Electoral College Roulette
The Chicago Tribune reports (from Political Wire)
“A coalition of former congressmen is launching a campaign to change how Americans select their president by reforming the Electoral College system, saying campaigns for the White House should be reliant on the nationwide popular vote rather than simply the outcome in a handful of swing states,” the Chicago Tribune reports.
“The bipartisan group plans to announce its proposal Thursday and begin a state-by-state effort to amend the Electoral College so the winner reflects the view of the country instead of an individual state or two with a close vote on Election Day. The plan would seek to eliminate the possibility of a candidate winning the popular vote but losing the election, as happened to former Vice President Al Gore in 2000.”
Says former Sen. Birch Bayh (D-IN): “The time is long past to not play Electoral College roulette every four years. It is a throwback to 1887.”
The Electoral College is certainly an issue that is open for debate. In fact, we would love to have that debate on DoubleSpeak, so please leave a comment below.
Right after the 2000, election, Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and some others talked about the need to do away with Electoral College, but, like most things in U.S. politics, the reforms never made it out of the gate.
February 25th, 2006 at 7:39 pm
In the above article I think they meant to say that they would amend the constitution, not an easy thing to do but certainly a worthy goal in this case. Every other election in this country is one by popular vote, and the election of president should be too. Here is part of an entry from Wikipedia. As can be seen, it is not easy to amend the US Constitution:
The United States
Amendments to the United States Constitution are passed as joint resolutions by both houses of Congress but with a two-thirds supermajority, after which at least three-fourths of the state legislatures must ratify it. Once certified by the Archivist of the United States, the amendment takes effect according to its provisions and the other rules of the constitution.
February 27th, 2006 at 5:10 pm
Ed, the proposed law, “Agreement among the states to elect the President by national popular vote”, has nothing to do with amending the Constitution. Rather, it uses Article II, Section I, of the Constitution that allows state legislatures to determine how their electors function. Individual states would form a compact to pledge all its electoral votes to the presidential candidate with the most popular votes nation-wide. When enough state(minimum 270-electoral votes)legislatures had approved the law, their states would honor the law. I live in the first state(Illinois)that is considering approval of the law(Illinois SB 2724). This approach to make “every vote equal” is brilliant. As few as eleven states approving the law would, for the first time in American history, have the election of the American President by the American people. Go to http://www.nationalpopularvote.com for more details.