Originally Posted by NPV

The Electoral College
The U.S. Constitution specifies that the President and Vice President of the United States are to be chosen every four years by a small group of people who are individually referred to as “presidential electors.” The electors are collectively referred to as the “Electoral College.”
The Constitution specifies that each state is entitled to one member of the Electoral College for each of its U.S. Representatives and U.S. Senators. Today, there are a total of 538 electoral votes in the Electoral College. This total corresponds to the 435 U.S. Representatives from the 50 states plus the 100 U.S. Senators from the 50 states plus the three members of the Electoral College to which the District of Columbia became entitled under the 23rd Amendment (ratified in 1961). Every 10 years, the 435 U.S. Representatives are reapportioned among the states in accordance with the latest federal census, thereby automatically reapportioning the membership of the Electoral College among the states.
Members of the Electoral College are chosen by each state and the District of Columbia on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November in presidential election years. Each political party nominates its own candidates (typically long-standing party activists) for the position of presidential elector.
The 538 members of the Electoral College cast their votes for President and Vice President in meetings held in the 50 state capitals and the District of Columbia in mid-December of presidential election years. If all 538 electors are appointed, 270 electoral votes (i.e., a majority of 538 members of the Electoral College) are required to elect the President and the Vice President.
The three North Dakota members of the Electoral College met on December 15, 2000, in Bismarck to cast their votes for the Bush-Cheney ticket. Gov. John Hoeven (left) observes former Gov. Ed Schafer put his signature to ballot for Electoral College. The other two electors are former state Senator Bryce Streibel of Fressenden and former Lieutenant Governor Rosemarie Myrdal.
The date for the meeting of the Electoral College is established by federal election law (United States Code. Title 3, chapter 1, section 7). In 2004, the designated day for the meeting of the Electoral College was Monday, December 13. This statute was enacted in 1934 after the 20th Amendment changed the date for the presidential inauguration from March 4 to January 20.
The people have the right, under the U.S. Constitution, to vote for U.S. Representatives. The 17th Amendment (ratified in 1913) gave the people the right to vote for U.S. Senators (who were elected by state legislatures under the original Constitution). The people, however, have no federal constitutional right to vote for President or Vice President or for their state’s members of the Electoral College. Instead, the Constitution (Article II, section 1, clause 2) provides:
“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress….”
As the U.S. Supreme Court observed in the 1892 case of McPherson v. Blacker:
“The constitution does not provide that the appointment of electors shall be by popular vote, nor that the electors shall be voted for upon a general ticket, nor that the majority of those who exercise the elective franchise can alone choose the electors.” …
“In short, the appointment and mode of appointment of electors belong exclusively to the states under the constitution of the United States.”
In 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore reiterated the principle that the people have no federal constitutional right to vote for President or Vice President or for their state’s members of the Electoral College..
“The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States unless and until the state legislature chooses a statewide election as the means to implement its power to appoint members of the Electoral College.”
The Constitution’s delegation of power to the states to choose the manner of selecting their members of the Electoral College is unusually unconstrained. It contrasts significantly with the limitations contained in the Constitution on state power over the manner of conducting congressional elections (Article II, section 4, clause 1).
“The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations….”
In a 1919 case involving a state statute entitled “An act granting to women the right to vote for presidential electors,” the Maine Supreme Judicial Court wrote (In re Opinion of the Justices):
“[E]ach state is thereby clothed with the absolute power to appoint electors in such manner as it may see fit, without any interference or control on the part of the federal government, except, of course, in case of attempted discrimination as to race, color, or previous condition of servitude….”

