This article about how the Illinois House has voted in the affirmitive for a bill that would give a national popular vote winner Illinois' electoral votes even if they lost in Illinois. I know that some people are still upset about what happened in 2000 with Bush but this doesn't seem very well thought out. Shouldn't you just work with the will of the people in your state?
Plus I wonder if this could pass constitutional muster. The electoral college is in the constitution, but it doesn't indicate how it should vote, just the procedure and how many electoral votes a candidate must get to become President. Nothing about the manner which it should be done.
In the early days electors had a little more independence in using their votes. These days convention is that instead of voting for our choice for President, we vote for his slate of electors. And usually the slate of electors would vote for the candidate they were supposed to vote for, though every now and then there is an unusual event for instance Al Gore didn't get all the electoral votes he was supposed to get in 2000 because one elector amongst many didn't like the results. Know one thing though, there are laws made by the states on matters such as this that can only resolved by a federal constitutional amendment.
So I don't know this doesn't seem like a good idea to me. It ties the hands of the electors from making the proper decision and reflect the will of the people of their state. And I can look at it this way in 2004 (unlike 2000), Bush was winning the popular vote, but lost in Illinois. Know what that means, Bush instead would have won Illinois' electoral votes. I'm thinking people wouldn't like that scenario especially the legislators in the Illinois House of Representatives.
Isiah 1:17- Learn to do well. Seek justice, Relieve the oppressed, Judge the fatherless, Plead for the widow.
2 comments:
The winner-take-all rule that is currently used by most states (including Illinois) to allocate their electoral votes is not in the U.S. Constitution. This rule is strictly in state law. The winner-take-all rule was used by only 3 states in the nation’s first presidential election in 1789. States have used many other methods to award their electoral votes over the years. Maine and Nebraska currently award electoral votes by district (regardless of the statewide vote). So, why would a federal constitutional amendment be needed to change these state laws? The answer is that it isn’t. Indeed, the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the states over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as “plenary” and “exclusive.” All the U.S. Constitution says is "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors." There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that prefers Illinois’s current statewide counting rule, or Maine’s district-level counting rule, or the National Popular Vote bill’s nationwide counting rule. It is a matter of state choice.
As for Illinois’s electors not reflecting the vote solely inside the state of Illinois, that’s the whole point of the National Popular Vote bill. If the electoral votes follows the popular voting inside each state, that is precisely the counting method that permits a second-place candidate from winning the Presidency. What’s worse, under the winner-take-all rule, if the partisan divide in a state is not initially about 46%-54%, no amount of campaigning during a brief presidential campaign is realistically going to change the winner of the state. As a result, presidential candidates have no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, campaign, or worry about the concerns of voters of states that they cannot possibly win or lose. Instead, candidates concentrate their attention on a handful of “battleground” states. 88% of the money is focused onto just 9 closely divided battleground states: Ohio, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, New Mexico, and New Hampshire.
Neither candidate visited Illinois during the post-convention 2004 presidential campaign because Illinois issues or concerns were simply not relevant to winning the November election.
Winner-take-all meshes with the principles of Federalism. Let the states, as entities, decide.
It also provides a finality that would not be present in a popular vote contest. A close vote like Florida would put all 49 other states back in play to scramble for a few more votes to push their guy over the edge, or cut off the other guy at the knees.
"88% of the money is focused onto just 9 closely divided battleground states"
This is not as bad as it may sound. Campaigning 'nationally' for a popular vote contest means more cash needed, meaning more and larger special interest contributors expecting more for their contributions ahead of the people.
We don't need this. I'll accept my vote 'not counting' because my guy lost my state; but not because my guy lost in a bunch of other states.
It ain't that broke, so don't fix it.
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