On May 6, the Massachusetts Joint Committee on Election Laws will take testimony on HB 710, which would establish the National Popular Vote Plan.
On May 6, the Massachusetts Joint Committee on Election Laws will take testimony on HB 710, which would establish the National Popular Vote Plan.
73% OF MASSACHUSETTS VOTERS SUPPORT A NATIONAL POPULAR VOTE FOR PRESIDENT IN JUNE 2008 POLL
A survey of 800 Massachusetts voters conducted on June 3, 2008 showed 73% overall support for a national popular vote for President.
By party, support was 82% among Democrats, 66% among independents, and 54% among Republicans.
By age, support was 74% among 18-29 year olds, 69% among 30-45 year olds, 72% among 46-65 year olds, and 78% for those older than 65.
By gender, support was 80% among women and 63% among men.
By race, support was 75% among whites (representing 88% of respondents), 59% among African-Americans (representing 4% of respondents), 66% among Hispanics (representing 1% of respondents), and 57% among Others (representing 7% of respondents).
see http://www.NationalPopularVote.com
Hello, mvymvy. Are you pinch-hitting for Susan for a while, posting the poll numbers as she had been doing?
jalp (of GPMI,
but not here writing for GPMI)
Great news, I feel pretty sure that Massachusetts will pass the NPV into law.
JALP –
Instead of wasting space by needling the person who posts them please tell us what is wrong with the polling numbers.
The numbers cited were developed by Public Policy Polling of Raleigh, North Carolina.
Not exactly amateurs.
But perhaps you yourself have you developed more credible polling numbers in MA on the NPV? If so, please publish them for everyone’s benefit.
Baronscarpia (Of PUCCINI, but not writing for PUCCINI)
NPV scheme – NOT yet approved by the gerrymander Congress (and getting past the Supremes)
NPV scheme – NOT yet getting past the EQUAL protection clause in 14th Amdt, Sec. 2 (and getting past the Supremes).
Since when can the voters OUTSIDE of a supposedly sovereign State determine election results INSIDE a State ???
I.E. — for MORONS — the NPV scheme is yet one more attempt to subvert the Constitution by statutory machinations — the alleged interstate compact scheme.
Proper remedy-constitutional amdt
Uniform definition of Elector
NONPARTISAN nomination and election of ALL elected executive officers and all judges using Approval Voting.
Gee — how many election related amdts after the first 10 ???
Hmmm. 12, 14-2, 15, 17, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27 [1 of original 12 proposed].
Looks like 10 of 16 [excluding 27] = 62.5 percent
Add P.R. in ALL legislative bodies — to END the minority rule gerrymanders in the U.S.A./State regimes.
Demo Rep –
Congress has no need to approve or disapprove the NPV interstate compact until it goes into effect.
14th amendment – interesting citation. That amendment refers to the “number of such male citizens” and yet it hasn’t been struck down by the USSC. If NPV comes into effect, and if Congress approves it, then and only then will we need to worry about whether the USSC will strike it down.
You repeatedly state a concern about whether states outside a state can determine election results inside a state. Again – how is the election of a president a state election. And also – again – what is unconstitutional about states deciding how to allocate their electors – a state right which is EXPLICITLY granted by the second article of the US Constitution.
Re: #4 — As I’ve said before, I don’t object to posting of poll numbers. I myself don’t have my youthful innocent automatic faith in polls any more, but the numbers that come out of polls are themselves relatively objective facts.
Nor was I objecting to “mvymvy”. I was just curious to know if he/she/it was associated with “Susan”, who had been posting similar poll-related information relevant to the particular states involved in particular NPV threads — but who had also been posting opinions which did not seem to change to fit the particular facts of the thread, or to address other comments in that thread.
In response to those, I have occasionally pointed out that how much weight you give to someone else’s opinions (rather than facts) can depend on what you know or think (or think you know) about that other person — and invited “Susan” to share her background.
If you go out for a walk in the rain — and you meet the biggest fool in the world, [insert your own chosen name here] — and he/she says it’s raining . . . will you immediately take down your umbrella and get wet because you’d never believe anything he/she says? Probably not.
But if, instead, BFITW says, “This is nasty weather” . . . or “This is good weather for eating soup” . . . or something else that’s not quite as objective as whether or not it’s raining . . . how would you decide whether to agree or disagree? (Presuming that you wanted to talk about the subject, of course.) You’d probably make want to make some evaluation of BFITW’s background; how you view that would affect how you viewed her/his opinion. No?
But you can relax. I’m not seeing a lot of meetings of minds on this issue here, or new arguments either. So I’ll probably be less interested from now on in who “Susan” is, or “mvymvy”.
(Or you, maybe even — though, if you know what’s good for you, you won’t get Tosca mad at you. . . :] . . .)
