Please take a moment to email your State Senator in support of the National Popular Vote bill. Earlier this month, the House approved it by a vote of 119-37, and the Senate is scheduled to vote this Tuesday!

http://www.commoncause.org/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=4344431

Further, having lived and participated politics in Maine as well as numerous other states, it is clear that gerrymandering is barely existant in Maine compared to the pros in other states.

Maine, however, has the distinction of having professional, paid election fraud committed by employees of the Speaker of the Maine State Assembly over decades. Dozens of close elections were stolen and finally two men went to prison.

IRV elections are even easier to mainipulate and steal.

the time for more democracy is now. not a total, unlimited, true democracy, but one more step towards it.

Your analysis is completely weak though, as IRV “schemes” do nothing except enable the true will of the voter to be heard, which is something you appear to be rather consistently against. How IRV can be “manipulated” but current votes presumably cannot to the same degree is a rather optimistic, and selective view.

Socialism is not equal to democracy. Please, look it up. While i have nothing against socialism (and in fact, any functioning society must contain at least some form of it, unless you advocate feeding prisoners with voluntary donations only), you cannot have a socialist electoral system. That statement just makes no sense, and is a transparent attempt to attach some associative label to an issue that should rightly be about democracy, and whether we think it’s a good thing or not. It’s kind of like saying you have a purely capitalist electoral system. What is that, an auction for votes? By that measure any electoral system that allows people to vote without paying for it is “socialist”. Ridiculous.

I think democracy is a very good thing. Call me a radical, I guess.

The only difference between a democracy and a republic is that a republic does not have a monarch, whereas a democracy may or may not have a monarch. Check the dictionary.

Both a democracy and a republic may either limit popular majorities from doing anything they want, with a constitution.

The idea that there is no check on what a majority can do in a democracy, and there is a constitutional check on what a majority can do in a republic, is simply not what those words mean.

And aside from all that, there is no connection between whether a constitution limits the majority, and whether we use a direct popular vote or the electoral college. People are simply not thinking clearly.

The US House of Representatives has been frozen for a long time at 435. It should be increased in size (to 600, 800 or more members) to increase the representation of the people in the lower house as intended. This would also shift the balance in the E.C. to a more appropriate level.

Instant runnoff and other vote reallocation schemes are a bad idea and should not be adopted. The are subject to all kinds of possible manipulation and fraud and could lead to extremely perverse outcomes.

Likewise, gerrymandering would be fought more intensely if the Maine/Nebraska system were adopted since there would be more at stake. Courts, some legislators and the general public would be more likely to require that districts be compact and geographically logical if electoral votes and therefore the Presidency would be affected.

This is one more win for the Maine/Nebraska system: the reduction of gerrymandering of American congressional districts.

Direct election is indeed a “socialist” way of electing the President in a large nation and destroys liberty.

Had he been a little less weird, he could have won a plurality of the vote in 92, but he never could have won a majority in the electoral college.

An extremely popular and rich person, such as Oprah, could easily mount an independent bid.

however, number 2′s language is a clear indicator that democracy is not his goal:

“2) make politics even more a contest of promises and pandering to special interests and the lowest common denominator”

which basically says, don’t let the popular vote matter because people can’t make good choices.

If you believe that, you don’t believe in democracy, representative or otherwise. So why the pretense? There is nothing “socialist” about popular votes, and blurring that line makes me seriously question your judgement. Socialism is an economic policy structure, not a voting methodology.

All of your other points already exist in our current electoral system and would in no substantive way change with a popular vote plan.

Popular vote IRV. Anything less is, quite simply, less democratic then we should settle for.