There's a push by a group in Colorado to change the way voting works and split the electoral vote of the state based on popular vote...awful idea, since, as would be the case in a national election if popular vote was what counted- the candidates would go to the largest cities in the state and totally ignore the smaller cities and rural areas, because to get the popular vote you need more people period, not more people spread out throughout the entire state. The electoral college is the system that we've had since our nation's inception, and there's a reason for this- it's the best system and the most fair system out there. If more states did this, rural and small-town Americans wouldn't count at all...candidates could merely go to a few states with large electoral vote counts and never, and I mean NEVER visit the smaller states- which would be like slapping the smaller and less populated states in the face.
Hopefully, this measure won't pass, because it doesn't do what they say it will do (make every vote count), it'll simply make the votes of citizens in Denver, Boulder, and other large cities count...and that's surely not fair.
Posted by Josh at September 17, 2004 11:50 PM | TrackBackIMHO, the winner should be decided by who got the most votes. That is after all, the person the majority of Americans want as their president. (ie: Gore had the popular vote, but lost because of the electoral college, which means more Americans wanted him as president.)
But like you said, the candidates would just campaign in the big cities. That's also a delema.
Posted by: HOODinc at September 21, 2004 07:30 AMBut at the time, I was happy Bush won over Gore. I never really liked Gore, and don't think he would have handled 9/11, the Chinese spy plane stand off, etc etc quite like Bush did. But then Bush had to go and make the mess he did in Iraq...go figure..
Posted by: HOODinc at September 21, 2004 07:31 AMIf the election was decided on popular vote alone, no presidental candidate would care about issues from any state except California, Texas, New York, and Pennsylvania. The issues from urban areas would completely dominate elections. It's so much more complicated than "who ever gets the most votes wins." Our country was founded on the idea that the federal government loosely connects the individual states, and that each state has important issues to bring to the table of their own accord. To deny that would completely violate the founding principles of this country.
Posted by: Chicagomommy at October 17, 2004 10:05 PM