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jalp (of — see above)
If the person with the umbrella cites poll numbers that I can verify, it doesn’t matter to me whether he/she is a genius or a dope. And whatever his opinions on any matter may be…whatever his political, educational, cultural background may be, whether he/she likes chocolate, whether or not he/she has a personal website opining on oh, say, the proper use of Latin…are all perfectly irrelevant to assessing the validity and significance of the polling numbers he/she cites.
All mvymvy did above was cite facts. While the “fact” of the existence of certain polling results is indeed separate and apart from the accuracy, or “facts” of the polling numbers themselves, the fact of their existence is nevertheless indisputable. Wet or dry, fool or scholar, in league with Susan or not, mvymvy did nothing but cite the polling results, and your response is to question motives.
Just thinking…in his last breathing moments, do you think Scarpia worried much about what garden clubs Tosca belonged to?
Thank you for reinforcing my point, dear Baron — when it’s objective facts that are being presented, who’s presenting them doesn’t affect their value. Only when it’s opinions.
That’s why, I repeat — for the last time on this thread, at the very least — that I have no objections to either “mvymvy” or the facts he/she/it cited. Any more than I objected to similar facts when cited by “Susan”. I was curious to know if there is an association, and I am mildly curious still — but it was not my intent to question motives.
As for the “original” Baron . . . maybe he should have thought about Tosca’s character — personality, background, whatever you want to call it — earlier, sir.
But maybe it’s time we got back to substantive issues — such as: how exactly were you expecting the Supreme Court to *strike down* the 14th Amendment to the Constitution? Which later Amendment[s] would you argue justified that?
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jalp (of, not for, as I say once more)
#4, The numbers were not “developed” by PPP. They were simply a contractor hired by an advocacy group to call phone numbers at random and then asked a single question with a skewed wording with responses by punching a button. The automated robot system then demanded respondents reveal personal information.
Re: #10 — Wording can be skewed, deliberately or not, but perhaps it is not always so. Do you have the wording this time? And if so, what’s the source and can you share the wording so we can look at it?
Re: #6 — At least in some senses, the Presidential election is a conglomerate of 50 separate state elections. (Well, 51 if you count DC as a state — or at least as a separate entity with a share in the conglomerate.) If it weren’t, there wouldn’t be all this mess :] of different voting laws, different lists of tickets on the ballot (and different laws controlling who is and isn’t in each list), and so on.
You’re right that states — technically, state legislatures — have the right/power to decide how to allocate their own votes in the Electoral College. That power — from Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 — is to “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”. So that same clause also puts the consensus-building Senatorial “bonus” into the Electoral College.
But it is possible for things to get tangled under NPV.
Let’s say the top plurality popular vote-getters in an upcoming Presidential election are close in totals. (The closer they are, the more likely it is that even a few votes for other candidates will mean the leader *doesn’t* have an actual majority of the popular vote, by the way.) Let’s say, for example, that the margin is 10,000 votes. That would mean a recount in any one state — or a combination of states — shifting the total at least 10,001 the other way would swing the plurality, and thus the NPV coalition’s electoral votes.
But which states will have recounts? If you live in an NPV coalition-member state, it may make a big difference to you whether some other state — *in the coalition or not* — allows or requires a recount in this situation. You are likely to want to control what that other state does. Do you have the right? If you do, what do you say to your fellow voter in the other state?
And note that the recounts you’d want in other states would not now be limited to cases where the recount would decide the plurality or majority winner in those states. Someone might want to see if the home-state favorite won with 80% or 90% of the vote. Which is one way that “majority fraud” can creep into the equation — because, if a state is strongly one-party in its vote, it may well mean the state’s own officers are with that same party . . . and that way (if you’ll pardon the phrase from a guy who was born and had most of his raising in the Chicago area) Daley-style machine politics lies.
I sympathize with the desire for a winner to be decided by a national popular vote. But it’s not as simple or as unalloyedly good an idea as it seems. (And I haven’t even brought up Professor Natapoff’s argument — and his claimed mathematical proof — that it’s almost always a lot easier for a single voter or a small group of voters to swing one state, and have that state tip the balance in the EC, than to be Kevin Costner and break a whole nationwide tie. Or Professor Natapoff’s analogy with the World Series — or the Stanley Cup, or the NBA Playoffs, depending on your preference in sports. If anyone here doesn’t know about Professor Natapoff’s work, and can’t find it on line, please feel free to let me know and I’ll post a link or something.)
JALP –
You disparage the NPV plan because the outcome of an election might be complicated by the lack of national standards by which recounts will/might be administered, and then proceed to cite examples of electoral fraud and recount inconsistencies, all of which exist today under the EC – as if that is evidence of a unique deficiency of NPV.
