http://www.nwfdailynews.com/articleArchive/aug2006/californiapopularvote.php

this is how it should be done.

__________________
Cruise Control not working? Send me PM or email (jamesdean59@gmail.com). I might be able to help out.
Check here for compatibility, diagnostics, and availability!

(4/11/2020: Hi Everyone! I am still taking orders and replying to emails/PMs/etc, I appreciate your patience in these crazy times. Stay safe and healthy!)


82 300SD 145k
89 420SEL 210k
89 560SEL 118k
90 300SE 262k RIP 5/25/2010
90 560SEL 154k
91 300D 2.5 Turbo. 241k
93 190E 3.0 235k
93 300E 195k

That's one solution. If we read the constitution, we learn that the manner of voting is up to each state. Thus, it will take either a constitutional amendment to make voting uniform or each state would have to change to the Calif. model. neither will happen.

If the popular vote is so all-fired important, why does each state have 2 senators?

B

I would love to see the President elected by popular vote. Right now, if you live in a state where the result is obvious ahead of time, your vote for President counts for nothing. If I live in Texas or Rhode Island, what's the point of going out to cast my vote for the candidate I support? I already know who will win my state regardless of whether I vote.

I think voter turnout would increase dramatically in presidential elections if we 86'd the electoral college.

__________________
Ralph

1985 300D Turbo, CA model
248,650 miles and counting...

Well I knew I'd take some flack for that comment. It is frustrating when you live in a state that votes the same way election after election. Florida is, of course, one of the increasingly few states where the outcome is uncertain, so as a Floridian it seems your vote is very important these days. Oregon is simiilar but to a lesser degree.

As another counter-argument to my original statement, I suppose that in an election like Reagon-Mondale or Clinton-Dole, the outcome would be obvious nationally so the same things I said could apply to the popular vote as well as the electoral college.

__________________
Ralph

1985 300D Turbo, CA model
248,650 miles and counting...

Why Was the Electoral College Created?





by Marc Schulman

The Electoral College was created for two reasons. The first purpose was to create a buffer between population and the selection of a President. The second as part of the structure of the government that gave extra power to the smaller states.

The first reason that the founders created the Electoral College is hard to understand today. The founding fathers were afraid of direct election to the Presidency. They feared a tyrant could manipulate public opinion and come to power. Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers:

It was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations. It was also peculiarly desirable to afford as little opportunity as possible to tumult and disorder. This evil was not least to be dreaded in the election of a magistrate, who was to have so important an agency in the administration of the government as the President of the United States. But the precautions which have been so happily concerted in the system under consideration, promise an effectual security against this mischief.


(See All of the Federalist 68)


Hamilton and the other founders believed that the electors would be able to insure that only a qualified person becomes President. They believed that with the Electoral College no one would be able to manipulate the citizenry. It would act as check on an electorate that might be duped. Hamilton and the other founders did not trust the population to make the right choice. The founders also believed that the Electoral College had the advantage of being a group that met only once and thus could not be manipulated over time by foreign governments or others.


The electoral college is also part of compromises made at the convention to satisfy the small states. Under the system of the Electoral College each state had the same number of electoral votes as they have representative in Congress, thus no state could have less then 3. The result of this system is that in this election the state of Wyoming cast about 210,000 votes, and thus each elector represented 70,000 votes, while in California approximately 9,700,000 votes were cast for 54 votes, thus representing 179,000 votes per electorate. Obviously this creates an unfair advantage to voters in the small states whose votes actually count more then those people living in medium and large states.

One aspect of the electoral system that is not mandated in the constitution is the fact that the winner takes all the votes in the state. Therefore it makes no difference if you win a state by 50.1% or by 80% of the vote you receive the same number of electoral votes. This can be a receipe for one individual to win some states by large pluralities and lose others by small number of votes, and thus this is an easy scenario for one candidate winning the popular vote while another winning the electoral vote. This winner take all methods used in picking electors has been decided by the states themselves. This trend took place over the course of the 19th century.


While there are clear problems with the Electoral College and there are some advantages to it, changing it is very unlikely. It would take a constituitional amendment ratified by 3/4 of states to change the system. It is hard to imagine the smaller states agreeing.

http://www.multied.com/elections/Electoralcollgewhy.html

*********************************************************





--------------------------------------------------------------------------

....and so we see the damage done to this nation by not teaching civics, consitution and govt. in public school.........

