Before the election, Pileggi’s plan (backed by a mysterious dark-money group called All Votes Matter) was to allocate electoral votes by congressional district, with the winner of each district receiving one electoral vote and the statewide winner getting a two-electoral-vote bonus. That might not seem like a big deal. But Pennsylvania, like other blue states in the upper Midwest, was subjected to a very effective Republican gerrymander after the 2010 midterm elections. Republicans won 13 of its 18 districts in 2012, so if Pileggi’s preelection plan had been in effect, Obama could have been awarded as few as 7 of Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes, despite winning the state.

Ironic and Orwellian title for such a group, isn’t it? “All Votes Matter” save those who voted for the person who won the popular vote in the state, in which case theirs don’t matter at all.

The only way I’d buy a scheme like Pileggi’s is if we did away with congressional districts altogether, in all states—no gerrymandering. Instead of gerrymander-able local districts why not have an election like we have for many city and county councils, where you have all the contestants running for office at-large and you are allowed several votes (in my home town, “vote for three”)? The top vote-getters fill out all the allotted congressional seats.

It would be hard to game such a system. Yes, the most partisan and loud-mouth might be shoo-ins to get a seat–but these could also “soak up” a lot of the partisan vote which might mean that although they’re among the top vote-getters, they find themselves in lonesome company in their state.

-stewartm

Just another case of a repug who realizes that people at large don’t support his party or ideology so he makes a desperate attempt to fix the game. If o were a dim, the party could dominate and squash this nonsense. Better yet, o could lead a charge to do away with the electoral college (not gonna happen in my lifetime).

They really are fascists, aren’t they?

The at-large is the way that we vote for school board locally. One drawback to that approach is that no one congress critter is responsible to a contained number of people; he/she could always pass to buck to the other at-large people.

First, this would seem to be unconstitutional because it permits a state to alter its vote counting system to benefit a candidate or party choice. On the other hand, if one state can do it, so can they all. As the number of independent voters increases, it seems as if this could eliminate a lot of party influence or it could lead to the formation of more parties.

If I read correctly, not only the most aggressive but also representing the most populous areas. While I don’t support over weighting small population areas, I don’t support trampling them, either. Some cities have systems to give every area some, proportionate, representation. There are actually a variety of voting systems over the country and some of them have been in place long enough to demonstrate their pros and cons. My reading on voting systems made one point explicitly clear: any system can be gamed. The object of sound democratic voting systems is to make them as fair as possible, as easy and painless to implement and use as possible, as difficult to game as possible. The second and third points in tandem present the most difficulties.

Oakland instituted some version of ranked voting this last mayoral election and it appears not to have worked very well. It was gamed, legally: the two women candidates urged their supporters to vote the other as next choice. The candidate with the most first place votes lost.

If every state did this, it wouldn’t matter. But they all won’t. PA doing it on its own will benefit only the GOP — which is the idea.

PA doing this will take NPV off the platter permanently there, and further reduce the already doubtful prospects that NPV can get to the 270 vote tipping point.

So, the question would be how to stop this plot in PA?

Pennsylvania’s congressional districts are heavily gerrymandered; Democrats actually got 50.24% of votes cast for Congressional representative, but Republicans wound up with 13 out of 18 seats. They accomplished this feat by concentrating all the Democrats in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh into as few districts as mathematically possible (district 1 was 85% D, district 2 was 90.5% D!).

If Pennsylvania used the Nebraska formula, and Obama won the same congressional districts that Democratic representatives did, he would get seven electoral votes (five plus two for winning statewide), and Romney would get thirteen. Quite a deal, isn’t it?

It’s done all the time. See 2008 Democratic primaries NJ and MI. This past election, the Republicans disenfranchised the Libertarians. Elections are in the hands of the major parties and the top of the parties’ food chains use those powers. I wonder if there’s ever been an election that was not shaped by party powers to suit their agenda.

