Dear ____________,

I ask you, in the name of democracy, to support the National Popular Vote Interstates Compact, which would replace the Electoral College with the national popular vote as the means by which the President of the United States is elected.

Why the Electoral College Must Go:

·         It devalues the national popular vote;

·         It gives disproportionate weight to votes coming from less populous states;

·         It discourages voter turnout;

·         It is a disadvantage to third parties.

While there are clear disadvantages to the Electoral College, but there isn’t a single way in which the Electoral College is better than the national popular vote.  Again, I urge you to pass the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.

Sincerely,

______________

OYV Order of Events

1)      Create Twitter account, Facebook Page and Group, email address, petition on Change.org, and blog (Did everything, but my twitter account was suspended because I was using the reply feature unsolicited, and I guess they frown on that.)  Hit pasetebin.com.  Youtube (rickroll style).  Use these and any other social networking tools that come to mind to spread word.  If possible, create Facebook bot to send automated PMs and Invites.

2)      Utilize what we know about search engine optimization (SEO) to bring articles/blogs opposed to the EC to the top in search results for “Electoral College.”  This can be done by creating links to those articles and pages.  We can also read up on SEO to come up with other ideas as to how we can accomplish this.  This must be done by the time the EC starts getting more attention as the election season approaches—when people start looking up the EC, the first things they’ll see are those articles/blogs we’ve chosen to promote.

3)      Gather as many people as possible in Washington, D.C. for a rally sometime in the period of July 3-5.  This will provide greater media attention and more notice from the public.  Rally will be in support of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.

4)      At the rally, start with masks off.  Once the rally gains media attention, put on the masks to reveal that this is an Anonymous operation.  Noticing the greater breadth of our efforts will draw new members, adding to the complexity and creativity of the collective; additionally, it will provide positive PR to counteract the reputation Anonymous has a being merely a bunch of Hackerz on steroids. The increase in Anonymous’ population and improvement in reputation will help us when it comes to planning future projects.

5)      After the rally gets attention, we can turn our attention having rallies at the offices of the state legislatures where the Compact hasn’t yet been signed.

6)      In case the amount of media attention garnered so far isn’t enough to make the EC a topic of Presidential debate,  we organize protests at the universities at which these debates will be held (first one is October 3).  Since there will be secret service (meaning we can get in a LOT more trouble if arrested than we would if they weren’t there) at the debates, instead of having a traditional protest, we’ll have a “walk-out.”  This will entail convincing the students and professors at those universities who have tickets to the debates take their seats and then, partway through the debate, walking out in unison.  Additionally, before the walk-out, and before the secret service arrives on campus, we make a large message about the EC that will be visible in the aerial camera shots that will appear on TV from the event.  To avoid getting in trouble for vandalism/destruction of property by painting the message or using other traditional means, we set stakes in the ground and attach the message, to the tops of the stakes, so that there is no defacing of the universities’ property (and fewer grounds on which to get in trouble). 

7)      This happens at each of the first two debates, bringing public interest to a head and forcing the candidates to confront the issue.  At least one, of course, will side with getting rid of the EC because 62% of the population wants to end it.  Making them commit to a position means that, even if they don’t want the EC to be an issue, they’ll have address it once elected to satisfy the people.  Thus there will be pressure on legislators to confront the issue, and knowing that over 60% of Americans want them to get rid of the EC will pull them to that side on the issue.

8)      We write to all senators and representatives, asking them to introduce a constitutional amendment, while simultaneously targeting the legislators in the states that haven’t yet agreed to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.

9)      This will give us two viable approaches; a back-up plan should the NPVIC fail to be agreed upon in enough states.  Protests will continue periodically as long as legislation has not yet been passed.

Declaration of Operation

Occupy Your Vote

Twitter: @OccupyYourVote

Purpose:
The goal of this operation is pass legislation to institute the National Popular Vote in US Presidential Elections. 

Background:
62% of Americans would be in favor of amending the Constitution to replace the archaic Electoral College with the popular vote (Gallup, 2011).

