Bad writing. Again.

irrelevant, like your legal careers

States THAT are traditionally overlooked. Pale, waltzing lord....Elie - you *must* get a better handle on basic grammar.

The electoral college isn't "broken." It works the way it was designed to work. We live in a republic, not a democracy.

Thanks for the con law exam. I take it that this is open book?

We need a national popular vote:

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

Those dealbreaker dudes are not JDs.

WHAT THE HELL!!!

STOP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rather than scrap the system in favor of the popular vote, I'd just add the popular vote to the electoral college. Instead of 535 EVs, make it 555 EVs, and give 20 EVs to the winner of the popular vote.

This way, turnout matters. Even in states where we already know the outcome, like NY, TX, and CA.

BREAKING NEWS:

US NEWS & WORLD REPORT erred in its #1 ranking of Harvard University. The most influential and sought after institution, which deserves a #1 ranking, is the Electoral College, located in Nowhere, USA. From the College's Dean of Admissions:

The Electoral College is proud to boast the highest rating of selectivity in the nation. Only two applicants are admitted every four years. The College requires no SAT or ACT standardized testing score; however, each applicant may gain admission only after a strong and lengthy nomination process. The College usies a numerical grading scale, 0-525, to assess its matriculants' performance. Only one candidate is eligible for graduation under the following grading scale: the candidate who achieves a rating 270 or higher graduates with honors. Although the graduation rate is 50%, the College boasts a 100% job placement rating, providing its graduate with a tenured position for a term of four years with an option to renew for an additional four years, provided that the graduate reapplies and gains admission anew to the College at that time.

If you would like more information about the College, including application fees and TOEFL reporting codes, please write to us. We thank you for your interest in our institution.

@8 - Actually, for some reason I seem to remember that Carney is a Skadden refugee.

vote to get rid of elie

how would a straight popular vote "disproportionally represent populous coastal states"? one individual = one vote, no matter what state.

8: yeah they are.

I'm squeaky CLEAN and SEVENTEEN!!!

DAMN IT!!!

16: you're sixteenth. D'oh.

I'm squeaky CLEAN but not yet EIGHTEEN!!!

UGGGGGGG!!!!!

18: Well PLAYED you SCREWED me with your COMMENT>

14: It would disproportionately divert the candidates attention to populous cities. You wouldn't campaign in Wasilla, AK because at best you convince 5,000 people to vote for you, and you probably have to go door to door to get each of their individual attention because the high school gymnasium only holds 200 people and there's no bigger venue.

Instead, you go to NYC and hold a rally with 20,000 people all at once at MSG, knowing that those 20,000 people will go tell their 8 million friends and neighbors about you.

So...the gist of the DB post is that no one cares about campaigning in NY because it's a given that the votes will always be for whoever the Dems nominate, be it Obama, Hillary, a spider plant, or a bag of hair. And this means New Yorkers votes "don't count."

What?

So it's not a swing state - big deal. A market for EC votes is supremely stupid on its own merits; that this is yet another dose of waaaahhhh-we're-New-Yorkers-so-genuflect-before-our-awesomeness only serves as bile icing on the stupid cake.

Remember this guy?

www.brianwells.net

@12 - correct. I believe Lat pointed this out before. If not Skadden some firm and therefore a JD.

Grade for this post: F-!

As Mr. Hand would say "What are you, ON DOPE?"

11- TOEFL obviously no longer required in light of most recent graduate

How about there be a mandatory IQ test in order to vote. That would disqualify roughly 97% of the population that are blind sheep followers of the rhetoric from both parties. Maybe then we would have voters who vote on the issues.

HTH.

26 - idiocy no longer bar to commentary as suggested by your posting

so the new direction of ATL is "give them stuff to complain about so we get more page views"?? We should try not commenting on topics like this one and hope winters. Maybe then ATL will go back to talking legal issues.

Things we want:
- Lawyers doing stupid job risking things
- Judges acting like complete ass holes
- A tad of illegal politician action
- Surveys reassuring us we were right about
BigLaw being a sweatshop
- People getting fired
Things we don't want:
- Sex and Law and the City (Hope Winters)
- Con Law debates on things that wont ever
change
- Reiterations of what Deal Breaker just said,
(we know, we read it or will read it when we are
done here)

elie continues to suck. the dealbreaker propal was obviously tongue-in-cheek but Elie decides to subject it to constitutional scrutiny.

Me: "You suck so bad Elie that I want to kill you"
Elie: "Well sir, that's an interesting idea, but you may encounter a problem with the New York Penal Code Section 125."

22 is absolutely correct. I would also add that the big "non-swing" states like NY, CA and TX matter tremendously in terms of weeding out candidates early on. Dems may take NY and CA for granted in the *general* election but if a candidate couldn't easily carry those states, he wouldn't get the nomination in the first place (or even run for that matter). These big states shape the parties, so it would make sense that they're already in the bag later on in the general election.

i think there should be a popular vote that is at the same time straight as it is bi-curious.

One person/One vote is never "disproportional."

The popular vote winner should ALWAYS be the President. Simple as that; anything else is, by definition, a distortion.

