How to win the electoral college with 22% of the popular vote

And many states are misrepresented because of jerryrigged districts. And allowing state representatives to choose senators would only extend that problem to the senate.

Besides who needs state representation when you have individual representation.

 

Taxcutter says:
Any human system can be hacked.

The benefit of having a senate chosen by state governments means that Senators have to be sensitive to the states' concerns.

 

nope, We are a representative republic.

Direct Democracy that your advocating is actually communism.

and um... no thanks.

 

yeah, that's the exception to the rule since I'm not aware of any other states that are not winner take all....

So skip nebraska, and then use the next state that is winner take all.... the point still remains valid, you can still win the presidency with under 30% of the popular vote.

Despite the OP's lack of understanding of what a democracy vs constitutional republic is.... and despite he bashes "right wing blogs" while still going back to wikipedia for his sources... (only on PF.com is foxnews considered unreliable but wikipedia is reliable... lol) the video itself brings up a valid point.


I have always thought it was possible, I was not surprised in 2000 when it happened.... but I'm not sure of the unintended consequences of scrapping the system entirely and starting something else. What possibilities of corruption exist in a new system we haven't planned for. In my experience... the political party screaming the loudest for "scrap the current system" understands a way to exploit the new system.

 

What? lol Direct democracy has existed WAY longer than communism. Communism is an economic philosophy. Direct Democracy is a government philosophy.

And a representative republic is a type of democracy. It's an indirect democracy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_democracy

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That's why you keep patching the system. You don't go back to a system that we already know doesn't work.

Also it's not the state's concern if the state is being ruled by representatives that are only there due to jerryrigged districts.

 

A Representative Republic is not a Democracy


Barack Obama recently said, speaking of Occupy Wall St., “The most important thing we can do right now is those of us in leadership letting people know that we understand their struggles, and we are on their side, and that we want to set up a system in which hard work, responsibility, doing what you’re supposed to do, is rewarded,” Obama recently told ABC News. President Obama, we already had that system in place long before you came along with your intent to bring down capitalism, I would add. Capitalism rewards those who generate the most value for others.

Obama added, “And that people who are irresponsible, who are reckless, who don’t feel a sense of obligation to their communities and their companies and their workers that those folks aren’t rewarded.” Only in our President’s perspective could he have been describing the so-called “greedy rich” who are the backbone of American cities, providing jobs, working hard, and investing in our future. The reckless irresponsible ones are those occupying Wall St, not those who are working their way up in businesses around the country. By impeding hard-working Americans from getting to their jobs, shutting down entire seaports, occupying Black Friday shoppers, threatening conservative gatherings and occupying public and private spaces, it is the occupiers who are irresponsible. They certainly feel no obligation to their communities. They are actively and purposely making a failing economy worse and should not be rewarded.

Contrary to frequent descriptions, America is still a representative Republic, not a Democracy. In a Democracy, majority or mob rule prevails, so whenever 51% of voters want something, they get it. Occupiers actually don’t comprise 51% of voters, but that does not keep them from trying to make demands as if they do. They certainly are not the 99% they claim to be, as 53% of Americans are paying the taxes which provide the money which government spends. These clearly uninformed participants call for taxing the “greedy rich” at 100%, free college education, an end to corporate personhood, government-provided jobs for all, an end to all fossil fuels, equal distribution of income, and open borders, for instance. Occupy has no unified message, refusing to list formal demands, but allowing anyone to post their radical ideas on their website for inspiration.

A group such as this, if in power in a Democracy, rules by mob action in its own interests. The unions and radical organizations which have attached themselves to the movement and used the initial demonstrators for their own purposes would have free rein to impose their agenda. This of course couldn’t last forever, as the money paying for all their demands runs out and chaos eventually ensues, as any good revolutionary knows. As a frightened and weary citizenry begs for relief, government can then step in, promising to save the day and make the chaos go away through government intervention. This scenario comes right out of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, the how-to handbook for collapsing capitalism.

A Representative Republic on the other hand protects the rights of all citizens, not just the majority, and is founded on the principle of elected individuals representing the people, with elections providing the opportunity for change. Using this election process, the Tea Party angrily but peacefully protested a government which has grown too large, which increases our debt to the detriment of our future, which sometimes doesn’t honor our Constitution, which honors entitlement and equal outcome more than it honors opportunity. Using the election process, it has been able to effect change in government representation and legislation.


commies are gonna have to try harder to slip one past me.

