Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Madcap Electoral College Hi-Jinks: Remember the Colorado

Them wascawwy Wepubwicans! Gonna take Penn proportional in the Electoral College! And the "fair and balanced" folks at NY Mag had this to say:

Pennsylvania, like every other state, is free to dole out its electoral votes however it wants. Republicans control both chambers of the state legislature as well as the governorship, so if the GOP wants to switch over to a congressional-district apportionment system, all the Democrats can really do is whine. As Nick Baumann points out in Mother Jones today, the same thing could be repeated in other blue states across the country.

Democrats, meanwhile, don't have the ability to retaliate by splitting up the electoral votes of traditionally red states.


Democrats, Democrats, whatchagoando, whatchagoando when Cantor comes for you? Poor defenseless little things!

Except that our brave reporters didn't mention that the Dems have tried this same crap several times, most recently in Colorado. That paragon of virtue Kos was all excited, back then, in 2004. It was GREAT news, a brilliant strategy.

How come it's cheating if the Repubs do it? I agree it's a bad idea, but this seems like pretty selective reporting.

5 comments:

mwbugg said...

Part of Kos discussion you left out:

"For one, every state should allocate EVs in this manner."

Chris said...

Why is it a bad idea?

Expected Optimism said...

Ditto on what Chris said. I can see how it's politically unfortunate for some, but it strikes me as a step toward greater democracy.

Anonymous said...

I think it's a swell idea. The best idea would be for states to pass this with the thing to come into effect when other states did, to bring all along. The big problem I have with direct popular vote is the Mexico problem: recounts and vote stealing in the most corrupt parts of the country. But if you do it by CD, then theft of huge numbers of Democrat votes in St Louis has an effect only on the EV of St Louis. But this would give you a pretty good proxy for national attractiveness, force candidates to pay attention even to those states likely to favor their opposition. Reeps would have to campaign in Fresno and Chico, Demmies would have to go to Birmingham. Dave Schutz

Mr. Overwater said...

Sadly, Mungowitz descends to demagoguery and FAILS.

Munger wails, "Waaaaahhhhhhh their reporters aren't being fair and thorough,"* and cites ... an opinion blog. Were I to demagogue like Mungowitz, I could say, "Mungowitz thinks that the only fair opinion is one that agrees with his! Booooo hoooooo."

Then Mungowitz, who LOVES to call people bedwetters, whines "How come it's cheating if the Repubs do it?"

Here's the first sentence of the article, "Pennsylvania Republicans are working on a plan that's as mischievous as it is completely legitimate: apportioning its electoral votes by congressional district instead of the current winner-take-all system." [my bold]

This blog has some very useful ideas and can be quite illuminating. I don't see the point of demagoguery and insults. To the extent that Mungowitz believes he knows how to make the world a better place and is trying to make that happens, the lies, distortions, and ad homineming undermine those goals.


* Not an actual quotation. Satire.