4 July 2008, 12:18 am
After the primaries, the candidates devote their attention to the swing states. The remaining "spectator" states are ignored. There is a plan to make the Electoral College irrelevant and in effect go to a popular vote system, without a constitutional amendment. Information about it is available here: http://www.everyvoteequal.com and http://www.nationalpopularvote.com The plan has been enacted by both houses of the legislatures in 7 states: Maryland, New Jersey, Illinios, Hawaii, California, Vermont, Rhode Island. - Under this plan, states would agree to give all of their Electoral Votes to the winner of the National Popular Vote - but the plan would not go into effect until states having a majority (270) of the Electoral votes have enacted the bill into law. The bill has been vetoed by the Governors of California, Vermont, Rhode Island and Hawaii, all of whom are Republicans. (In Hawaii, a 2/3 majority of both houses of the legislature, overturned the governor's veto.) I don't think it is a coincidence that all the vetoes were by Republican Governors. The question is why? I think I know the answer, but I would like to see if anybody else can guess what it is. This is not a large state - small state issue. Three of the vetos were by Republican Governors of small states, and one was by the Republican Governor of a large state. In 2004, if 60,000 people in the swing state of Ohio had voted for Kerry rather than Bush, Kerry would be president, even though he lost the popular vote by more than 3 million votes, so a popular vote system wouldn't necessarily benefit the Democrats - but I still think it is no coincidence that all the vetoes came from Republican Governors, and I think that these Republican Governors have not been entirely candid in stating their reasons for their veteos.... read more
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