gdp's Comments

SaveOurStates.com : Poll: Americans Want to Scrap World Series

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 04:53:04 +0000

You're simply wrong about the reasons for the Electoral College. Really, who told you those things? Can you cite sources? Please, don't simply believe what some high school teacher rattled off one day ... look into it yourself.

The Heritage Foundry : The National Popular Vote Scheme Isn’t So Popular

Thu, 1 Dec 2011 02:29:51 +0000

Thanks to Heritage for exposing NPV and helping to educate the public about the benefits of our current system. No political system will ever be perfect, but the current Electoral College works much better than the proposed NPV interstate compact, which is either a recipe for eventual disaster or, more likely, a way to move toward more centralized control of election administration by the federal government.

SaveOurStates.com : The Electoral College Versus the World?

Fri, 5 Aug 2011 03:30:03 +0000

It is simply not true that parliament is more democratic, as the amount of money spent campaigning has nothing to do with how democratic a process is. Blame a combination of big government (as power increases, it becomes worth more for people to influence the outcome) and that darned First Amendment.

SaveOurStates.com : What is "National Popular Vote"?

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 21:59:36 +0000

So you don\\\'t mind if the winner has a plurality drawn heavily from one region of the country? You place no value on political stability or moderation? Maybe you\\\'re just a big fan of the French Revolution, that turned out well, didn\\\'t it? The Electoral College allows the will of the people, filtered through the states using the exact same political calculus that is the basis for Congress, to decide who is President of the United States. By recognizing and using the states, the current Electoral College system helps to keep our politics more national and inclusive than it would be under a raw popular vote system.

SaveOurStates.com : Who is John Koza?

Thu, 3 Feb 2011 00:49:53 +0000

You should do more research, Greg. You obviously don't know Koza the way I do--but it's all online, he's talked about the different things I mention in various web interviews and such. And I hold no grudge against him save that he's wrong--on this and on his support for far, far Left political policies in general.

SaveOurStates.com : The "Inter-government" Threat to Federalism

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 21:31:45 +0000

Should all be fixed. Sorry for the errors and thanks for the catches.

SaveOurStates.com : NPV Moves in N.Y, Mass.

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 00:07:21 +0000

Again, talk to someone who has put together a serious campaign strategy in a single-member district. Candidates in single-member districts, which is what NPV would turn the entire nation into for the purpose of electing the President and Vice President, often pay consultants a great deal of money to figure out whose votes to pursue and who to ignore. That is, even under NPV, candidates will focus in certain geographic areas and on certain kinds of voters. That is the reality that is ignored by NPV's theoretical machinations. Under NPV, candidates would still treat voters and regions inequally. I guess the comfort some people get from NPV is that the inequalities would be harder to predict and perhaps harder to recognize. But the inequalities would also likely produce destabilizing effects, whereas the Electoral College has produced stabilizing effects. In an NPV race for president, the question is how would the campaigns slice and dice the electorate and the geography? One suspicion that I have is that it's probably easier to drive up your vote in areas where you already have high support, rather than to reach down into areas that are dominated by your opponent. Of course, we also understand that the transaction costs of political organizing generally go down as population density increases (less so in the internet era, but the correlation remains).

SaveOurStates.com : NPV Moves in N.Y, Mass.

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 23:59:34 +0000

The Republican Party of Michigan had no claim to the resources of the McCain campaign. Frankly, they exist to coordinate Republican victories at the state level there regardless of how the national candidates' strategies help or hinder them. The question of how we elect the "leader of the free world" should not hinge on the experience of a group of Republican partisans in one state in one election. The question is: what system makes justice and liberty more likely? Because some significant measure of political stability is absolutely necessary for liberty and justice, not to mention prosperity, I favor the Electoral College system over and against any national popular vote scheme.

SaveOurStates.com : NPV Moves in N.Y, Mass.

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 19:38:50 +0000

That admits my argument about regional politics. Candidates would have an incentive under NPV to drive up their vote totals in states where they already have 70% support, whereas the Electoral College forces them to those states where they have, say, 45-49% support. The latter system is politically healthier if you care about stability in your political system. And stability is an essential ingredient for both prosperity and liberty.

SaveOurStates.com : NPV Moves in N.Y, Mass.

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 19:35:23 +0000

It's an abuse of statistics to arbitrarily change the denominator. Whether you like NPV or not, it should be easy to recognize that point from their materials as intellectually dishonest spin. The EC provides an incentive against regional politics, as demonstrated by the 1888 election. Then, Democrats were forced to reach North and Republicans to reach South. Today, Democrats are actively working to put Texas into play, and have had recent success in Colorado and Virginia; Republicans have done and are doing the same in Michigan, Wisconsin, and West Virginia, just to name some off the top of my head. The Electoral College system as now in place includes powerful incentives that force our political parties to be national and relatively moderate coalitions, shift a significant amount of coalition building to pre-election processes (where it works to make actual individual persons involved in politics less rigidly ideological and more willing to compromise), and focuses elections in their final days on the most politically balanced states (thus providing another moderating impulse while also ensuring greater accountability for the election processes in those, the most hard-fought states that generally have the most narrow election outcomes).

