I have proposed a reform of the Electoral
College that would return power back to state legislatures, would end the myth
of "popular vote" for president, and would end voter fraud in presidential
elections in every state chose this reform: place the selection of presidential
electors back where it was in the first decades of the republic and have those
electors chosen directly by state legislatures.
As
folks commenting on my article noted, we ought also to repeal the 17th
Amendment and have state legislatures again reclaim the power to pick United
States senators. That
change, though, would require 38 state legislatures to go along – the minimum
number to ratify a proposed amendment – and that is a tough thing to do, no
matter how good the reform.
There is another reform in how
presidential electors are chosen that would transform presidential elections
and has already been adopted by Maine and Nebraska: have those presidential
electors attributable to the state's apportioned House seats elected by
congressional district and have those two presidential electors attributable to
the state's two senators elected statewide.
Why would this be good?
Presidential candidates today need spend little time or attention in those
states that either will be carried by that candidate no matter what or will not
be carried by the candidate no matter what. The Constitution does not
envision a president being elected because most Americans want him, but rather
because the different parts of America, each with different interests and
values, find him acceptable.
States are the proper level of government
to make that choice, but the most populous states today can safely ignore whole
sections of the state because large metropolitan areas swamp the votes of less
populous parts of the state. What that means in a reliably leftist state
like California is that the third of the state in the rural eastern ridge, who
will be outvoted in statewide elections, really have meaningless votes not only
in the presidential race, but in senatorial races as well.
If the electoral votes of California were
chosen by congressional districts, then the voters in Republican-leaning
congressional districts would have an incentive to vote, as would voters in
swing districts. What would be true of rural Californians would be true
of upstate New Yorkers, downstate Illinoisans, and so on. These
effectively disenfranchised Republican voters would have a reason to go to the
polls in presidential elections.
What is interesting is how this would have
affected recent presidential races. In 2016, assuming that congressional
districts voted the same way for members of the House as they did for
president, in the presidential election, Donald Trump would have won 247
electoral votes from those electors chosen by congressional district and 60
votes from the 30 states he carried, giving Trump 307 electoral votes instead
of the 304 he got in the Electoral College as it is now.
In 2012, making the same assumption
(congressional districts would vote the same for president as for House
member), Mitt Romney would have won 282 electoral votes and won the
election. In 2008, John McCain would have lost with 220 electoral votes
instead of 173. The changes in electoral votes reflect the fact that each
state, still, would cast two votes statewide (as the Senate portion of the
state's electoral vote) but that the few big states upon which Democrats rely
would give some votes to Republican presidential candidates.
There would be some advantage to
Republican presidential candidates, but the primary effect would be to make
much more of America relevant in presidential elections without allowing big
cities (with Democrat machines who typically engage in substantial voter fraud)
to determine the winner of the election. Presidential candidates who
actually campaigned all over the nation would find those efforts rewarded as
scores of congressional districts that have historically been in
"safe" states for one party or the other would be winnable.
This ought to be the response to Democrats
whining for the next four years about the need to have a national popular
vote. Adopt the reform of Nebraska and Maine, which would have the
practical effect of encouraging millions of Americans to vote in presidential
elections and substantially increase the number of electoral districts in
presidential elections by splitting large states into many smaller districts.
Here is another thought: conservatives
should ask California and New York, if the state governments there care about
more than just their party winning the White House, to take the lead with this
reform.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/12/how_to_get_people_to_vote.html#ixzz4UX3NhzHS
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