Doesn’t matter.

Winner-take-all is one of the many fundamental sources of dysfunctional U.S. political system.

Proportional voting would be better but no chances of that.

I’m glad this effort has so much momentum. Thanks for reporting on it, Jon. Now, if we could just find a way to force the Senate to work more democratically…

The Electoral College needs to be eradicated, period…! That should be the primary target of these State efforts, a very tangible State’s Rights issue…

This is a great idea, and apparently it has some momentum already. Why am I reading about it here for the first time?

Too little, too late.

Esp with such a small pop state, around 500,000. Who cares. (No offense to VTers, just being realistic.)

hopefully this movement will grow.

This is an amazing idea. You hit yourself on the forehead, and say, why didn’t I think of it?

What are the odds of getting 270 votes worth of states? The Thugs will fight it tooth and nail in places like PA and FL. I will suppose that there is no chance in OH. You have to go through the Gore-Kerry election maps to judge whether this has legs or not. It’s a very close call, because no Thug state will vote for it.

It’s impossible to justify the current system in the US, which permits the top popular vote-getter not to become Prez.

Direct popular election could mean smaller turnout. Now there is a rationale for not voting which says there are 3 (or 5 or 7 or whatever) million registered voters in my state, so my vote for Prez is meaningless. There were 130 million votes cast for Prez in 2008. A person not dissuaded by 3 million might be dissuaded by 130 million.

We’re talking about the same system that allows a lot of legislation to be passed in the House of Representatives only to die in the Senate, right?

This is not a system that’s particularly friendly toward the will of the people.

Still, I’d like to see it change for the better.

Proportional voting.

I’m proud to be in one of the states that has signed it into law: Washington.

The Constitution is a treaty among states that are equals. Hence the Senate. The UN is like our Senate, not like our House.

I don’t think the US Constitution says anything about the will of the people. I also don’t think it contains “democracy,” or any of its derivatives.

May I ask supporters of this initiative why they think it’ll make a scintilla of difference when winner-take-all is so much bigger a problem. I’d appreciate links to studies that show what kind of improvement popular vote would make, when laughingly-referred-to-as 2-party (meaning no choice) system is the root of the problem.

Is it bc such a system would suck less than the current one, or bc it actually would demonstrate a greater pro-democracy bent.

Explain.

What is your Q. I think the explanation is already worded in my comment, expanded at 13.

By way of answering your Q, are you familiar with proportional representation in other western democracies? In which case, you might start with a simple wiki link.

Do you vote? If so, why?

As Jon presented above:

Second, it addresses the problem where candidates care almost entirely about trying to appeal to voters in a handful of “swing states.”

That alone makes it worthwhile. Campaign strategies would have to change for the better, I think.

It’s not about me. And your wingnut stupidity of putting it the blame where it doesn’t belong will not play here.

So marginal as to be laughable.

If there is no choice, why choose? If you don’t vote, why think about or talk about politics at all?

I think most people would agree that the Senate’s broken. That was my only point. In your comment @ 8, you seem to be putting down one part of the Constitution (Electoral College). Then in your comment @ 12, you seem to be matter-of-factly describing the Senate in all of its broken glory because, well, it’s part of the Constitution.

Guessing you have no ability to think about problems abstractly.

to essentially replace the arcane and undemocratic electoral college system with a true, national democratic election.

Even though we’ll be past collapse (and possibly extinction) by the time this catches on enough to theoretically save our nation – well fuck it, good anyway.

Not sure why you think the change would be so marginal. A popular vote in so many states (assuming more go for it) would go a long way toward forcing candidates to care more about voters beyond those who live in swing states.

BC political culture is much more multidimensional than A vs. B.

So addressing the A vs. B choice is just deluding yourself that you have made progress in a more complex situation.

While this is a step forward, it will not solve the real problem, i.e. the two-party duopoly which is locked in by the plurality voting system and the accompanying spoiler effect.

Single-winner elections such as the presidential election should be decided by approval voting, wherein every voter marks all candidates “approve” or “disapprove”. The candidate with the highest approval wins. This not only enables voters to express their support for third party candidates without automatically voting for their least favorite candidate, it also eliminates the needs for primaries.

Of course approval voting or not, the Senate is an abomination in its current form and should be replaced by an assembly that is elected in a national proportional vote for a party, with an instant approval vote for candidates of that party (you cast your vote for a party and then mark all candidates for that party approve or disapprove, and seats are filled in descending order of approval.)

