We must take the vote BACK!

Have you heard about this?

There is a movement in this country to change the way we Americans pick the President of the United States. Have I got your attention?  A VOTE CALLED THE NPV was IMPLEMENTED BACK IN 2009-I BET YOU HAVE NEVER HEARD OF IT  BECAUSE IT WAS TO IMPORTANT TO MENTION THAT'S WHY... JUST LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE. [NATIONAL POPULAR VOTE]

" Are you aware of the national popular vote laws? Some may refer to it as the people's elective vote. Have you heard of the consensus law? You need to check with your state to see if this law has been enacted. If not, write your congressmen and request that it be done because as a US citizen you would like your vote to be accounted for. Below is a long letter and it is also posted on other sites on the internet to educate and inform why the voting system does not work and why people are cheated out of being heard." ( Ron Paul)

IT IS TIME FOR THE VOTES TO MATTER AND BE ACCOUNTED FOR!

Fair Vote National Popular Vote Brochure (PDF) – Look for this online and pass them out.http://www.fairvote.org/brochures

  

                  

     In the United States’ during current election systems, everyday citizens don’t actually directly choose the President and Vice-President. Instead, during each election season, in each state (and in the District of Columbia), supporters of each ticket running in the election designate a slate of potential presidential “electors,” also known as “candidates for elector.” Being chosen to serve as a candidate for elector is often a symbolic honor bestowed upon loyal, respected, longtime advocates for that ticket’s particular political party.

         These candidates for elector are men and women who promise that, if ultimately directed by their state (or District in the case of D.C), they will represent the state or District in the Electoral College to vote for the particular presidential and vice-presidential candidates to whom they are pledged. The Electoral College consists of all of the electors chosen throughout the country during that election and they meet, in their respective states (and the District), on a particular day in December to cast the actual votes that determine the President and Vice-President.

     Thus, the total current size of the Electoral College is 538 electors, matching the total of the number of members of the U.S. House of Representatives (435) plus the number of U.S. Senators (100) plus 3 electors representing the District of Columbia. After you and your fellow citizens vote, each state or District then decides, based on the vote among its residents, and according to its particular election laws, which combination of electors has been chosen to represent the state in the Electoral College weeks later to actually vote for the candidates to whom they are pledged.

     As of this writing in 2010, with only two exceptions, every state’s (and D.C.’s) laws mandate that its electors be chosen according to a winner-take-all system. In other words, if a candidate receives the most votes in that state or District, then that state or District’s full representation in the Electoral College will consist of electors pledged to that candidate. It is the candidates that receive a majority of votes in the Electoral College – at least 270 out of the total 538 electoral votes - that ultimately become President and Vice-President.

The Problems with the Current Electoral College System :
     Many are critical of this current method of electing the President for a number of reasons, including the following: A candidate can lose the popular vote but still win the presidency within the current system, a candidate can lose the popular vote, but still win the Electoral College. In other words, he or she can become President even though he or she did not win the most votes among the public. In fact, not only can this happen, but it has happened several times.

THIS IS WHY SOME PEOPLE WISH NOT TO VOTE AND I DON'T BLAME THEM, BUT TIMES ARE CHANGING AS ARE LAWS SUCH AS THE NEW 2009 LAW-THE CONSENSUS  OR NPV LAW WHICH IS THE TOTAL OPPOSITE OF AN ELECTORAL SYSTEM OF VOTING WHICH WE REALIZE IS NOT TRUSTED AND OFTEN DIS-HONEST FOR WHAT EVER REASONS.

EXAMPLES:
In 1876, Rutherford B. Hayes won the presidency by one electoral vote, despite having lost the popular vote by over 250,000 votes. Hayes’ opponent, Samuel Tilden, actually received 51% of the popular vote to Hayes’ 48%.

    In 1888, Benjamin Harrison won the presidency by a wide margin in the Electoral College, despite losing the popular vote.

    In 2000, George W. Bush defeated Al Gore in the Electoral College, winning the presidency despite losing the popular vote by over 500,000 votes.

     The reason this can happen is due to the fact that almost all states choose their electors in winner-take-all fashion. This means, for example, that a candidate can receive millions of votes in relatively populous states like Florida, lose them only by very small margins, and still receive no electoral votes from those states. (This is, of course, exactly what happened to Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election in Florida, where, in the official tally, he lost by only a few hundred votes, yet received none of its 25 electoral votes.) He or she can then win many other states by very wide margins, but still not receive enough electoral votes from those states to make up for their narrow losses in certain very populous ones.
 As the New York Times explains in a 2008 editorial:

    “Wyoming’s roughly 500,000 people get three electoral votes. California, which has about 70 times Wyoming’s population, gets only 55 electoral votes.”

Mathematically this means that each Wyoming resident represents a larger fraction of an electoral vote than does each resident of California. In other words, it takes far fewer voters in Wyoming to give the same relative amount of electoral support to a candidate as in California.

