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PATRIOTS; The United States and Our Constitution Need You Now

Submitted by The Philosopher on Wed, 03/14/2012 - 21:50

Daily Paul Liberty Forum

While doing a search for information on my State's elector selection process, my heart sunk into a very deep pit of despair. I discovered something which I had never heard of before called, National Popular Vote. This is kind of what it sounds like; DEMOCRACY is coming to these United States.

How it works is thus: each State has electoral college votes, and the person to be elected president needs 270 electoral college votes to win the Presidency. So, what these people are doing is getting Bills passed in the State legislature for National Popular Vote, and when it passes and gets signed into law in each State, that State's electoral college vote gets added to the National Popular Vote total of electors. Once National Popular Vote gets passed in enough States for 270 electors to be assigned to National Popular Vote, then DEMOCRACY is established in these United States. The election of the President will reside solely on the Popular vote. They have already acquired 132 electors or 49% of what they need, but there are Bills in every State which hasn't already passed it. I'm not sure what happens to the electors who's States passed the Bill, if there are not enough electors to establish DEMOCRACY in these United States; but most assuredly it would be preferable to the alternative of us living in a DEMOCRACY.

This needs to be stopped!!!

Check out this link to see if your State has already passed this Bill; if it hasn't please call your legislatures to stop this Bill before it is too late.

EDIT: I'm concerned who might learn of this Bill; I can see the Religious Right wanting to use this as a vehicle to pass an anti-abortion law and an anti-gay marriage law. We all know why the Communist left wants this passed for. We must be careful who we speak about this with, because our efforts may backfire if too many people see this as a way to get their "Utopia" passed into law.

EDIT II: Currently if someone wanted to steal the Presidential election they would have to steal entire State votes; meaning that the popular vote in the individual States would have to change for the perpetrators to be able to collect the electoral college votes. With this system that doesn't need to be the case. They would only have to focus on manipulating the vote count in the major population centers of any number of States, so that the National Popular Vote was swayed in their direction, for them to be able to collect the electoral college votes of all of the States which passed this law.

Then, there is the possibility that if your State passed the Bill, and your State voted for the Republican but the National Popular Vote went to the Democrat, then your electoral votes go to the Democrat even though the Democrat lost in your particular State.

≈ 6,190 is a closer number based on 2010 estimates. (I did the

Submitted by samadamscw on Thu, 03/15/2012 - 18:00. Permalink

numbers before the Census was done)

Yes, that's big. So what? On it's own, that isn't an issue.

Now, let's address your specific concerns:

#1 - Aides. This can be trimmed to zero, perhaps one or two part time, one at home in the district, the other in D.C. only to serve if need be, while the Rep was out of town. Truly, this could probably be handled by a single central staff rather than aides for each Rep. There's no reason it has to be the way it is now. There are many solutions to this. Probably much of the work an aide does might be automated with some creativity. Give the Rep a smart phone or tablet and suddenly he doesn't need so many aides. The original and ongoing reason for the aides is because the districts got too large for one person to manage. This amendment solves that problem by reducing the districts back down to the size they were before aides were employed. Remember, this is 50,000 inhabitants. At best, maybe 2/3 are of voting age, thus you have at worst, about 30-35k constituents. Compare that to today's districts of anywhere from 500k to over a million leave one with anywhere from 300k-600k+ constituents. It's no wonder they have aides. At the current level or efficiency, if say the smallest district has 3 aides as you mentioned, that's 4 people to handle about 333k possible voters. That's one person for every 83K. Clearly, leaving them with only 33k or so is very doable. (the argument works the same regardless of if you consider voters or inhabitants)

#2 - Pay - well, we've just slashed your fears with fewer, no, or only part-time aides, or even using a common aide staff or even more automation if possible. That leaves us with the Representative themselves. Yes, we'd be increasing the size of the House by a factor of 14 or so. However, if we also included in the amendment that salary must match the median wage in their district, or nationwide, we'd only be slightly more than doubling the total amount spent on their salaries. (it could increase if median wage increased, but then it wouldn't matter because revenues would be up to compensate, even without an income tax) Presently, a Rep makes about 200k a year. This would limit them on average, or all together to about 35k a year.