How does the Electoral College work?






It may surprise you to know that Russia has a more direct presidential election process than the United States. In the United States, a system called the Electoral College periodically allows a candidate who receives fewer popular votes to win an election. In fact, there have been several presidential candidates who won the popular vote, but lost the election because they received fewer electoral votes. In Russia, where no such system exists, the candidate who receives a majority of popular votes wins the election.
Every four years, on the Tuesday following the first Monday of November, millions of U.S. citizens go to local voting booths to elect, among other officials, the next president and vice president of their country. Their votes will be recorded and counted, and winners will be declared. But the results of the popular vote are not guaranteed to stand because the Electoral College has not cast its vote.

The Electoral College is a controversial mechanism of presidential elections that was created by the framers of the U.S. Constitution as a compromise for the presidential election process. At the time, some politicians believed a purely popular election was too reckless, while others objected to giving Congress the power to select the president. The compromise was to set up an Electoral College system that allowed voters to vote for electors, who would then cast their votes for candidates, a system described in Article II, section 1 of the Constitution.

Each state has a number of electors equal to the number of its U.S. senators plus the number of its U.S. representatives. Currently, the Electoral College includes 538 electors, 535 for the total number of congressional members, and three who represent Washington, D.C., as allowed by the 23rd Amendment. On the Monday following the second Wednesday in December, the electors of each state meet in their respective state capitals to officially cast their votes for president and vice president. These votes are then sealed and sent to the president of the Senate, who on January 6th opens and reads the votes in the presence of both houses of Congress. The winner is sworn into office at noon on January 20th.

Most of the time, electors cast their votes for the candidate who has received the most votes in that particular state. Some states have laws that require electors to vote for the candidate that won the popular vote, while other electors are bound by pledges to a specific political party. However, there have been times when electors have voted contrary to the people's decision, and there is no federal law or Constitutional provision against it.

In most presidential elections, a candidate who wins the popular vote will also receive the majority of the electoral votes, but this is not always the case. There have been four presidents who have won an election with fewer popular votes than their opponent but more electoral votes.

Here are the four elections when the candidate who led the popular vote did not win the office:

1824: John Quincy Adams received more than 38,000 fewer votes than Andrew Jackson, but neither candidate won a majority of the Electoral College. Adams was awarded the presidency when the election was thrown to the House of Representatives.

1876: Nearly unanimous support from small states gave Rutherford B. Hayes a one-vote margin in the Electoral College, despite the fact that he lost the popular vote to Samuel J. Tilden by 264,000 votes. Hayes carried five out of the six smallest states (excluding Delaware). These five states plus Colorado gave Hayes 22 electoral votes with only 109,000 popular votes. At the time, Colorado had been just been admitted to the Union and decided to appoint electors instead of holding elections. So, Hayes won Colorado's three electoral votes with zero popular votes. It was the only time in U.S. history that small state support has decided an election.

1888: Benjamin Harrison lost the popular vote by 95,713 votes to Grover Cleveland, but won the electoral vote by 65. In this instance, some say the Electoral College worked the way it is designed to work by preventing a candidate from winning an election based on support from one region of the country. The South overwhelmingly supported Cleveland, and he won by more than 425,000 votes in six southern states. However, in the rest of the country he lost by more than 300,000 votes.

2000: Al Gore had over half a million votes more than George W. Bush, with 50,992,335 votes to Bush's 50,455,156. But after recount controversy in Florida and a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Bush was awarded the state by 537 popular votes. Like most states, Florida has a "winner takes all" rule. This means that the candidate who wins the state by popular vote also gets all of the state's electoral votes. Bush became president with 271 electoral votes.

Today, a candidate must receive 270 of the 538 votes to win the election, so George W. Bush won the 2000 election by one electoral vote. In cases where no candidate wins a majority of electoral votes, the decision is thrown to the House of Representatives by virtue of the 12th Amendment. The House then selects the president by majority vote with each state delegation receiving one vote to cast for the three candidates who received the most electoral votes.
Here are the two elections that were decided by the House of Representatives:

1801: Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, both Democrat-Republicans, received the same number of electoral votes, despite the fact that Burr was running as a vice presidential candidate, not for the presidency. Following 36 successive votes in the House, Jefferson was finally elected president.

