Why should my vote count more than yours?

Posted on October 23, 2012 by Fairlington Blade

We’re two weeks away from the election, which looks like it’s going to be a nail biter. Most of you, though, needn’t bother to vote. Mark is free to make a statement with his vote, because Texas is deep red. For the time being. A California Republican is useful as an ATM, but not much more. As a resident of Virginia, my vote is being heavily courted.

The electoral college is the appendix of our constitution, prone to getting infected from time to time. As I love irony, I was hoping for Kerry to win Ohio in 2004 so that Bush would lose the presidency while winning the popular vote. Right now, Nate Silver has a 6% chance of Obama winning the election while getting fewer votes than Romney. There’s a 2% chance of the converse result. That puts the total odds at about one in twelve.

My modest suggestion would be to reform, but not eliminate, the electoral college. As every congressional district is electing a representative, one can also tally presidential votes by district. Winner of a state’s popular vote gets the bonus two electoral votes. Nebraska does it this way; I think one other state does as well. Maine, perhaps? DC gets a number of delegates that reflect its population, rounded up to an even number to eliminate the possibility of a tie. We keep the pomp and circumstance of the electoral college, but effectively it’s a popular vote.

The bonus being that certain states don’t get lavish attention. I’m not worried about all the political ads. With Virginia being a deciding state for president and senator, we get a truckload of them. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that Ohio has done very well in terms of federal contracts by being the swingiest of swing states.

As long as I’m proposing a significant change to elections, I would also suggest changing the terms of House members from 2 years to 4 years and having the entire House elected with the president. Or half and half if you’re into mid-terms. It’s interesting that the House has flipped only in mid-terms in my lifetime.

Well, I’m off to my bike. C’ya.

BB

Filed under: 2013 and beyond, democracy, states' rights | Tagged: | 12 Comments »

Who are the 47%?

Posted on September 18, 2012 by lmsinca

You’ll all be glad to know I’m done with my brief obsession with the people who produced, filmed and promoted the crappy video that turned the ME on it’s head.  I was more interested in the psychological profiles of the characters involved than the political ones anyway.  Now I’m stuck on Romney.

Here are his comments again, the ones I had a truly visceral reaction to.

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.

Romney went on: “[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

Earlier I challenged Scott to say what he meant.

I think the elephant in this room is that you agree with him. Just say so.

jnc replied first,

I’ll own this. I definitely agree with him. I mean it when I say I’m a libertarian. It’s the most persuasive argument he’s made in my view thus far in the campaign. Note also that the 53% vs 47% meme isn’t original to Romney. The first I saw of it was from Erik at Red State in the Facebook posts in response to the “We are the 99%” meme as part of Occupy Wall Street. The “divide the country” approach didn’t start with Romney, he just draws the line differently than OWS

then went on to talk about the “Life of Julia” and his ideas on the flat tax.  Just a reminder, I ridiculed the “Life of Julia” and said it reminded me of the dopey sex ed material the girls watched in the 60’s and btw, a lot of us are intrigued by jnc’s tax proposals.  Too bad Romney didn’t mention either of those.  He was too busy embarrassing the 47% of the population that don’t pay Federal Income Tax or the 47% of Obama’s base, and brought out the tried but true euphemism that Brigade (of PL fame) always trots out……………..liberals are on the dole and only vote for Democrats so they can continue to get “free stuff”.

Romney seems to be confusing the 47% of people who don’t pay Federal income tax with 47% of the population at large who are Obama’s base who will naturally vote for Obama.  A large number of the 47% who don’t pay income tax are seniors, vets, people living in the poorer states in the south etc., many of whom also generally vote for Republicans.  It’s a little confusing who he’s actually insulting here but it seems to be just about everyone who isn’t in an exclusive group of wealthy Republicans.

And then after challenging me on what he considered my mis-representation of Romney’s words and taking something out of context, Scott said this,

I thought I did, but if I need to be I can be more clear. I agree with him.

I have said this many times, but if the way in which we fund our government is through income taxes, then everyone should pay income taxes, and the tax rate should be flat with no exemptions.

I think this is interesting because none of the quotes I was objecting to had to do with a flat tax or even Romney, Scott or Jnc’s tax solutions which are all slightly different if I understand them correctly.  Romney/Ryan don’t like to get into the same kind of specifics that Scott or Jnc do, so I know less about them than I’d like to.

Political differences and tax solutions aside, I wanted to know whether they agreed with the Romney comments I quoted above.

And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax”.

Here are a couple of maps showing counties that voted for Obama and the richest vs poorest counties in the country.

Matt Welch over at Reason.com:

I should theoretically be the target audience for this stuff. I never took out a federally guaranteed student loan, never enjoyed the mortgage-interest deduction; I worry all the time about government spending and entitlements, and I am not unfamiliar with the looter/moocher formulation. But this kind of reductionism does not reflect individualism (as David Brooks charges), it rejects individualism, by insisting that income tax is destiny. It judges U.S. residents not as humans but as productive (or unproductive) units.

There are to my mind many more important things to consider in this presidential race than Mitt Romney’s reductive parroting of plausible-but-wrong GOP tropes. But the reason this controversy will have legs is ultimately because many Republicans think Romney’s comments were just fine .  They are about to learn what the rest of the country thinks about that.

That piece above from “The Corner” (linked in the Reason piece) should please Scott and Jnc.  We’ll see who’s right…………….but I think Romney just screwed his chances of ever becoming President of the United States.  Personally, I don’t think he deserves it.

Filed under: 2012, Mitt Romney | Tagged: | 25 Comments »