Thompson, briefly a presidential candidate in 2008, was named national co-champion of the National Popular Vote campaign at a news conference in Washington, D.C.
Thompson told The Tennessean that the country cannot “run the risk of having a president who is handicapped by not having won the most popular votes.”
Proponents of the idea say the current system, in which the winner of a state earns all the electoral votes, means that a few states decide who is president and other states, including Tennessee, are ignored.
I’m too lazy and unimaginative offer any new opinions against this. So, I’ll repost in summary what I’ve already said on the matter.
It ensures all people, “common” or otherwise, no matter in which state they lived, would have an equal chance in deciding who the president should be. The large states would of course have their say, but under the Electoral College system, smaller states likewise would be protected by being guaranteed three electoral votes no matter their size in population.
Our winner take all system in 48 states (Maine and Nebraska are the exception as each do proportional awarding) makes it possible for a candidate to win the needed 270 electoral votes without even winning the majority of the popular vote. It has happened in 2000, 1888, 1876, and almost happened in 1960. If there is another case then I’ve forgotten.
At any rate, consider that a candidate can win the ten largest states in the union and he or she will only be 14 short of the presidency. That seems hardly fair to smaller states such as North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Alaska, Vermont,etc. That is why they tend to be over-represented in the Electoral System compared to their population. Should the system be done away with, and smaller states were all but forgotten and unrepresented, then, in which case, a vast majority of voters and their votes really “wouldn’t” count.
Massachusetts got it wrong, contd.
There is no doubt that a lot of Americans would like to see the EC abolished. However, think of the results and the unforeseen consequences. For instance, if we relied on a national popular vote only, there would have to be a runoff if neither candidate received a clear majority. This is because a popular vote would encourage many — any and all — third parties to pick up votes. So America would have to stomach an Al Sharpton party, the New Black Panther Party, the Ku Klux Klan Party, Southern Nationalists parties, urban grievance parties, militant and secessionist parties, etc. Who knows, if circumstance were poor enough, it could resemble the Weimar Republic.
All of these parties considering their degree of popularity would be in position to negotiate with the two major parties over favors and positions in government in exchange for support. American presidential politics would like a circus, or, worse, like Italy or France.
Related articles
- New “co-champion” of National Popular Vote movement is … Fred Thompson? (hotair.com)
- Vermont Will Become Seventh State to Adopt National Popular Vote (elections.firedoglake.com)
- Look Who’s Working Against the Electoral College (dakotavoice.com)
- How to lose the republic (sfgate.com)
I disagree with the popular vote and if fact think that we should go back to Senators being appointed by the states. If we want true representation, that is probably the only way that we will ever get it again.
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The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).
The National Popular Vote bill is a state-based approach. It preserves the Electoral College and state control of elections. It changes the way electoral votes are awarded in the Electoral College. It assures that every vote is equal and that every voter will matter in every state in every presidential election.
Every vote, everywhere would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections. Elections wouldn’t be about winning states. Every vote, everywhere would be counted for and directly assist the candidate for whom it was cast. States have the responsibility to make their voters relevant in every presidential election. Candidates would need to care about voters across the nation, not just undecided voters in a handful of swing states.
In the 2012 election, pundits and campaign operatives already agree that, at most, only 14 states and their voters will matter under the current winner-take-all laws (i.e., awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in each state) used by 48 of the 50 states. Candidates will not care about at least 72% of the voters- voters-in 19 of the 22 lowest population and medium-small states, and big states like CA, GA, NY, and TX. 2012 campaigning would be even more obscenely exclusive than 2008 and 2004. Candidates have no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, campaign, or care about the voter concerns in the dozens of states where they are safely ahead or hopelessly behind. Policies important to the citizens of ‘flyover’ states are not as highly prioritized as policies important to ‘battleground’ states when it comes to governing.
Since World War II, a shift of a handful of votes in one or two states would have elected the second-place candidate in 4 of the 13 presidential elections. Near misses are now frequently common. There have been 6 consecutive non-landslide presidential elections. 537 popular votes won Florida and the White House for Bush in 2000 despite Gore’s lead of 537,179 popular votes nationwide. A shift of 60,000 votes in Ohio in 2004 would have defeated President Bush despite his nationwide lead of over 3 Million votes.
The bill would take effect only when enacted by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes–enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538). When the bill comes into effect, all the electoral votes from those states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC). The bill would thus guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
The Electoral College that we have today was not designed, anticipated, or favored by the Founding Fathers but, instead, is the product of decades of evolutionary change precipitated by the emergence of political parties and enactment by 48 states of winner-take-all laws, not mentioned, much less endorsed, in the Constitution.
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.
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 is strong among Republican voters, Democratic voters, and independent voters, as well as every demographic group surveyed 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 smaller 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%, VA – 74%, and WV – 81%; and in other states polled: CA – 70%, CT – 74%, MA – 73%, MN – 75%, NY – 79%, OR – 76%, and WA – 77%.
