This doesn’t change much about the state level lunacy being passed in Maine, other than causing more division among Maine voters. It only pertains to how Maine awards its electors every four years.
It can potentially swing a close presidential election and it can potentially result in the will of Maine voters being ignored. We have 4 electors and there have been two elections decided by four or fewer votes, most recently in 2000.
Contrary to what the smooth-brained automatons in Augusta repeat, this doesn’t move the needle towards implementing a popular vote for president. That requires a constitutional amendment and getting one of those passed requires the kind of broad consensus that isn’t likely in today’s political climate.
Got it. This is kind of what I imagined the result would be. Not something we’d necessarily feel, at least not right away.
I told my wife, either towards the end of last year or maybe early this year, that I believed within our life times (eearly-mid 30s currently) we’d see some kind of real cultural conflict. Maybe not a full scale civil war, but something spicier than the boiled frog approach we seem to following now. I’m not so convinced I will closer to the end of my hour glass when that takes place as I was a few months ago.
It weakens a state’s position if it’s just going to follow the results on a national level. Candidates will focus on the states where they will get the most votes. They can “win” a state without having to win the state.
It’s just more proof that your State, and the others that pass similar, hate the America that was intended by most of what are commonly referred to as the founders.
Maine was already “weird” because it allowed its Electoral Votes to be split among candidates. 48 other states are “winner take all.” So Maine gave losing candidate voters Exceptional representation.
The proposed law would take things (almost nearly) completely out of Maine’s voter’s hands. That would be bad for the state.
If the governor doesn’t veto this law it would be absurd!
A change to make Maine give all its electoral votes to one candidate would be “bad” for losing candidate voter, but would make Maine more like everywhere else.
The new law is something totally new, different snd Bullshit.
Her lack of veto was absurd, but it wasn’t as absurd as allowing it to become law without having the spine to put her signature on it. It’s hard to imagine a bigger “fuck you” from the people who have the gall to call themselves “democracy defenders”.
With California and Oregon losing steam along with their productive population, Maine seems to be positioning itself as the nation’s newest laboratory for progressive ideology. Hopefully enough people realize that progressive ideology is incompatible with everything we’ve always thought of as “values”, but I’m not optimistic.
It’s scary to think about what would happen if all states were to eliminate the electoral college and simply go with the popular vote. As it is, and growing increasingly each year, it seems that “most” major population centers/cities are blue. Even in predominantly red states (at least by area, when you look at a map), that is now the case. Take my state of TX for example…ALL of the biggest cities are blue…at best, maybe very very purple…Houston, Dallas, Austin[duh], San Antonio. The only reason why TX is still a red state is due to its sheer size, in that the rural parts of TX still have a slightly bigger population combined than just that handful of blue cities. Sadly, that won’t be the case much longer I predict. But many other states are like this.
I worry that states might start trying to do away with the electoral college and go solely by popular vote. If that were to happen, would a republican ever win an election?
Remember, before you answer with “well trump did it”, he didn’t win the popular vote and with each passing year, cities and states turn increasingly blue with population growth being highest in big or urban cities (Los Angeles grows much faster than Omaha, for instance)
What’s much scarier/worse is that a single official has enough power to make that “scary.”
The hate for the Electoral College just comes from it getting in the way of one Party occasionally. The Electoral College now functions as a goal line defense for the team that’s allowed its opponent to march down the field to its one.
It’ll be interesting when north woods Mainers, the bayou swamp folk, mountain people from the remote rockies, midwestern corn eaters, and desert dwellers of both high and low varieties are told to live in accordance with the views of people in the high rise condos of NY, Chicago, LA, Houston, etc.
There was a local clown lady that ran for township supervisor (3 person position) and part of her platform was to end hunting in the township. Mind you, this is in western PA, an area where 1st day of buck is a universally recognized holiday.