Category: National Popular Vote

Will Gov Patrick assign MA votes to states with touch screens and voter suppression?

Perhaps Governor Patrick will consider the arguments of Democrats like Connecticut Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz who opposes the Agreement and Minneosota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie who objects for the difficulty in counting the popular vote. We are not in principle against a national popular vote, but as a prerequisite we would require sufficient uniform national voting franchise and integrity laws, enforceable and enforced.

Recently both houses of the Massachusetts Legislature passed the National Popular Vote Agreement/Compact.  StateLine.org story: Anti-Electoral College pact could expand <read>  The StateLine article and their earlier one attempted to present arguments from both sides, however, missing are the most important arguments against the NPV, especially via the Compact as we have covered in our Case Against “The National Popular Vote“:

  • The franchise is not uniform from state to state
  • We cannot trust reported results
  • Reported popular vote totals are a fiction
  • The Agreement is likely to result in Presidential Elections being decided by the Supreme Court

Perhaps Governor Patrick will consider the arguments of Democrats like Connecticut Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz who opposes the Agreement and Minneosota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie who objects for the difficulty in counting the popular vote.  We are not in principle against a national popular vote, but as a prerequisite we would require sufficient uniform national voting franchise and integrity laws, enforceable and enforced.

The franchise is not uniform from state to state

On Voting Integrity, Johnny We Hardly Agree With Ye

For the second time in as many weeks, I find myself disagreeing on an election integrity issue with John Nichols of The Nation.

For the second time in as many weeks, I find myself disagreeing on an election integrity issue with John Nichols of The Nation.

We appreciate and admire Mr. Nichols.  When it comes to media reform, he a combination of William Lloyd Garrison and Rachael Carson for our age. In that sphere we generally agree with him, we attended the Media Reform Conference sponsored by his group, the Free Press in 2007, and are half way through his latest book, The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution that Will Begin the World Again.   If we were not so involved in election integrity we would spend more time on media reform.  Like election integrity it is a necessary ingredient to democracy; perhaps more fundamental; with a reformed media we would have a much easier time arousing the public and causing election integrity.

This week in The Nation: Going Postal in the Digital Era by John Nichols<read> we find much to agree with. He describes the decline of the U.S. Postal Service, the causes of the decline, the Service’s to value print journalism and democracy, and his proposed solutions.  Yet, when unsupported conclusions are quoted as fact, we cannot overlook them:

These “efficiencies” threaten more than just the Postal Service. They pose direct and indirect threats to democracy. Oregon Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley noted as much when they asked Congress and the USPS to avoid taking steps that would damage their state’s mail-in balloting. “While we admire and encourage examination of avenues to modernize the postal service, the implementation of this proposal would pose a direct threat to democracy in Oregon,” wrote the senators, whose concerns have been echoed by election officials from around the country, which increasingly relies on the Postal Service to carry regular and absentee ballots.

The PRC’s Goldway [,Ruth, Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) chair] has been at the forefront of arguments for taking state-based “Vote by Mail” experiments national. “Voters would not need to take time off from work, find transportation, find the right polling station, get babysitters or rush through reading complicated ballot initiatives,” she explains. “The country’s 35,000 post offices could provide information, distribute and collect voting materials and issue inexpensive residency and address identifications for voting purposes. Perhaps most important, given the concerns about voting machine security, mail ballots cannot be hacked. Tampering or interfering with mail is a federal crime, and the United States Postal Service has its own law enforcement arm, which works closely with a variety of enforcement authorities including the F.B.I. Trained election clerks can take the time to check signatures without delaying or discouraging voters. And the advantages of a paper trail outshine the glitter of black box electronic gadgetry.”

We disagree and offer this recent example from Dallas of vote “hacking”  and our post on an opinion  by the Board President of Coloradans for Voting Integrity,  Keep Colorado’s voting integrity which includes our other references.

