More than likely on Sunday. Awesome.
Probably going to get Tiger Woods 08 since I had so much fun with it last time I got a chance to play the Wii. And since I have a wireless internet portal in my basement, I'll be able to take it online through the router.
If only my weekend wasn't marred by other unpleasantries...namely school work to the tune of "please beat me over the head with a lead pipe because it would be more fun than this term paper."
I guess I could think of the Wii as my reward for all of my studious hard work. (Insert laughter here)
This post is really against my main goal for my blog, to be somewhat insightful whenever possible, so I'll try and make up for it:
I recently heard about this ridiculous motion in congress in support of a National Popular Vote. Essentially, it states that individual states will form into pacts with each other so that whatever candidate receives the majority of the popular vote in the combined populations of all the states participating will receive all of those states' combined ELECTORAL votes. Call me nuts, but doesn't the constitution explicitly state that these kind of interstate pacts are illegal and controllable by the government? Interstate commerce/relations is one of the few enumerated powers given to the federal government by the constitution. And considering the founding fathers were almost unanimously in favor of limited government at the federal level, then it says something that that is one of the things they'd give the federal government explicit control over.
My objection to the legislation stems from the fact that it would force states to relinquish their right to choose the winner of their own electoral votes, even if the opposite candidate wins the popular vote in the 'pact' of states. For example, if MN were to enter into a pact with California, and the majority of Minnesotans vote for one candidate but the majority of Californians vote for the other, the MN popular vote will mean jack crap in the long run because California citizens determined who MINNESOTA electors are going to vote for! BS if you ask me. I don't want my vote diluted by people in a different state, thanks. Let's hope and pray this doesn't make it past committee review.
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2 comments:
The National Popular Vote interstate compact doesn't force states to do anything. States may voluntarily join it if they like.
Compacts are authorized by the U.S. Constitution, and there are thousands of them in existence. While many compacts do require congressional consent, compacts don't require congressional consent if they don't threaten federal supremacy (1893 case of Tennessee v. Virginia).
The major shortcoming of the current system of electing the President arises from the winner-take-all rule (currently used by 48 of 50 states) under which all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who gets the most votes in the state. If the partisan divide in a state is not initially closer than about 46%-54%, no amount of campaigning during a brief presidential campaign is realistically going to change the winner of the state during a short presidential campaign. As a result, presidential candidates have no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, campaign, or worry about the concerns of voters of states where they are safely ahead or hopelessly behind. Instead, candidates concentrate their attention on a handful of “battleground” states. 88% of the money and visits (and attention) is focused onto just 9 closely divided battleground states: Ohio, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, New Mexico, and New Hampshire. 99% goes to just 16 states.
Another shortcoming of the current system is that a candidate can win the Presidency without winning the most popular votes nationwide.
The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).
A national popular vote is the way to make every person’s vote equal and to guarantee the White House to the candidate who gets the most votes in all 50 states. The bill would take effect only when enacted, in identical form, by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes—that is, enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538). When the bill is enacted in a group of states possessing 270 or more electoral votes, all of the electoral votes from those states would be awarded, as a bloc, to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).
The National Popular Vote bill has 366 legislative sponsors in 47 states. It has been signed into law in Maryland. Since its introduction in February 2006, the bill has passed by 11 legislative houses (one house in Colorado, Arkansas, and North Carolina, and two houses in Maryland, Illinois, Hawaii, and California).
See www.NationalPopularVote.com
O...kay? The fact that the interstate compacts are voluntary doesn't change anything. All it means is that if my state legislature decides that they wanna enter into it, then they can. Even if it's put to a vote, if it's voted to be, that still puts my state into a compact with other states and dilutes the power of my individual vote by influencing the way my electors vote based on the popular vote in another state. The electoral college isn't perfect but it's better than this crap.
And explain to me how this idea makes "everyone's vote equal." If it did that, then there'd be no need to even keep the whole electoral college idea in existence. If you just put it to a popular vote then fine, but what this bill proposes is that popular votes be used to select electoral votes but on a compact basis. Tell me then, why even keep the electoral college around? Oh that's right, because you have to keep it there in order to pull an end-run around an established American institution. And that's assuming that individual votes are not of equal importance currently, which is laughable. If that were the case, then there wouldn't have needed to be a massive recount in Florida in 2000 or hot disputes over Ohio in 2004. Those simply proved that individual counties/votes can count even in the electoral system.
I'm all for electoral fairness, but it doesn't seem fair to me that my electoral votes are determined by people in another damn state. That's ridiculous.
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