News Article: Interesting OpEd on the NPV/EC workaround...
- Thread starter TIDE-HSV
- Start date
It's what a number of us have been saying. Abolishing the EC might be the worst thing we could do.
Defenders of the EC claim that rural Americans shouldn’t have to be ruled by urban Americans. Yet they’re fine with the opposite scenario, so I don’t consider this argument to be made in good faith. They errantly claim that the EC ensures diverse geographic relevance in the presidential election, when, in reality, it’s the voters of ~5 states that determine our president. The EC may have served a useful purpose at some point, but that time has passed. Its primary effect today is to render most voters irrelevant.
Not in good faith? So everyone on the opposite side should consider your comment to not be made in good faith because they disagree with it?
I'm sorry, but this is part of the problem we face today. It's one thing to say you disagree for whatever reason. It's quite another to say another's stated opinion is made in bad faith. Frankly, this is why rural Americans don't trust big city folk. When the big city folk call them stupid and/or say they have bad intentions it does lead to bad things happening, including further division and finding solace in an idiot that claims to stand for them. Admittedly, not a smart move for them or us and not your fault but it sure doesn't help.
i'm still not convinced one way or the other on the ec vs npc, but this bolded part is a bad effect of a system that gives un-proportional representation to rural areas.
Idk if the solution is to get rid of the EC completely or to rework it in some way but I think leaving it as is would be a mistake.
In my opinion it is likely to make little difference in the ultimate outcome for this country. It does seem to me that a system whereby the tail is allowed to wag the dog in such a way and allows the likes of Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell to have unequal sway over the lives of people in California, New York and Minnesota. Think about the complete absurdity of that for a moment and how long it will be allowed to exist in a country that can no longer pay its bills.
If the EC is so great, how come states don’t use a version of it to elect governors and senators?
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If Hillary Clinton had won the election but lost the popular vote, none of these people would care. They are all just angry that their "guy" lost. They do not care about what is “fair”.
Amen, the system is only broke because their choice lost. Plain and simple.
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The biggest problem is the apportionment is far out of proportion to the populations of the states. Fixing that would fix most of what is wrong with the electoral college and bring better balance back to the scales.
One thing to remember is that the world in which the electoral college was conceived was far, far different from today's, in many ways, population, how that population was distributed, geography and demography, including vast areas added later which would never sustain the density of the original 13, etc., etc., etc. There's no way on earth a system devised back then could still meet today's needs perfectly...
Yes. No one could have conceived of the shear size and role of the Federal Government in comparison to the intent of the writers of the Constitution.
My critique of the NPV is pragmatic, not ideological.
In California in 2016, Clinton won 8,753,788, Trump won 4,483,810. No need to recount California because there was no way Trump was going to pick up 3.3 million votes in a recount. The EC firewalls the recount in California.
In Alabama, Trump won 1,318,255, Clinton won 729,547 votes. No need for a recount in Alabama since there was no way Clinton was going to pick up 600,000 votes in the recount.
Adopt NPV, and then every vote in every precinct, in every district of every state will have the recounted in every close election, because there will be no firewall for recounts. That means, if the total national vote is close, no winner can be declared until every vote is recounted Sunflower County, Mississippi, south central LA, and North Slope Burrough, Alaska. This could take months.
Lawyers would probably like it though. The nationwide demand for lawyers to looks at every hanging chad nationwide would place lawyers at a premium.
Reckon that might be the cost of a well-functioning, representative government though?
In fairness to the Founders, they simply adopted a system in which the states (by popular vote or legislative selection) would select 138 (+/-) men* who would meet and select a president. No parties or caucuses, just 138 sober men who came together pick the best man for president, regardless of party, because parties did not exist.
Partisan politics screwed this up, like it has screwed up so many other aspects of American political life.
* Weird factoids, in the 1788 presidential election, New York legislature did not select NY's electors in time. NC & RI did not vote because they were not in the Union at the time. Two of Maryland's electors did not bother to vote at all. One of Virginia's electors did not bother to vote and one could not because of a disputed election.
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I do not think the two are positively related in that adopt NPV would not guarantee a "functioning representative government" and not adopting it would not necessarily preclude it.
This is one of those issues that, after one election cycle that dragged out for a couple of years with all the recounts (and law suits associated with recounts), folks would be saying, "Why did we get rid of the EC in the first place. This new system is completely unworkable."
Amendments are not supposed to be adopted lightly.
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I would argue that the Founders did envision the possible size and scope of the Federal government and they positively forbade its expansion because the powers enumerated in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution absent an amendment to the Constitution.
Nowadays we no longer go through the pain of amending the agreement. We just find a penumbra or "deem" constitutional whatever the powers that be want to do.
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