tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5930029646250876369.post310233187527274059..comments2024-03-26T00:15:21.984-07:00Comments on Templeton Times: Origins of the Electoral College from uselectionatlas.orgBaldwin Templetonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14033373330060833423noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5930029646250876369.post-17470045230003698142015-04-24T12:09:05.908-07:002015-04-24T12:09:05.908-07:00With National Popular Vote, with every voter equal...With National Popular Vote, with every voter equal, candidates will truly have to care about the issues and voters in all 50 states and DC. Part of the genius of the Founding Fathers was allowing for change as needed. When they wrote the Constitution, they didn’t give us the right to vote, or establish state-by-state winner-take-all laws for awarding electoral votes, or establish any method, for how states should award electoral votes. Fortunately, the Constitution allowed state legislatures to enact laws allowing people to vote and how to award electoral votes. <br /><br />The National Popular Vote bill would replace current state winner-take-all laws that award all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who get the most popular votes in each separate state (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), in the enacting states, to a system guaranteeing the majority of Electoral College votes for, and the Presidency to, the candidate getting the most popular votes in the entire United States. <br /><br />The bill preserves the constitutionally mandated Electoral College and state control of elections. It ensures that every voter is equal, every voter will matter, in every state, in every presidential election, and the candidate with the most votes wins, as in virtually every other election in the country.<br /><br />Under National Popular Vote, every voter, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in every presidential election. Every vote would matter in the state counts and national count. <br /><br />When states with a combined total of at least 270 electoral votes enact the bill, the candidate with the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC would get the needed majority of 270+ electoral votes from the enacting states. The bill would thus guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes and the majority of Electoral College votes.<br /><br />The bill has passed 33 state legislative chambers in 22 rural, small, medium, large, Democratic, Republican and purple states with 250 electoral votes, including one house in Arkansas (6), Maine (4), Michigan (16), Nevada (6), New Mexico (5), North Carolina (15), and Oklahoma (7), and both houses in Colorado (9). The bill has been enacted by 11 jurisdictions with 165 electoral votes – 61% of the 270 necessary to go into effect.<br /><br />NationalPopularVote.com<br />totohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12247335901450384827noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5930029646250876369.post-32676434836170387672015-04-24T12:06:38.999-07:002015-04-24T12:06:38.999-07:00The current presidential election system does not ...The current presidential election system does not function, at all, the way that the Founders thought that it would.<br /> <br />Supporters of National Popular Vote find it hard to believe the Founding Fathers would endorse the current electoral system where 80% of the states and voters now are completely politically irrelevant. <br /><br />10 of the original 13 states are ignored now.<br /><br />Four out of five Americans were ignored in the 2012 presidential election. <br />After being nominated, Obama visited just eight closely divided battleground states, and Romney visited only 10. <br /><br />More than 99% of polling, organizing, ad spending and visits was showered on voters in just the ten states in 2012 where they were not hopelessly behind or safely ahead, and could win the bare plurality of the vote to win all of the state’s electoral votes. <br /><br />Now the majority of Americans, in small, medium-small, average, and large states are ignored. <br />Only 3 of the 27 smallest states receive any attention. <br />None of the 10 most rural states is a battleground state. <br />24 of the 27 lowest population states, and 16 medium and big states like CA, GA, NY, and TX are ignored. <br /><br />That’s over 85 million voters, more than 200 million Americans. Their states’ votes were conceded by the minority parties in the states, taken for granted by the dominant party in the states, and ignored by all parties in presidential campaigns.<br />Once the conventions are over, presidential candidates now don’t visit or spend resources in 80% of the states. <br /><br />Candidates know the Republican is going to win in safe red states, and the Democrat will win in safe blue states, so they are ignored. <br /><br />States have the responsibility and power to make their voters relevant in every presidential election.<br /> <br />totohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12247335901450384827noreply@blogger.com