Originally Posted By ecdc <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/24/republican-vote-rigging-electoral-college_n_2546010.html" target="_blank">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...010.html</a> What happens when you can't win elections because of shifting demographics, and demonizing gays and brown people doesn't work anymore? You just change the rules, of course. Instead of having a winner take all approach to the electoral college, you split them up, so that Republican candidates win. Far-fetched? Too conspiratorial? Well Virginia just did it, and it's also under consideration in Michigan and Pennsylvania, crucial states for Democrats. Curiously, it's not under consideration in deep red states like Texas or Utah. I wonder why....
Originally Posted By TomSawyer Today's GOP knows that they can't win on ideas or their positions. They have to cheat to win.
Originally Posted By Donny Both sides GerryMander <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...andering</a>
Originally Posted By ecdc >>Both sides GerryMander<< This isn't gerrymandering a district to increase the likelihood that a Republican will win that district. This is completely revamping the rules of the electoral college to cheat your way into winning an election, Donny. Unless you can explain why else it's "such BS?"
Originally Posted By RoadTrip Yes, they do, but Republicans currently control more states (at the state level) than Democrats, and since 2010 have been very busy gerrymandering the districts in their states. Sure, in time the Democrats would do it back. But by then we would have had several elections like in 2000 where Gore won the popular vote but Bush became president. Do you really want more of that to happen? I suppose as long as it means Republicans winning, you don't really care.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan This election-rigging crap is really the lowest of the low. Their efforts to suppress votes didn't work out so well for them this past election, but they'll keep trying.
Originally Posted By Dr Hans Reinhardt The real BS is the Rupublican party, and I've had enough of it. I see the ugly racist things they say about the First Family and watch the condescending way they disregard women, the poor, minorities and anyone who doesn't fit into their fantasy of what they think America should be. There must be a sensible reasonable person in the group somewhere but I've yet to observe one.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 To be fair, Hans, there are still plenty of Paleo-Republicans (like my parents) who are sensible and reasonable. No question, though, that the party leadership has taken the party waaaaaaay far right recently, along with the loudest and most strident voices in the tea party, who listen to the loudest and most strident voices in the professional right-wing-I'm-so-aggrieved-osphere. The quieter and more sensible voices are drowned out, or simply stop trying (or leave the party, as several of our own LP'ers have done). Rather than do what the Democrats did after a series of losses in the 80's/early 90's, and tack to the center, the GOP is doubling down on the crazy. Eventually they'll figure out that they need to change policies if they want to attract a majority of voters again. But God forbid (as the true believers see it) they moderate their policies. Rather than attract more voters, they've decided to try to keep the "wrong" voters from voting, and now to endow certain (mostly rural) voters with votes that essentially count for more than certain other (mostly urban) voters via gerrymandering and even changing the rules of presidential races. VA is the first test case. They're absolutely fine with the idea that Obama could win a majority of voters in VA, yet Romney would get more electoral votes. This doesn't seem "off" to them. They will win by any means necessary, including rigging the system.
Originally Posted By mawnck A comment on another website raises a good point. If this goes through, it will significantly alter the way campaigns are conducted. You can't just look at the 2012 results and say that Romney would've won, because the 2012 results came from the 2012 campaigns, which assumed the states in question would be winner-take-all. So ... if it works the way the GOP wants it to, and screws up an election, then the Electoral College gets eliminated and the Dems win forever after. If it doesn't ... the Dems win anyway. A desperate move by the Stupid Party.
Originally Posted By TomSawyer The GOP isn't about the people any more - it's about protecting privilege. They are gaming the system to keep privileged, wealthy people in their positions and to do that they need their useful idiots to keep voting against their own self interest. By focusing on things like a culture war or abortion or gun control or Meskins, they keep attention away from the things that really affect our daily lives. They portray Obamacare as socialism (O! Horrors!) to shift the dialogue away from the good that it is doing. They know that the way things are going is leading toward erosion of the privilege that they were born in to. By keeping us obsessed with illegal aliens, abortion, gay marriage and violent movies we don't pay attention to the economic and social disparities designed to keep the privileged in power. The GOP (and Fox) are there to keep the useful idiots frothing at the mouth about liberals to keep them from really looking to see how the GOP is throwing them under the bus on tax and spending issues
Originally Posted By tiggertoo Honestly, who didn't see this coming. Funny that the folks that call themselves the "moral majority" have no qualms stealing democratic elections. Time to kill the electoral college, and go for a two-tier majoritarian system? Seems much fairer all around.
