http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070209/ap_on_...nt_popular_vote

 

my favorite part of the article is...

 

"If you look at the population trends ... if this were to become the law, our presidential elections would be controlled by the vote in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Houston," said North Dakota state Rep. Lawrence Klemin, a Bismarck Republican. "They would decide who the president was, not the rest of us."

 

My comeback to this comment would be... if everyone had an equal vote, then yes, those areas in which more people live would have a greater impact on elections.

I would love to see us get rid of the electoral college, which is frankly worthless at this point in history. Democracy isn't, and shouldn't be, about land area. Its about people, and one person should be one vote. Instead, we get the current situation where the only votes that matter are those in the 4 or 5 "swing" states. We disenfranchise 45 of the 50 states this way, ones with both rural AND urban populations. Its a horrible system.

 

But, unfortunately, I don't see this state-level initiative getting it done. Only way this would work is at the federal level, I think, and that isn't going to happen.

While avoiding the feeling to recycle the same arguements, again, I will say this much....

 

I would much rather see the work done to change people who run for President back to canditates instead of dollar whores like they are now. The irony is that reading the federalist papers, the exact problem of having certian canditiates control what gets out during an election and duping the public is exactly what happens when a campaign turning into a two year fund raising event, instead of a focus on the issues at hand. People can keep picking at the scabs of 2000 all they want, but in reality, in the terms of problems in the electoral process, this is no where near them top of them.

 

But, unfortunately, I don't see this state-level initiative getting it done. Only way this would work is at the federal level, I think, and that isn't going to happen.

 

3/4's of states would have to approve a change, and you can bet your ass that way more than 13 states would never go for this change to the constitution.