electoral college

More Electoral College food for thought

Romey

Some food for thought for those who question the validity of the Electoral College…

These last 5 days have been excruciatingly slow for our nation, but do you realize that California has only tallied 3/4 of their votes? New York is a little better, with 84%, but between those two states alone they represent over 6 million uncounted votes – Biden’s current margin of victory is 4 million votes. Tonight while people are celebrating (or lamenting), every state is still counting votes.

A big part of what took the press so long in calling this election was waiting for a threshold state (Penn, Nevada) that would build up a large enough margin that wouldn’t trigger a recount. In keeping with the spirit of our republic, the Electoral College dispersed power and accountability, sharing it across multiple states.

As with all things government, the Electoral College is not perfect, but I would ask those who may not fully understand it from assuming that it’s without virtue. There are other tweaks that could be made (e.g. revising winner-take-all) could offer a compromise for many concerns.

Lastly, I wanted to share a chart of Swing States and Tipping Point states from the last 5 elections prior to 2020. There are definitely the usual suspects, but you may be surprised just how many states have had this status over the last 20 years.

low light photography of armchairs in front of desk

Colorado Voters – Vote No on 113 – It’s more than “One Person, One Vote”

Romey
low light photography of armchairs in front of desk
Photo by Joakim Honkasalo on Unsplash

I know we’ve all grown tired of politics and I’ve been trying to refrain from most of the discourse, but there’s one issue I feel compelled to speak out on Prop 113 in Colorado (National Popular Vote Interstate Compact).

I understand that “One Person, One Vote” is a great tag line, but frankly oversimplifies this very complex issue. I would ask all Colorado voters to spend some time and consider all sides regarding this proposition.

If you have the time, listen to this episode of the Political Orphanage Podcast:

If you feel you’ve made up your mind, give it a listen and if none of their points resonate with you, please vote your conscience, but they do a good job articulating many reasons why we have the Electoral College. There’s a segment where they name off the top cities that would form an electoral majority – spoiler alert: Denver’s not on that list.

However my primary motivation for voting “no” on this has nothing to do with whether the Electoral College is right for our republic, it has everything to do with the process this is coming about. Originally this wasn’t even going to be on the ballot, as this was rammed through our state legislative session. The irony of originally preventing the citizens of Colorado to make their voices heard on the issue of democracy is not lost on me. However, enough people objected that the issue is now forced into the public square for debate – like the way it should be.

Entering the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is an end-run-around of our Constitution. Rather than follow the defined process to modify our living governing documents, this is basically a strong-arm into forcing a group of ideologically-aligned states to bypass the constitutional process. I’m no lawyer, but given that the Supreme Court UNANIMOUSLY ruled against Faithless Electors (Chiafalo v Washingon) last spring, I’m convinced that if this Compact came into fruition, it would not survive judicial scrutiny.

I understand there are valid reasons to oppose the Electoral College, some of which beyond “because my candidate didn’t win the last election”, so let’s have that discussion – in public. Let’s petition our representatives to amend the constitution, convince a ratifiable majority that this is the right thing to do. I’m of the opinion that our Constitution needs more amendments, but re-writing the rules outside of the Constitution is not the way to do it.

Thank you for your consideration. I hope that you treat this issue with the amount of thoughtful consideration it deserves, beyond a bumper sticker slogan.

Colorado state Democrats are destroying the Electoral College

Romey

Colorado lawmakers are sparring over a plan to bypass the Electoral College. Here’s what’s at stake.

I don’t know what’s more appalling: that this is being done at the state legislature, or that no one really seems to be covering it all that much. I’m not a fan of knee-jerk, reactive legislation to begin with, but no amount of state laws that you pass will put Hillary in the White House. To make the Electoral College a petty partisan issue betrays the republic and displays a level of partisan toxicity that further erodes our societal foundation.

The irony is that proponents are pushing for making every vote count, but the reality is that laws like this will all but nullify the constituency of anyone not living in an urban setting. All you have to do is look at a population density map to see the disparity between the major cities in our country, and everywhere else.

Any area that starts to look green can simply be ignored by any presidential candidate. For every 1 person you reach in the 20-to-88 zone, you can reach 200x the amount of people by just staying in the cities. Why would you go there to campaign? What would stop a presidential candidate from pandering only to those people? Does your vote even count anymore?

Go look at this list of states by population density, and you’ll find that electoral power would be concentrated into 14 states, with Colorado falling to #21 on that list. Our ballots would now become blank checks to these populous states.

What’s worse is that voters aren’t even getting a voice. This isn’t being part of some national dialog, but rather is being rammed through, state by state, at the legislature level. If our state representatives really cared about voters rights, they’d let the voters actually make the decision.

To those who aren’t fans of President Trump (and I’m one of them), the lesson from 2016 should not be to abolish the Electoral College, but rather that we should avoid elevating the office of the Presidency as a de-facto king of our country. Rather than using our state legislatures to cry “sour grapes”, we should be pushing for our national legislatures to take back their constitutional power. Instead, we seem content to do irreperable harm to our state and country.