stephanie
02-04-2007, 04:18 PM
Sunday, February 04, 2007
JOHN LAIRD Columbian editorial page editor
As a columnist, I'm often asked by aspiring young wordsmiths if they should follow their dreams and become writers. Typically I will invoke the sage advice of Matt Foley, the motivational speaker played by Chris Farley on "Saturday Night Live" in 1992. I like to lean forward and tell the kids: "You're not! Gonna amount! To Jack Squat!"
Yes, mine is a hapless livelihood, using mere words to try to make the world a better place. Better to pursue law or medicine, I tell the students.
One of my fruitless crusades has been advocating the abolition of the Electoral College. Most folks have their minds made up on this system of electing a U.S. president, but my crusade persists, and I have to ask: Look back on the past six years. Now are you ready to abolish the Electoral College?
Fans of this cockamamie system don't like being asked these two easy questions:
When free people elect their leader, could there ever be anything wrong with the leading vote-getter winning? The answer, of course, is no.
Among free people, should one vote ever count more than another? The answer, again, is no. Americans decided long ago that skin color, gender, economic status and other personal traits must never matter in voting. We can deprive some people (felons) of their right to vote, but once a person is admitted to the polling place, the one-man, one-vote concept must reign supreme. Yet, as I have written before, in the 2000 presidential election Wyoming residents had one electoral vote per 164,592 residents while California had one electoral vote per 627,253 residents. That is blatantly un-American.
Electoral College defenders boast that the system helps discourage presidential candidates from campaigning only in heavily populated states. In reality, though, the Electoral College forces candidates to flock to "swing" states in pursuit of electoral votes. If your state is not a hotly contested battleground state -- large or small -- you're destined to be ignored by the candidates.
Consider the six-year box score
It could be said that because of the 2000 results of the Electoral College:
More than 3,000 members of the U.S. military have died fighting a war that has no military solution.
The Republican Party's proud and rigid fiscal spine has been extracted by a Republican president who presides over such runaway spending that a record surplus became a record deficit.
Americans' telephones have been tapped and our mail has been opened by our government without the warrants that our Constitution requires.
Americans have a president who has issued 750-plus "signing statements" (more than all other presidents combined), each statement essentially declaring that the president can ignore the attached legislation anytime he wants.
Finally, it could be said that the half-million-plus Americans who gave Al Gore the highest number of votes in the 2000 presidential election were wise in their choice, but alas, irrelevant.
Yes, friends, it's been a long six years, and I have to ask again: Now are you reading to abolish the Electoral College?
In about 45 states, there are bills pending that would allow states to circumvent the Electoral College. Through an interstate compact, states would agree to direct their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, thus avoiding the need for a constitutional amendment to end the Electoral College. In our state, the bills are SB 5628 (Sen. Craig Pridemore, D-Vancouver, deserves praise as one of four sponsors) and HB 1750. If you believe an election should be won by the leading vote-getter, and if you believe every vote must count equally, then you should support these bills. Remember, no other meaningful national election in America is subject to reversal by the Electoral College, only our most critical one.
Of course, there's no way of knowing if Al Gore would've been any better than what the Electoral College forced upon us in 2000. He might have been worse. He could have become the worst president in U.S. history. We just don't know. But this much we do know about any such President Gore of 2000: He would've been duly elected.
That should be the great civic hope of every American. Sadly, though, until we crusaders raise the volume of our rage, well, Matt Foley was probably right.
http://columbian.com/opinion/news/02042007news100545.cfm?comment=1
JOHN LAIRD Columbian editorial page editor
As a columnist, I'm often asked by aspiring young wordsmiths if they should follow their dreams and become writers. Typically I will invoke the sage advice of Matt Foley, the motivational speaker played by Chris Farley on "Saturday Night Live" in 1992. I like to lean forward and tell the kids: "You're not! Gonna amount! To Jack Squat!"
Yes, mine is a hapless livelihood, using mere words to try to make the world a better place. Better to pursue law or medicine, I tell the students.
One of my fruitless crusades has been advocating the abolition of the Electoral College. Most folks have their minds made up on this system of electing a U.S. president, but my crusade persists, and I have to ask: Look back on the past six years. Now are you ready to abolish the Electoral College?
Fans of this cockamamie system don't like being asked these two easy questions:
When free people elect their leader, could there ever be anything wrong with the leading vote-getter winning? The answer, of course, is no.
Among free people, should one vote ever count more than another? The answer, again, is no. Americans decided long ago that skin color, gender, economic status and other personal traits must never matter in voting. We can deprive some people (felons) of their right to vote, but once a person is admitted to the polling place, the one-man, one-vote concept must reign supreme. Yet, as I have written before, in the 2000 presidential election Wyoming residents had one electoral vote per 164,592 residents while California had one electoral vote per 627,253 residents. That is blatantly un-American.
Electoral College defenders boast that the system helps discourage presidential candidates from campaigning only in heavily populated states. In reality, though, the Electoral College forces candidates to flock to "swing" states in pursuit of electoral votes. If your state is not a hotly contested battleground state -- large or small -- you're destined to be ignored by the candidates.
Consider the six-year box score
It could be said that because of the 2000 results of the Electoral College:
More than 3,000 members of the U.S. military have died fighting a war that has no military solution.
The Republican Party's proud and rigid fiscal spine has been extracted by a Republican president who presides over such runaway spending that a record surplus became a record deficit.
Americans' telephones have been tapped and our mail has been opened by our government without the warrants that our Constitution requires.
Americans have a president who has issued 750-plus "signing statements" (more than all other presidents combined), each statement essentially declaring that the president can ignore the attached legislation anytime he wants.
Finally, it could be said that the half-million-plus Americans who gave Al Gore the highest number of votes in the 2000 presidential election were wise in their choice, but alas, irrelevant.
Yes, friends, it's been a long six years, and I have to ask again: Now are you reading to abolish the Electoral College?
In about 45 states, there are bills pending that would allow states to circumvent the Electoral College. Through an interstate compact, states would agree to direct their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, thus avoiding the need for a constitutional amendment to end the Electoral College. In our state, the bills are SB 5628 (Sen. Craig Pridemore, D-Vancouver, deserves praise as one of four sponsors) and HB 1750. If you believe an election should be won by the leading vote-getter, and if you believe every vote must count equally, then you should support these bills. Remember, no other meaningful national election in America is subject to reversal by the Electoral College, only our most critical one.
Of course, there's no way of knowing if Al Gore would've been any better than what the Electoral College forced upon us in 2000. He might have been worse. He could have become the worst president in U.S. history. We just don't know. But this much we do know about any such President Gore of 2000: He would've been duly elected.
That should be the great civic hope of every American. Sadly, though, until we crusaders raise the volume of our rage, well, Matt Foley was probably right.
http://columbian.com/opinion/news/02042007news100545.cfm?comment=1