Anyone else notice that the baby-daddy did NOT look like he wanted to be getting married?

24, way to be a crazy crackhead!

31, you are a retard. Clinton won both NY and CA, yet Obama got the nomination. Way to be completely ignorant and prove that you haven't read a newspaper since the Mesotoic era.

Love,
NYer

Well, this idea at least has truthiness to it. May as well just come out and admit that the voices of the rich are the only ones that *really* count for anything, instead of this silly charade we're still calling "representative democracy." It's so cute how we kept the name even when we decided to stop doing it.

Bi-Skadden Curious?

The candidate should have to win two out of three: (1) the elecoral vote; (2) the popular vote; and, if those are split, (3) a vote of the full Congress. Or the decision could just be left to the Supreme Court.

Elie, stop going to Al Gore for writing material. Geez, why don't you cry a little more, maybe that way you'll get a dumocrat in office. WAAAAA!!!

40 Oz to Freedom

What is this "electoral college?" In Bratislava,, we do not have.

... or not.

40,

The only crying this election season will be from a bastard child from a teenager being born and a bunch of republicans.

YEAH ABSTINENCE ONLY EDUCATION!! Fuck Yeah! . .. oh wait,

there's no fucking in that. Oooohhh, new campaign spin to win over the Christian Conservatives:

IMMACULATE CONCEPTION IN THE WHITE HOUSE!!!!!!!!

what 29 said.

44 = angry Democrat. Great way to focus on the issue!

-40

I think we should scrap the 1st and 14th amendments while we are at it.

Mooseknuckle Jones hates the Electoral College. Skadden to 88!

My issue is teaching about condoms and abortion and sex ed and all options. You're issue is "God loves an embryo"

For a legal analysis: Separation of church and state motherfucker!

49 here, I'm mentally challenged as well with the "you're" issue. What can I say? I'm not gifted like the rest of ATL commentors.

Will go kill self now.

I want to watch 49 kill themselves. Can you Twitter the whole event please?

Elie, no more posts authored by you, please.

NY is an overlooked state in the election? Maybe if NY hadn't elected satan spawn Hillary to the senate after carpet bagging into your state, it might have some credibility and relevance.

52, AMEN

52 and 53 = rednecks who make 40K in some peice of shit state and are bitter they did not get NY Biglaw.

Go suck on an ear of corn.

54, I live in NY and work in BigLaw. Good try though.

-53

You guys are idiots. We don't need a popular vote. In fact we need the states to stop allowing people to vote for who the electors are in the electoral college. It should be chosen by the state legislatures directly.

That way there will be significant interest in elections for state legislatures (this is how representative democracies work), instead of now where people could care less about ANY election except the presidential election.

Follow the lead of Nebraska and Maine. One electoral vote for each congressional district and 2 electoral votes to the person who wins the state.

who cares about the electoral college or Elie's trying to pump Obama.

Take a look at the video at endofesq.com and laugh your shorts off at what his profession has become.

ELECTORAL TAPE WILL FIX IT

56: AGREED. My amendent would follow the spirit of the constitution and require that state legislatures choose electors. That would make local elections for state office important. Currently as you say, nobody gives a crap about any election other than president. That shouldn't be the case.

22, that happens anyway b/c NY has a lot more electoral votes than Alaska.

the problem w/ the EC is that if you're a voter for the losing candidate in your state, you might as well not have voted. whether a candidate wins by 1% or 80% is irrelevant; he still gets all the EC votes.

We should do away with states altogether. There is no need for 50 sets of state governments with 50 sets of laws. The time has come to end federalism once and for all.

We should do away with states altogether. There is no need for 50 sets of state governments with 50 sets of laws. The time has come to end federalism once and for all.

To all who favor a popular vote:

Remember Florida 2000, and how much grief there was over a few counties worth of electoral votes?

Imagine if popular votes from any city or state could sway a close election. You'd have fraud, or fears of fraud, on a nationwide scale. It would destroy the whole presidential election. We'd be suing and arguing for years with no clear winner.

Split a state's electoral votes proportionally between the two major candidates iff neither wins a majority of the popular vote.

According to Wikipedia(google State Populations): the top 9 states make up just over 50% of the population. If we had a popular vote, it is theoretically possible for 9 states to decide the president for 50 states. We should keep the electoral college to prevent the less populous states from being overruled by the large states.

Example: Vermont, 49th biggest population - represents 0.2% of the population, but has 0.55% of the electoral college votes (3 / 538)

what if we changed the voting policy from 1 vote per person, to vote for as many people as you'd like(you can only vote for 1 candidate 1 time)?

Perhaps a third party candidate could emerge. I don't know if this is a good idea or not, but I like the idea of more (viable) choices.

14:

The reason a straight popular vote would shift power back to more populous states is that the split in EC delegates is based on the number of congressional representatives each state has (senators + house reps). Each state has the same number of senators (giving less populated states a clear advantage) and the total number of house representatives is limited to 435 with a minimum of 1 per state (creating further distortion).