Perhaps Mr. Nichols is just not talking to a wide enough range people  Just Monday last week we read another note in The Nation on Instant Runoff Voting (IRV):

I.R.V. BUZZ: Instant runoff voting, the smart reform that makes majority rule possible in multi-candidate elections, is finally capturing the imagination of the opinion leaders, who just might jump-start this movement at the national level. Über-influential New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman–not a frequent recipient of praise from this magazine–started things off with a March 24 column that noted how some Republicans had voted against healthcare reform because they feared retribution in party primaries, and how Democrats are similarly fearful on other issues. “When your political system punishes lawmakers for…doing the right things, it is broken,” he wrote.

What to do? “Break the oligopoly of our two-party system” with redistricting reforms that take the power to draw Congressional district lines out of the hands of partisans, argued Friedman, and “get states to adopt ‘alternative voting'” that allows voters to rank an independent candidate “your No. 1 choice, and the Democrat or Republican No. 2. Therefore, if the independent does not win, your vote is immediately transferred to your second choice, say, the Democrat. Therefore, you have no fear that in voting for an independent you might help elect your real nightmare–the Republican.”

The New Yorker’s  Hendrik Hertzberg, a veteran reform advocate, welcomed Friedman aboard “for what we electoral-reform monomaniacs call…I.R.V.,” and an elated FairVote executive director Rob Richie chimed in with a note that “Hurt Locker won the best picture Oscar with this system, and voters handle it well in major elections in Minneapolis and San Francisco and in nations like Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.” Now if we could just get Friedman excited about reforming our broken “free trade” policies. JOHN NICHOLS

As luck would have it, we were scheduled to attend a Connecticut ACLU event that evening, featuring John Nichols as on one of two panelists on Media Reform.  Once again, we agreed with everything he said on the panel.  After the panel I mentioned my concerns with IRV.  Mr. Nichols was very open to considering alternative views.  He had received one email on the subject and asked if it was mine. It was not and he asked that I follow-up with an email.  I did, with a summarized version of my recent testimony to the Connecticut legislature along with supporting links.

As we have said before, IRV is complex to compute, complex for voters, and does not provide the intended benefits.  It  is simply not true that IRV  “makes majority rule possible in multi-candidate elections”.  Sometimes it does and sometimes it does not, just like winner take all elections – but at an increased complexity, cost, and risk, especially in multi-district, statewide, and national elections.

These “efficiencies” threaten more than just the Postal Service. They pose direct and indirect threats to democracy. Oregon Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley noted as much when they asked Congress and the USPS to avoid taking steps that would damage their state’s mail-in balloting. “While we admire and encourage examination of avenues to modernize the postal service, the implementation of this proposal would pose a direct threat to democracy in Oregon,” wrote the senators, whose concerns have been echoed by election officials from around the country, which increasingly relies on the Postal Service to carry regular and absentee ballots.

The PRC’s Goldway has been at the forefront of arguments for taking state-based “Vote by Mail” experiments national. “Voters would not need to take time off from work, find transportation, find the right polling station, get babysitters or rush through reading complicated ballot initiatives,” she explains. “The country’s 35,000 post offices could provide information, distribute and collect voting materials and issue inexpensive residency and address identifications for voting purposes. Perhaps most important, given the concerns about voting machine security, mail ballots cannot be hacked. Tampering or interfering with mail is a federal crime, and the United States Postal Service has its own law enforcement arm, which works closely with a variety of enforcement authorities including the F.B.I. Trained election clerks can take the time to check signatures without delaying or discouraging voters. And the advantages of a paper trail outshine the glitter of black box electronic gadgetry.”

National Popular Vote Squeaks Through Connecticut House

Initially defeated by 1 vote, legislators change their votes.

Most votes on this bill are along party lines with Democrats generally for the bill and Republicans generally against the bill. However, there are prominent Democrates who oppose the Agreement including Connecticut Secretary of the State, Susan Bysiewicz and Minnesota Secretary of State, Mark Ritchie.

