Sooooooo, Should I Still Even Bother To Vote?

[badstar]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18053715/

The measure would award Maryland's 10 electoral votes to the national popular vote winner. The plan would only take effect if states representing a majority of the nation's 538 electoral votes decided to make the same change.

This really doesn't make sense to me.

Comments

[vees.livejournal.com]

It's basically a state-by-state implementation of popular vote.

If all the states with a majority of the electoral votes all put their votes towards the popular vote winner, then the winner of the popular vote across the US will always win.

Translation: Gore would have been President in 2000.

[fuego.livejournal.com]

If all the states with a majority of the electoral votes

this isn't really computing for some reason. All the states with a majority?

[blaisepascal]

I'd have to take a look at the law, but I suspect it means that if the states that will throw their EC votes to the winner of the popular votes represent a majority of the EC, then the law takes effect.

So if enough states representing at least 270 EC votes say "We'll go with the national popular winner", then MD will be one of them.

Personally, I'd prefer legislation apportioning the EC votes among the candidates based on number of votes cast in that state. If broadly implemented, that would make the EC reflect the national vote better, and would probably allow for some 3rd-party EC representation.

[fuego.livejournal.com]

good grief, I just want to vote directly for who I want to vote for.

[blaisepascal]

Until a constitutional amendment is passed to eliminate the EC, that ain't gonna happen. Now you technically vote for "electors" pledged to vote for a particular candidate in the EC. Occasionally you get "faithless electors" who vote for a different candidate than the one they were pledged.

The closest you'll come w/o a constitutional amendment is the thing that MD passed. If it ever goes into effect, then it effectively turns the presidential election into a national plurality vote.

I don't like plurality votes in general when there are more than 2 candidates, nor do I think it is necessarily a bad thing to have the Presidency go to a candidate who didn't get the plurality vote.

[fuego.livejournal.com]

Yes, I understand how it works. *sigh* like I said, I wsant to vote for who I want to vote for. Not for some other guy who might decide to say screw it and vote on my behalf for someone else.

[vees.livejournal.com]

More than likely this would just cause the political strategists on both major party sides to fund "spoiler" candidates against each other (think Greens vs. Dems and Libs vs. GOP) to diminish the impact of strongly colored states.

Not necessarily a bad thing, but a predictable response.

[blaisepascal]

Then give the entire state to a single candidate, but choose that candidate using a clone-free Condorcet system. ("clone-free" means that adding a candidate who is "identical" to another candidate doesn't spoil either candidates chances.)

[vees.livejournal.com]

All the states who when added together would collectively hold more than 50% of the total electoral votes for the entire U.S.

[saratoga80.livejournal.com]

This is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. As the Supreme Court noted in its 2000 decision that granted the Presidency to George W. Bush, there is no way to ever guarantee, with certainty, that a popular majority exists under the circumstances of a close vote. It is impossible to compeltely remove the effect of voter fraud. For every time that we have accusations of fraud in Florida - and we'll never know the truth but we'll all ahve an opinion - we have accusations in Hawaii of by the GOP. So, imagine the turnaround if a Republican wins the clean popular majority in the nation - say 55-45 - but, in MD, a noted blue state, the Democrat squeaks by with 51-49. This means all 10 MD votes would be Republican, and would not reflect the majority will of the people. The idea of the electoral college, while flawed, was created to guarantee that representation of a state's will was accounted for. If they wanted to truly account for the people's will, they would have 10 Democrats and 10 Republicans, and a smattering from other parties at the ready, establish a threshold percentile for electoral college representation (10% of the people of a state must have voted for the party to be represented, at minimum, is one idea). Then if the election were 60-40 Democrat to Republican, 6 Dem delegates would go, 4 GOP would go, and then you'd actually represent the will of Maryland, instead of all-or-nothing.