Wyoming, for instance, has 3 EC votes (based upon having 2 senators and 1 house representative) with a total population of around 500,000. Thus, each EC vote from Wyoming represents about 166,666 people. California, on the other hand, has 55 EC votes with a population of around 30,000,000. Thus, each EC vote from California represents about 545,454 people. So, this tells you that one EC vote from Wyoming is equivalent to one EC vote from California while representing 1/3 as many people. A striking example of this inequality would be a hypothetical situation where 50% + 1 of constituents from Wyoming vote for one candidate while 100% of the constituents from California vote for the other candidate. Each candidate would have the same number of EC votes (one each) while the one from Wyoming represents about 80,000 people and the one from California represents about 7 times as many people.

With a straight popular vote, voters in populous coastal states like California would be equivalent to voters in a sparsely populated interior states like Wyoming instead of having their voting power arbitrarily diluted.

Change to a straight-up popular vote, but only allow ballots to be cast during the airing of "Heroes." That way, we weed out the monumentally stupid portion of the voting public and everyone wins.

Concerns about big vs little states are misguided, compared to the greater disenfranchisement that occurs to voters all across the nation: Republicans in the blue states and Democrats in red states. Where the lines are drawn on the map should not influence who wins an election- though obviously it does.

The electoral college is just a rejection of One Person, One Vote.. I'm a big fan of One Person, One Vote myself. I understand why people in Wyoming are reluctant to give up their 8 votes each, because people are always reluctant to give up unwarranted power, but the simple fact is they have more than their share. Candidates SHOULDN'T neglect giant cities in favor of ittybitty ones with three people and two cows.

66 - People don't really vote "by state" though. A state that consistently goes 60/40 is among the very reddest or bluest. More are closer than that. Its not like all the big states vote one way and all the small states the other way.

State borders are kinda arbitrary accidents anyway.

Where people happen to receive their mail should not change the weight of their vote in any NATIONAL election, period. The small states (like Alaska) already have 2 senators each to make sure they get more than their share of pork anyway.

BTW Democrats and Republicans are both about equally likely ot get screwed by the electoral college in the long term. 2000 was a long time ago.

68 - Agreed, except it should be during Americal Idol.

64 - The popular vote wasn't very close at all in 2000.

I think the odds of a really close vote in one STATE that could flip the election (as in Fla) are a lot higher than the odds of anyone winning the national popular vote by a close margin.

Remember, in any given election there might be several reasonably close states that would change the outcome if they flipped.

SEVENTY - THREES ALL!

Any CBers remember that one?

Here's what we should do:

Get rid of the current "winner-takes-all" system and encourage each state to split its electoral vote according to the relative proportion of popular votes received by each candidate in that state.

So in a state with 10 electoral votes, if Candidate One gets 60% of the vote and Candidate Two gets 40% of the vote, give Candidate One 6 electoral votes and Candidate Two 4 electoral votes, instead of just awarding all 10 votes to Candidate One.

This preserves the additional electoral weight granted to smaller states (although many people disagree with this element in the first place), but prevents the effective disenfranchisement of the minority vote in each state, which would otherwise receive no electoral representation at all. It would also encourage would-be presidential candidates to campaign more broadly across a variety of states rather than focusing their energies on (and giving undue influence to) a small set of swing states.

74 -

Problem with that is that some states don't have very many EC votes. If you have 30 votes, ok this might work. But if you have only 3 votes, or 6 votes? If becomes either a split every time, or a new "winner takes all" system in that the guy with 51% gets say 3 votes and the guy with 49% gets 2 votes. We havent really gained anything.

I mean 60/40 is a landslide, and will often be hard to apportion fairly. What about all those 52/48 states?

this site has officially and unofficially jumped the shark.

66, 67: so the upshot is that a person's vote in VT counts more than a person's vote in a more populous state. a Vermonter's vote is worth twice what a New Yorker's vote is. this s the problem with focusing on states instead of citizens.

77,

One point that's easy to miss is that this is not necessarily a bad thing. Our governmental system explicitly has multiple ways that political elites can overrule popular will. Witness lifetime judicial appointments, the Senate, its long terms, and the fact that the electors are not required to vote in a particular way. The power to elect the President properly belongs to the state governments, and not the people. The power to elect the state governments lies with the people alone. This check on popular will is one of many in our system.

One indirect but arguably good side effect of this is that effective participation in the Federal government system requires participation in the state government system as well. This incentivizes political participation but also ensures that people who don't care enough about politics to vote and become involved in local elections have a limited political impact. There are obvious downsides to this but encouraging political participation seems to be a central aim of the system as a whole and I think it is a good one.

74 - Agree with proportinate granting of EC votes, like the Democrat's primary system. Been wondering why it isn't done this way ever since Civics in HS. A couple states do this already (Maine and ???) I noticed in the 2004 election.

I live in a state that is perenially Blue, but historically vote about half Red and half Blue. Get really angry when I see that my vote for a Red president (strong emphasis - NOT THE CURRENT ONE) ends up not counting for squat because my state went Blue again.

Each state gets only one electoral vote. Popular vote in each state determines that state's vote. The country IS a Union of States. Each state faces different issues, none of which should be ignored by the candidates.