posted August 17, 2004 12:14 PM              

---

They haven't posted the new Army Times on-line yet, but our paper copy just came in and I thought this opinion article to be a nice little piece:

Cast your ballot in November, but be aware that your vote may not count
- Robert F. Dorr
The writer, an Air Force Vetran, lives in Oakton, Va. He is the author of numerous books on Air Force topics, including "Air Force One". His e-mail address is robert.f.dorr@cox.net

Whether you're home or deployed, it's going to be easy to cast your ballot in the Nov. 2 election.
On military bases, services are available to those who need help voting. For troops overseas, the Pentagon and the U.S. Postal Service are making it easier to cast an absentee ballot.
So there's no excuse for not voting. But there's a strong chance your vote won't count.
In November, about three-quarters of all voters - not just those in the military - will cast ballots that have no effect on the outcome of the election.
That's right. The American system of voting is broken.
When it comes to picking a president, neither you nor I have much say. At the front end of the process, we are shut out when the two candidates are chosen.
The Democratic nominee, Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., was picked months ago by a handful of voters in Iowa and New Hampshire. President Bush gets his name on the ballto because the incumbent always does. Most of us had no role in picking either of them.
Now, let's shif to November. In case you've forgotten, we won't vote for Kerry or Bush. We'll vote for a slate of those obscure men and women called electors, either Kerry's slate or Bush's.
In 48 of the 50 states (in two states, the rules are different), the candidate who receives the most popular votes takes all of the electoral votes.
To illustrate why your vote may not count, and mine may not either, let's suppose your state of residence is California or Texas. They are two fot the nation's most populous states, and a lot of military people call them home.
Today, with the election only weeks away, we already know Kerry will receive more popular votes in California and that Bush will receive more in Texas.
Becasue it's winner tke all, we know today that Kerry will receive California's 55 electoral votes and Bush will receive Texas' 34. If you vote in those states, regardless of which candidate you pick, you can't change the outcome.
There are 538 electoral votes (one more than in 2000). A candidate needs a majority, or 270, to become president.
In the last presidential election, Bush won 271 electoral votes and former Vice President Al Gore won 266. Bush won under the electoral system, fair and square, even though more Americans picked Gore.
The popular vote in 2000 was 50,999,897 (48.87 percent) for Gore, 50,456,002 (47.87 percent) for Bush, and 2,882,955 (2.74 percent) for Ralph Nader.
About three-quarters of Americans are residents of states that predictably chose one party or the other. Pundits call these "red" states when they're assuredly Republican (Colorado, Texas, and Virginia, among others) and "blue" states when they're certain to go Democratic (California, New York, and Massachusetts, as examples).
About 35 of the 50 states are red or blue - meaning that if you're voting in one of those states, you cannot change the outcome.
If you're fortunate enough to be a resident of a state where we don't know who will win, you're amoung the few Americans who actually choose our next president.
For example, in 2000, more than half a million people voted in New Mexico. Gore received 286,783 votes, or 366 more than the 286,417 votes for Bush. So Gore won all five of New Mexico's electoral votes.
If just half of those New Mexico residents, plus one person - 184 people - had gone the other way, Bush would have carried New Mexico.
We ought to live in a nation where every vote counts.
I'm not suggesting a change under which the president would be chosen by the popular vote. That arrangement could introduce new inequities.
But we need a new way to pick each party's nominee. And we need to redistribute electoral votes based on current population trends. That would give us more battleground states. By all means, vote. But remember the system is seriously flawed.
As Americans, we need to fix it.

IP: Logged

posted August 18, 2004 01:00 AM              

---

quote:

---

I'm not suggesting a change under which the president would be chosen by the popular vote. That arrangement could introduce new inequities.

---

Does anyone know what these inequities would be? Having a president elected based upon the will of the constituents as opposed to some stuffy old electoral college sounds like the most equitable thing to me.

IP: Logged

Posts: 1
From: Brisbane, Australia
Registered: May 2009

posted August 18, 2004 11:44 AM            

---

The Electoral College is an equalizer, ensuring that the populous coastal areas don't end up deciding the fate of everyone.

A good example would be:

Farm issues - a big deal in the midwest (and in the traditionally non-democrat parts of CA) - city folk and country folk. There's far more city folk. If everything was done by popular vote, you'd have the coasts running the farm areas, despite having little to no interest in the needs of those farm folk, nor knowing much at all about those issues. It's about balance. They never could have gotten the smaller states to join the Union without guaranteeing them some equalizer - something to balance out the needs of everyone.

IP: Logged

posted August 18, 2004 12:10 PM              

---

Yeah, it may be a necessary thing in a country as diverse in its mode of living as ours - but I do like the idea of proportional electoral representation/award rather than it going whole-hog by state.

IP: Logged

Posts: 1
From: Brisbane, Australia
Registered: May 2009

posted August 18, 2004 12:27 PM            

---

Actually, there are a few states, NE is one of them, that is able to split up their electoral votes proportionate to the popular vote in their state. I might support something like that, but not a popular vote. I think our system has worked pretty well over the past 230 years, and there have only been a few instances when the Electoral College-elected president didn't win the majority of the popular vote.

If you look at a voting map from the last election, there was actually a much larger geographic area that voted for Bush than for Gore, however the areas that Gore won were usually urban with larger populations. I think that right there shows what an equalizer the EC is, and how important it is in a representative form of government. In CA, the majority of the state (geographically) voted for Bush, but since the districs in and around LA and SF voted Dem, and they're the areas w/ the largest % of the population, all the EC votes went to the Dems. I would like to see a map of how the election would have gone if every state could split up their electoral votes proportionately. That would be an interesting read.

------------------
“The good things which belong to prosperity are to be wished, but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.” Seneca

IP: Logged

posted August 18, 2004 03:02 PM              

---

That would be an interesting read.

Not sure if I'm the only one, but this Liberal understands the necessity of the EC.

IP: Logged

posted August 18, 2004 03:11 PM              

---

That was a very enlightening explanation of the electoral college Isis. The first time the EC system has made any sense to me. It's always been presented to me before as the archaic system that allowed Bush to steal the election!

IP: Logged

posted August 18, 2004 03:44 PM              

---

That's cool AquaGirl! It's always fun to learn something new

IP: Logged

posted August 19, 2004 11:21 AM              

---

Absolutely!

IP: Logged