Making The Popular Vote A Winner (TomPaine.com)

[marmar]

Making The Popular Vote A Winner
Rob Richie and Ryan O'Donnell
April 02, 2007


Rob Richie is executive director and Ryan O'Donnell is the director of the Presidential Elections Reform Program at FairVote.

Any poll will tell you that the vast majority of Americans favor electing the president by a national popular vote over our dysfunctional Electoral College system. This should be no surprise. The current system makes most Americans irrelevant in electing their most powerful elected office.

They may not have to wait much longer. After lopsided votes in Maryland's state senate and house of delegates, Gov. Martin O'Malley will soon have on his desk a bill to initiate the National Popular Vote plan for president. The Declaration of Independence had its John Hancock. That movement for a National Popular Vote has the appropriately nicknamed 'Free State."

With the endorsement of former members of Congress across the political spectrum, and from groups like FairVote, Asian American Action Fund, National Black Caucus of State Legislators, National Latino Congreso and Common Cause, National Popular Vote is pursuing a state-based approach. Its plan does not abolish the Electoral College. Instead, it recognizes that the Constitution grants states the power to make the Electoral College work for all Americans.

Just as Dorothy all along had the power return home from Oz with a few clicks of her heels, the American people have the power through their state government to establish presidential elections founded on the principles of majority rule and one person, one vote.
...(snip)...

While it's unlikely that enough states will be on board by next July to affect the 2008 election, we think it will be the last state-by-state election for president in our history. It couldn't come any sooner. In today's climate of partisan polarization, the current system shuts out most of the country from meaningful participation by turning naturally "purple" states into simple "red" and "blue."

The result is a declining number of Americans who matter and a majority who don't. Youth turnout was fully 17 percent higher in presidential battlegrounds than the rest of the nation in 2004—double the disparity just four years before. The presidential campaigns and their allies spent more money on ads in Florida in the final month of the campaign than their combined spending in 46 other states. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/04/02/making_the_popular_vote_a_winner.php

[HeeBGBz]

1. I wish they would

I think the electoral college thing sucks.