Al Gore appeared on Current TV last night and dropped what was an interesting little bomb for politicos: he called for the end of the electoral college.
Appearing with the network’s Elliot Spitzer, Cenk Uygur and Jennifer Granholm, Gore said, “I have strong views on that.” He should—he won the popular vote in 2000 and ended up losing the election. He admitted, “Even after the 2000 election, I supported the idea of the electoral college.”
But no more. Gore argued that the electoral college was outdated in a time when an accurate one-person one-vote system is possible technologically. “The logic is it knits the country together, prevents regional conflicts, and it goes back through our history wtih some legitimate concerns. But since I’ve given a lot of thought to it and I’ve seen how these states are just written off and ignored, and people are affectively disenfranchised in the presidential race, I really do now think it’s time to change that.”
The relevancy or need for the electoral college in elections is debated fiercely, but Elliot Spitzer weighed in with another interesting point about how it affects more than just elections: “The other element is it affects governance. …A Republican president who knows he’s never going to get California or New York electoral votes is necessarily going to focus on states that are in play,” creating a state favoritism favoritism in policy decisions.
Watch the clip below.
September 01, 2012 at 2:36 am, Ooty Cat said:
The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).
Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections. No more distorting and divisive red and blue state maps. There would no longer be a handful of 'battleground' states where voters and policies are more important than those of the voters in more than 3/4ths of the states that now are just 'spectators' and ignored after the conventions.
When the bill is enacted by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes– enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538), all the electoral votes from the enacting states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC.
The bill uses the power given to each state by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution to change how they award their electoral votes for President. Historically, virtually all of the major changes in the method of electing the President, including ending the requirement that only men who owned substantial property could vote and 48 current state-by-state winner-take-all laws, have come about by state legislative action.
In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). Support for a national popular vote is strong among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in virtually every state surveyed in recent polls in closely divided Battleground states: CO – 68%, FL – 78%, IA 75%, MI – 73%, MO – 70%, NH – 69%, NV – 72%, NM– 76%, NC – 74%, OH – 70%, PA – 78%, VA – 74%, and WI – 71%; in Small states (3 to 5 electoral votes): AK – 70%, DC – 76%, DE – 75%, ID – 77%, ME – 77%, MT – 72%, NE 74%, NH – 69%, NV – 72%, NM – 76%, OK – 81%, RI – 74%, SD – 71%, UT – 70%, VT – 75%, WV – 81%, and WY – 69%; in Southern and Border states: AR – 80%,, KY- 80%, MS – 77%, MO – 70%, NC – 74%, OK – 81%, SC – 71%, TN – 83%, VA – 74%, and WV – 81%; and in other states polled: AZ – 67%, CA – 70%, CT – 74%, MA – 73%, MN – 75%, NY – 79%, OR – 76%, and WA – 77%. Americans believe that the candidate who receives the most votes should win.
The bill has passed 31 state legislative chambers in 21 states. The bill has been enacted by 9 jurisdictions possessing 132 electoral votes – 49% of the 270 necessary to go into effect.
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October 25, 2012 at 9:35 am, How John Boehner could end up president on November 7 | Death and Taxes said:
[...] poll guru Nate Silver is still laying odds at 70% of an Obama victory because of the way the electoral college votes are likely to fall, Rachel Maddow ran through an exercise last night that would put all the [...]