Originally Posted by NPV

The National Popular Vote bill
The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and the District of Columbia).
The National Popular Vote bill has been enacted by Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, and Maryland. These four states possess 50 electoral votes — 19% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect. The bill has passed 21 state legislative chambers, including one house in Arkansas, Colorado, Maine, North Carolina, and Washington, and both houses in California, Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
The bill is currently endorsed by 1,181 state legislators — 439 sponsors (in 47 states) and an additional 742 legislators who have cast recorded votes in favor of the bill.
The shortcomings of the current system stem from the winner-take-all rule that awards all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in each state.
Under the winner-take-all rule, candidates have no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, or pay attention to the concerns of states where they are safely ahead or hopelessly behind. Instead, candidates concentrate their attention on a small handful of closely divided "battleground" states. This means that voters in two thirds of the states are ignored in presidential elections. In 2004, candidates concentrated over two-thirds of their money and campaign visits in just five states; over 80% in nine states; and over 99% of their money in just 16 states.
Another shortcoming of the current system is that a candidate can win the Presidency without winning the most popular votes nationwide. A shift of 60,000 votes would have elected Kerry in 2004, even though President Bush was ahead by 3,500,000 votes nationwide.
The U.S. Constitution gives the states exclusive and plenary control over the manner of awarding of their electoral votes. The winner-take-all rule is not in the Constitution. It was not the Founder's choice (having been used by only three states in the nation's first presidential election). Maine and Nebraska currently award electoral votes by district—a reminder that a federal constitutional amendment is not required to change the way the President is elected.
The National Popular Vote 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 bill has been endorsed by the New York Times, Chicago Sun Times, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, and Sacramento Bee, Common Cause and Fair Vote.
70% of the public has long supported nationwide election of the president.
The National Advisory Board of National Popular Vote includes former congressmen John Anderson (R–Illinois and later independent presidential candidate), John Buchanan (R–Alabama—the first Republican elected to represent Birmingham), Tom Campbell (R–California), and Tom Downey (D–New York), and former Senators Birch Bayh (D–Indiana), David Durenberger (R–Minnesota), and Jake Garn (R–Utah).

Originally Posted by AOL news

Study: American Voters Dumb as Ever!
By David Knowles
Jul 24th 2008 9:20AM
Filed Under:eDemocrats, Republicans, Featured Stories, Humor
Back in 1960, four University of Michigan professors published a landmark study that, to the nation's utter shock, found that Americans are nothing but lemmings when it comes to our most sacred Democratic rite, voting. Titled "The American Voter," the study revealed that, by and large, Democrats and Republicans voted for their respective parties for no better reason than that was what their parents had done before them. Independents, the study claimed, were even less informed than their partisan neighbors. In fact, if anything, they were less interested and involved in politics than the donkeys or the elephants.

Over the ensuing 48 years, a lot has changed in our country. We've seen great leaders assassinated, fought a disastrous war in Vietnam, seen a president resign in disgrace, helped dismantle the Soviet Union, learned interesting uses for Altoids, and invaded Iraq based on faulty intelligence. In short, we've been given every reason to start paying attention to the issues that face our country so that we can make an informed decision about who we elect to governmental office. What's that old saying? Something about learning from the mistakes of the past so that we're not doomed to repeat them in the present?

Well, consider us doomed. That's the gist of an update to "The American Voter," aptly titled, "The American Voter Revisited."

Once again, four smart people have gotten together to look down from their ivory tower across the landscape populated with frighteningly unthoughtful voters. And, once again, we're learning about what we already knew. From The Washington Post:

"The American Voter Revisited" is chock-full of depressing conclusions, couched in academic understatement. In-depth interviews conducted with 1,500 people during the two most recent presidential elections revealed that the "majority of people don't have many issues in mind" when they discuss voting, (study co-author Michael) Lewis-Beck says. Sometimes they say they're attracted to a candidate because "I just don't think we should change parties right now." They tend to inherit their party allegiance from their parents, and those beliefs tend to stay fixed throughout their lives, he says.

Just as in 1960, American voters aren't really paying attention. Despite the 24-hour campaign coverage on the teevee and the internets, for the most part, the electorate seems to be set on auto-pilot, as Lewis-Black, detailed in an interview with the University of Michigan Press:

...do socio-economic conditions and, especially, party identification, still largely determine how Americans vote? Are voters still mostly inattentive to politics, with a rather low level of interest in politics, and very little under standing of the liberal-conservative debate raging at the elite level? The answer to these questions, perhaps surprisingly, is "yes." In other words, the typical American voter follows pretty much the same cues as he or she did fifty years ago.

