Reading along in another humdrum article ("Medicare issue put to test quickly in Florida") concerning the presidential campaign, one comes to this graf:
The implications extend beyond Florida. Elderly voters are significant forces in Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio, and Virginia and Pennsylvania, all states that could help determine the outcome of the election.
This list of states that "could help determine the outcome of the election" is not evidently intended to be comprehensive. It is, rather, a subset of all the states that "could help determine the outcome of the election"--namely, those states that "could help determine the outcome of the election" in which there are substantial numbers of elderly voters.
Nevertheless, it's startling that people aren't startled by these cliches of political journalism. That there are states that "could help determine the outcome of the election" indicates that there are other states that will not help determine the outcome of the election. Here are a few of them: California, New York, Illinois, Texas, Tennessee, Georgia, Hawaii, Vermont, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, Alaska, Utah, Kansas, Oklahoma. . . .
To be a little more accurate: these states will, strictly speaking, help determine the outcome. They do have electoral votes, and their electoral votes will count in the final tally. But, since the race isn't close in any of them, and because the candidate who's going to win the state gets all the electoral votes allotted to that state, everyone who prefers the candidate who's going to lose is for all practical purposes disenfranchised. All the Republicans in California, New York, and Illinois. All the Democrats in Texas and Tennessee. Millions and millions from all over the country. They're suckers if they believe their vote has any impact on the outcome of the presidential contest. Moreover, if, like me, you prefer Obama, and live in a state that Obama is going to win, your vote is, if not exactly worthless, heavily discounted. Ditto for those who prefer Romney in the crimson states.
The electoral college is responsible for this sorry state of affairs. There is a remedy at hand, however: National Popular Vote. It deserves your support.
The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).
Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections. No more distorting and divisive red and blue state maps. There would no longer be a handful of 'battleground' states where voters and policies are more important than those of the voters in more than 3/4ths of the states that now are just 'spectators' and ignored after the conventions.
When the bill is enacted by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes– enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538), all the electoral votes from the enacting states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC.
The bill uses the power given to each state by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution to change how they award their electoral votes for President. Historically, virtually all of the major changes in the method of electing the President, including ending the requirement that only men who owned substantial property could vote and 48 current state-by-state winner-take-all laws, have come about by state legislative action.
In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). Support for a national popular vote is strong among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in virtually every state surveyed in recent polls in closely divided Battleground states: CO – 68%, FL – 78%, IA 75%, MI – 73%, MO – 70%, NH – 69%, NV – 72%, NM– 76%, NC – 74%, OH – 70%, PA – 78%, VA – 74%, and WI – 71%; in Small states (3 to 5 electoral votes): AK – 70%, DC – 76%, DE – 75%, ID – 77%, ME – 77%, MT – 72%, NE 74%, NH – 69%, NV – 72%, NM – 76%, OK – 81%, RI – 74%, SD – 71%, UT – 70%, VT – 75%, WV – 81%, and WY – 69%; in Southern and Border states: AR – 80%,, KY- 80%, MS – 77%, MO – 70%, NC – 74%, OK – 81%, SC – 71%, TN – 83%, VA – 74%, and WV – 81%; and in other states polled: AZ – 67%, CA – 70%, CT – 74%, MA – 73%, MN – 75%, NY – 79%, OR – 76%, and WA – 77%. Americans believe that the candidate who receives the most votes should win.
The bill has passed 31 state legislative chambers in 21 states. The bill has been enacted by 9 jurisdictions possessing 132 electoral votes - 49% of the 270 necessary to go into effect.
NationalPopularVote
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Posted by: Oldgulph | August 16, 2012 at 11:14 AM