My summary and request sent in the e-mail:
SUMMARY OF MY CONCERNS
Today the Electoral College protects “We The People” from our faulty and fragmented voting system. Implementing a national popular vote at this time would put at risk the integrity of the entire election process. If the votes of all states were accumulated toward the national popular vote the impact of errors, voter suppression, disenfranchisement, and fraud would be compounded; incentives for voter suppression, disenfranchisement, fraud and contesting election results would also increase.
MY REQUEST
I would appreciate an opportunity to discuss this bill with you for 10 minutes. I am prepared to talk with you at anytime and can be reached at 860-xxx-xxxx. Please e-mail or voice mail a time that would be convenient for such a call. I am also prepared to meet with you any time after 2/10 as I am currently out of state, on vacation.
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Attachment in the 1st Comment
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1 comment:
Why it is not the time for “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 for our democracy as compartments perform for ships. 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 several states, including Connecticut. Often a topic of high school civics class discussions, replacing the antiquated Electoral College by the direct election of the President has obvious appeal. The Electoral College was intended to protect the smaller states from domination by the larger states, while protecting wealthy landowners from the uniformed, uneducated people.
Today the Electoral College protects “We The People” from our faulty and fragmented voting system. Implementing a national popular vote at this time would put at risk the integrity of the entire election process. If the votes of all states were accumulated toward the national popular vote the impact of errors, voter suppression, disenfranchisement, and fraud would be compounded; incentives for voter suppression, disenfranchisement, fraud and contesting election results would also increase.
Disregarding fraud, many prestigious groups dedicated to democracy have documented other serious problems. They have developed agendas to implement election reforms to protect the integrity of the process, prevent voter suppression, reduce voter disenfranchisement, and reduce counting errors. Groups include the Carter/Baker Commission, Common Cause, and Demos. Bills have been introduced by several Senators and Representatives in Washington. Reforms involve uniform national standards, poll worker training, oversight, enforcement, voter registration reform, paper ballots, standards for provisional ballots, and ending the conflict of interest in election administration.
Although Common Cause also supports the National Popular Vote, it is hard to understand their enthusiasm given their current Election Reform Agenda which provides clear support for all the concerns listed above. A recent report shows that they and several other groups that originally supported the HAVA (Help America Vote Act), subsequently became the leaders demanding paper ballots and audit reforms in an attempt to correct the unintended consequences of HAVA. Their support of the national popular vote, while well intended, risks once again creating unintended consequences.
The ideal of a precise popular vote count is far from the reality of the current system. The reality is a 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, FL 18,000 votes were lost forever and never counted in a heavily Democratic area, resulting in a contested election of a Republican candidate by less than 400 votes. In Ohio two election officials were recently convicted of rigging a partial Presidential recount.
We accept approximate totals on election night but verify them and correct them later in locally close races. We have little assurance this would be done in every polling place, in every state, based on close national totals. Here in Connecticut in 2006, in the 2nd CD re-canvass, the margin changed from 167 to 91. In that same election, a hand audit of optical scan and other ballots in just the towns of East Hartford and Wethersfield, showed differences greater than 10 votes in 14 races, with the top errors being 73, 82, and 105.
Direct election of the President would magnify errors and distort differences among states, while offering an open invitation to voter suppression and fraud that will lead directly to voter disenfranchisement and add to voter cynicism. We can also expect an unending series of court challenges of vote counts in almost every state in every close presidential election, leading to a tradition of the Supreme Court deciding the President.
References to all facts and detailed paper available upon request.
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