Yes, the Times They Are a Changin', and the more they change, the more they stay the same.

Originally Posted by WP

Voters Fail the Test
By Kathleen Parker
Wednesday, November 26, 2008; 12:00 AM
WASHINGTON -- So much for the wisdom of The People.
A new report from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) on the nation's civic literacy finds that most Americans are too ignorant to vote.
Out of 2,500 American quiz-takers, including college students, elected officials and other randomly selected citizens, nearly 1,800 flunked a 33-question test on basic civics. In fact, elected officials scored slightly lower than the general public with an average score of 44 percent compared to 49 percent.
Only 0.8 percent of all test-takers scored an "A."
America's report card may come as little surprise to fans of Jay Leno's man-on-the-street interviews, which reveal that most people don't know diddly about doohickey. Still, it's disheartening in the wake of a populist-driven election celebrating joes-of-all-trades to be reminded that the voting public is dumber than ever.
The multiple-choice ISI quiz wouldn't deepen the creases in most brains, but the questions do require a basic knowledge of how the U.S. government works. Think fast: In what document do the words "government of the people, by the people, for the people" appear? More than twice as many people (56 percent) knew that Paula Abdul was a judge on "American Idol" than knew that those words come from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address (21 percent).
In good news, more than 80 percent of college graduates gave correct answers about Susan B. Anthony, the identity of the commander in chief of the U.S. military, and the content of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.
But don't pop the cork yet. Only 17 percent of college grads understood the difference between free markets and centralized planning.
Then again, we can't blame the children for what they haven't been taught. Civics courses, once a staple of junior and high school education, are no longer considered important in our quantitative, leave-no-child-behind world. And college adds little civic knowledge, the ISI study found. The average grade for those holding a bachelor's degree was just 57 percent -- only 13 points higher than the average score of those with only a high school diploma.
Most bracing: Only 27 percent of elected officeholders in the survey could identify a right or freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment. Forty-three percent didn't know what the Electoral College does. And 46 percent didn't know that the Constitution gives Congress power to declare war.