For the record, Clinton won NJ by 10 points. A majority of NJ delegates voted for Obama. RD at the Confluence wrote that Corzine effected the switch. WTF’s the point of voting if decisions have already been made and results are screwed around to the pre-determined outcome?

Can’t they, tho.

Obama’s flagrant incompetence in his first term is the gift that keeps on giving. He (a) dismantled Howard Dean’s “50 State Strategy”; (b) virtually read the base out of the party (thank you, Robert “Drug Test” Gibbs); (c) utterly and totally mishandled the health-care debate; and (d) failed or refused to call out the Tea Party as a bunch of fringe-ass racists and raggedy conspiracy theorists.

I’ve washed my hands of Obama and his brain-dead, rotting-carcass political party.

What they are planning is another end run around the Constitution. They thought they had one with their voter suppression laws, but that back fired on them and just pissed people off. This scheme is a bit more stealthy and would require them to just make all the big Dem. Blue states having to apportion the electoral votes according to the popular vote and not the Red states. How convenient right? I heard some GOper talking heads discussing this idea on NPR back 6 mos. ago and when he was asked wouldn’t that be unfair if only blue states and not all States had to do this? His answer was so what it’s all about winning not being fair.

Why did it take you so long to get to that decision? Anyway, it was not o’s “flagrant incompetence” that caused him to do that. He is very competent in keeping people who should know better hanging on to him as if his campaign rhetoric is what he actually believes, in spite of governing in the exact opposite way. No, it wasn’t incompetence that brought about his resusitation of the repugs, it was his desire. If he really were a dim, he could have driven the repugs over the cliff, but no, he brought them back and, with the help of dinos pelosi and reid, gave them the keys to the kingdom. o will accomplish more of the repug agenda than the repugs ever could.

A survey of Pennsylvania voters showed 78% overall support for a national popular vote for President.
Support was 87% among Democrats, 68% among Republicans, and 76% among independents.
By age, support was 77% among 18-29 year olds, 73% among 30-45 year olds, 81% among 46-65 year olds, and 78% for those older than 65.
By gender, support was 85% among women and 71% among men.

Obvious partisan machinations like these should add support for the National Popular Vote movement. If the party in control in each state is tempted every 2, 4, or 10 years (post-census) to consider rewriting election laws and redistrict with an eye to the likely politically beneficial effects for their party in the next presidential election, then the National Popular Vote system, in which all voters across the country are guaranteed to be politically relevant and treated equally, looks better and better.

The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).

Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections. No more distorting and divisive red and blue state maps. There would no longer be a handful of ‘battleground’ states where voters and policies are more important than those of the voters in 80% of the states that now are just ‘spectators’ and ignored after the conventions.

When the bill is enacted by states with a majority of the electoral votes– enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538), all the electoral votes from the enacting states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in the country.

In polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state. Support for a national popular vote is strong among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in virtually every state surveyed in recent polls.

The bill has passed 31 state legislative chambers in 21 states with 243 electoral votes. The bill has been enacted by 9 jurisdictions with 132 electoral votes – 49% of the 270 needed.

NationalPopularVote
Follow National Popular Vote on Facebook via NationalPopularVoteInc

Yes Ma’am. Rigging means you can’t win on merits.
Follow the dough…

http://votesmart.org/candidate/campaign-finance/47507/dominic-pileggi

I am not sure that I understand the term “rigging” in the context of the electoral college.

Gerrymandering, I do understand and abhor. But, getting at gerrymandering through the electoral college is not the way to go, IMO. As far as the electoral college, the Constitution leaves a lot to the states.

Most states have gone with winner takes all electoral votes, which is probably the least democratic choice. A couple of states have long chosen to apportion their electoral votes.

A perfectly constitutional legal choice does not become “rigging” simply because it happens to disadvantage Democrats. In fact, until recently, it’s been Democrats who have long pushed for apportionment.

But, back to gerrymandering.

I deem three issues worthy of a Constitutional amendment, despite the grave risks of a Constitutional Convention in our current political atmosphere. Those are gerrymandering, the Senate rules (sixty vote cloture rule, secret one Senator holds, etc.) and clarifying the Constitution to make sure campaign funds can be limited by statute without violating the Constitution, although that one would require some very careful wording.