SaveOurStates.com : NPV Moves in N.Y, Mass.

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 18:55:09 +0000

The only reason campaigns focus down into swing states is that each candidate already has built significant support in the other states. Candidates in singe-member districts do this also, though it is less visible.

SaveOurStates.com : NPV Moves in N.Y, Mass.

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 18:52:48 +0000

That is the single worst abuse of statistics by NPV. Why not exclude even more elections, then you could tell people it was half? Pure spin, no substance; shameful. Alex, you suggested that it is wrong to look to history and here you are drudging it up, so I put the question to you once more, slightly differently: wasn't the outcome of the 1888 election, particularly in terms of what it represented (and continues to represent) about the incentives created by the Electoral College an example of the very best of this system? You're question begging and I'm calling you on it. The Electoral College is better than taking the raw popular vote regardless of who gets the most of the latter. That's no less democratic than the Bill of Rights.

SaveOurStates.com : NPV Moves in N.Y, Mass.

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 23:08:16 +0000

The key question though relates to concrete history: How do you think American politics would have developed differently without the Electoral College, particularly in light of the 1888 election? The Democrats won the popular vote in 1888 based on intense regional popularity but still lost the Electoral College. The incentives of the Electoral College system, emphasized by the 1888 outcome, forced the Democrats to go national, to shift their coalition toward the center and let go some of their most radical Southern support in favor of winning votes in the North. Which of these results would you prefer to have been different? Or would you simply plug your ears, close tight your eyes, and drown out all reality saying over and over as loud as you can: "Democracy, democracy, democracy...."

SaveOurStates.com : NPV Moves in N.Y, Mass.

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 23:03:13 +0000

And a stolen vote in some one-party backwater in a state dominated by one party or the other will cancel out a vote cast in a swing state where the presence of both parties fosters accountability and hence integrity.

SaveOurStates.com : NPV Moves in N.Y, Mass.

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 21:17:38 +0000

So you're comparing the amount spent to lobby a single piece of legislation for one year in one state by a group (NPV) that has, as far as I can tell, a single-member/donor (John Koza) with the amount spent to lobby on hundreds of bills for ten years nationwide by a group with 4 million members? On your second assertion, you should read my post on NPV and the Constitution. To your third point, it's true that NPV attempts to make the country one big single-member district for president, the same as most other offices. But the country is a lot bigger in both population and geography and more diverse than any individual states. And in most states, especially the larger ones, there is great discontent about how that works out in areas of low population density. After all, political organizing costs are lowest as population density increases, so even in a single-member district voters are not, for practical purposes, perfectly equal. Your final point leaves me wondering, have you ever worked on a political campaign? Take this down to the local level: a city council candidate targets, first, those who vote. Second, those who are undecided. If a candidate knows that a voter has made up his or her mind, the candidate (if he or she is a smart candidate), avoids contact with that voter because it is a waste of scarce resources, whether time or money. NPV's arguments only fly in their own theoretical political world; in the real world of politics, almost nothing said on behalf of NPV is meaningful.

SaveOurStates.com : The Electoral College Versus the World?

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 18:03:29 +0000

The undermining of Federalism that you identify really goes back, I think, to the 1913 constitutional amendments. Those changes, allowing federal income taxes and forcing the direct election of U.S. Senators, unleashed a tidal wave of federal government power that continues today.

SaveOurStates.com : Saving Maine from NPV

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 04:59:37 +0000

And one more thing ... it was really, really cold taking that picture. I'll try to post a couple more over at www.trentengland.com.

SaveOurStates.com : Co-opting our states

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 23:26:36 +0000

Crossposted from www.LibertyLive.org, the blog of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation.

SaveOurStates.com : "Wisconsin would lose big time!" under National Popular Vote

Wed, 6 Jan 2010 02:17:07 +0000

Zweifel's story is full of errors. He asserts that some states award electoral votes proportionally, which is incorrect, and that one state uses the Congressional District method (both Maine and Nebraska do that).

SaveOurStates.com : NPV targets Idaho

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:39:39 +0000

mvymvy: I deleted two of your posts which simply republished blocks of polling from your NPV website. Insightful comments, criticisms and arguments are welcomed (though we'd respect you more if you were brave enough to use your real name). Cut-and-paste comments, especially public opinion polls (which are not arguments--didn't your mother ever tell you not to jump off that bridge even if...), will be removed. If people want to view the polling data, please do visit the NPV site. If you want insightful analysis and thoughtful discussion, SaveOurStates.com is your site. Along the same lines as the NPV polling, you can also find online videos of people signing petitions to stop the suffraging of women (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEqWgMsEA_8) and to ban dihydrogen monoxide (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi3erdgVVTw).