The latest Republican effort to silence you

Of course it's coming in 2013

This is, of course, an utterly horrible idea on multiple levels ranging from basic fairness to the Constitutional role of the states. it's made even worse thanks to gerrymandering.

So naturally the Republicans are all over it. It might even help explain why they were in such a gawdawful rush to pass as many pernicious and insidious bills as possible during the "inflamed duck" session (h/t to Eclectablog).

"The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity." ~ Harlan Ellison

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by: helzapoppn @ Tue Dec 18, 2012 at 19:09:30 PM UTC

Does

Does anyone think they have enough votes in the next session to get something this contentious through?  You'd think they'd have done this this month with all the rest of the bullsh%t they passed.  I don't see this as being as clearly partisan as some do, which is why I think we'll be able to peel off enough (five) Republican votes to stop it in the next session.

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by: MiddleGrandGuy @ Wed Dec 19, 2012 at 02:01:33 AM UTC

I'm not sure

I believe the Reps have given up on carrying MI for their Prez candidate anytime soon, so they figure this is a way to "win" the state despite losing the popular vote. Absent another result like '08, right now you can pencil in the MI allocation of EVs for '16 and '20 as 7D/9R.

I see this as clearly partisan, and the Rep legislators are nothing if not partisan Reps. They lose a few votes on issues such as RTW from legislators worried about keeping their seats, but they all seem to hang together on purely partisan votes.

To the average voter, this will seem like just another process issue that's not worth worrying about. I'd guess it's not something that any legislator will lose his/her seat over. Ergo, if it comes to the floor it will pass.

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by: Don K @ Wed Dec 19, 2012 at 04:42:30 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Why

Why I said this wasn't partisan is that Dems - including myself - were screaming about dividing up electoral votes during the Bush years, and then I grew up and saw the folly.  I could totally see some GOP folks seeing how this could be bad for them down the road, though, it is tempting for Republicans in Michigan knowing it's a blue state, like you said.

I don't know, I'm not dreading having this argument, because I don't think it's clear-cut enough where it couldn't be stopped in the new House with the right kind of campaign by the community.

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by: MiddleGrandGuy @ Wed Dec 19, 2012 at 05:28:55 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

National Popular Vote

This is a better way to use the electoral college and a good idea in my book.  http://www.fairvote.org/nation...

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by: Bill_in_Mi @ Wed Dec 19, 2012 at 15:46:54 PM UTC

It would greatly harm a President's ability to govern

Think back to 1992. If Bill Clinton's sole claim to the Presidency was his 43% showing at the polls, there's basically zero chance he could have been an effective leader, with Republicans attacking his legitimacy in the harshest of terms.

Not that Clinton didn't suffer innumerable attacks anyway, up to and including impeachment in his second term (when he only picked up 49%)...but at no time did Republicans claim he hadn't been properly elected, given the number of STATES and Electoral College votes he won compared to Bush 41 and Perot.

The way the EC normally works is as an amplifier: It turns a close election into something akin to a mandate...and a not-so-close one (1972, 1984) into epic landslides. When there are multiple candidates -- in which the winner gets a PLURALITY, not a MAJORITY, such as 1992, 1968 or 1948 -- the EC tally becomes really important in establishing a President-elect's authority.

[Another example: In '68, Nixon only beat Humphrey by < 1%, but overall the DEMOCRATIC total was far greater, once the Wallace votes are added (of course, nowadays Wallace voters would be considered reliable Republicans, but back then they were breakaway Dems). Nixon's victory was cemented by that 301-191-46 win in the Electoral College.]

In that regard, 2000 was an anomaly, where the popular vote and the EC vote were nearly equal, only with different winners. By comparison, 2008 and 2012 were revisions to the classic norm for relatively close elections, in which President Obama's popular vote victories were amplified by the EC margin to the point where only the most brain-dead Kool-Aid drinking wingnuts could argue that Obama wasn't legitimately elected based on the results (which are separate from to doubting his legitimacy based on where he was born).

The EC was also designed to emphasize the role of the States in The United STATES of America, and to make sure that the smallest states still had a voice because of the  formula (House seats + 2 Senators = minimum of 3 votes).

Lacking that formula, smaller states (not to mention all rural areas) would get even LESS attention than they do now, while California, Texas, New York, Pennsylvania and Florida -- or, more properly, their vast urban centers -- would wield more power to decide the Presidency.

It's a tradeoff -- some of the absolute fairness of true "one man-one vote" democracy for the STABILITY of federalism and Presidents with more solid claims to victory than we'd otherwise have. But it's one I accept.

Of course, changing the winner-take-all rules at the state level subverts the whole deal. Turning the race for the Presidency into 436 separate mini-elections (including D.C.) is a nightmare scenario that also all-but-guarantees that whichever Party controls the House of Representatives would also control the White House (assuming the 102 votes representing the Senate (plus D.C.) would rarely if ever give one side more than 58-60) -- making the President more of a puppet to the Legislative branch than the true Executive.

But then, Republicans haven't really thought that far ahead. What's good for Michigan and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania would somehow be impossibly divisive (and a partisan Democratic power-grab!) were it applied to, say, Texas and Georgia and Oklahoma. As always, IOKIYAR.

"The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity." ~ Harlan Ellison

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by: helzapoppn @ Wed Dec 19, 2012 at 19:28:19 PM UTC

[ Parent ]