An Anonymous Reply Part 1
I just received an E-mail that had a long reply to my column regarding Amendment 36. If passed it would scrap the winner take all system for our Electoral College votes (We have 9 Electoral votes) and replace it with a system that divides up the vote based on the percentage of the popular vote.
Before we get into the reply I just want to say that all of the daily Colorado newspapers have come against this amendment and even the alternative weekly Colorado Springs Independent also calls for a No vote on 36. Bill Owens and Ken Salazar don't like it either. The point is that a lot of people are ganging up on 36. Democrat and Republican, liberal and conservative alike. Here is the piece that I wrote regarding 36 since this is key.
http://www.colostate-pueblo.edu/today/live_viewStory.asp?documentID=525
Now let's dig in.
The electoral college has become one of the most hated institutions
among all informed voters. Amendment 36 is the issue you will vote on this
November that will rid us (at least in our own state) of this terrible
system and will make sure that your vote actually counts.
You can see right away that this person wants to get rid of the electoral college system and eventualy replace with a direct popular vote. However it should be noted that 36 would only change how the Electoral College votes are cast in Colorado.
In his online article on Amendment 36, CSU-Pueblo Today staff writer Don
McCullen argues that Amendment 36 is simply a short term solution to get Jon
Kerry in office. This is coming from a man who will desperately believe and
perpetuate any lie necessary to keep his beloved George W. Bush, the man who
is destroying your country, in the White House.
Stay tuned to this Blog and you will see me come aganist Bush if he is advocating and signing into law that infrignes on the America individual, along with his or her life, liberty, and freedom. I don't drink anybody's Kool-Aid. Neither the Republicans or the Democrats. Yes I do want George W. Bush to get a second term. I don't like what John Kerry is proposing regarding his vision on the War or Terror. He is indeed planing more changes and I am NOT just talking about Kerry's global test. Did you know that he wants to revamp our "Terror Alert" system. I heard this from a radio report that the enlightned ones at CBS News did. I wonder what he would come up with. Anyway I am getting off track here so lets get back to the subject at hand.
The point of Amendment 36 is not who gets into office, it is that your
vote should be reflected in your state's electoral vote. Currently, if 49%
of our state voted for a certain candidate, it would mean absolutely
nothing. That's right. Absolutely nothing. You and the 2.2 million other
people who voted for your candidate in Colorado mean nothing. This ludicrous
violation of voter rights must be stopped this November.
Its all about that Popular Vote. That is what is driving the supporters of 36. They can't stand the fact that the majorty of the popular is going to to drive the electoral votes in a certain way. Its all about fairness is it. Also the writer talked about 'voter rights.' I am going to save that one for later.
As a state, we have 9 electoral votes. In the last election, we as
Coloradans were split just slightly in favor of George W. Bush. This means
that just under half of us did not want George W. Bush to be in the White
House. This was not reflected in our electoral vote. Instead, our nine
electoral college representatives all voted for George W. Bush, essentially
saying that they did not care what half of us thought. Our vote did not
count.
In any contest their has to be a winner and a loser. The rules are setup now that whoever gets the majorty of the votes takes it all regardless of the party he or she belongs to. So that you the Democrats did get the popular vote a few times in Colorado. Lyndon B. Johnson won the popular vote in 1964 and Bill Clinton won the popular vote in 1992. Anything is possible. In Baseball, Basketball, and Hockey, if your team is in the playoffs, the way to advance is by winning a certain amount of games. If your team gets the wins before your rivals do, you move on and the loser is gone. What if you changed that to the amount of points that you have accumlated during a playoff rival rather than amount of games that you played or made it a combnation of both? If that was done the Yankees would be in the world series by now because of the number of runs they scored rather than the games they have won. I will let Ari Armstrong explain that in his piece regarding 36.
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/opinion/article/0,1299,DRMN_38_3274881,00.html
There are only about 200 people in the electoral college, and in states
across our nation they routinely cast votes contrary to their citizens. This
unfair practice of denying the citizens of our nation a say in who runs
their country must be stopped.
What this person really wants is a pure democracy. Our founders did not want a PURE DEMOCRACY!!! If anything a pure democracy eventually would lead to abusive power and the violation of "Individual Rights." Key word here INDIVIDUAL. That means the rights of one person and not of a "Group." I bring up "Group Rights" because liberals love to talk about Group Rights. As John Samples of the Cato Institute says.
"James Madison said that writing a Constitution is hard work because you have to set up a government that is strong enough to control its citizens and yet limited in scope and powers. Madison and the other Founders feared unchecked power of any kind. They believed elections were the primary control on government. But they also knew that pure democracy the unchecked will of the people was as much a danger to liberty as any autocrat."
http://www.cato.org/dailys/12-21-00.html
It is a system of checks and balances. It does not give favorable treatment to majorty and protects the minorties including those of hispanic and the black. You might bring up the issue of slavary but I will save that for another post. Lets just focus on the issue at hand.
By the way, it also should be noted that plebiscites (someone of the lower class in Rome or the common people in any country) have been used as tools to usher in dictatorships.
Read this piece by Ronald D. Rotunda also from Cato to find out more
http://www.cato.org/dailys/11-13-00.html
Next Time I will began to go into his or hers counterpoints to my piece.
posted by Don McCullen at 3:30 PM
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