DOWN WITH THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE
COMPILED AND WRITTEN BY LUCY WARNER
NOVEMBER 11, 2016


A friend today sent me another article on ditching the Electoral College. If we don’t have it, how can we vote fairly and DIRECTLY? Will directly counting the votes of so many people be overly confusing and cumbersome? How great a load can our modern computers handle? In my old college days, people were talking about plebiscites as a means to that end.

Between the “winner take all” states (most of them) and the perks given to the swing/battleground states, our individual voters are more like what is disgustingly called “pink slime,” a food additive used to give a can of stew or some hamburger a little more flavor and protein, but nothing to chew on and enjoy. I am just like some of those Trump voters. I want my vote COUNTED!

Our American system is not only one that, effectively, robs citizens of their vote; it can be grossly inaccurate in choosing the candidate. Some of our candidates have had a narrow margin of victory in the popular vote, but a “landslide” in Electoral Votes. In a handful, but a painful handful, of election years, the candidate who got the least votes was actually chosen over the true winner by the (accursed) Electoral College.

2016 was one of those years, with Hillary Clinton losing to Donald Trump. There are a number of articles on the Net this last week analyzing how and why that happened, and there are a lot of causes it seems. Some politicians like system because it is a quick and dirty way to get enough “electoral votes” (there that concept is again) without going nearly as many miles in your bus or airplane, or spending as much energy on studying the people and the political climate. It is both politically motivated and corrupted by both parties, I have no doubt. If this bill that is being circulated, the National Popular Vote bill, is passed, the worst flaws of our system can be ameliorated without totally dismantling the Electoral College. At least that is the hope.

In reading about the literally worldwide angst over the legal but unfair election of a man who is widely viewed as incompetent and even dangerous, I discovered that there is no other democracy extant which has an administrative barrier like the Electoral College standing between the citizens and their chosen leader. Yes, I perceive the raw vote count as the only legitimate method of selection, and if that takes extra computers to handle that load, then invest in them – before the next election.

Not only is the present method inaccurate, in which the Electors do all the voting without even a requirement for conformity to the popular vote – using a number of different methods as defined by their respective states, immediately inducing injustice into the matter – but the Electors are powerful and wealthy people whom I tend to view as so steeped in their own private interests that they cannot be relied upon at all to be basically honest -- the fox watching the hen house so to speak.

That is because, from the very beginning in this country, the founding fathers FEARED that the judgement of the people would be unintelligent, uneducated, overly emotional, generally incompetent, immoral and downright dangerous. I wish I could say that the situation is greatly different today. The wealthy don’t merely harbor scorn for the poor, they fear their power, and especially if their skin is not white.

The Wikipedia article on the word plebiscite states that it is used mainly to decide specific policy questions that would affect the people or the nation. In a plebiscite, no representatives or electors or any such thing will be chosen. The result comes straight “from the horse’s mouth – from the citizens. That’s what I really want to see in this country. What we have now is an overly complicated and rather mysterious system that does no good whatsoever. Let’s make a surgical strike and just excise the whole concept of an Electoral College from our Constitution.

I see no reason, except the fears of the wealthy and privileged, why a direct voting mechanism can’t be used to elect the nation’s leaders as well as to pass referenda. An amendment to that effect would have to change the word being used from plebiscite to election, and rules under which an “election” is to be held would have to be simplified and revised in the Constitution.

Another thing which I didn’t see in this article is one of my pet peeves, the intricate and arcane (I love that word) leftover of the old States Rights privilege system, still being used by the radical right in ways that do unfairly impact people of color and women. For an eye opener look up the acronym “ALEC” on Google. Then Google Tea Party and David Koch for more. Donald Trump’s emergence on top of the stack is just part of Hillary Clinton’s “vast rightwing conspiracy.” I heard Clinton say that, several months ago, and I didn’t believe it was an organized system. I thought it couldn’t be true. She couldn’t be serious in her use of the word. I had seen the White Supremacists in their militias, of course, but I saw them as mainly distinct groups operating singly. The US citizens have been blindsided by something that is just possibly too big to fight. That doesn’t mean that we Progressives, led by Bernie Sanders, Howard Dean, Jill Stein, and others won’t keep trying.

As for the recent Supreme Court decision that Federal oversight in some specific states, applying to all issues involving Civil Rights, as being no longer needed, was very unfortunate and may well contribute to a takeover of sorts of our government. The idea that the “conservative” states can be trusted to play fair is really naïve. We need laws written to guarantee things like the freedom to register to vote and then carry through with it in action. That means that no infernal “poll watchers” who are nothing but thugs intimidating the poor, should be be allowed at any polling place in any state. That still has a tendency to require the Federal government’s stepping in to intervene, but so be it. All of those things are due to the extreme power and wealth of the Southern land holders and slave owners, who did strongly influence the writing of the Constitution.

