When we wrote of the reported “death” of the GOP initiative/scam to split California’s Electoral College votes we urged caution, suggesting that these guys don’t just give up that easily. Not just because they get caught. As they did when it appeared an out-of-state Rudy Giuliani supporter appeared to secretly be behind the attempt to see the measure placed on next year’s ballot.
The initiative, if it gains enough signatures, would make its way onto the ballot in next February’s Presidential Primary Election. If passed, it would require that California’s enormous number of electoral votes be apportioned as based on Congressional district support. That, instead of the current winner-take-all system used in the state and in the vast majority of the country. Critics, not without appropriate justification, have viewed the initiative as an attempt to steal the 2008 Presidential Election for the Republicans.
Late last night, Sacramento Bee reported that the initiative may be back on track, having found new, deep-pocket funders. Today, “The Maven” at dKos offers many more details.
Crap.
We have got to stop these maniacs!
This is just one of the MANY reasons that the Electoral College needs to be abolished completely.
It serves absolutely ZERO purpose today except to throw away 10s of Millions of votes and is no doubt largely why voter turnout is so incredibly low.
It should have been abolished at least 75+ years ago.
Shitcan the Electoral College, the sooner the better. Even with all the Florida mess Al Gore still won the popular [read: REAL] vote, by over half a million actual votes. So anything that goes against the idea of whoever-gets-the-most-votes-wins and nullifies the actual results, reversing them to let the guy who got less REAL votes nationwide end up in the White House, has to be considered a terrible idea and the opposite of democratic. How many election outcomes does it have to turn on its ear before the people throw out this anti-democratic device and let the presidential elections be decided by, shockingly enough, who actually gets more votes? That’s just ONE feature of American “democracy” that makes this country undemocratic.
Another is the gerrymandering of Congressional districts to the extent that the other party may as well not even spend the money to field a candidate in that race because the district’s boundaries have been purposely distorted to make it 90% one party and 10% the other.
Still another is the role money plays in deciding who gets elected or “elected”, very much at the expense of who has the best ideas and message.
Tying in with that is the role of the supine corporate-owned mainstream media; notice the format of the “debates” in which they place Dennis Kucinich all the way on one end and Mike Gravél all the way on the other, and give them the least amount of time to speak, even cutting them off in mid-sentence and rarely calling on them. Seemingly playing the role of kingmaker, the media is actually just the mouthpiece of their bourgeois ruling class masters.
Then of course you have election fraud in its many forms, as examined on this blog thoroughly and well.
Then you have the matter of the Democrats in Congress talking a good game (sometimes) but not following it up with actual action, for example every one of them has to know that all they have to do to end the war in Iraq is to refuse to vote on supplemental funding bills; they don’t have to write a bill formally ending it, to send to Bush to be vetoed, then try to override the veto. That’s a smokescreen. All they have to do is to NOT VOTE ON IT. They are in the majority in both houses, paper thin but they aren’t in the minority. So if the Dems en bloc refuse to vote on supplemental funding bills to pay for the war in Iraq, it WON’T REACH BUSH’S DESK. Surely they realize they can do that, but “mysteriously” refuse to even talk about it. So who are they working for? The people? Or the pro-war expansionist establishment?
So among several other things, yes they need to get rid of the electoral college system. It would be a good start.