Comments on: Virginia’s ill-considered electoral college idea

By: petefrt

petefrt — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 15:33:28 +0000

It also means that the Democrats would be able to swing the entire election by enough fraud (or near fraud) in cities like LA, Chicago, and New York.

Count to 10 on January 26, 2013 at 8:23 AM

As a resident of western PA, I hate to see Philthadelphia swing all of the state’s electoral votes when the remainder of the state is mostly conservative and moderate. I’d lean toward any measure the state legislature might take to give better balance to the influence of rural and suburban districts.

By: Count to 10

Count to 10 — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 13:23:56 +0000

If republicans really cared about democracy instead of rigging the vote, they’d advocate the abolishment of the electoral college and a national popular vote, no gimmicks.

You can’t gerrymander simple math.

If candidate A gets more votes than candidate B, he should win. I’m amazed anyone wants to argue against that logic.

triple on January 26, 2013 at 3:08 AM

It also means that the Democrats would be able to swing the entire election by enough fraud (or near fraud) in cities like LA, Chicago, and New York.
Of course, that’s more or less how Obama won the last election, just in a larger number of Democrat controlled cities.

By: duggersd

duggersd — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 12:21:57 +0000

I like the Nebraska and Maine plan. The upside is it makes more areas of the country a place to compete. Living in South Dakota would have no effect as we only have three votes to begin with, but I can see how it would be something to get presidential candidtates to visit more than just a few states. I do not like Virginia’s idea on the statewide allocation. I believe there should be some incentive to actually win the state. Has there been an analysis on how things would have turned out if all of the states used the NE model?

By: boone

boone — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 11:37:28 +0000

We ~~do the popular vote~~ vote at the state level for every single other election in our country, but not the president? That’s kinda screwed up.

FIFY

By: triple

triple — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 09:05:51 +0000

We do the popular vote for every single other election in our country, but not the president? That's kinda screwed up. The electoral college makes the presidency about whoever wins ohio, not whoever the country actually wants.

By: vegconservative

vegconservative — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 08:39:43 +0000

I don’t like the idea of changing the rules so we can win, mostly because it admits we can no longer win under the current set of rules, which since Republicans have had more presidents than democrats by a significant margin, shows the current decline of the party. Lets figure out how to win in the future with the rules we’ve been able to win with in the past.

By: triple

triple — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 08:08:03 +0000

If republicans really cared about democracy instead of rigging the vote, they’d advocate the abolishment of the electoral college and a national popular vote, no gimmicks.

You can’t gerrymander simple math.

If candidate A gets more votes than candidate B, he should win. I’m amazed anyone wants to argue against that logic.

By: karenhasfreedom

karenhasfreedom — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 06:06:01 +0000

Sigh. iPhone fat fingers. Who cares ABOUT.

By: karenhasfreedom

karenhasfreedom — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 06:05:02 +0000

Who cares a out the national vote total. The electoral college puts the power at the state level, where it should be.

By: crosspatch

crosspatch — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 04:46:35 +0000

It encourages radical gerrymandering.

Exactly and that is why I think maybe simply dividing the electoral votes (-2) according to the vote split (rather than by district boundary) with 2 votes going to the overall winner is better.

For example: in 2012 Obama won Colorado 51.49% to 46.13% Colorado has 9 electoral votes. Obama gets 2 because he won the state leaving 7. Obama gets 4 for his portion of the popular vote leaving 3 for Romney (other candidates did not get a large enough percentage for 1 electoral vote). So rather than 9 votes Obama, Colorado would have gone 6 Obama, 3 Romney. This also makes it MUCH more difficult for a candidate to win the popular vote but lose the electoral vote nationally.