The National Popular Vote Agreement passed the Connecticut House after initially being defeated by one vote. See how your representative voted <here>  As reported by the Hartford Courant <read>

The vote was a nail-biter to the end, and it passed only after four veteran Democrats switched their votes from negative to affirmative: Deputy House Speakers Robert Godfrey of Danbury and Emil “Buddy” Altobello of Meriden, and Reps. Peggy Sayers of Windsor Locks and Peter Tercyak of New Britain.

As frequent CTVotersCount readers are aware we strongly oppose the National Popular Vote Agreement.  For more information read our Case Against The National Popular Vote or a recent talk by Conn College Professor Dorothy B. James.

Most votes on this bill are along party lines with Democrats generally for the bill and Republicans generally against the bill.  However, there are prominent Democrates who oppose the Agreement including Connecticut Secretary of the State, Susan Bysiewicz and Minnesota Secretary of State, Mark Ritchie.

**********************
Update: Similar articles at CTNewsJunkie.com, TheDay, and ConnPolitics.tv .  Here is a conglomerate of my comments on those sites:

There are other reasons to be against the National Popular Vote agreement: 1)The national vote number is not accurate, it is the result of error prone counts in various states which usually would not matter except in close swing states. 2)There is no national recount law to correct those results. 3)Close elections can be expected to all end at the Supreme Court as voters could sue their Secretary of the State for using unreliable results.

Mr. Ritchie’s opposition is based, in part, on the fact that there is no national recount law that would provide a number that would have any hope of being credible.

Since state electors would be awarded by Secretaries of the State based on questionable results in other states, I can see close elections all ending up in the Supreme Court based on voters suing their Secretary and others states’ Secretaries based on providing or relying on questionable results.

Also, in passing, I mention that the following argument is questionable:

“In 2008, candidates concentrated over two-thirds of their money and campaign visits in just six states and 98 percent of their money in just 15 states, a press release touting the bills passage said.”

This is a media centric concern. In recent elections almost all of the media money goes to out of state media moguls. Does the average voter in Connecticut need more phone calls and candidate ads to be better informed? No. Do candidates have to visit Connecticut for the election to be covered responsibly by the Connecticut media? I doubt it.

Several comments on those sites are from “mvymvy” who shows up on many blogs, with comments as useful and redundant as his or her name, but does not actually address the issues that we bring up.  I suspect because the facts and logic are with our arguments.

Of Levers, WPE, and The National Popular Vote

How certain can we be that George Bush won the popular vote in 2004?
How certain can we be that Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000?
How many votes would be added or subtracted if the reported popular vote was close and a process like Minnesota’s were used for a nationwide recount of the paper ballots?

We have made several posts lately about the relative merits of touch screens (DREs), vs. optical scanners vs. lever machines.  We have also warned of the risks in going to the National Popular Vote given the current state by state variations in voting integrity.

We ask you to contemplate:

  • How certain can we be that George Bush won the popular vote in 2004?
  • How certain can we be that Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000?
  • How might the totals change if every error or fraud in every state could contribute to the popular vote and it would decide the President?
  • How many votes would be added or subtracted if all the absentee ballots and provisional ballots were counted in every state and the results for every district and precinct reviewed to make sure each state’s totals were accumulated correctly?
  • How many votes would be added or subtracted if the reported popular vote was close and a process like Minnesota’s were used for a nationwide recount of the paper ballots?
    (answers below)

Within Precinct Error (WPM) is a measure of the difference between the exit polls and the actual result.  We have heard a lot about the discrepancies between the exit polls in 2004 and the election results that claim that Kerry was consistently higher in the polls than the results and that it points to fraud <e.g.>.  Countered by strong arguments from statisticians that there are other explinations. <e.g.>

A story today reminds us that we cannot trust the fictional national popular vote number. <read>