Originally Posted by WP

5 Myths About Those Civic-Minded, Deeply Informed Voters
By Rick Shenkman
Sunday, September 7, 2008; B05
One thing both Democrats and Republicans agreed about in their vastly different conventions: The American voter will not only decide but decide wisely. But does the electorate really know what it's talking about? Plenty of things are hurting American democracy -- gridlock, negative campaigning, special interests -- but one factor lies at the root of all the others, and nobody dares to discuss it. American voters, who are hiring the people who'll run a superpower democracy, are grossly ignorant. Here are a few particularly bogus claims about their supposed savvy.
1. Our voters are pretty smart.
You hear this one from politicians all the time, even John McCain, who promises straight talk, and Barack Obama, who claims that he's not a politician (by which he means that he'll tell people what they need to hear, not what they want to hear). But by every measure social scientists have devised, voters are spectacularly uninformed. They don't follow politics, and they don't know how their government works. According to an August 2006 Zogby poll, only two in five Americans know that we have three branches of government and can name them. A 2006 National Geographic poll showed that six in ten young people (aged 18 to 24) could not find Iraq on the map. The political scientists Michael Delli Carpini and Scott Keeter, surveying a wide variety of polls measuring knowledge of history, report that fewer than half of all Americans know who Karl Marx was or which war the Battle of Bunker Hill was fought in. Worse, they found that just 49 percent of Americans know that the only country ever to use a nuclear weapon in a war is their own.
True, many voters can tell you who's ahead and who's behind in the horse race. But most of what they know about the candidates' positions on the issues -- and remember, our candidates are running to make policy, not talk about their biographies -- derives from what voters learn from stupid and often misleading 30-second commercials, according to Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center.
2. Bill O'Reilly's viewers are dumber than Jon Stewart's.
Liberals wish. Democrats like to think that voters who sympathize with their views are smarter than those who vote Republican. But a 2007 Pew survey found that the knowledge level of viewers of the right-wing, blustery "The O'Reilly Factor" and the left-wing, snarky "The Daily Show" is comparable, with about 54 percent of the shows' politicized viewers scoring in the "high knowledge" category.
So what about conservative talk-radio titan Rush Limbaugh's audience? Surely the ditto-heads are dumb, right? Actually, according to a survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, Rush's listeners are better educated and "more knowledgeable about politics and social issues" than the average voter.
3. If you just give Americans the facts, they'll be able to draw the right conclusions.
Unfortunately, no. Many social scientists have long tried to downplay the ignorance of voters, arguing that the mental "short cuts" voters use to make up for their lack of information work pretty well. But the evidence from the past few years proves that a majority can easily be bamboozled.
Just before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, after months of unsubtle hinting from Bush administration officials, some 60 percent of Americans had come to believe that Iraq was behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, despite the absence of evidence for the claim, according to a series of surveys taken by the PIPA/Knowledge Networks poll. A year later, after the bipartisan, independent 9/11 Commission reported that Saddam Hussein had had nothing to do with al-Qaeda's assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, 50 percent of Americans still insisted that he did. In other words, the public was bluntly given the data by a group of officials generally believed to be credible -- and it still didn't absorb the most basic facts about the most important event of their time.
4. Voters today are smarter than they used to be.
Actually, by most measures, voters today possess the same level of political knowledge as their parents and grandparents, and in some categories, they score lower. In the 1950s, only 10 percent of voters were incapable of citing any ways in which the two major parties differed, according to Thomas E. Patterson of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, who leads the Pew-backed Vanishing Voter Project. By the 1970s, that number had jumped to nearly 30 percent.
Here's what makes these numbers deplorable -- and, in fact, almost incomprehensible: Education levels are far higher today than they were half a century ago, when social scientists first began surveying voter knowledge about politics. (In 1940, six in ten Americans hadn't made it past the eighth grade.) The moral of this story: Schooling alone doesn't translate into better educated voters.
5. Young voters are paying a lot of attention to the news.
Again, no. Despite all the hoopla about young voters -- the great hope of the future! -- only one news story in 2001 drew the attention of a majority of them: 9/11. Some 60 percent of young voters told Pew researchers that they were following news about the attack closely. (Er -- 40 percent weren't?) But none of the other stories that year seemed particularly interesting to them. Only 32 percent said that they followed the news about the anthrax attacks or the economy, then in recession. The capture of Kabul from the Taliban? Just 20 percent.
Six years later, Pew again measured public knowledge of current events and found that the young (aged 18 to 29) "know the least." A majority of young respondents scored in the "low knowledge" category -- the only demographic group to do so.
And some other statistics are even more alarming. How many young people read newspapers? Just 20 percent. (Worse, studies consistently show that people who do not pick up the newspaper-reading habit in their 20s rarely do so later.) But surely today's youth are getting their news from the Internet? Sorry. Only 11 percent of the young report that they regularly surf the Internet for news. Maybe Obama shouldn't be relying on savvy young voters after all.

Originally Posted by kamino

National Popular Vote -- Electoral college reform by direct election of the President

National Popular Vote -- Electoral college reform by direct election of the President

Originally Posted by MrVicchio

Ahh, a great idea, let's give 5-10 areas th say in Presidential elections. Let's ignore the rural areas for the dense Urban areas!

What a FANTASTIC IDEA!

You live in a smaller state? Small towns? When this goes in, you'll have NO SAY at all. Oh sure... you can vote, but the politicians... They won't care about you! They'll spend their time and money in:
New York City
Los Angeles
Houston
Boston
Miami
San Fransisco
San Diego
Dallas
Philadelphia

That's where the votes are, that's where the money will go, that's where their cares and concerns are.

So let's hear it for CITY VOTING! Dis-enfranchisement of anyone dumb enough not to live in a high-density population areas!

Originally Posted by Pinu7

Umm... no. It costs ALOT more money to advetise in NYC than in Nowheresville, Nebraska. If I broadcast in Dallas and it reaches 100,000 people. It should cost approximately the same as an ad that reaches 100,000 people from rural NJ.

Originally Posted by winston53660

What about the rate of return? If I advertise widget x in Dallas and it sells vs. NYC and it doesn't sell in NYC why should I have to pay more for NYC?