{"id":5406,"date":"2014-04-27T22:10:28","date_gmt":"2014-04-27T22:10:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/?p=5406"},"modified":"2014-04-27T22:10:28","modified_gmt":"2014-04-27T22:10:28","slug":"presidential-election-change-at-hand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=5406","title":{"rendered":"Presidential election change at hand?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>The passage of time tends to make me reflect on some long-held positions, reconsider them and possibly look for avenues of change.<\/p>\n<p>That seems to be happening with my long-standing support of the Electoral College system of electing presidents. Momentum for a change seems to be building, according to The Hill newspaper.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-embedded-content\" data-secret=\"ciaCkEjfLm\"><p><a href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/blogs\/ballot-box\/204437-will-popular-vote-elect-president-in-2020\/\">Will popular vote elect president in 2020?<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" style=\"position: absolute; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);\" title=\"&#8220;Will popular vote elect president in 2020?&#8221; &#8212; The Hill\" src=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/blogs\/ballot-box\/204437-will-popular-vote-elect-president-in-2020\/embed\/#?secret=efkDWcuB65#?secret=ciaCkEjfLm\" data-secret=\"ciaCkEjfLm\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The Hill reports that 11 states have enacted legislation ending the winner-take-all provision for doling out electoral votes.<\/p>\n<p>Proponents of the change say that the 2020 presidential election might be the first to pick a president that relies on the popular vote rather than the current method.<\/p>\n<p>This is a huge deal. I&#8217;m still officially undecided on whether I want it to change, but I am ready to keep an open mind on it.<\/p>\n<p>The Hill reports: &#8220;Criticism of the current Electoral College system stems from its &#8216;winner-take-all&#8217; approach, which awards all of a state&#8217;s electoral votes to the candidate that wins the popular vote in that particular state. Winner-take-all systems generally mean presidential candidates ignore the states they know will go red or blue and focus their campaign efforts on battleground states instead.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>If a candidate wins a state, he or she wins all of that state&#8217;s electoral votes. Texas boasts 38 such votes. It&#8217;s a big prize. However, given that the state is so reliably Republican, candidates in recent years rarely have ventured here to compete for our state&#8217;s electoral votes. They concentrate instead &#8212; almost exclusively &#8212; on the &#8220;swing states,&#8221; such as Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin. As The Hill reports: &#8220;In the 2012 presidential election, for example, two-thirds of campaign funding went to four states: Colorado, Florida, Ohio and Virginia. Aside from other events in handful of states, the majority of the country was ignored.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I can recall a trip my wife and I made to Greece in November 2000. I was attending a series of meetings sponsored by the Greek press ministry. That year&#8217;s U.S. presidential election was not yet decided. Vice President Al Gore won more votes than Texas Gov. George W. Bush and the candidates were fighting over a recount of ballots in Florida. The winner of that battle would win the presidency.<\/p>\n<p>The question kept coming at me from my Greek hosts, who are quite sophisticated about these matters, given that their country gave birth to democratic government as we&#8217;ve come to know it: How is it that someone can get more votes than the other guy and still lose an election? I had difficulty explaining how the Electoral College system works. Frankly, the more I tried to explain it, the less I began to believe in it.<\/p>\n<p>Well, Bush won the battle with a razor-thin Supreme Court decision over Florida&#8217;s ballots and became president despite losing the popular vote.<\/p>\n<p>Now the tide to fundamentally reform the presidential election process may be turning in favor of those who want to change it.<\/p>\n<p>Something tells me this discussion is just now picking up steam.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The passage of time tends to make me reflect on some long-held positions, reconsider them and possibly look for avenues of change. That seems to be happening with my long-standing support of the Electoral College system of electing presidents. Momentum for a change seems to be building, according to The Hill newspaper. Will popular vote &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=5406\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Presidential election change at hand?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[53,786,1551],"class_list":["post-5406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2000-presidential-election","tag-bush-v-gore","tag-electoral-college"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5406\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}