>What's really pissing me off these days are Republicans (and some
>Democrats) from large states who argue that getting rid of the the electoral
>college and modernizing the election system would hurt small states.
>Boo hoo. These people are offensively servile, ass-kissing, boot-licking
>brown-nosing, syncophatic toadies to big money/capital/oligarchical power.
>And they're chickenshit for not coming out and saying that democracy/one-
>person-one-vote is a bad idea. And I would not be surprised if anti-urban
>racism plays a part. Okay, okay, I'll lighten up.
from another list:
<forwarded>
The evil effects of the cities can be better ameliorated -- with a chance of actually enacting the reform -- by assigning one electoral vote to each congressional district, and partitioning the 2 extra votes somehow. (if one candidate gets more than 70% of the whole state's vote, he gets both, otherwise winner gets one.)
The problem is not so much "urban" voting as the unmentionable factor in American politics, bloc voting by controlled ethnic minorities.
Suppose -- as in the recent presidential election -- both popular and electoral votes are "close". In most precincts, the vote splits 50:50, men voting for liberty and women for benefits, largely cancelling each other out. Take a massive state like PA, with only a single megalopolis, load that megalopolis with blacks, who "vote" 96% for benefits. I quote "vote" because we have this mental picture of a black citizen entering a polling booth, pondering the issues, then voting. This is not how it is done. Because of politics, the black districts are controlled by urban democrat party operatives. In the city of Philadelphia, there are 1,400,000 citizens, of all ages, including children, felons, insane, foreigners. Yet 1,000,000 managed to "vote" in Philadelphia, including phenomenal 100% voter turnouts in black precints, where 99% of the vote is for Democrats. Thus can the black political machine steal the entire state, by a margin so large that recount is futile. *poof* 23 electoral votes for a candidate that doesn't dare show his face outside Philadelphia and Pittsburgh for security reasons.
The Reese scheme limits the theft by a machine to a single state. Voting by county is likewise theft-limiting, as is my "congressional district". The problem with the other two is that they have no chance of passage. The county scheme fails because a county has no strict definition -- what would prevent a state from dividing itself into a thousand counties? Congressional districts have the advantage that there is already (more or less) a constitutional definition, at least that they must represent a certain number of persons (mas o menos).
This scheme is doable on a state-by-state basis, since how a state partitions its electoral votes (or even if it uses elections to select electors, as Gore may have shoved in his face shortly) is a strict matter of state's rights. If the states of California, Pennsylvania and New York had used this method in the last election (as Maine and Nebraska did), Bush would have won hands-down. Doing it on a state-by-state basis is also a mostly "we win" procedure, since each state going over to the system weakens the ability of the urban areas to dominate the countryside, or for a few corrupt precincts in Miama, LA, Philly, Chicago and NYC to steal a national election. Doing it state-by-state is easy, too, since state legislatures already have districts (limiting theft and Democrat influence), and this reform can be done by statute or state constitutional amendment, and the legislatures are often Republican.
Going to a straight national popular vote -- Hillary's plan, also Arlen ["Single Bullet"] Specter's (Consider the sources!) -- would guarantee the end of the country, it would be exclusively ruled by the coastal cities. Democrats have been pushing for this for decades, the same SOBs who gave us popular election of Senators, another abomination -- the Senatorial races can be stolen by corrupt urban machines. (Why does CA have only Democrat Senators? SF, LA, Sac, SD.)
100% voter turnout? 99% Gore? C'mon... In a way, these stolen black precincts are implementing the "plan".
Note: stealing elections is ~OK, if the electoral district is small enough, since it is likely that a machine strong enough to steal the district actually does represent the people in the district. Mayor Daley the Elder did *not* (AFAIK) have to steal his *own* or Chicago alderman elections, he was the people's choice. But he could and did steal US presidential, senatorial, and state gubernatorial elections.
Note that my "congressional district" reform is formally identical to having the president simply elected by a joint session of the Senate and the House.