The 12% NY WPE cut Kerry’s vote margin (and increased Bush’s) by about 900,000. Kerry also won late paper ballot votes (absentees, provisionals, etc.) by the same 64%.  Just a coincidence, Lever bots will surely say. But Past is Prologue. Obama won 71% of NY late votes and just 63% of the recorded vote. Gore won 66% of late votes and 60% officially. Mechanical Levers had the highest average WPE (11%) of all voting machines. Paper ballots had 2%, optical scanners and unverifiable touch-screens 7%. At least there is a paper trail with optical scanners,

New York is just one state:  No paper – No means of proving/refuting – No confidence

Our answers to questions above:

  • How certain can we be that George Bush won the popular vote in 2004?
    Not certain enough to feel confident.
  • How certain can we be that Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000?
    Given the errors in 2000 accounting in FL and fraud found in other elections its quite likely that the magnitude of error exceeded the margin nationwide.
  • How might the totals change if every error or fraud in every state could contribute to the popular vote and it would decide the President?
    The incentive for fraud would apply to every district, precinct, and state, not just a few close states.  There would be more for advocates to monitor.
  • How many votes would be added or subtracted if all the absentee ballots and provisional ballots were counted in every state and the results for every district and precinctreviewed to make sure each state’s totals were accumulated correctly?
    Lots.
  • How many votes would be added or subtracted if the reported popular vote was close and a process like Minnesota’s were used for a nationwide recount of the paper ballots?
    None.  This is a trick question.  Each state only recounts its on votes based on a close margin in its own totals.  Even in a very close national popular vote, none or very few states would have a recount.  Also many states, like New York, do not have  paper ballots to count.

VoiceOfTheVoters Radio: Electoral College Debate

Last night VoiceOfTheVoters.org held a debate, Electoral College v. National Popular Vote. Unfortunately, most of the debate is the usual partisan arguments. It is an example of Democratic support of the National Popular Vote for the wrong reasons and Republican opposition for equally wrong reasons. The exception is Part 3.

Last night VoiceOfTheVoters.org held a debate, Electoral College v. National Popular Vote.

February 11, 2009: Electoral College v. National Popular Vote (NPV) debated by Tara Ross, attorney and author of Enlightened Democracy: The Case for the Electoral College, and Jamie Raskin, MD state senator and professor of law at American U., with comments by Dan Ashby, Election Defense Alliance, and Rob Richie, FairVote. Audio:  Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

Unfortunately, most of the debate is the usual partisan arguments.  It is an example of Democratic support of the National Popular Vote for the wrong reasons and Republican opposition for equally wrong reasons.

We do highly recommend listening to Part 3 and the excellent articulation of the risks of the national popular vote given our current state by state election systems, by Don Ashby of the Election Defense Alliance.

CTVotersCount.org opposes the National Popular Vote at this time because of the clear risks given our current variety of unequal, unreliable voting systems from state to state <read> <read> Also note the comments by anonomous bloggers on our second post.  Just like the debaters on the  VoiceOfTheVoters, those in favor of the National Popular Vote never actually provide a rational rebuttal to our concerns – there is none.

Imagine A National Recount. What Could Possibly Be Worse?

I’d love to discuss the Electoral College and the importance of that institution, when you imagine a National Recount.” – Mark Ritchie, Secretary of State, Minnesota

What could possibly by worse?

As we have said before, we understand the appeal of the popular election of the President.  However, CTVotersCount is conditionally opposed to the popular election of the President, in any form, unless and until there are uniform election laws, enforceable, and enforced nationwide. <The Case Against>

Yesterday, the Secretary of the State of Minnesota, Mark Ritchie touched on the same subject in a speech to the National Association of Secretaries of the State (NASS) , winter conference, February 7, 2009 in Washington, D. C.:

“I’d love to discuss the Electoral College and the importance of that institution, when you imagine a national recount.”  -Mark Ritchie

What could possibly be worse?