The reason why the Trump and the Sanders followers have reacted so intensely in this 2016 election is because this country needs to do a much better job of (1) LISTENING TO THE PEOPLE and (2) SERVING the people rather than the unnamed oligarchs. As one demonstrator, whom I saw on the news last night (walking among the thousands who hit the streets immediately after Trump was declared the winner), had a sign saying “The people shouldn’t fear their government. The government should fear the people.”

I stand with him fully in that viewpoint. We really do need to “shake up” the government, but not by electing a dangerously right-leaning, unstable and inexperienced businessman-cum-con-artist for our president. We will be years as a nation getting over this obscene excuse for an election. Trump undoubtedly has some business acumen, but he needs law, foreign policy, civics, general science (he claims that Climate Change is a hoax) and a record of honest dealings.

There should also be no news stories about his possibly raping a 13 year old girl, ago along with “a billionaire pedophile” named Jeffrey Epstein. For that story see the Huffington Post, dated November 2, 2016. For even more of his legal battles, go to http://people.com/politics/donald-trump-legal-battles-stop-president/. That story was written by Tierney McAffee, and published yesterday. Then there is also the fraud lawsuit about his “college.”

Unfortunately, he has few if any of those desirable traits, in my view, and more than just a couple of the undesirables. NO, I’m not saying he is “a deplorable.” Deplorable is an adjective and not a noun, and no human can be written off to that degree. The Christian religion requires that we value all life, leave room in our hearts for all sinners to repent, and that includes Donald Trump! I will never forget the news footage of George Wallace asking a black man to forgive him. Trump’s family seems to like him, which shows that there must be good things in his nature. It’s very easy to totally blacken any person’s reputation to a degree that is damaging, and not fair, and I don’t want to do that. I was interested in some of the items listed on his “contract” with the people. They weren’t all about building a wall “like the Great Wall of China,” along the Mexican border. He is not totally evil. He does, however, need a good psychiatrist. Well, there now. I think I’ve said enough.




http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-explanation

Agreement Among the States to Elect the President by National Popular Vote

The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

The bill has been enacted by 11 jurisdictions possessing 165 electoral votes—61% of the 270 electoral votes necessary to activate it, including four small jurisdictions (RI, VT, HI, DC), three medium- size states (MD, MA, WA), and four big states (NJ, IL, NY, CA). The bill has passed a total of 33 legislative chambers in 22 states—most recently by a bipartisan 40–16 vote in the Arizona House, a 28–18 vote in the Oklahoma Senate, a 57–4 vote in New York Senate, and a 37–21 vote in Oregon House.

The shortcomings of the current system of electing the President stem from state winner-take-all statutes (i.e., state laws that award all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate receiving the most popular votes in each separate state).

Because of these state winner-take-all statutes, presidential candidates have no reason to pay attention to the issues of concern to voters in states where the statewide outcome is a foregone conclusion. As shown on the map, two-thirds of the 2012 general-election campaign events (176 of 253) were in just 4 states (Ohio, Florida, Virginia, and Iowa). Thirty-eight states were ignored.

State winner-take-all statutes adversely affect governance. “Battleground” states receive 7% more federal grants than “spectator” states, twice as many presidential disaster declarations, more Superfund enforcement exemptions, and more No Child Left Behind law exemptions.

Also, state winner-take-all statutes have allowed candidates to win the Presidency without winning the most popular votes nationwide in four of our 57 presidential elections—1 in 14 times. A shift of 59,393 votes in Ohio in 2004 would have elected John Kerry despite President Bush’s nationwide lead of over 3,000,000 votes. A shift of 214,393 votes in 2012 would have elected Mitt Romney despite President Obama’s nationwide lead of almost 5,000,000 votes.

The U.S. Constitution (Article II, Section 1) gives the states exclusive control over awarding their electoral votes: “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors....” The winner-take-all rule was used by only three states in 1789.

The National Popular Vote interstate compact would not take effect until enacted by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes—that is, enough to elect a President (270 of 538). Under the compact, the winner would be the candidate who received the most popular votes from all 50 states (and DC) on Election Day. When the Electoral College meets in mid-December, the national popular vote winner would receive all of the electoral votes of the enacting states.

The bill ensures that every vote, in every state, will matter in every presidential election.

The National Popular Vote bill preserves the Electoral College and state control of elections.

