http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2012/11/14/what-if-we-elected-our-governor-the-way-we-elect-our-president-hint-pierce-county-is-washingtons-ohio Comments On: What If We Elected Our Governor the Way We Elect Our President? (Hint: Pierce County Is Washington's Ohio) by Goldy en-us Copyright 2013 The Stranger. All rights reserved. This RSS file is offered to individuals, The Stranger readers, and non-commercial organizations only. Any commercial websites wishing to use this RSS file, please contact The Stranger. webmaster@thestranger.com (The Stranger Webmaster) Thu, 23 May 2013 00:00:01 -0700 Thu, 23 May 2013 04:30:00 -0700 Foundation http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss
The National Popular Vote aims to get states representing 270+ electoral college votes to agree to assign their votes instead to the winner of the national popular vote. Currently, states representing 49% of the 270 necessary votes have passed laws to this effect (including Washington), which will come into force once enough states have passed the laws. It doesn't eliminate the electoral college, just changes how votes are assigned. See Hendrik Hertzberg's blog on the New Yorker webpage or http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/ for more
Posted by seaaan]]> Thu, 15 Nov 2012 16:32:11 -0800 The Stranger Posted by Goldy]]> Thu, 15 Nov 2012 11:09:45 -0800 The Stranger Posted by searunner]]> Thu, 15 Nov 2012 09:51:18 -0800 The Stranger Instant Runoff Voting.
Posted by treacle]]> Thu, 15 Nov 2012 08:45:33 -0800 The Stranger How about an Electoral College to decide where four bros go to get a drink?

"Three of us wanted the Classic Tavern, but somehow we ended up at the Grape Adventure!"

Posted by Supreme Ruler Of The Universe]]> Thu, 15 Nov 2012 07:45:56 -0800 The Stranger
Do you not realize that a series of political events that directly impacted the rights of GLBT people took place in Tacoma this year?

if the Stranger's beat includes politics, why ignore something that could have been catastrophic to GLBT civil rights in WA- like a Senator Jack Connolly?

This may shock you, so you may want to sit down before you read this, but we do have politics in Tacoma. And ignoring it didn't make it any easier for us to make sure the good side won this time.
Posted by Tacoma Traveler]]> Thu, 15 Nov 2012 06:59:17 -0800 The Stranger
The election is over and the good guys won. Time to move on.
Posted by Cato the Younger Younger]]> Thu, 15 Nov 2012 06:55:48 -0800 The Stranger Posted by greggreggreggreg]]> Thu, 15 Nov 2012 06:42:44 -0800 The Stranger
How deeply can you miss the point?

You can't claim that "your vote only matters if you live in a state (or county or whatever) that is split roughly 50/50" unless you've already acknowledged that everywhere else, the votes are equally important, but essentially decided, as though it was a form of early voting.

An area that is already 80% Democrat or 80% Republican still contributes to the total, and each of those votes matters just as much. They just don't effect the results at the last minute like the closer areas do.
Posted by Lymis]]> Thu, 15 Nov 2012 06:36:31 -0800 The Stranger
The Stranger's beat is:
Capital Hill,
Plus
Politics,
Plus
The 6 foot space in front of a writer's home or car or bus route




Posted by NotSean]]> Thu, 15 Nov 2012 06:15:51 -0800 The Stranger
Then why feature so many stories about Olympia? Are we holding part of HUMP at the Capitol Theatre because Oly is merely an exclave neighborhood of Seattle now?
Posted by Tacoma Traveler]]> Thu, 15 Nov 2012 05:51:29 -0800 The Stranger Posted by zobot]]> Thu, 15 Nov 2012 04:33:11 -0800 The Stranger Posted by nwcitizen]]> Thu, 15 Nov 2012 02:35:46 -0800 The Stranger Fortunately, we don't elect our governors this way, because it would be stupid. Almost as stupid as counting Black people as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of apportionment.

???????????????????

Not that dumb, cracker! Jesus christ I can't believe I just read that.
Posted by andrew]]> Thu, 15 Nov 2012 00:34:44 -0800 The Stranger
I didn't mean to imply that you yourself resented Pierce County. I meant to imply that most of Seattle looks down on us in a nasty way. this is reflected in the way the Seattle press ignores us completely, as the Stranger did during this past election season. Publicola at least mentioned the Darnielle-Connoly race and recognized what Jack Connoly as Senator would have meant for GLBT civil rights in WA. The Stranger though seems to have a blind spot that runs between Federal Way and Olympia.