A close Presidential election under a national popular vote, without a National recount.

SOS Ritchie reinforces our objection to a national popular vote without uniform laws.  Many states have a recount on close vote, but that is based on state totals not national totals.  Where it would be done well, it works under the electoral college to verify that the states votes for President are awarded based on the intentions of all the voters.  However, without other changes in the law a close national total does not imply a close vote in any states and would be unlikely to be close in any but a few states.  A close popular vote to be trusted would require a national recount with uniform standards – high standards such as those demonstrated in Minnesota.

Be Careful What You Ask For

Article in Akron Beacon Journal expresses concerns with a statewide recount. What about a nationwide recount? What would the National Popular Vote cause?

We have nothing against the well intentioned voters and legislators supporting the National Popular Vote Agreement. We encourage them to recognize and consider the impact of unintended consequences.

Article in Akron Beacon Journal expresses concerns with a statewide recount. What about a nationwide recount? <read>

Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy did not know she had defeated Republican Steve Stivers in a central Ohio congressional race until Dec. 5, more than a month after the 2008 general election.

The mix-up was the result of a contest too close to call when the polls closed, uncounted and disputed provisional and absentee ballots, tag-teaming lawyers and a litany of litigation.

For Ohio at large, that race exposed the continuing weaknesses in the state’s elections system.

Luckily for this state and the nation, the presidential race between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain was not close.

Imagine the chaos that would have ensued if Ohio were the last state standing in the presidential race because of uncounted provisional and absentee ballots. It’s not a stretch to think we would have been — and unless problems are addressed, could well be — the next Florida from 2000.

We have two points to make relative to this article.

First, we disagree with the thrust of the article that there is something wrong with counting carefully after a close election.   We are not familiar with the Ohio details, but waiting to Dec 2nd to get it right is well worth it.  Since we have absentee ballots, provisional ballots, military and overseas ballots they should be counted, especially when they may change the result.  These voters demonstrate a higher commitment to democracy, often working harder to vote than the average voter.

We  support of the careful process in Minnesota in the recent Coleman/Frankin statewide recount.  We have a national obsession, stoked by the media and apparent winners, with knowing the election results almost immediately.  We jump to the conclusion that the winner of the first approximate count on election night is actually the winner, even though there are many votes not yet counted and frequent errors in the reporting and accumulating of results.

If we want every vote to count and count accurately, then we need to take the time to get in right every time.  That includes counting very carefully when the results are close.

Second, imagine national popular election of the President.  Would we have a nationwide recount as careful as the Minnesota recount?  I doubt as we can rely on every state to do as good a job.  Some states without paper trails could not under any circumstances.  Could the country wait for a good job to be accomplished in all 50 states, with the media and the questionable initial winner pushing to complete the job?  Would there be endless suits?  Voters, parties and candidates going to court to challenge accuracy in many states.  With the National Popular Vote Agreement, could each state’s voters go to court against their state challenging the award of their electoral votes based on questionable counts from other states?  Could they go to court against those states for providing questionable numbers?

Worse.  Right now many states have recounts on close votes.  If there were a close presidential vote, only the states with close votes would actually do a recount – perhaps none.  But since every vote, every error  and every fraud could change the result, a close vote should require a national recount.  Even then, every state has its own way/standards for recounts.

Faced with 1) the facts of questionable counts, 2) the media and questionable winners sturring up worries, complaining of delays while filing suits, and 3) all the law suits – what would happen?  Would every reasonably close presidential election be decided by the Supreme Court?

The myth of every vote being equal, the risks of error and fraud, and the potential for legal chaos is why we are opposed to the popular election of the President, in any form, unless and until there are uniform election laws, enforceable, and enforced nationwide.

We have nothing against the well intentioned voters and legislators supporting the National Popular Vote Agreement.  We encourage them to recognize and consider the impact of unintended consequences.