Originally Posted By Dr Hans Reinhardt "To be fair, Hans, there are still plenty of Paleo-Republicans (like my parents) who are sensible and reasonable." I wouldn't dare make assumptions about them, nor is it any of my business how your parents vote or what their personal political views are, but in light of the downright terrible policies and dirty games that have come from the party over the past decade it defies logic that anyone with sound judgment could justify aligning themselves with the GOP.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 They're over 80. They ain't changing now. My mom votes GOP out of habit; my Dad has actually dropped hints that he' leaning more Dem (or at least splitting tickets) these days. He's long sat on local Boards of Health, and he understands there are some good things about Obamacare, for instance. Luckily, they've retired to an area where they couldn't vote for anyone TOO crazy even if they wanted to.
Originally Posted By skinnerbox <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/01/25/1497881/electoral-rigging-colorado-2004/" target="_blank">http://thinkprogress.org/justi...do-2004/</a> FLASHBACK: Republicans Opposed Electoral Vote Rigging In 2004, Calling It ‘A Really Stupid Idea’ By Scott Keyes on Jan 25, 2013 at 2:20 pm <> Nearly a decade before the GOP responded to President Obama’s re-election by proposing to rig the Electoral College in states like Pennsylvania and Virginia, Republicans vehemently opposed the plan and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting its implementation. In 2004, when Colorado was still a red state and then-President Bush was locked in a tight race with Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), the state had a ballot initiative that would have shifted its allocation of electoral votes from winner-take-all to proportional. Under the proposal, for example, even if Bush had won 60 percent of the vote, he still would only get 5 of the state’s 9 electoral votes instead of all 9. However, the proposed Electoral College rig ended up getting trounced for one reason: Republicans strongly opposed the idea. The push against Amendment 36, which failed by a 2-to-1 margin, was led by Republican Gov. Bill Owens, who lambasted the idea as a “transparently partisan movement”. Owens detailed his opposition in a USA Today op-ed: There’s a transparently partisan movement afoot in Colorado to distribute our Electoral College votes proportionately. The goal? To give John Kerry a four-vote Electoral College boost, putting him ahead of President Bush in a close election. But that in and of itself is not the reason proposed Amendment 36 on the Nov. 2 ballot is bad for Colorado. The fact is that if Amendment 36 passed, it would forever make it easy for presidential candidates to ignore Colorado, since our state would be an Electoral College “lone ranger” among states.[...] Here’s why: Colorado is a state with a slight Republican majority, but which, nevertheless, has a longstanding tradition of electing Democrats to statewide and national office. If Colorado split its electoral votes, leaving just one or two electoral votes in play, future presidential candidates — and presidents — would ignore Colorado and its interests in favor of states with more electoral clout. They would skip over us and move on to more fertile ground. If that sounds like the same argument Democrats and anyone opposed to GOP’s electoral rigging efforts are currently making, that’s because it is. Owens was joined by all his fellow state GOP officials in opposing the plan. Republican consultant Katy Atkinson, who organized the anti-36 effort under the umbrella group “Coloradans Against a Really Stupid Idea”, noted that it would undermine the state’s clout. “[If Amendment 36 passes], Colorado will effectively have 1/3 of the power of Alaska, Delaware or Wyoming,” Atkinson wrote. State newspapers roundly criticized the initiative; the Pueblo Chieftain even called the proposed electoral rig a “quest for pure, raw political power by the left.” National conservatives also criticized the idea. George Will wrote a scathing article in Newsweek, calling it a “pernicious proposal”. Major GOP funders also rallied against the referendum; Sheldon Adelson alone contributed $100,000 against Amendment 36. In 2004, Republicans fervently opposed manipulating the Electoral College when the Democratic candidate stood to benefit. A decade later, after Obama won his second term and pundits discuss a long-term electoral realignment, Republicans are abandoning that principled stand in an attempt to rig future presidential elections. <> Since the latest rigging will benefit Republicans in blue states, of course the GOP is for it now. Hypocrites. Personally, I strongly believe we should do away with the electoral college completely and choose our Presidents through popular vote only. Here's hoping the popular vote pact will gain enough steam over the next two years to neuter the EC once and for all: <a href="http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/" target="_blank">http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/</a>
Originally Posted By ecdc >>A comment on another website raises a good point. If this goes through, it will significantly alter the way campaigns are conducted.<< That is a good point, one I hadn't considered.
Originally Posted By mawnck Here's the thing about all this. Let's go to the Constitution: >>Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors<< In other words, I'm afraid it's the Dems doing the whining here. The legislators are totally within their rights to change the elector allocation in any way they so choose. Constitution says so. If you'd like to try and amend the Constitution to switch to popular vote, then knock yourself out. Not gonna happen, though, because it would require ratification by several states who would *lose* power in the election as a result. Such an amendment was tried, BTW, in 1969-1970. Never got out of the Senate.
Originally Posted By mawnck (Yes, after doing further research, I've changed my mind since post 12. The Electoral College is here to stay.)