 

Taxcutter says:
Yup. The ancient Athenians invented direct democracy. It devolved into mob rule in a short period of time. The mob led them into the disastrous Peloponessian War which broke Athens' dominance of ancient Greece. Direct democracy was considered by the Framers and rejected. It still has the "mob rule" and "Vote yourself wealth" aspects and until you can eliminate that, direct democracy is not desirable.

Taxcutter says:
The pre-17th amendment system worked everywhere but New.York. It could be re-instituted and patch its deficiencies. at least the states would have some say in the federal government that way.

Taxcutter says;
Gerrymandering is a problem of representational government. On balance it is no worse than the "19,000-0" low level vote fraud we see today.

The pre-17th amendment system is not claimed to be perfect, but it is no worse than the system we have today. Viz: The election of Al Franken in 2008. At least the pre-17th amendment system offered a nice feature: Robust representation of the states' interests. You never saw unfunded mandates jammed down the states' throats before the 17th came along making Senators nothing more than six-year "super Reps" rather than the "Ambassadors from the states" they were before.

 

It just doesn't happen that way. There have only been a handful of times in a two party election where the popular vote winner wasn't also the electoral college winner. In all of those cases, the differences in the popular vote were essentially below the statistical margin of error. For example, in Bush vs. Gore 2000, the difference in votes was less than .5%. Statistically, that's a tie. In the cases of those statistical ties, the candidate who won the most states (i.e. EC) won. Not a bad outcome, that the winner of a statistical tie go to the winner of the greatest geographical area.

 

Maine is also not winner take all.

The thing is, historically, the popular vote winner not being the EC winner has only occurred when there has been almost a statistical tie between the candidates. Gore vs. Bush only had a .5% difference in popular vote.

 

No, the reason for the Electoral college and the state legislatures choosing the Senators, is because the Constitution was designed to limit power of any group (including the people). If the senators are chosen by the legislatures, they will be more responsive to the views of the states, rather than the political parties. The original plan was for this to be a union of states (i.e. United States), not a strong central government. The EC and the legislature choosing the Senators are reflections of that.

 

Fuzzy math. It's a handsome presentation, but will only sway those unwilling to analyze virtually every claim. I'll address one.

Adding up the ten largest cities doesn't come close to the total number of urbanites and suburbanites that make up what are the blue states.

Take Missouri, for example. St. Louis and Kansas City metro areas are roughly four million of the total six million in population for the entire state. The two cities' combined populations are only about a half million. But their surrounding counties are even more populated. Using the population of the city itself, and not the surrounding metro area produces an inaccurate result.

Very few large cities don't have even larger populations of suburbs outside the city.

 

It did not work since big corporations bribed the state legislatures, especially in the Northeast and mid West, to put their candidates in office. In DE, Senators were selected by the DuPont Family, in PA, by the Steel and Coal industrialists, in NY, by Rockefeller and the big Financier's. We had from about 1870 til 1918 the best Senate the Corporate interests could buy. They did not represent the states that sent them to the Senate but the oligarchs who paid to have them sent to the Senate.

 

That's true, little democracy ever existed in America, America is set up to favor whoever has the most money. PERIOD. They don't and never did allow direct democracy, because they know, likely, take money out of th equation and the 1% can't win anything.

 

The real problem is the winner-take-all system, it is not that less populated states get a disproportionate electoral vote. The few people who live in Alaska inhabit a territory that is extremely rich in resources, so they should be rewarded with this extra voting power, which is really slight anyway. We need people to spread out into those areas.

Why hasn't anyone given the data on who would have won based on eliminating states' winner-take-all system? In 2000, Bush took 30 out of the 50 states, so this outrage about losing the popular vote should be balanced against that landslide he won. I doubt if he would have won anyway, since he should have had only 50.1% of Florida's electoral votes.

Since this is a national election, majority rule doesn't apply. Everyone is both a citizen of his state and of the nation.
Winner-take-all discourages voting in a state that is a sure thing for the other side. It even discourages the people on that side, because their side is going to win anyway, considering that most people won't care that their vote is unnecessary.

 

That's exactly how Obumbler got elected!