The Case Against “The National Popular Vote”

The National Popular Vote Agreement will likely be proposed again, in 2009, in the Connecticut Legislature. Recently the Secretary of the State expressed her support for a constitutional amendment for the popular election of the President.  Update 05/13:  <squeaks by the CT House> We understand the appeal of the popular election of the President. However, … Continue reading “The Case Against “The National Popular Vote””

The National Popular Vote Agreement will likely be proposed again, in 2009, in the Connecticut Legislature. Recently the Secretary of the State expressed her support for a constitutional amendment for the popular election of the President.  Update 05/13:  <squeaks by the CT House>

We understand the appeal of the popular election of the President. However, CTVotersCount is conditionally opposed to the popular election of the President, in any form, unless and until there are uniform election laws, enforceable, and enforced nationwide.

We have two basic reasons for opposing the popular vote, at this time, in any form:

  • The franchise is not uniform from state to state: One man one vote and one woman one vote is a fiction. Different states enfranchise different groups of citizens directly by different requirements to register to vote and indirectly by making voting more or less convenient for different groups. Clearly, uniform enfranchisement is a prerequisite to a fair popular vote.
  • We cannot trust reported results. Reported popular vote totals are a fiction: There have been many instances of vote counting errors and fraud in several states. Even in Connecticut, in the November 2008 election, without exhaustive research, several errors have been uncovered in the vote totals reported, and presumably certified, on the Secretary of the State’s web site. None of these errors were significant even though the numbers may have amounted to several thousand votes for individual candidates. However, in a close Presidential election every aspect of every state’s counting process could change the result. A prerequisite for a real national popular vote is uniform, sufficient, effective, enforceable, and enforced national voting integrity standards.

The above concerns apply to the popular vote in any form. There is a third reason for opposing the National Popular Vote Agreement:

  • The Agreement is likely to result in Presidential Elections being decided by the Supreme Court: Some constitutional lawyers believe that the Agreement is unconstitutional – even if it is constitutional, it will end up in court. The Agreement requires our Secretary of the State to certify our electoral votes based on the questionable results of other states – we could sue our Secretary in state and federal court – we could sue the Secretaries of other states in state and federal court – citizens of other states could sue Connecticut. The only remaining option would be for the Supreme Court to decide.

Here is an updated version on an op-ed we wrote two years ago, when the Agreement was proposed in Connecticut.

The Case Against “The Agreement Among The States
to Elect The President by National Popular Vote”

The Titanic sank not just because it hit an iceberg. It sank because too many of its compartments were flooded. If the integrity of a hull is breeched, if the damage can be sufficiently contained to a few compartments, a ship will not sink. The Electoral College performs the same function as ship compartments for our democracy. If the integrity of an election is breeched, then if the damage can be sufficiently contained to a few states, the democratic process will prevail.

This year “The Agreement Among The States to Elect The President by National Popular Vote” has been proposed in the vast majority of states. Replacing the Electoral College sounds appealing. It was intended to protect the smaller states from domination by the larger states, while protecting wealthy landowners from uninformed, uneducated people. Today, the Electoral College protects us from our faulty and fragmented voting system.

Implementing a national popular vote would put at risk the integrity of the entire election process. If the votes of all the states were accumulated, errors, voter suppression, disenfranchisement, or fraud in any and every state count toward the popular vote. This would increase the potential impact of errors and the incentives for suppression, disenfranchisement, and fraud. Defying logic proponents of the Agreement simply claim the opposite effect. Its chief proponent, Senator Birch Bayh, claims benefits of fraud would be limited because “Under a direct popular vote system, one fraudulent vote wins one vote in the return. In the electoral college system, one fraudulent vote could mean 45 electoral votes”. In reality under the popular vote, one vote could take all 538 electoral votes.