I don’t see how long we can continue to kid ourselves that we are a democracy without those three fixes.

The rich stopped kidding themselves about that decades ago and addressed the reality to their advantage. I don’t know if it is too late to fight them and win. Then again, I don’t see many trying to fight them.

Why does everyone assume that Obama, whose two campaigns run smoother than silk to a history making degree, is incompetent and/or weak?

Why not assume that he is achieving his goals, but his goals are different from those of the 99%?

You have to start by changing the rules of the Democratic Party, which are highly undemocratic.

The rules of the national party need to change for the better, as do the rules at the state level.

Nothing about it is unconstitutional, but the gerrymandering. I would argue that gerrymandering does violate the Constitution. And, if that is not already clear, we need to amend the Constitution. However, that will be tough because amendments have to begin with Congress and both parties gerrymander.

Hey D-Day, I don’t know if you, or anyone else for that matter, ever reads my comments (my narcissism tells me that some fuckheads do—okay, okay, some people who I respect do), but before you leave FDL I would like to apologize to you and Steven Spielberg (if he’s listening) for a comment I made in your Lincoln thread a week or so ago. As you might, or might not, recall, I was busy whining about Mr. Spielberg’s latest films, “Lincoln” and “War Horse,” but I never explain my real beef with him. I don’t know why I was so curt that day because I usually don’t hold anything back when complaining. I don’t know, maybe it was because this was so personal and it goes back to 2005. I guess I was upset because I feel like he is linked to how, a couple months ago, Netanyahu wanted US blood (maybe my son’s) to deal with Iran. Plus, at the time, it was looking like the latest Gaza skirmish, with about a 14:1 death toll ratio, was going to turn into another 2009 skirmish. Oh well, whatever it was, I still should have added this:

Back in 2005, my son and I went to see “War of the Worlds” and, close to the end, Tom Cruise’s son defies him by running off to join the war. I didn’t think much about, but then about a year later, my 12-year-old son told me that when he gets old enough he was going to join the army so he could fight in Iraq. I immediately said “oh no your not,” and then, after going back and forth for a while, he brought up what the kid did in the movie. (Of course, needless to say, we’ve had several follow-up discussions since then (now that I think about it, this may have been a blessing)).

After our discussion, I had begun to wonder if this film had influenced any other young men and women into actually defying their parents. And then, a few months later, I couldn’t help but think of this when I saw Mr. Spielberg making out with Dubya in the Kennedy Center balcony. Sorry, but with everything that has transpired, this is how I feel and it doesn’t matter what anyone says, this is going to be very hard for me to let go.

I hope this doesn’t make me sound like an anti-Semite because I have no animosity towards him, or anyone else for that matter. Plus I honestly believe that the Jewish people—see, even in my head, I refuse to even use the word “Jews” because so many assholes have used it in such a derogatory manner—getting back to what I was saying, I honestly feel that the Jewish people are just as much at the mercy of their warmongering leaders as the Palestinians, Iranians and even us Americans.

This is easy for me to write so I thought I’d throw it in. When I was growing up, my Jewish friend would always invite me to dinner while he had to tell the rest of our friends that there was only enough food for one friend (I think it was more his parents than him who was inviting me). His dad would always tell us fishing and Cubs stories while his mom fed and yelled at us (well deserved). So it would really hurt me if I were to hurt them. I also just voted for Jill Stein because I trust her, and, if and when I ever do grow up, I want to be just like Jon Stewart…only funny…and handsome. I can go on and on with my admiration.

So, if you, Mr. Spielberg or anyone else perceived my comment as being insensitive, then I sincerely apologize.

http://news.firedoglake.com/2012/11/26/the-danger-of-analogizing-about-politics-and-compromise-from-lincoln/#comment-222654

Amen.

Incompetence can be deliberately orchestrated. An intelligent man Obama is not. A clever man, yes.