You & I are getting at the same underlying problem, using somewhat diff language & approach.

The popular Presidential election was supposed to be an election of electors and I believe the idea was for electors to exercise their judgment. That system broke down in fairly short order, I think. I’ve never known the name of a single elector I’ve voted for. The Electoral College is now pretty mechanical, there are slates of electors pledged to particular candidates, the electors now vote for the candidate to whom they are pledged. From time to time there is a rogue elector.The Electoral College is now a cumbersome, unnecessary, and undemocratic intermediary step.

In any event the Electoral College system has degenerated and there is essentially no judgment exercised. So what we’re left with is a system which weighs the votes of voters in different states differently. I favor amending the US Constitution to abolish the EC and changing to direct popular election of President. I also think amending away the EC is possible.

Give me an example.

In pondering who to write in for prez in ’12 (e.g. my cat, Jacques Brel, Thelma Ritter, Yoko Ono, Dr. Frank N. Furter, Bertrand Russell, Jane Hamsher, Gore Vidal at 50, etc) – i think i’ll add “State of Vermont” to the list.

Ask an intelligent Q and I’ll respond in kind.

third party candidates

You’ve been had by today’s language owners.

I remember when John Anderson ran against Carter (D) and Reagan (R) and all the other candidates of their parties. Anderson ran as an independent candidate, i.e., unaffiliated with any political party. Our media hotdogs referred to Anderson as a “third-party” candidate as often as an “independent candidate”.

Soon enough but well after that election, a voter could register as an “Independent” voter, i.e., unaffiliated with any registered party in that voter’s region of residence; it had been a requirement in most or all voting precincts that the voter register as a party member of a sanctioned party.

Precious.

The only solution to the bigger problem you’re talking about would require a radical change to our system of government that, while it might be better, will never happen.

I recall some little bit of talk in the 1970s (the time of Nixon, Ford, Carter) of changing our system to a parliamentary democracy. It wasn’t much more than talk then. Won’t happen now. Besides, the result then was the rise of the unitary executive, imperial presidency beginning with Reagan.

My point is that it makes more sense to discuss improving the current system than to demand a radically different one that won’t happen short of a revolutionary popular uprising (perhaps not even then).

***as moderator***

disagree with the message but do not insult, demean, or otherwise attempt to flame the messenger. doing so will result in comments being moderated

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr wrote The Imperial Presidency (1973)

I agree that it will never happen.

Evidence: Lannie Guinier.

But my point is that it is a waste of typing fingers to discuss marginal changes that will make no difference, when only larger changes can.

I’ve been thru these priority issues for 2 decades on medical economics. Small changes are worthless. Large changes are impossible.

Better to admit that than to hold out “hopey changey”. Intellectual honesty must be the underpinning. If that can’t happen, admit defeat.

It makes sense to try to improve a failing system only if the hypothesized alternative will make a material diff in the intended direction.

What is your larger point, i.e., the big picture?

What talk will you walk?

I’ll admit that, if this effort were to succeed, we still wouldn’t have a perfect system. In fact, it would still be far from perfect. So long as the likes of Goldman Sachs has so much influence, we’re largely screwed either way. Still, I’d like to see this change happen.

It’s a failing system only in your mind. Excepting mathematics, the crap we learned in high school and earlier made for indoctrinating the society into a false world view. I thought you understood that. *w*

eCAHNomics – I think I agree with most of your points, if I understand them correctly. However, doesn’t the concept of President require some sort of “winner take all” election? I’d rather see multiple parties, coalitions, and more, but if we still have a President, at some point there will be a winner and one or more losers. Am I missing something?

There was a sense in the ’70s that the presidency was broken. Some thought the solution was a parliamentary democracy, others called for a unitary executive, i.e. imperial presidency. Beginning with the rise of Reagan, we got the latter. Still stuck with it, complete with strings being pulled behind the scenes.

In what sense is the current U.S. economics and foreign policy not a failing system?

The alternative is a president who acts more or less like a sovereign with little real power. As I understand it, real power in a parliamentary democracy would be in the hands of a prime minister, elected by the representatives of the people.

The early series of POTUS elections gave the P to the highest # of electoral votes, and the VP to the next higher #. Almost invariably for a while, after the POTUS’s term(s) the VP ‘ran’ for P and got the highest #.

Let me shout my point one more time and a little bit louder, and then you can ignore me altogether. *g*

I am/was a macroeconomist. So I focused on systemic problems, not small fixes. In the process, I thought a lot about marginal fixes, and pretty much decided that if you squeezed here, the problem would only bulge out there.