National Popular Vote’s Advisory Board includes former Senators Jake Garn (R–UT), Birch Bayh (D–IN), and David Durenberger (R–MN); former Congressmen John Anderson (R–IL, I), John Buchanan (R–AL), Tom Campbell (R–CA), and Tom Downey (D–NY). Other supporters include former Cong. Tom Tancredo (R-CO), Governor Howard Dean (D–VT), Governor Jim Edgar (R–IL), and House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R–GA).

Additional information is available in the book Every Vote Equal: A State-Based Plan for Electing the President by National Popular Vote and at www.NationalPopularVote.com.

The Only States That Received Any Attention in the 2012 General-Election Campaign For President Were States Within 3% of the National Outcome

The states are listed below in order of Romney’s 2012 percentage—with the most Republican (red) states at the top.

The second column shows the total number of general-election campaign events for each state (out of a nationwide total of 253). As can be seen, the only states that received any campaign events and any significant ad money (third column) were the 12 states (shown in black in the middle of the table) where the outcome was between 45% and 51% Republican—that is, within 3 percentage points of Romney’s nationwide percentage of 48%.

The fourth column shows donations from each state.

Reform the Electoral College so that the electoral vote reflects the nationwide popular vote for President.



http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11109-008-9068-7

Political Behavior
Description

Political Behavior publishes original research in the general fields of political behavior, institutions, processes, and policies. Coverage focuses on conventional and unconventional political behavior of individuals or small groups, and of large organizations that participate in the political process such as parties, interest groups, political action committees, governmental agencies, and mass media.
June 2009, 31:187



The Consequences of Battleground and “Spectator” State Residency for Political Participation
Keena Lipsitz
29 July, 2008

Abstract

This study uses pooled NES and state-level turnout data from 1988 through 2004 to assess whether a participation gap is emerging in the United States between the residents of battleground and non-battleground states in presidential elections. The analysis finds that Electoral College (EC) participatory disparities are more likely to occur in voting and meeting attendance than in donating and political discussion. Moreover, it suggests that such disparities are more likely to occur when presidential elections are nationally competitive. The study also demonstrates that when participatory gaps do occur they are the result of a surge in participation among battleground state residents—not of citizen withdrawal in safe states, as many EC critics contend.



http://www.electproject.org/home/voter-turnout/voter-turnout-data

Voter Turnout
National Turnout Rates, 1787-2012

The complete time series of national presidential and midterm general election turnout rates from 1787-present.
State Turnout Rates

Provided below are national and state turnout rates for the voting-eligible population for the 1980-2014 November general elections (spreadsheet for this entire series). This spreadsheet now includes VAP and VEP estimates for the 2014 general election.

National and state turnout rates for the 2000-2016 elections are also available on the web pages below, with specific data notes.


Contact:
Michael P. McDonald
Associate Professor
University of Florida
Department of Political Science
223 Anderson Hall
P.O. Box 117325
Gainesville, FL 32611



http://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01047926?no-access=true

Article Title: Public Choice
April 1994, Volume 79, Issue 1, pp 187–209
Steve Knack

Cite this article as: Knack, S. Public Choice (1994) 79: 187.

Abstract

Conventional political wisdom holds that inclement weather on election day reduces turnout, and helps elect Republican candidates. Analysis of National Climatic Data Center weather records and National Election Studies (NES) survey data for 1984, 1986, and 1988 refutes the latter hypothesis: interaction variables based on various measures of partisanship and election-day rainfall show no evidence of partisan differences in the turnout-deterring impact of inclement weather. Furthermore, rainfall does not significantly reduce the probability of voting for the NES samples as a whole, but only among those respondents scoring low on the standard NES civic duty indicator.

The author wishes to thank Joseph V. Knack (National Weather Service, ret.), William Evans, and Tancred Lidderdale for helpful comments and suggestions. American National Election Studies data were collected by the Center for Political Studies of the University of Michigan and were provided by the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research. Precipitation and temperature data were collected by the National Weather Service, and provided by the National Climatic Data Center. Analyses and interpretation of the data, as well as any remaining errors, are the sole responsibility of the author.



http://www.electionstudies.org/studypages/anes_timeseries_2012/anes_timeseries_2012_userguidecodebook.pdf

User's Guide and Codebook for the ANES 2012 Time Series Study
www.electionstudies.org/.../anes.../anes_timeseries_2012_userguidecode...

May 28, 2015 - conducted during years of Presidential elections since 1948 (the "ANES Time ... ANES staff will continue to conduct checks on the survey responses and on the ... The ANES was previously called the “National Election Studies” or NES. ... been called the American National Election Studies since 2005.


SEE ALSO: American National Election Studies
www.electionstudies.org/

A collaboration of Stanford University and the University of Michigan, producing data on voting, public opinion, and political participation.