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Colorado voting

2K views 5 replies 4 participants last post by  Ribulose Diphosphate 
#1 ·
What do you think of this? Personally I like it, here in Meechigan Detroit and Flint choose who's elected or not by a huge margin. Instead of a person taking electoral points on my behalf that they don't deserve why not split them up?

Colorado Voting on Electoral Proportionality

Mon Sep 13, 7:37 AM ET

By STEVEN K. PAULSON, Associated Press Writer

DENVER - Colorado Republican Marcy Benson remembers getting calls four years ago from people asking if she was going to change her vote when she cast her ballot as a presidential elector.

For years, few paid much attention to the Electoral College. But in the close election of 2000, every vote counted in the battle between Republican George Bush and Democrat Al Gore. The GOP was worried that "faithless electors" might jump ship and vote for Gore.

"It surprised me that people thought I would change my vote," Benson said.

This year, the Electoral College system is getting a critical look even before the election from voters in Colorado. And what happens here could affect the outcome of the presidential fight between Bush and Democrat John Kerry.

On Nov. 2, voters will consider a proposal to immediately scrap the state's winner-take-all electoral vote system and allow candidates to keep a proportion of the delegates they win. In theory, a candidate could win 55 percent of the statewide vote and get only five of the state's nine electoral votes.

If the proposal had been in place four years ago, Gore would have earned enough electoral votes to go to the White House.

Only two other states divide electoral votes, Nebraska and Maine. Each gives two votes to the winner of each state, and the remaining votes are cast to show who won each congressional district.

Colorado would be the first state to allocate all its electoral votes proportionately according to the popular vote — something supporters say would make every vote count.

"When a winner gets 51 percent and the loser 49 percent, and you give all the electoral votes to the winning candidate, that's not representative government," said Julie Brown, a spokeswoman for sponsors of the initiative.

Republicans, who hold a 185,000 edge in registered voters over Democrats in Colorado, say the plan is a plot to take the state's nine electoral votes from Bush and give them to Kerry.

Katy Atkinson, a GOP pollster, said Colorado could end up always splitting its votes 5-4, in effect giving it one electoral vote. That would make the state a political backwater no candidate would waste time visiting.

"If this succeeds, we will become the least influential state in the country," said Atkinson, who helped found an opposition group that calls itself Coloradans Against a Really Stupid Idea.

Advocates of the idea in Colorado gathered 134,821 signatures to get the proposal on the ballot.

The Electoral College was criticized as unfair and outdated after the disputed 2000 presidential election, in which Gore won the vote of the people but narrowly lost to Bush in the Electoral College by a vote of 271-266.

Atkinson promised a court challenge if the Colorado measure passes to determine whether it can be applied retroactively.

That raises the possibility of a judge holding up Colorado's results in what is expected to be a tight race between Bush and Kerry. Secretary of State Donetta Davidson did not return calls for comment.

State Democratic Party chairman Chris Gates said the party has not taken a position on the initiative, but said the measure has little support.

"Many Democrats feel this state is in play and this is a state we can win. They think this is a way to give George Bush four electoral votes in Colorado," Gates said.

University of Colorado law professor Robert Dieter — one of the electors who sat around a desk in the office of Gov. Bill Owens in 2000 to cast votes for Bush — said the system shouldn't be changed.

"The electoral college, for all of its flaws, is a necessary check and balance for ensuring that the president is elected from a dispersed geographical portion of the United States," he said. "The organizational plan of the founding fathers was to make sure we didn't have a system where a president could be elected simply based on popular votes from population centers."
 
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#2 ·
The founding fathers never intended for there to be a direct vote, and would be appalled by the current voting procedures.

I find humor in the fact that each party is accusing the other of trying to steal electoral votes.

Colorado has several military bases, a high number of military retirees, and a large number of defense contractors. I don't think Kerry has much of a chance there.
 
#3 ·
Why not split them up? Because you kill any incentive for a candidate to visit or even give a s__t about your state. Just about any state, even Mass at one end or Utah at the other, is going to go about 55-45 for one party or the other at the very outside. That means one candidate will get one more electoral vote than the other from every state. Why should candidates even visit your battleground state of Michigan if they know they've got just over or just under half the electoral votes anyway? No more addressing local issues, promises (which are generally kept to some degree) to deal with local problems, etc. If this goes through, Colorado will never see a presidential candidate again (maybe not a bad thing, but...)
 
#5 ·
Yes time do change, but human nature doesn't. The Pentium has no more to do with who should vote than an abacus does. Giving direct voting on Presidential elections to anyone with a pulse and many without was a bad idea then and a worse idea now. At least in those days people didn't vote based on hair style or the endorsement of some half wit celebrity.
 
#6 ·
I think it would be really interesting if Congressional districts followed some sort of minimum boundary rule rather than cherry-picking voters to one party's advantage. This would result in more heterogeneous within-district populations and that would force candidates to consider the views of minority consituents, even conservative Repos in majority Demo districts.

The result would be 435 House members who's constituencies would be highly variable and thus encouraging greater ability to fashion coalitions outside of party boundaries.

The other reform that I'd make would be to have each Elector represent the Congressional District from which he came. Thus, if your district is of a minority party, that party's vote is still represented in the process.

Ain't gonna happen.
 
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