National Popular Vote Interstate Compact

 

 And as promised yesterday, here is the solution:

Thanks to Stanford University Professor and computer scientist Dr. John R. Koza, there is a simple yet elegant work around to article 2 of the Constitution that will allow the popular vote to prevail and that is an agreement known as the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact between states to cast their electoral college votes not for the presidential candidate who won in each respective state but to pledge their votes for the candidate who wins the national popular vote in excess of the 270 votes needed to win the election. So far 19 states possessing 215 votes have signed on to the compact and all that is needed is for states who possess the remaining 55 votes to join in order to guarantee that the candidate who wins the popular vote will also win sufficient electoral votes to win the presidency. If you live in a state which has not signed on to the compact, I beseech you to work in your state to get these needed remaining votes.

I have allowed you a link entitled National Popular Vote so you can read about this in more detail and see if your state has signed on or not.

Should the Electoral College be Abolished?

It can be argued that the Electoral College must be abolished.  Twice in the last 25 years candidates for President of the United States have lost the popular vote yet have received the majority of Electoral Votes and have won the presidency.  How can this be, you say. 

Well let's blame it on our Founding Fathers because they are the folks who wrote it into our constitution. 

So let's have a simplified look:

1. Each state of the union gets to have 1 elector for each Senator and Congressman.

2. That elector is bound to cast his or her vote according to who won in his state. 

3. Whoever gets 270 votes or greater wins, regardless of how many popular votes were cast in the United States for a given candidate.

This has been a subject of contention throughout our history but especially in the 21st century where George W. Bush (41) and Donald J Trump (45) lost the popular vote but won the electoral votes and thus the election.

Voters in the large urban states (predominantly Democratic) hate it and those in the smaller rural states (predominantly Republican after 1964) love it because they accrue disproportionately more power as a voting bloc.

Okay, you say, this is wrong but how is it to be righted?  Well not so easily.  It would require a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College and that would require 2/3 votes of both the House and the Senate and 3/4 ratification by the States.  The furthest it ever got was in 1969 where it was passed in the House but failed in the Senate. 

 Stand by folks for a proposed solution in my next post;

National Water Grid: A No Brainer

Environmental scientists have been warning us since the days of author and 60's environmental activist Rachel Carson that we would be encountering catastrophic global changes in the future but yet over the decades this has been pushed to the back burner. Now is the time to stop dithering and act.

The western United States is literally drying up and blowing away. According to a recent CBS 60 minutes segment, California's San Joaquin and Salinas Valleys are turning into dust bowls and becoming incapable of growing sufficient produce for not only the western states but the United States at large. Utah's Great Salt Lake is disappearing and taking its valuable wetlands with it and the Colorado River has been reduced to a mere trickle relative to its former self. Yet at the same time the eastern United States is being inundated by heavy rainfall. 

We need a new Tennessee Valley Authority project that will create a national water grid of pipelines to quickly transport surplus water from the soggy East to the parched West and solve this age old problem once and for all. We have the technology and the scientific expertise to get this done. This could be the infrastructure project of the century and could transform our nation into the breadbasket of the world. Such an undertaking would most likely create wealth like we have never seen and provide thousands of good jobs just as the TVA did back in the 30's. So, what's it going to be Congress? Shortsightedness or abundance? The specter of starvation or security?

If you agree with this post, then please do two things:

1. Look up your congressman by clicking on "Government 101" to the left of the main section of "We the People" and contact him or her and make your wishes known. I know, it's hard the first time you do it but after a while, calling your representative will become second nature. After all they work for you! 

2. Remember to vote in the next election!