Lastly, we could also include a provision prohibiting retirement or any other benefits at all. This would surely reduce the total spent, even with the massive increase in members and the more than doubling of the total spent on salaries. Even without revenue increases from increased activity from rising wages, it would take us likely decades to match what we are spending now.

As well, we could write in limits on how long their sessions could last, and mandate they spend more time in the district. Thus, the job could become part time again, and certainly justify with smaller districts, the reduction in pay. It would also keep out those trying to get rich with cushy benefits and retirement for screwing the people.

Anything else?

Now - let's get back to the rest:

No, not all states use Winner-take-all, FORTY-EIGHT of them do. (as well as D.C.) That's enough that it's a problem.

The idea isn't to create a larger bureaucracy. It's to create a more accountable legislature. George Washington and others were adamant about this.

The side effect is that yes, the LEGISLATURE gets bigger, but not necessarily the bureaucracy. In fact, there is good reason to see that such a reform would lead to legislative reform quickly and would in turn shrink the size of government back to where it is supposed to be.

The problem isn't related to the number of legislators, and there are no serious problems with increasing that number, IF the principle is that the important thing to keep in focus is HOW LARGE the districts are. That is the key. Read up on "Article the First."

Madison covered this well in the Federalist Papers also.

This amendment was THE most request change by the States when the wrote the Bill of Rights.

Do you know there were originally 12 amendments proposed then? What we know as 1-10 were really 2-12. The first two didn't pass. The original second amendment later became the 27th. (and now rendered useless by bad court decisions on COLAs) The first was an amendment to limit the size of House districts. It didn't fail because they didn't want it. They wanted it the most.

It passed the House.

The Senate passed their own version.

But some jerk or idiot messed it up in reconciliation and by changing one word - less to "more" he rendered the amendment eventually useless. Thus it failed final passage. Unfortunately, they decided they'd just do it on the honor system. That worked sort of for about 30-40 years. Then they slowed down. Then by 1913, it was a mess and by the 20's they fixed the House instead of continually increasing it.

This change would address the concerns of the NPV crowd and it would bring massive benefits in so many other areas.

Going by 6,190

Submitted by The Philosopher on Thu, 03/15/2012 - 21:32. Permalink

Going by 6,190 Representatives that would be 6,190 to 30,950 minutes to debate each Bill, or 103.666667 to 515.833333 hours or 4.298611111 to 21.49035556 days, using all 24 hours per day, just to debate one Bill. You seriously must be joking; yes that is an issue.

Also, the aids do a lot more than just answer phones in the district. The majority of them are at the capital running errands for the Representative, like taking Bills from one member to another and working with other aids to workout differences between what one Rep wants in the Bill and what the other rep wants in the Bill. Yes, the Congressmen, already have smartphones and tablets.

As far as what you suggest for their pay, the median income of people in their district, I like that idea, I've thought about that one before. I really do believe that idea would be good; but I do have concerns that it may lead to ever greater corruption, if you can believe that. Also, the pensions; I don't know if I would get rid of them entirely, but I was thinking maybe one month of benefits for every year served.

Oh, and the NPV people; I think they are trying to rig the system for a Democrat to be President indefinitely. If you think about it, it isn't that far off from what would happen, either by design of by accident; the popular vote would make the major cities the major battle grounds, however, since the cities are under the control of Democrats, and there are more Democrats in major cities then Republicans. It would only stand to reason that the cities would, as they have in the past, voted overwhelmingly for Democrats -thereby solidifying a Democrat as President indefinitely.

What in the world are you talking about with debating bills?

Submitted by samadamscw on Thu, 03/15/2012 - 22:44. Permalink

You seem to make a presumption everyone of them is going to speak on a bill. That doesn't happen now. Why should it happen with this change? Should more WANT to debate a bill? Of course. So what? So it takes a few weeks to pass a bill and deliberate on it. GOOD. It shouldn't be passed in haste anyway or snuck into some other bill they don't get to read.

Besides, this brings up another easy solution that solves other problems some people contemplate like office space, etc.

It would be very easy to change the sessions of the House like so:

A 45 day committee session in their respective State Capitols where bills are introduced, marked up and debated and hearings are held.