Many researchers including the Carter/Baker Commission, Common Cause, The Secretary of State of California, and the Brennan Center for Justice have documented serious problems with our election systems. Reform bills have been introduced in Congress. These reforms include uniform national standards for poll worker training, enforcement, voter registration, paper ballots, provisional ballots, and ending conflicts of interest in election administration. Voter suppression and fraud have been documented in press reports, books, and the Conyers Report by Representative John Conyers, Jr. and The House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff.

The ideal of a precise popular vote count is far from the reality of the current system of rushed tallying of the vote to produce a winner on election night, followed by pressures to justify the initial count to avoid a time consuming, frequently embarrassing series of recounts. The 2000 Supreme Court decision, Gore v. Bush, stated “The recount process, in its features here described, is inconsistent with the minimum procedures necessary to protect the fundamental right of each voter in the special instance of a statewide recount under the authority of a single state judicial officer”. In 2006, in Sarasota, Florida 18,000 votes were lost forever and never counted in heavily Democratic districts, resulting in the contested election of a Republican congresswoman by less than 400 votes. Recently, in Ohio two election officials were convicted of rigging a partial recount. In Connecticut in 2006, in the 2nd CD re-canvass, the margin changed from 167 to 91. In 2008 in Connecticut there were several reporting errors discovered in the originally reported results posted on the Secretary of the State’s web site. Review of thousands of actual votes in Ohio has demonstrated that votes were deliberately changed in several counties in 2004 using a variety of methods. In Alabama, votes were deliberately changed to defeat the sitting Governor, Don Siegleman.

Direct election of the President would magnify errors and distort voter eligibility differences among the states, while offering an open invitation to voter suppression and fraud that will lead directly to voter disenfranchisement and cynicism. We can also expect an unending series of court challenges of vote counts and the Agreement, in almost every state, in every presidential election, leading to a tradition of the Supreme Court deciding the President.

Electing the President by popular vote sounds truly democratic and fair. Yet, until we have uniform standards for voting, effective independent enforcement, and can suppress our obsession for immediate results, the national popular vote is a certain a disaster for our democracy, like an oil tanker without compartments heading toward an iceberg.

We do not take this stand lightly. The National Popular Vote Agreement has been endorsed by several legislators in Connecticut, The Hartford Courant, and some national good government groups. <National Popular Vote web>

*****
Update: Secretary of the State, Bysiewicz: For the Popular Vote. Against the Compact. Says it will increase inner city vote. <read> We don’t agree with all her logic: In Connecticut few inner city voters go to the polls even when there are hotly contested Mayoral or Senate primaries and elections.

Update: Minnesota Secretary of State, Mark Ritchie also opposes the National Popular Vote <read>

*****
Update: Cross posted on MyLeftNutmeg. Comments there are worth reading: http://www.myleftnutmeg.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=10856 (on MyLeftNutmeg, I am BlastFromGlast)

Update: Article questioning the purported failure of the Electral College in the 1800’s <read>

Update: Washington Post, Dec 18, 2000: Public Backs Uniform U.S. Voting Rules; Poll Finds Wide Support For Guidelines on Ballots, Closing Times, Recounts.

Most voters agree it’s a mess, and 61 percent said they want the federal government to clean it up. Barely a third said they wanted to allow local and state governments to continue to set election law…

Nearly nine in 10 want a federal rule that requires all jurisdictions in the country to use one kind of voting machine…

About six in 10 Americans say they want to amend the U.S. Constitution to select the president by direct popular vote and do away with the electoral college...\

Q: Do you think voting rules in presidential elections should continue to be set individually by states and counties, or should the federal government establish voting rules for all states and counties?

The federal government should establish voting rules 61%

Of course we would be the last to say that HAVA was a good example of meeting the voters’ requests for uniformity.  But we can conclude that the public does want uniform Federal rules for Presidential elections as much as it would like the popular vote – pretty close to what we would like to see, sufficient, uniform, enforceable, and enforced eleciton laws nationwide as a prerequisite to considering a Constitutional Amendment.