How many times have you heard, “My vote doesn’t count in this state. Bush or Kerry has this state locked up.”? This is the lament that has been heard almost since the start of the Electoral College. And, it is a reality. Here in Massachusetts (and on Martha’s Vineyard where I live), Kerry will win by a landslide, as will Bush in Texas. The votes of the minority in each state will not count. Further, as the Center for Voting and Democracy (www.fairvote.org/e-college/reform.htm) shows, voters in states with few electoral votes have a greater say in the election than voters in states with a significant number of electoral votes.
The chances are that you won’t hear any more about this after November 2, assuming, of course, that the fiasco of 2000 is not repeated. We don’t get riled up about this extremely important issue until a month or two before each presidential election. We should because, simply put, it is not fair. The site mentioned above, http://www.fairvote.org/, has several cogent arguments about this issue. But, all the cogent arguments in the world will result in nothing unless we, the people, can increase our attention spans beyond the sound bite.
3 comments:
Gerrymandering is clearly a very important factor in this. If it were not, you could simply assign the electoral votes within a state by congressional district plus two for winning the state.
I think the real problem is the short attention span of the American public. My wife can recall her college professors remembering their professors' complaints about the system.
I also remember Frank Kelly, who appeared before the Massachusetts legislature for maybe twenty and more years petitioning for a state lottery. It finally passed and, now, we can't live without it. I think this issue will take the same type of dedication.
There has been some movement in the past 30 years in that Maine and Nebraska(?) now divide their vote by congressional district.
I just think its funny - if the 2000 election went the other way, Libs would be in full support of the Electoral College system. Because it went against them, they hate it. Same with how when Clinton proposed privatization of Social Security, Dems were all for it. When GOP proposes it, it is pure evil.
There is a new proposal which DOES have a chance of passing into law. Now if we can just get the govenator (CA) to sign it out here that would be a good start.
www.nationalpopularvote.com
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