     This is ultimately a consequence of basing the electoral power of a state on the combination of its number of U.S. Representatives and U.S. Senators. The U.S. Constitution gives every state, regardless of population, two U.S. Senators. Our founders set up the Senate this way to ensure that, at a time of great concern over the balance of state and federal power, more populous states didn’t completely override the desires of less populous ones in Congress. However, the Electoral College translates this purposeful imbalance in the Congress to a completely different area, the election of the President.

     It incentivizes a nearly exclusive campaign focus on a small set of “swing states”In the current system, presidential candidates know that, strategically, with almost no exceptions, they receive no benefit at all from winning even millions of votes in a given state if they don’t end up with the most votes in that state. Even if they receive great support in that state, and only narrowly lose it to another candidate, in terms of the Electoral College results, they may as well have spent no time there at all. Given these circumstances, wise presidential candidates are almost forced, even before their campaigns begin, to divide states into three categories:

    Safe wins - States that consistently can be taken for granted as supportive of their party

    Predictable losses – States that consistently can be taken for granted as supportive of their opponent’s party

    Swing states – States that are close enough in support of each party to be influenced in one direction or the other through campaigning 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/opinion/24fri1.html?_r=1&th&a...
 As the New York Times explains in a 2008 editorial:

    Swing states – States that are close enough in support of each party to be influenced in one direction or the other through campaigning Wise candidates are then almost forced to focus their campaigns’ time, attention, money and resources nearly exclusively on the voters and interests in the swing states. They have little to no incentive to allocate any resources to states that they can already safely predict they will win or lose. Combine these facts with the reality that most states consistently lean heavily toward one political party or the other – that most states are relatively predictably “red” (Republican-leaning) or “blue” (Democrat-leaning) – and you have a recipe for presidential candidates ignoring the voters and issues of the majority of states and, therefore, the majority of citizens in the country.

     This is why, in every presidential election cycle, a few swing states like Ohio and Florida receive constant attention, interest, advertising and campaign visits, while even large populous states like New York, Texas and California, with many millions of voters, receive hardly any at all. In fact, according to FairVote:

    “More than 98% of campaign spending and advertisements in the 2008 general election were in states representing barely a third of the country's population.”

Also according to FairVote:
    “From September 24 – two days before the first general election debate – through Election Day on November 4, 99.75% of all advertising spending was in just 18 states…. The remaining 32 states and the District of Columbia that received a combined 0.25% of campaign advertising were left as net exporters, sometimes in massive sums, of campaign money.”
This means that many millions of people in non-swing states, even many who are donating to the presidential campaigns, are basically left out of the political campaign process itself. THIS IS NEWS TO US ALL BECAUSE NO ONE TELLS YOU THIS, DO THEY?
HOW MANY OF YOU HAVE SEEN THE MAP ON THE TELEVISION DURING ELECTION TIME ?

     Separating the map into “red” and “blue” states exaggerates and escalates the perception of division between states
As mentioned, we can quite safely predict which party most of the states in the country will favor in any presidential election. Those that consistently favor Republicans are labeled as “red” states and those that consistently favor Democrats are labeled as “blue” states. Most of us, around election time, have seen the familiar red/blue state map (shown here from the 2000 presidential election).

     The problem with this map is that, while it may accurately reflect the electoral results in the current system, it does not accurately reflect the true distribution of voters in the country in all its complexity. In reality, every state is purple – or at least has elements of red and blue scattered throughout. Even in states that one major party usually wins by a healthy margin there is still typically a significant amount of support for the other major party.
THIS NEXT TWO STATEMENTS WILL PISS YOU OFF I IMAGINE:     For example, despite California being considered a very safe state for Democrats, Republican John McCain still won over 5 million votes in that state in the presidential election of 2008. That gave McCain almost 37% of California’s vote - not nearly enough to win, but still a significant amount of support. To call the state purely “blue”, despite being electorally accurate in today’s system, is misleading and fails to represent the fact that more than a third of voters in the state actually were “red”.

 On the other hand, Republicans consistently win the state of Texas by a significant margin. Still, in the 2008 presidential election, Democrat Barack Obama won over 3.5 million votes in that state, giving him over 43% of the vote. Painting the state simply as “red” fails to show that close to half the state supported the “blue” candidate.

TIME FOR CHANGE AND SOLUTIONS TO THIS MADNESS:

     It may seem that Americans are stuck in a dilemma with only two bad options: the undesirable option of sticking with the current problems of the Electoral College system or the likely ineffective option of trying to eliminate it. Luckily, there is a third-hand solution that transcends this false dichotomy. The National Popular Vote (NPV) bill, and the movement behind it, is a clever and pragmatic way to change the presidential election system without requiring a Constitutional amendment.

