I heard that Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania are once again messing with the election system. This time Republicans supposedly want to change the electoral vote system in a manner that would cause the winner of the Commonwealth's popular vote to not win the complete electoral vote.
This disgusts me on so many levels. First, we live in a representative democracy in which our leaders are picked through our vote. We don't have a direct democracy in which the citizens can create laws and vote on laws. That is why voting is so important. Voting allows us to freely pick our leaders who in turn will represent us and formulate the laws.Voting, in my opinion, is what makes us free. So, when a party tries to alter the voting system it just feels wrong.
The second point I would like to make concerns suppression of the vote. This change will probably not affect Republican voters in the state. However, it will most likely affect Democrat voters. For instance, most Democrats live in Pittsburgh and Philly while Republicans live in the more rural counties of the state. President Obama won the counties of Philly and Pittsburgh while Romney won the rural counties. It seems to me like this change will give the voters of Pittsburgh and Philly a reduced voice in presidential elections. Most of PA's population lives in Pittsburgh and Philly so why is the majority of the population having a reduced vocie? Lets look at hypothetical situation. Assume that there are ten counties in a state and two of those counties contain 1000 people each while eight of those counties contain about 100 people combined. Lets assume a President wins the two larger counties totalling 2000 votes while the other candidate won the eight counties totalling 100 votes. Subsequently, under the new system the candidate with the 100 votes could receive a good deal of electoral votes why the candidate with the 2000 votes will not completely win the state. In my opinion that system is totally anti-democratic. There are both Democrats and Republicans in rural and urban counties and they don't all vote straight party ticket. President Obama won the popular vote of the country. The people spoke in the election.
The general and accepted practice in this country, with the exception of two states, is to award a Presidential candidate electoral votes based on the popular vote of each state. This is a very important reason why there is a difference between the executive branch and the legislative branch. In the legislative branch of government voting is broke up into districts so diverse groups of people can be adequately represented in government. However, districts are often gerrymandered in states which means that one party may control more districts than another. Gerrymandered districts may not create the best system for adequate representation in Congress; but, the district system for voting ultimately works because the legislative branch consists of 100s of representatives. The Executive branch consists of 1 person. Imagine a gerrymandered system to vote for the President of the United States. Hypothetically speaking, the Democrats may have a national wave election around the time of the next census. Technically, the Democrats could potentially gerrymander various states so each Congressional District is controlled by Democrats. Subsequently, the Democrats could demand that the President be elected by Congressional Districts which are all Democrat. The Democrats would surely win and the Republicans would be outraged. Anything other than a state by state popular vote for President, is anti-democratic. If 60 percent of the country votes for a Democratic President and the Democrat looses, then the American people are not adequately represented in the Executive branch. Congressional districts controlled by one party are adequate for Congress, not the Presidency.
Finally, I think its important to note that it seems quite odd that these issues are coming up after a big Republican loss. Have we resorted as a country to changing the rules so that the other side can win? I believe strongly that a candidate, who wins the most votes in a state, should win the electoral votes of that state. It makes no sense to elect someone who has less votes than the other candidate. That is not adequate representation and that is not democracy. Electing someone who obtained less votes than the other, is something more like oligarchy. It is the few ruling over the many. Adequate representation in the Executive branch means the majority wining that branch... K
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