And by the way, you're welcome for the fight we put on for R74 down here. I busted my own ass four nights a week on that thing for two and a half months. And no, you couldn't have done it without us and the effort me and my fellow volunteers as well as the wonderful staff we had down here and what we managed to do. Nor could Inslee have become viable if it had not been for that primary win, handed to him mostly by Art Wang and his hard working team.

And yes, you do owe Art a big thank you for not having to refer to McKenna as the governor-elect. Maybe you could use a little bit of that journalistic influence (did I mention that alot of Tacomans read the Stranger?) to gin up some support for the people down here who made those wins possible. Maybe four years from now you might look into what it is we do down here.
Posted by Tacoma Traveler]]> Wed, 14 Nov 2012 22:06:23 -0800 The Stranger Posted by Goldy]]> Wed, 14 Nov 2012 21:38:37 -0800 The Stranger Posted by seandr]]> Wed, 14 Nov 2012 20:52:13 -0800 The Stranger
Under an electoral college system, your vote only matters if you live in a state (or county or whatever) that is split roughly 50/50. Rather than campaign to win as many votes as they can, the candidates campaign only to the voters in those close states, ignoring the rest. Democracy suffers. This "meaningless bullshit" points that out quite nicely.
Posted by Moag]]> Wed, 14 Nov 2012 19:53:24 -0800 The Stranger
Also, the efforts of Washington United for Marriage here in Tacoma made R74 possible. We knocked on a crazy amount of doors and drove everybody with a 253 area code crazy to offset the heavy opposition we expected to see in Eastern WA. While we lost Pierce County by a point or two, had we not fought the battle down here that you ignored, it would not have been possible for King County and Thurston to overpower the rest of the state.

Inslee can thank his Tacoma team too for a remarkable primary win in a county that would have gone to McKenna elsewise. Art Wang's leadership here in T-town was incredible, and Jay Inslee owes him a major debt of gratitude. By proving early on that Inslee was viable enough to win conservative Pierce County over during a primary with low voter turn-out, Art Wang established Inslee as a candidate that was worth voting for, a real winner.

So yes, I get that everyone up there hates us down in Pierce. but electoral college or no, you need us. And it wouldn't kill you to show a little love for this gritty soot-covered jewel once in a while.
Posted by Tacoma Traveler]]> Wed, 14 Nov 2012 19:41:56 -0800 The Stranger
The electoral college was first formed in the opening days of this country because they didn't hold national elections. State legislatures picked the electors (or were the electors themselves). Then they simply chose the president without bothering with any sort of election at all. The second place winner became the VP.

So there was actually some logic and purpose to the electoral college system, at least at the time it was set up. Why they continue this goofy arrangement to this day is considerably less logical.
Posted by Reverse Polarity]]> Wed, 14 Nov 2012 19:36:55 -0800 The Stranger
Or just be honest about it, and let international law and the UN have jurisdiction, like the wastes of Antarctica or the high seas.
Posted by Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn]]> Wed, 14 Nov 2012 18:28:36 -0800 The Stranger Posted by Fnarf]]> Wed, 14 Nov 2012 17:47:04 -0800 The Stranger
This is meaningless bullshit. The campaigns naturally know ahead of time how the state electoral votes will be counted, they would change the way they campaign accordingly. Nobody would have run a statewide campaign under such as system, so you can't take the vote count from a statewide system and shoehorn it into an electoral vote system and then pretend it means doodly squat.

Inslee would have gone to the counties he needed to win to get out the vote necessary to win. McKenna would have tried the same thing, but as Romney just proved, it's not so easy to do that when your party, one, is selling what the people ain't buying, and two, lives outside the reality-based community and refuses to accept the facts on the ground that clash with their ideology.

We just watched Obama prove what happens when you understand how to play this game, and Romney prove what happens when you haven't got a clue how to read the polls or do simple arithmetic.

And don't tell me McKenna is smarter than that; if he was so smart he would have known that Obamacare is obviously constitutional and obviously good for the voters of Washington.
Posted by Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn]]> Wed, 14 Nov 2012 17:26:08 -0800 The Stranger Posted by MikeBoyScout]]> Wed, 14 Nov 2012 17:18:15 -0800 The Stranger Posted by pfffter]]> Wed, 14 Nov 2012 16:46:17 -0800 The Stranger