A Modest Proposal
Posted at 1:31 pm on Tuesday, November 4, 2008, in Uncategorized, and tagged electoral college.
You may have not realized it — even with the free coffee at Starbucks — but today is Election Day, but not just any election day… it is the most important day of our lives. (A tad overstated, no?)
Here are some changes I would like to see for future elections…
- You should be able to register to vote in the year you turn 18. If you are born on December 28, or god forbid, November 5, you should be able to vote in that election (as well as any preceding primaries).
- You should be able to vote when you turn 17. (So replace 18 in the statement above with 17.) Many students begin college at 17 — the infamous “‘ber kids”* — and if they are smart enough to get into Yale (or Arizona State), they should be able have their vote count. Likewise, seniors in high school should be offered the right as well. It certainly wouldn’t hurt to expand the voting pool. Well, except for republicans.
- The Electoral College should be modified. Each congressional district (plus DC) should be given their vote, with no winner-take-all. A total of 436, not 538 (as current); so 219 is needed to win, not 270. This will decrease the inproportionate importance of smaller states, and also increase the importance of EVERY district in the country. Let me repeat that: every district in the country will be equal, or as close to as “equal” as possible (some smaller states will still have some advantage because they are allotted one district, even if that district is smaller than districts elsewhere). What a world we could live in. Not only would candidates campaign in western Pennsylvania and Norfolk, Virginia, but also Sacramento and Peoria, Illinois. And Buffalo and Syracuse. And Eugene, Oregon.
* “‘Ber kids” are those born in the months of September, October, November or December. (Note that all months end in “-ber.”) These kids could either be a year older or younger, depending on when they started school. If you started kindergarten at age 4, you were a year “younger.” If you started at age 5, you were effectively a year “older.”
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December 18th, 2008 at 11:16 am
[...] college. I would rather it not be winner-take-all and that the number of votes for any given state equal the number of congressional districts in that state, however it is a workable system. It has only failed four times in over two hundred [...]