Stealing Electoral Votes In California?
September 7, 2007, 10:21pm
California Republicans don’t like the winner-take-all approach in presidential elections, so they are working to get an initiative on the ballot next June to change the rules.
Under the Presidential Election Reform Act, presidential candidates would win the electoral votes in each district where they win the popular vote. California’s current system, like those in most states, is based on the statewide vote. In other words, the candidate who wins the popular vote for the entire state wins all of the electoral votes.
The bid by Republicans to change the rules via ballot initiative does not sit well with Democrats, whose candidates have won all of California’s electoral votes (currently 55) in the past four presidential elections. One group, the Courage Campaign, is working with bloggers and other online Democratic activists to fight the initiative.
Online videos are one facet of the Courage Campaign’s fight. The latest video, released yesterday, attacks Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for failing to take a position on the ballot effort or even to read it so far. The satire features a Simpsons-style Schwarzenegger repeating the phrase, “I was elected to lead, not to read.”
The closing message: “Tell Arnold: Read and lead. Stop the Republicans from stealing the White House on June 3rd.”
Categories: Politics, Technology, Presidency 2008, History, Government Reform
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September 8th, 2007 at 11:02 am
The ballot measure to divide California’s 55 electoral votes by congressional district would magnify the worst features of our antiquated system of electing the President.
Under the current system (used everywhere except Maine and Nebraska), all of a state’s electoral votes are awarded to the candidate who gets the most popular votes in that state. The effect of this winner-take-all rule is that candidates have no reason to campaign in states where they are comfortably ahead or hopelessly behind. Candidates concentrate over two-thirds of their money and visits on just six closely divided battleground states, and 99% of their expenditures in just 16 states. Two thirds of the states (including California) are ignored in presidential elections.
The proposed ballot measure would not, as claimed, make California relevant in presidential elections. The presidential race is a foregone conclusion in 50 of the California’s 53 congressional districts. Candidates would have no incentive than they do now to pay attention to California remaining 50 districts. Nationwide, there are only 55 districts that are competitive in presidential elections, so seven-eighths of the county would be left out of presidential elections if this approach were used nationally.
If the district approach were used nationally, it would less accurately reflect the will of the people than the current system. Although Bush lost the national popular vote in 2000, he won 55% of the country’s congressional districts. In 2004, Bush won 50.7% of the popular vote, but 59% of the districts.
A national popular vote is the way to guarantee that the candidate who gets the most votes in all 50 states becomes President. It is the way to make every person’s vote relevant, regardless of where that person lives.
Under the National Popular Vote bill, all of the state’s electoral votes would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The legislation would take effect only when enacted, in identical form, by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes—that is, enough electoral votes to elect a President.
The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee that the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in all 50 states will win the Presidency. The bill has 320 legislative sponsors in 47 states. It has been signed into law in Maryland. The bill has also passed the Colorado Senate, Arkansas House, and Hawaii House and Senate.
See www.NationalPopularVote.com
September 8th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
John, while IMHO the national popular vote system is a great idea to latch onto eventually, such a bill would have no practical effect– the Electoral College is a part of the United States Constitution itself, not just a Congressional law, so no bill can bring about a national popular vote. Only a Constitutional Amendment would do that, and that takes years to bring about. (You’d need a 2/3 majority voting for it in *both* houses of Congress– you’d never get that many Republicans on board– *and* then you’d need 3/4 of all the state legislatures in the country to support it, a large number of which are Republican-dominated, especially in the small states. And it takes so much time to get something like that through the legislatures, this just isn’t something that’s practical at the outset, although possibly by the 2012 election.)
I don’t agree with the assessment that so many of California’s districts are uncompetitive– a lot of them are close calls, and there are possibly 15 of them that could swing either way (especially in the Inland regions and central California). It *would* compel the candidates to focus more on California, to discuss a lot of critical issues in the state that are neglected.
The best thing for the Dems to do, would be to introduce analogous ballot initiatives in some other states. Remember how we’ve been screwed over in Florida and in Ohio in the last two elections? Both full of Democratic-leaning districts that are ignored when the states break Republican (often due to some nasty chicanery on the GOP’s part). And both with robust ballot initiative processes. We should get similar measures going in those states, as this will take back Electoral Votes for the Democrats that would otherwise be monopolized by the Republicans and their minions.