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Originally Posted by Mazer
I havn't seen any recent polls on the subject (a poll from Sept. 22 reported a small majority in favor), but the opposing radio ad's are funny. It's being shot down by a group called 'Coloradans Against a Really Stupid Idea,' not kidding you.
I'm against it myself. If the presidential elections havn't already degraded down to popularity contests then this would only make things worse. There's nothing that divides Americans more than election results. The last election turnd into a pissing contest over a matter of 25 electoral votes, can you imagine what it would do to us all if a candidate won by just one vote? It also feeds into my fear that Americans only really care about national politics, that they cast their votes for President, Senator, and Representative and ignore the local issues. I'm heartened by the recent news of a huge voter turnout this year but are these really informed voters who vote for local and state affairs as well, or are they just trying to give their presidental candidate a majority and nothing else?
In pracitce the amendment would immediatly take four votes from Bush and give them to Kerry, which is probably why the Apollo Group proposed the amendment here.
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i think amendment 36 would only be to Colorado's disadvantage as long as Colorado is the only state doing it...if other states got on board, it would make sense for everyone...
(for those not familiar with amendent 36, it's a proposition on the Colorado ballot this year to apportion electoral votes to each candidate based on the percentage of votes that candidate gets - e.g. Bush gets 60% percent of Colorado votes, then he gets 60% of Colorado's electoral votes....as opposed to the current winner-take-all method used in every state. if it gets passed, it goes into effect this year, meaning instead of Bush having Colorado's 9 electoral votes in the bag, he would presumably only get 5 [based on the usual Colorado voter trends] and Kerry gets the other 4. needless to say, the Dems love this idea and the GOP hates it....)
it's not a bad concept because it brings the whole system back to a one man, one vote concept, and if it was adopted acrross the country, then the electoral vote would in fact reflect the popular vote.
there are some other very interesting arguments for it, namely that it would increase the viability of third party candidates. a pretty good overview of 36 can be found here:
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,...422386,00.html