actually dislike the EC college because you get a disproportionate say in our government over those areas you seem to despise. My vote counts for less towards electing our President than someone in Wymoing's does.

I find it interesting that this intiative was started by Calif Dems but they do not want this to be the rule in Calif or NY or other large states. FYI - if this was the rule across the country in 2000 Bush wins by a significantly larger margin of EC delegates.

The real issue is that if we go this route then each state will be subject to the same nonsense that took place in Fla because virtually every state will have an EC delegate up for grabs if you can move the vote a couple of tenths of a point. Can you imagine David Bois and Ben Ginsburg runnig allover the country suing every county election official. Jesse Jackson and his ilk will calim voter fraud in every city and we will not know who the Pres is for about 6 months after every election.
In addition we will have a rise in Third parties (not because they can be elected) beciase thay can get a few EC delegates here or there and then toss their support to the candidate that will cut a deal (see every other parlimentry form of Gov't in the world)

The purpose of the EC is to force a candidate to appeal to a mass a people across the country. I tis our way of aggregating power. Here it is accomplished by dividing groups by state and if you get that state you get all of it.

The rest of the Fed Govt runs the same way - we amend the constitution not by 2/3 popular vote but by having 2/3 of the states ratify a change. (plus 2/3 of the Senate and House (which by the way are selectived geographically.)

Why all of a sudden should we elect the President a different way than the rest of the Federal system. If we had a pure popular vote for electors there with a few third party EC delegates we would have sent the Nixon/Kennedy election to the house as well as the Bush/Gore election.

This is the only con=untry in the world that routinely transfer power overnight peacfully and with the braod support of the public. We are the greatest country in the world lets not screw it up because truly partisan political professionals with no agenda other than making their "guy" wins wnats to screw the pooch.

Vote this mess down.

I'm a Kerry supporter. I'd love to be able to get 4 electoral votes out of Colorado. But this is a stupid idea.

It would be a stupid idea regardless. It would be a stupid idea even if every state in the union adopted the plan.

If you want to eliminate the Electoral College--far from a bad idea--then there is a constitutional amendment process you can follow. But this would be a ridiculous act by Colorado--and would, in effect, turn Colorado into the state in the Union with the fewest Electoral Votes--a net of one.