 

Because of the state-by-state winner-take-all electoral votes laws (i.e., awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in each state) in 48 states, a candidate can win the Presidency without winning the most popular votes nationwide. This has occurred in 4 of the nation's 57 (1 in 14 = 7%) presidential elections. The precariousness of the current state-by-state winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes is highlighted by the fact that a shift of a few thousand voters in one or two states would have elected the second-place candidate in 4 of the 15 presidential elections since World War II. Near misses are now frequently common. There have been 7 consecutive non-landslide presidential elections (1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, and 2012). 537 popular votes won Florida and the White House for Bush in 2000 despite Gore's lead of 537,179 (1,000 times more) popular votes nationwide. A shift of 60,000 voters in Ohio in 2004 would have defeated President Bush despite his nationwide lead of over 3 million votes. In 2012, a shift of 214,733 popular votes in four states would have elected Mitt Romney, despite President Obama’s nationwide lead of 4,966,945 votes.

The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in the country, by replacing state winner-take-all laws.

Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections. No more distorting and divisive red and blue state maps of pre-determined outcomes. There would no longer be a handful of 'battleground' states where voters and policies are more important than those of the voters in 80% of the states that now are just 'spectators' and ignored after the conventions.

The bill would take effect when enacted by states with a majority of Electoral College votes—that is, enough to elect a President (270 of 538 ). The candidate receiving the most popular votes from all 50 states (and DC) would get all the 270+ electoral votes of the enacting states.

The presidential election system, using the 48 state winner-take-all method or district winner method of awarding electoral votes, that we have today was not designed, anticipated, or favored by the Founders. It is the product of decades of change precipitated by the emergence of political parties and enactment by 48 states of winner-take-all laws, not mentioned, much less endorsed, in the Constitution.

The bill uses the power given to each state by the Founders in the Constitution to change how they award their electoral votes for President. States can, and have, changed their method of awarding electoral votes over the years. Historically, 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 recent or past 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 33 state legislative chambers in 22 rural, small, medium, and large states with 250 electoral votes. The bill has been enacted by 10 jurisdictions with 136 electoral votes – 50.4% of the 270 necessary to go into effect. If Governor Cuomo signs it in New York, it will be at 165 electoral votes - 61%.

NationalPopularVote
Follow National Popular Vote on Facebook via NationalPopularVoteInc

 

What I don't like is that the Constitutionazis who say that imply that we have to accept a republic just because of their Sacred Cow anti-democratic manifesto written behind closed doors by lawyers for the colonial 1%. A democratic republic is a contradiction in terms. It purposely gives all the power to a few hundred people who can be easily bribed or snobbishly feel they know better than the majority of their fellow citizens.

He's right, you know. We have never been given a democracy by the ruling class. But we don't have to put up with this system just because the enemies of democracy say so in their bullying tones. The Constitution is not an immutable fact of life we have to accept as justice. It is an elitist tyranny imposed on us with contempt for the people. It is not self-government, it is government for the selfish.We should dump this representativism and only obey laws made through a direct democracy. The Rule of Law Is the Law of the Rulers.

 

So you think the majority of Americans are a mob? Why should we put up with such insults, especially since the alternative is a clique of pre-owned political scum?

 

It's not hypothetical that if your state is virtually a sure thing for one party or the other, then you have no say in the national government. So let's at least get rid of this absurd winner-take-all system. Then, with that taste of democracy, we can get rid of the other anti-democratic idea that has representatives instead of referenda deciding what our laws are to be.

 

The only alternative to tyranny by the many is tyranny by the few over the many, which is the only real tyranny. So it is a matter of which is the greater tyranny if you still believe that the majority can be a tyranny. And the only minority that really counts in America is the 1%, which pretends to protect minorities only so they can humiliate the majority and make us resigned to being powerless.

 

The idols you foolishly hope mean "us" are a hereditary plutocracy of thieves and traitors who deserve to be dispossessed and deported by the majority. And they are just using you; they despise you just as much as they despise the rest of the 99%.

 

Obama won the popular vote twice. So no it's not.

It is however how Bush got elected.

 

Then either fix it, learn to live with it, or Leave.

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There ya go, bring reality and facts to a right-wing rant, you do know that is not allowed, but feel free to keep doing so

 

The video is arguing for a popular vote only system. Which would not have elected Bush.

 

5% of elections so far have ended in the loser of the popular vote winning the election. A 5% failure rate is too high for an election system.