This can then be followed by a 45 day town-hall period in each district where the People get a chance to give input and feedback on upcoming legislation that made it out of committee.

Then you have a 60 day session in D.C. to handle passing the bills and dealing with any other business.

It would also be a no brainer to set a limit on either or both the number of bills that can be filed, and how many may make it out of committee in any one session. They could maybe even add a requirement that a bill has to pass two sessions before it gets sent for a signature or even to the Senate.

This 45-45-60 rotation would constitute "one session" of Congress. thus instead of two per Congress, you'd have four. The remaining time is spent either off entirely, or in the district. (45 days are already spent in the district twice a year)

This is just one solution. Maybe do it 30-30-45? They may come up with something better.

As well, I doubt they would continue to allow the waiving of reading of full bills since they can be held more accountable for their votes. Thus, no one wants to sit through a long bill and bills will now be short, sweet, and to the point, and much easier to deal with. You won't need massive debate per bill. Most likely any and all real debate will take place before they even get to D.C. And that's as it should be, because the People will get more input that way.

As for the aides, ever heard of e-mail or network collaboration? Are you seriously telling me we need to pay aides because they have to physically carry paper around from office to office? No, they use volunteer intern Pages for the formal stuff, everything else should be electronic. Anything else you mentioned can be handled by certainly less staff, and certainly by a common staff. In fact, if coordinating language is an issue, that works better with a shared staff than separate ones.

On the pay I'm glad we agree. I think it would serve as an incentive not to muck up the economy. The better off the people are the more you can get paid. There's always room for corruption. That's for the details. I think the principle is sound. I have no love for pensions, ESPECIALLY for public servants. It's not like these folks will be on the street if we cut them off. They can suck it up for all I care. As for new people going in, they aren't "owed" anything. It's a privilege to serve. We pay them because it's work, and because that means we don't limit the job to rich people who can afford not to for two years.

Also, if we make the job more part time, even more than I suggested, then they don't have to be independently wealthy or need a large salary or benefits.

I also agree with your assessment of the motives behind NPV. Entrenching a Democrat is the exact effect it would have, as well as making everywhere but the largest cities irrelevant.

I don't think it will go away though, and I don't think we can prevent or defeat, and certainly not repeal it without addressing at least the stated concerns of its proponents. Certainly, it has enough support to pass, not because people want to entrench the Dems in the White House, but because there are lots of people who think the EC needs to be reformed and this is their ONLY option. (remember, there are people who think "we must do SOMETHING!" Even if it is the wrong thing.)

Thus, I suggest we address those concerns and shortcomings with a solution.

This one is nice because it is one that should have happened from the beginning. Really, the current situation is the anomaly. And like most things, is not what the Founders intended. I say we give their method a shot.

True, not every member does

Submitted by The Philosopher on Thu, 03/15/2012 - 23:08. Permalink

True, not every member does have to debate the Bill, but they could. Also, the amendment process would therefore also take several weeks to get through. Their is no guarantee that the Bills would be short just because they may have to read them aloud, they would just hire an auctioneer to read the Bill really fast aloud; they did this before.

Also, I'm not saying that Representative need those aids, however, you are not going to convince them to get rid of them either; the same goes for getting them to agree to accept the median income of their district, it will never happen.

The NPV is being debated in State legislatures, so it isn't an amendment, if that is what you thought. Secondly, I've already been on the phone and email getting people to question our local State legislatures about this as well as to express our concerns over this Bill. I will be going around with a petition to ban the State from allotting our Electors to the National Popular Vote, therefore, effectively killing the chance of this Bill passing.

We may need a amendment to our State constitution, which my rep said might be doable.

I have written to several people I trust in other States which haven't already passed this, so they can try and stop it in their States as well.

I don't agree with you solutions, but I certainly don't agree with theirs either. If they really wanted to return the power back to the people and end corruption in the voting system then they should be trying to end the 'Party' system; they shouldn't be trying to make an already corrupt system even more corrupt, nor should they be trying to make an already easily defrauded system more easily defrauded.

I personally would rather make congress part-time, so much so that they only convene for a major issue of importance. I could also support re-instituting the Articles of Confederation if the current Federal Government remain to be corrupt.