My analysis is dispiriting in the sense that small changes are worthless. As I’ve typed before YMMV. So we are free to disagree on whether marginal changes on a fundamentally flawed political structural matter, or whether they are just emotional sops to make do-gooders feel better.

Okay, if that’s what eCAHNomics was saying – defrock the President. The War Powers Resolution (1973) along with other attempts to put the President back in the box the constitution called for have failed. Treaty powers are now rubber stamped, the judicial system is one big rubber stamp, there haven’t been any successful “constitutional crises” to reign in the President since Nixon. If we are going to elect our dictators, I wish we had more benevolent choices…

Different room. My reply presumed the discussion was narrowly restricted to US electoral politics and US poli-sci.

That didn’t last long, though. If I remember correctly, just as many Secretaries of State became President as did VPs early on.

I get it. But you’re not offering any solutions as far as I can tell. At least this effort is highlighting the problem, even if it’s not going to make a huge dent toward fixing it.

This movement once looked like a long shot, especially with California’s Republican governor vetoing the measure twice. Now with a Democratic governor in Jerry Brown, the state’s 55 electoral votes appear likely to join the National Popular Vote effort. There is a great deal of support for it in Calif., which always finds itself sidelined except as an ATM machine for the parties.

Calif. has 55 electoral votes.

Right – I recall from my reading of history. The party system essentially got rid of that. But getting the position of V.P. instead of President – that really is as good as losing. They originally would disagree so badly, there wasn’t even any consultation between the two. If we have a President instead of some sort of council, we’ll need some eventual winner. But reading more of eCAHNomics’ posts, I see the advocacy of greater change, possibly removing the Presidential powers altogether.

Nothing in US politics lasts long simply because it gets figured out and then fails. E.g.: Gary Hart’s changing the Primary Election rules for the 1972 McGovern victory.

If we are going to elect our dictators, I wish we had more benevolent choices…

Sad. But I agree.

there haven’t been any successful “constitutional crises” to reign in the President since Nixon.

The Lewinsky affair doesn’t count? I think you’ve made Starr cry.

Some problems have no solutions.

I’m pessimistic about solutions to current problems bc of the economic disparity between us and them.

I haven’t given up, but have yet to see a way that the have-nots will react in our intended direction to haves until situation gets a lot worse.

My evaluation of ME revolutions.

Anyhow, late & weary so bid you all adieu.

Cute. I would say the Iran-Contra hearings were pre-impeachment revelations. Reagan’s handlers had him say “mistakes were made”, and there’s little doubt that he promised to sit on his hands for the duration of his term. That is, Congress (the first among equals) won, the Executive (second among equals) lost.

It will help but I’d like the option to vote for “none of the above”.

It’s hard to tell whether state legislatures are swayed more by how progressive they are, or by how pissed off they are at being ignored. Since a lot of the original momentum of the movement came from disgust over Bush v. Gore, this has been a progressive issue but I could certainly see Texas or California signing on just to get some Presidential face-time.

Oddly enough, several years ago Colorado changed voter registration reporting so that every minor party showed up as “independent.” There are still several parties that qualify for ballot access, and they’re all listed on the registration form but voter reg data only has the D, R, and I.

If our Republican gubernatorial debacle in the last election had lost the GOP major party status, that law would’ve changed really fast.

The way to get alternate systems is to build it up from smaller pieces. For example, San Francisco and Oakland, California both have ranked choice voting. People just love it, contrary to the “oh, those poor little voters will hate the confusion” story the opponents told. Once we’re into the details of which preference voting system is best, we’re a long, long way in the right direction.

Whining about how we have to have it nationally doesn’t advance this idea one whit. In fact, it serves the cause of those who don’t want it because it has you sitting on your hands rather than getting out there and doing something constructive.

It’s actually worse than that. The number of EC votes that each state gets is still thoroughly out of whack because it’s based on Congressional and Senate seats.

This proposal literally defines “tinkering at the margins.”

It would have an impact in only the most fringe cases like Bush v. Gore.

Good luck. Benevolence doesn’t thrive in a shameless popularity contest.

Getting self-serving narcissists as your government representatives is a guarantee, because of the selection bias inherent in the types who choose to run for office and who can shamelessly self-promote. If you’re content to keep representative government, then the only way you’re going to get any modicum of benevolence is if you just pick people at random.