The bill has passed 31 state legislative chambers, in 21 small, medium-small, medium, and large states, including one house in AR, CT, DE, DC, ME, MI, NV, NM, NY, NC, and OR, and both houses in CA, CO, HI, IL, NJ, MD, MA, RI, VT, and WA. The bill has been enacted by DC (3), HI (4), IL (19), NJ (14), MD (11), MA (10), VT (3), and WA (13). These 8 jurisdictions possess 77 electoral votes — 29% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect.
http://www.NationalPopularVote.com
Under National Popular Vote, when every vote counts equally, successful candidates will continue to find a middle ground of policies appealing to the wide mainstream of America. Instead of playing mostly to local concerns in Ohio and Florida, candidates finally would have to form broader platforms for broad national support. It would no longer matter who won a state.
Now political clout comes from being a battleground state.
Now with state-by-state winner-take-all laws presidential elections ignore 12 of the 13 lowest population states (3-4 electoral votes), that are almost invariably non-competitive, and ignored, in presidential elections. Six regularly vote Republican (Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, and South Dakota), and six regularly vote Democratic (Rhode Island, Delaware, Hawaii, Vermont, Maine, and DC) in presidential elections. Nine state legislative chambers in the lowest population states have passed the National Popular Vote bill. It has been enacted by the District of Columbia, Hawaii, and Vermont.
None of the 10 most rural states (VT, ME, WV, MS, SD, AR, MT, ND, AL, and KY) is a battleground state.
The current state-by-state winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes does not enhance the influence of rural states, because the most rural states are not battleground states.
The 11 most populous states contain 56% of the population of the United States. Under the current system, a candidate could win the Presidency by winning a mere 51% of the vote in just these 11 biggest states — that is, a mere 26% of the nation’s votes.
With National Popular Vote, big states that are just about as closely divided as the rest of the country, would not get all of the candidates’ attention. In recent presidential elections, the 11 largest states have been split — five “red states (Texas, Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, and Georgia) and six “blue” states (California, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and New Jersey). Among the four largest states, the two largest Republican states (Texas and Florida) generated a total margin of 2.1 million votes for Bush, while the two largest Democratic states generated a total margin of 2.1 million votes for Kerry. 8 small western states, with less than a third of California’s population, provided Bush with a bigger margin (1,283,076) than California provided Kerry (1,235,659).
If an Electoral College type of arrangement were essential for avoiding a proliferation of candidates and people being elected with 15% of the vote, we should see evidence of these conjectured apocalyptic outcomes in elections that do not employ such an arrangement. In elections in which the winner is the candidate receiving the most votes throughout the entire jurisdiction served by that office, historical evidence from more than 10,000 statewide elections in the past two hundred years shows that there is no massive proliferation of third-party candidates and candidates do not win with small percentages. For example, in 905 elections for governor in the last 60 years, the winning candidate received more than 50% of the vote in over 91% of the elections. No such tendency for massive proliferation of third-party candidates has emerged in other jurisdictions, such as congressional districts or state legislative districts. There is no evidence or reason to expect the emergence of some unique new political dynamic that would promote multiple candidacies if the President were elected in the same manner as every other elected official in the United States.
Under the current system of electing the President, no state requires that a presidential candidate receive anything more than the most popular votes in order to receive all of the state’s electoral votes.
Not a single legislative bill has been introduced in any state legislature in recent decades (among the more than 100,000 bills that are introduced in every two-year period by the nation’s 7,300 state legislators) proposing to change the existing universal practice of the states to award electoral votes to the candidate who receives a plurality (as opposed to absolute majority) of the votes (statewide or district-wide). There is no evidence of any public sentiment in favor of imposing such a requirement.
Since 1824 there have been 16 presidential elections in which a candidate was elected or reelected without gaining a majority of the popular vote. – including Lincoln (1860), Wilson (1912, and 1916), Truman (1948), Kennedy (1960), Nixon (1968), and Clinton (1992 and 1996).
Americans do not view the absence of run-offs under the current system as a major problem.
Finally! Someone who eats up more comment thread bandwidth than I do!
mike, it’s the same guy from the original posts I made just under a different name. And sadly, those are cut and paste comments.
You fault someone for being prepared to counter the many misinformed often spouted criticisms?
Jason Cabel Roe, a lifelong conservative activist and professional political consultant who just wrote in “National Popular Vote is Good for Republicans” notes:
“National Popular Vote is not a change that can be easily explained, nor the ramifications thought through in sound bites. . . .Opponents either have a knee-jerk reaction to the idea or don’t fully understand it. . . . We believe that the more exposure and discussion the reform has the more support that will build for it.”
http://www.flashreport.org/blog/2011/05/16/national-popular-vote-is-good-for-republicans/
No I don’t fault anyone for being prepared. Just give credit to the source you are cutting and pasting from.
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