By Dr. Tom Godfrey
As we are revving up to the Presidential Election in November, I feel it is my civic duty to point out that the Electoral College is lying in wait for us come year’s end. The College, unlike Franklin and Marshall and William and Mary, has nothing to do with education. It is the creation of the Founding Fathers, designed to put the outcome of national elections for President and Vice President in the hands of right-minded people. This, of course, occurred at a time when the only right-minded people allowed to vote were white male property-owners….
The worst outcome comes when the Electoral College selects someone other than the candidate who won the popular vote. This has happened three times since the Civil War. The most recent time was in 2000, when Albert Gore won the popular vote but lost to George W Bush in the Electoral College. That came after a challenge to the Florida outcome that ended up in the Supreme Court. In addition an elector of Gore’s pledged to vote for him declined to do so as a protest against the District’s lack of representation in Congress. Gore’s decision not to seek further legal action to secure the office probably spared the country an ugly protracted fight.
Most responsible observers agree the Electoral College is horribly antiquated, redundant and needs to go. Unfortunately it would take a Constitutional Amendment to bring this about. No action has been taken in recent years to accomplish this. I vote to put the College out with the weekly trash… (more)
EDITOR: Despite a disgraceful Supreme Court decision, the election was almost bound to end up in House of Representatives, in which case George W. Bush would have been selected because each state gets one vote and there were more Republican states than Democrat.
As a recount by distinguished newspapers later determined, Bush would have won Florida based upon a recount of the counties specified for recount by the Florida court. Only a recount of the entire state would have made Gore the winner.
The greater irony was how a confusing ballot was written in Florida’s Palm Beach County that resulted in Pat Buchannan garnering most of the heavy Jewish vote. Had that infamous “butterfly ballot” not occurred, Gore would have been president and the world would be a different and likely much better place today.
…The Florida debacle was terrible. Scalia should have recused himself.
The chad business was a disgrace, The secretary of state there was far too political.
Nothing has been done to prevent a re-occurence.
People were far less polarized in 2000. If it happened this, the gridlock would be unprecedented and I believe it would affect the recovery.
It’s not who votes that counts; it’s who counts the votes–Stalin, Bush, Cheney.
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.
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: 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 small, medium-small, medium, and large states. The bill has been enacted by 9 jurisdictions possessing 132 electoral votes – 49% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect.
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