CONSENSUS LAW-NATIONAL POPULAR VOTE BILL-

DEEP THINKING PEOPLE CLEAR YOUR MINDS - IN A NUTSHELL THIS LAW MEANS THE VOTES MADE FROM THE PEOPLE BY THE PEOPLE EACH AND EVERYONE OF US CAN BE ACCOUNTED FOR.

     What this means is that, if it chooses, through its own laws, any state can decide to allocate its electors according to the winner of the total popular vote in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, rather than just the winner among its own voters. In other words, the third-hand solution is to leave the Electoral College intact, but simply have states opt to choose their electors based on a different criterion than they currently do – namely the outcome of the national popular vote.

   The National Popular Vote bill solves the problem of the electoral voting system by taking the form of an interstate agreement or compact. Each state is encouraged to enact identical legislation and that legislation specifies clearly that, even if passed, it will only actually go into effect when enacted by enough states to reach a certain threshold. That threshold is when the legislation is enacted by a group of states whose total electoral votes equal at least the 270 required for a majority in the Electoral College. At that point, the states within the compact will, amongst them, have enough electoral power to guarantee that the winner of the presidency will be the winner of the national popular vote. No state will be unilaterally giving up its power because the statewide election totals will have become moot for all states. The national popular vote will, in effect, determine the winner.

     This mechanism is an example of what is known as an assurance contract – a contract in which each party to an agreement assures the others that they commit to going forward with a plan, but only if enough of the other parties also commit to make the plan viable. Assurance contracts are themselves a form of third-hand solution, transcending the dichotomy between sticking with a bad system because no party wants to risk unilateral change and having certain parties altruistically take that risk and possibly be unfairly punished for doing so. I also like to call such solutions “contingent commitments.” They are also very much related to the concept of a “trigger law,” a law that is clearly designed, but includes a mechanism by which it only goes into effect if a certain condition, or trigger, is met.

The Benefits of the National Popular Vote BillIf the National Popular Vote bill is passed by states with a total of 270 or more presidential electors, it could address all of the previously mentioned problems with the current application of the American Electoral College, leading to many benefits for the country, including:

 The presidency will always go to the candidate that most Americans voted for, giving him or her a greater mandate upon taking office.

    All votes for President will be effectively made equal, regardless of what state the voter is in.
    Presidential candidates will have an incentive to focus their campaign resources on the voters and issues in all of the states and the District of Columbia, rather than only a few swing states.
    Voters in non-swing states – which make up by far the majority of states in the country – will be further incentivized to vote, possibly increasing voter turnout.

    We will eliminate the risk of purposely or even accidentally favoring particular interest groups that just happen to be more prominent in swing states
    The familiar red state/blue state map will be replaced with a more realistic map in which the country as a whole, and every state within it, is purple (or at least displays a much more integrated distribution of red and blue areas).

       Thus, presidential election campaigns and results will contribute to a more accurate national and regional self-image reflecting the diversity of political opinion that exists throughout the country and within every state.

    Presidential election results will more accurately reflect the fact that as a whole, Americans have always clearly voted in greater numbers for a particular candidate. No longer will the country endure traumatic and divisive close-calls in particular swing states - such as the 2000 Florida debacle - that are unnecessarily and “artificially” manufactured by the Electoral College.

 
     Progress of the NPV MovementAs of this writing, at the end of August, 2010, the National Popular Vote bill has over 900 state legislative sponsors and has been endorsed by well over 1800 state legislators. It has been introduced into the legislatures of all 50 states. It has been passed by 30 total state houses, including passing both the upper and lower chambers in 10 states. Of those 10, it has been enacted into law in 6 states – Hawaii, New Jersey, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington. These states possess 73 combined electoral votes or 27% of the 270 electoral votes needed to trigger the legislation into effect.

To find out if the NPV Bill/Law is happening where you are click here:  https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml

Local Official Look up, Sample Letter and Contact Form – Just enter your zip code, edit the sample pro-NPV letter to put it in your own words, complete the form and hit send to quickly voice your support for NPV to your appropriate state officials.

   Ron Paul has introduced HR 459, the FederalReserve Transparency Act (known as Audit the Fed), to deliveranswers to the American people about what the Fed is doing withour money.My son Senator Rand Paul has introduced S 202, the Senate companionbill. Audit the Fed amends section 714 of Title 31 of the U.S. Code toremove the restrictions on how the Government AccountabilityOffice (GAO) can audit the Federal Reserve.

 With these limitations gone, the Fed’s discount windowoperations, funding facilities, open market operations, andagreements with foreign central banks and governments would all finally be open to congressional oversight. The GAO would be required to audit the Fed and report its findings to Congress. A December 2010 Rasmussen poll revealed 74% of Americans support Audit the Fed.

 Call Congress at 202-224-3121 and urge your representative and senators to support HR 459 and S 202.

 
"There should be no calls for or acts of violence under any circumstances. Remember that "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." (Ron Paul)

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http://HR459.com

http://www.PolitiLeaks.com