Gene Green (TX) & Electoral College Reform

[crispini]

So where's he from? Check it out, he's pushing for Electoral College reform. (Couldn't find the AP story but it's got it as well.)

http://www.columbian.com/09162004/clark_co/189771.html

Congressman Brian Baird, D-Vancouver, wants to abolish the Electoral College in favor of a system where the president would be elected directly through a national vote.

Baird announced Wednesday he has teamed with Rep. Gene Green, D-Texas, to introduce a constitutional amendment that would kill a feature of the Constitution.

If the Baird-Green proposal had been in place for the 2000 election, Al Gore would be president today. Gore won the popular vote by more than 540,000 votes, but George W. Bush captured the White House after winning Florida's 25 electoral votes, which gave him a majority in the Electoral College.

[shance]

1. I called his office yesterday. Hes on the Delay Investigative committee.

The woman I spoke with was incredibly nice.

Give them a jingle, say hi and a little support their way. The more we connect, the more they listen.

Here's the toll-free numero: [phone]

[tibbir]

2. Gene Green is cool.

He's from here in Houston. He does a good job for his district.

[unblock]

3. gore would have won? this is a bit facile

if the baird-green proposal had been enforced after the votes were counted, yes. then again, same could be said for current law.

but in truth, if baird-green had been in place for the 2000 election, it would have been a very different campaign. even assuming the parties would still have nominated bush and gore, the campaigns themselves would have focused massively on gotv efforts in what we now think of as "safe" states.

as it is, bush can take texas for granted, so there's no campaigning there, only fundraising. in a straight nationwide vote, bush would have spent a huge amount of time making sure that every texan outside of austin voted at least twice.

you think i'm joking about the twice thing.

one of the big, unappreciated advantages of the electoral system is that election fraud is limited to a few states when the election officials, legislatures, and governorships are probably not all from the same party. fraud is always possible, but harder to get away with.

in a straight nationwide vote, massive fraud would be much easier to pull off in highly partisan states where all the officials are from the same party. if texas reports 98% of the people voted and 98% of the votes were for the republican, who's to prove them wrong?

[dumpster_baby]

4. that is a very poor argument

You argue for UNFAIR representation in order to prevent possible felonies. Laughable!

KILL the electoral college NOW!

[last_texas_dem]

5. Good to hear

I've been supportive of abandoning the Electoral College for quite a while now; before the '00 travesty actually. Losing it would make our elections so much more democratic. (A Wyoming voter's vote counting 4x that of a Californian's must seem ridiculous even to advocates of state's rights, right? Well, that's exactly what the Electoral College provides for.) I disagree with those who argue that it would cause candidates to abandon concerning themselves with voters in the "small" states. As is, they hardly do anyway; few battleground states have small numbers of Electoral votes, and those that do get much less attention than those with large numbers. Using the nationwide popular vote would mean everybody's vote everywhere would count the same and, more importantly, each person's vote would matter. Every vote would truly count in the Presidential election- Massachusetts Republicans, Wyoming Democrats, etc.

Would there be flaws to adapting this system? Sure. But to me it's simply the most logical, fairest, most democratic way to run a Presidential election.

So is it likely it will ever be implemented? Probably not, but we can still hope!

It's definitely good news it's being promoted in Congress again. I heard about it a bit after the '00 election but figured it failed because it was seen as a partisan issue. If Republicans start raising the specter of a Bush Electoral College loss/ popular vote victory as they did (erroneously) prior to the 2000 election, I'd expect it to gain a little more bipartisan traction than it did the last time around. The hardest part would be convincing Senators from states with small populations to vote in favor of abandoning the Electoral College, which they see as protecting their self-interests. I don't believe the Electoral College really does all that much to protect the interests of the lesser-populated states per se, other than simply giving their citizens' votes a distorted weight in the Presidential election and nothing more. I think it would be in America's national interest to elect the President by a nationwide popular vote.