2012 Election: Should Winner Take All?

The 2012 presidential campaign season has started.  Did you know that the Illinois General Assembly changed the election law in 2008 to alter whether your vote for President will count?

A new non-partisan initiative called BarringtonVotes is being launched this month, with the first meeting at the Barrington Area Library on Tuesday, Sept 20 at 6:30pm.  This will start a process to encourage local voters to share useful information with each other.  We need to empower, inform, and respect individual voters.  Instead, too many politicians seem to just want to manipulate them for their own perceived partisan advantage, power, or career ambitions.  Every voter matters, in every election.  We are the leaders who must pick our public servants wisely, rather than become pawns who can be easily manipulated by others.

Here's an interesting article about a Republican initiative in Pennsylvania to change the method by which electoral college votes are allocated.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/14/us-usa-campaign-pennsylva...

In short, the idea is to allocate two electors to the winner of the state as a whole (like a Senator race), and the remaining electors according to who won each Congressional district.  The result is that it would no longer be "winner takes all".  Instead, the elector votes would be split more proportionately.

Other states have also been considering changes to the process by which electors are chosen, including other processes by which they would be split to mirror the popular vote percentages in the state, or the "National Popular Vote" rather than the vote totals within each state.

For example, did you know that the Illinois General Assemby changed the law in April 2008 so that Illinois became one of the first states in the country to adopt the "National Popular Vote" compact?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact

Are you confident that your legislators in Springfield were looking out for your interests in 2008 when they made this decision to assign Illinois electors according to the national popular vote percentages, rather than whoever Illinois voters choose?

If Illinois were to follow the same model as the Pennsylvania proposal, then a Republican candidate for President could reliably win in Illinois, where a majority of the Congressional seats are now held by Republicans.  This may change over time, of course, but the 2010 election results and the subsequent gerrymandering of Congressional districts to favor Democrats in preparation for the 2012 election show how this process is open to manipulation.  Legislatures can largely do as they please to redefine how state electors are chosen, and thus manipulate the value of your vote.

What do you think?  Were you even aware that Illinois legislators had already made your vote for President potentially irrelevant, because only the national popular vote totals will matter if this succeeds?  Does that bother you?  Do you think more Illinois voters should know about this?

The initiative doesn't yet have enough states supporting the compact, but it is halfway to the total necessary to impose a national popular vote outcome on the electoral college process.  Earlier this summer, California joined the initiative after Gov. Jerry Brown supported it.  The former governor had opposed the measure.

This is reminiscent of third-world authoritarian regimes in which the winner of an election seizes the opportunity to rewrite the election rules to assure future victories.  This "one vote, one time" pattern is one by which elected leaders consolidate their power and then reward their supporters and punish opponents through crony capitalism, bureaucratic intimidation, abuse of power, and corruption.

In effect, they become "popularly" elected rulers rather than representatives or public servants, and the "popular" election process is cleverly rigged to assure their continued rule.  Both right-wing and left-wing populist politicians have used such processes, whether to impose socialism or dictatorships.  The common feature is that such political rulers arrogantly rig election outcomes for their own benefit.

The "National Popular Vote" or "Fair Vote" idea was promoted as a way to avoid the rare sort of close election outcome (as in Bush-Gore) in which there is a dispute about the potential difference between the national popular vote and the electoral college vote.

Other than in 2000, that last happened in 1888.  Why is changing the way our votes are counted such a burning issue for our elected officials?  Is this really for our benefit, or are they basically trying to manipulate election outcomes by changing whose votes count most?

In practice, that alters the importance of low population states so that elections would essentially be decided by the outcome in high population states, just as state results can differ sharply between high population cities (such as Chicago) and the rest of the state so that the cities can dominate the results for everyone.  That would make it easier for national campaigns to concentrate their investments in high density markets, such as to focus their media spending and largely ignore low population areas.

In some respects, this is similar to the gerrymandering issue in which politicians get to pick their voters, rather than vice versa, according to how they draw the districts after each Census.  In effect, both parties are trying to gain an advantage by changing how votes are added up, thereby marginalizing the value of each vote as though they were in a better position to determine what is best for everyone in the state.

Similarly, the state central committee of the Illinois Republican Party has been playing games recently with the process by which candidates receive delegates to the national nominating convention.  This seems to be designed to provide more power to the party leadership to make deals for the benefit of whoever they favor, and give less power to the individual voters in the primary election process.

Rather than make such changes behind of closed doors or out of the public spotlight, party leaders should step forward and publicly defend any proposed changes which impact how our votes count.  Very few Illinois voters even realize that the General Assembly already agreed to change the electoral college process here, or that the Republican Party leadership in Illinois has been considering changes to the process of electing delegates for the 2012 convention.

Were you unaware of this issue?  Take a look at the following articles as background.

Heritage Foundation

http://www.heritage.org/events/2011/10/national-popular-vote

Cato Institute

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9708

RedState blog

http://www.redstate.com/cdavis_lv/2011/06/02/a-republic-if-you-can-...

http://www.redstate.com/morton_c_blackwell/2011/06/24/national-popu...

http://www.redstate.com/fightinwords/2011/06/24/why-are-conservativ...

National Review Online

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/271926/california-join-nationa...

The Weekly Standard

http://www.weeklystandard.com/keyword/National-Popular-Vote

Here's an interesting but older piece of testimony from the Cato Institute to the state legislature in Pennsylvania back in 2007.  In short, the legislatures have been trying to figure out how to tamper with our election process ever since the disputed 2000 election.

http://www.cato.org/testimony/ct-js-10182007.html

Do you really trust your legislators to do this in a way which better respects your interests as a voter, or will they change the rules to benefit their own partisan interests in power?   Note the focus on the question of how to alter the outcome of elections without actually consulting or persuading voters to support such changes.   Instead, they may just change the rules for us, as the Illinois General Assembly already did in 2007 and 2008 while few voters even noticed.  The result is that the outcome may be changed to favor one party or the other while most voters don't even realize what has happened.

Is that any way to run a representative republic?

If you wonder about the potential bias of the "National Popular Vote" initiative, take a closer look at the website of those who have advocated it, and the pattern of which states have already supported it.

http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/

http://www.fairvote.org/national-popular-vote

http://www.progressivestates.org/policy/issue/141?parent=67

It has also been heavily supported by George Soros, if that tells you anything.  Although progressives have promoted this idea, there are also Republicans who have debated whether this change will be more advantageous from a partisan political perspective, rather than whether it is really the best way to represent the will of American voters.

When politicians get to pick their voters, rather than vice versa, your liberty and prosperity may be put in jeopardy.  The end result can be an elite ruling class of politicians and bureaucrats with the unchecked power and resources to do largely as they please through government, rather than to be limited and truly accountable to voters as public servants.