Why must the people who disagree with Eric the Blue be so obtuse?
Last week, when the Massachusetts State Senate voted to award the Commonwealth's electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, thereby joining the ranks of the enlightened (along with Maryland, New Jersey, Illinois, Washington, and Hawaii), Richard Tisei, the Senate minority leader and Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, showed that he is not himself one of the fit and fair:
"We've had a lot of bad ideas come through this chamber over the years, but this is going to be one of the worst ideas that has surfaced and actually garnered some support," said Tisei. . . .
And why is that?
He said the legislation would force candidates to focus on cities, where they can get the most votes. "They're going to spend all their time in New York City and Los Angeles," he said, "and to hell with the rest of the country."
Whoa!
The legislation would not "force candidates" to do anything, and Tisei advances no reasons for why they would act as he says they would act. He's running for lieutenant governor of Massachusetts. The winner will be the candidate who gets the most votes. Will he and the Republican candidate for governor spend all their time in Boston? If not, why does he think it is inevitable that the major party candidates for president would be obliged, in a national popular vote election, to spend all their time in New York City and Los Angeles?
And why would the outcome he predicts and abhors be worse than what we have? Is there some reason that presidential aspirants spending all their time in Columbus, Ohio and Tampa, Florida and Des Moines, Iowa, while ignoring New York City and Los Angeles and Houston and Chicago, is superior?
I think the candidate with the most votes should win. That's the way all our other elections work. I do not understand why we need a Rube Goldberg machine to choose the president.
Wait, Tisei isn't done:
Tisei also criticized the proponents for not following the normal procedures to seek a constitutional amendment.
He said, "The thing about this that bothers me the most is it's so sneaky. ...This is sort of an end run around the constitution."
No, the constitution is not being amended, and the electoral college is not being abolished. That is really the genius of the national popular vote movement. One of the lousy things about the electoral college, as it currently works, is that ballots cast in sparsely populated states count more than those cast in the most populous states. It's a lousy thing about the electoral college, but it's not a lousy thing for the thirteen least populated states, which have veto power over any proposed amendment to the constitution. There is, however, no constitutional requirement that the electors cast their votes for the popular vote winner in their state. Nor is there anything "sneaky" about open votes, in state legislatures across the country, on the question of whether their electoral votes should be awarded to the candidate who, from sea to shining sea, gets more votes than any other.
I don't think this Tisei fellow can get anything right.
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