If I propose to rebuild a road running through a swamp because the asphalt is broken, trucks break down and drivers are eaten by alligators as they repair their vehicles, is the plan flawed because it doesn’t provide for eradicating alligators as well?
Well, no, and neither is the NPV.
Why did New Mexico not have a Florida-style recount in 2000, even though the popular vote margin was as slender as Florida and a swing there would have negated a swing to blue in FL?
Well, why not indeed? Shall we blame deficiencies of the NPV plan?
And how, lacking an NPV system and the flaws you see in it…how did a Republican governor and a Republican secretary of state and a Republican Party manage to steal Ohio’s EC votes in 2004?
How indeed? And if I had been a Gore supporter in 2004 living in some state other than Ohio, what “right” did I have then under the EC system to see that a review was conducted into possible electoral fraud in Ohio, or for that matter that a recount be commenced?
None. Nadda. Zilch.
I’ll state my position again. I believe the current system of electing a president in the US is rife with weaknesses, illogic, inequity, and stinking, steaming fraud. As a fellow GP member, I would have thought we would agree on so much of that but we’re mired down instead in this triviality.
Agreed, then…the NPV plan solves few of those problems. But that is not valid or sufficient reason, in my view, to oppose it. The NPV system does correct two of the most serious flaws in our current system – that being disproportionate representation of individual voters (male AND female…you missed my point about the 14th by a long margin, but that’s OK)in the EC count, and the systematic and massive disenfranchisement (effectively) of “other party” voters in states which are predictably blue OR red.
I also happen to believe that the NPV will lessen the opportunity to perpetrate electoral fraud in presidential elections because as less granularity is applied to allocating EC votes, there is less opportunity to identify the “swing” states or CD’s (under another plan mentioned herein from time to time) where fraud will produce desired results.
Bush had a plurality of some five million votes, but under the EC it was evidently necessary to commit extensive electoral fraud in ONE (and ONLY one) state to assure his EC victory.
You really like that system better than NPV? Well, good luck to you.
Re: #13 . . . (*sigh*) . . .
New Mexico and Florida have different election laws. So what might call for a recount in one state might not in the other. (Not to mention that the definition of a recount — what would actually be done — may be different as well.) Under the current system, these differences make less of a difference, because the states’ representation in the Electoral College is also entirely separate.
But with NPV, that would not necessarily be the case. (To say the least. And I’ve already said more than the least above.)
I describe myself as a Green, but not writing for the Green Party, most often when — as here — I am not writing from a position adopted by the Green Party. I know I am in the minority on this issue, at least among Greens here in Michigan. But I keep trying now and again to make my points, there as here.
I tend to lean toward believing Professor Natapoff’s theory of voting power — which would mean individual voters at the grassroots have more power under the current EC (to swing their state and have that state swing the overall election, rather than to be the nationwide tie-breaker). And I have not been able to bring myself to believe that we’ll get *LESS* fraud by *RAISING THE STAKES* of fraud, and making it *EASIER TO DO* in places where you have control and affect places where you don’t.
(And, possibly more specifically to the point of Green-ness, I see the “Senatorial votes” in the EC as a force toward consensus — that decision-making process we tend to favor, the one that helps us get along while making decisions we may not all be wild about.)
One way to sum this up: I see the can of worms that NPV would open as much larger than you see it — and I don’t see those worms as being the high-quality bait you do, either. I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree. (Respect for diversity. . . .)
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jalp
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P.S.
If I misunderstood your point about the 14th Amendment, it was perhaps from reading “struck down” as the past tense of “strike down”. State and federal laws can be struck down as violating the US Constitution. The US Constitution can’t be.
If your point was in fact to do with the mention of “male persons” (or “inhabitants”) in Section 2 of the 14th Amendment, then you might want to read ahead to the 19th Amendment as well. Or, if your point was the possibility (raised in that section of that amendment) of changing states’ proportion of representation in the US House and the EC, then you might want to consider that that possibility would again involve only a state’s internal electoral affairs (if you’ll pardon the phrase).
Or if you were comparing that possibility to the “Senatorial votes” as a structural variation from the proportionality of popular to electoral votes, then you might consider the point I made above. Namely, that those “Senatorial votes” are a force for national consensus. For encouraging people not to take their bats, balls, ballots, voting machines, and polling places and go home anytime they don’t like the result of a close Presidential election. For encouraging us to live with diversity rather than splitting along party or state lines.
(Or maybe you wouldn’t. It doesn’t seem to me as if anybody’s convincing anybody else here. . . .)
#11 (this was the question asked in Massachusetts, in the poll cited by “mvymvy”
Q1 How do you think we should elect the President: should it be the candidate who gets the most votes in all 50 states, or the current electoral college system? If you think it should be the candidate who gets the most votes in all 50 states, press 1. If you think it should be the current electoral college system, press 2.
Surprisingly, there were no respondents with “No opinion”.