1825: As mentioned above, Andrew Jackson received a majority of the popular vote over John Quincy Adams, but neither man received a 131-vote majority of electoral votes needed at the time to claim the presidency. Adams won the House vote on the first ballot.
Proponents of the Electoral College say that the system served its purpose in the elections listed above, despite the fact that the candidate who won the popular vote didn't always win the election. The Electoral College is a block, or weighed, voting system that is designed to give more power to the states with more votes, but allows for small states to swing an election, as happened in 1876. Under this system, each state is assigned a specific number of votes that is proportional to its population, so that each state's power is representative of its population. So, while winning the popular vote may not ensure a candidate's victory, a candidate must gain popular support of a particular state to win the votes in that state. The goal of any candidate is to put together the right combination of states that will give him or her 270 electoral votes.

http://people.howstuffworks.com/question472.htm

I hate it with such a passion you would not believe. I understand WHY it's in the Constitution, but it's WAY past any useful purpose now. And WHY would the smaller states care? The smaller states have less Electorial votes, what's the difference? Popular vote NOW!!!
Gilly

__________________
Click here to see the items I have up for auction at EBay

Click here to see a photo album of my '62 Sprite Project Moneypit (Now Sold)

No offense but if you understood you wouldn't hate it. The purpose has not changed at all. The electoral collegs, as well as the 2 Senator rule makes eual representation possible. Without these, only the 5 biggest states would ever see a politician.

Some can argue that some of the Constitution is "obsolete" but its funny how that applies to their pet peeves.

Good example is when people say the 2nd amendment did not take into account automatic weapons, therefore it needs to be rewritten or deleted. But you don't hear anybody wanting to dump the 1st amendment, even though it did not know about radio, TV and the internet.

The people who wrote our Constitution were WAY smarter than anybody you see today, by far. The document does not attempt to be perfect for everybody all the time.

You hear people saying abolish the elctoral college when only 2 (or 3?) times the prez didn't win the popular vote. It will probably happen once in a persons lifetime, if at all.

And in case you didn't know, we are a republic, not a democracy, so getting out and voting for congress is VERY important.

I think the only sensible change would be to not publish ANY results until all votes are counted, so western voters can go to the polls without knowing the outcome.

__________________
MB-less

Once again, our lovely legislature, not content with merely screwing up the state, tries to take things on a national level...

It's too bad we can't recall the legislature... Which, BTW, is in large part screwed up because Los Angeles and San Francisco have the main say in what this state does and where the money goes, much to the detriment of people who don't live in those areas.

Our founding fathers were some smart fellas. I would not hesitate to state that they are MUCH smarter now, being dead in the ground all these years, than is the average California legislator.

__________________
-livin' in the terminally flippant zone

come on you should know this... the house of reps has represenatives based on population , that house directly represents the house, then you're going to need a house that thinks differently with less members along with longer terms so they can debate bills and such while the 2 year people over at the house come in and out(even though senate is broken up into thirds and each third is voted in every 2 years in line with the HR)

LOL.......he got you Don........the coy Botanist with another rhetorical question.........

probably but i just had a test on the constitution and stuff related with it.. i recived 155/160 points.. i screwed up on how to ammend the consitution

I don't buy into this for a few reasons. Well, first the candidates DO try to court the states with the most EC votes. It's not like every state has the same amount of votes, so candidates do hit those states pretty heavily anyways.
Second, and this is where the EC is really outdated because of modern communications. The candidates will realize that to appeal to the large audience of rural America, they must also court to them as well. It's not like every small town in America will expect a visit, but if the candidates make it a point to visit a bunch of these areas, it will make the news and they'll know about it, and as we ALL know any little mistake or misspoken word will be recorded, as well as the well said speeches. This is where I really think the EC is failing us. We can all find out what the candidates are saying and promising and what they purport to stand for, we don't need the EC to make the desicions for us any more, the popular vote system will work JUST fine now. As it is, it's just a tactic which can be looked at a few different ways and a big numbers game to try to win. With popular vote, this would disappear. I know there were a few states last time (for some reason CO comes to mind) which was going to divide up the EC votes depending on the popular vote, this is at least a step in the right direction, popular vote should really be considered, I don't like this "winner takes all" approach with EC. To me it's just a big game, a real turn off to voting in general, at least the Presidential race.
Gilly

__________________
Click here to see the items I have up for auction at EBay

Click here to see a photo album of my '62 Sprite Project Moneypit (Now Sold)