Plan:
Since “Electoral College” will become a much more popular search term in the months that follow, we metagame search engine optimization through linking to articles or blog posts in favor of the National Popular Vote.  This will improve the positions of those articles or blogs in search results for “Electoral College” when it becomes a more popular search term.

Meanwhile, we gather 10,000 people on the Mall on Capitol Hill, stretching between the White House and the Russell Senate Office Building for Occupy Your Vote’s first in-real-life rally.  Then we use the initial rally’s media coverage to organize other, similar protests across the nation—both in states where the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) has not yet been passed and at the Presidential debate locations.  The former will put pressure on those states to vote for the NPVIC; the latter will force the issue of the Electoral College into the debates, should the initial rally on Capitol Hill come up short.

Once it becomes a topic of debate, the presidential candidates will have to declare their positions with respect to the Electoral College and commit to those stances.  This will bring more attention to the issue, catalyzing legislation in the form of either the passage of the NPVIC or a Constitutional amendment.

Occupy Your Vote

Occupy Your Vote

Twitter: @OccupyYourVote

Purpose:
The goal of this operation is pass legislation to institute the National Popular Vote in US Presidential Elections. 

Background:
62% of Americans would be in favor of amending the Constitution to replace the archaic Electoral College with the popular vote (Gallup, 2011).

Plan:
Since “Electoral College” will become a much more popular search term in the months that follow, we metagame search engine optimization through linking to articles or blog posts in favor of the National Popular Vote.  This will improve the positions of those articles or blogs in search results for “Electoral College” when it becomes a more popular search term.

Meanwhile, we gather 10,000 people on the Mall on Capitol Hill, stretching between the White House and the Russell Senate Office Building for Occupy Your Vote’s first in-real-life rally. The rally will gather added media attention through a “Titties for Democracy” campaign at the rally.

Then we use the initial rally’s media coverage to organize other, similar protests across the nation—both in states where the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) has not yet been passed and at the Presidential debate locations.  The former will put pressure on those states to vote for the NPVIC; the latter will force the issue of the Electoral College into the debates, should the initial rally on Capitol Hill come up short.

Once it becomes a topic of debate, the presidential candidates will have to declare their positions with respect to the Electoral College and commit to those stances.  This will bring more attention to the issue, catalyzing legislation in the form of either the passage of the NPVIC or a Constitutional amendment.

On The Electoral College

The United States’ Electoral College, approved in 1787, isn’t just antiquated—it’s also a barrier to true democracy.

 

Many arguments have been made in support of the Electoral College. For those who support it, unfortunately, most of the arguments are irrelevant or just plain flawed. For instance, proponents claim that the Electoral College benefits minorities. They believe that making the votes of each state an all-or-nothing proposition increases the likelihood that these voters will turn out and have the opportunity to make a critical difference in election results, thus necessitating that candidates court a wider variety of voters. This seems reasonable until you look at the issue from alternative angles. Consider this example: 49% (a minority) of voters in a given state might support a particular candidate but, if 51% of the population favors another, the group of 49% receives exactly 0% of the Electoral votes. This is problematic for a number of reasons. Two of the most essential problems are that: the 49% of voters in a given state make no difference on the national level—essentially, in this case, the minorities’ votes count for nothing whatsoever; additionally, when a minority group knows that its vote will amount to nothing whatsoever, that group actually has less incentive to turn out to vote. With a straight popular vote, this is not the case because the minority group will know that they actually can make a difference on the national level.

ARGUMENTS FOR THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE

The most relevant arguments in favor of the Electoral College are that it does the following:

• Prevents urban-centric victories

• Maintains the federal nature of our government

• Makes it easier to detect and ameliorate election fraud.

Unfortunately, for these proponents, the first argument is flawed because the all-or-nothing system actually forces the candidates to focus on large swing states, neglecting the needs of the more rural states. Maintaining the federal nature of the government is a compelling argument, but even this can be destructive. Consider the South. There was a time when black citizens were assigned only 3/5 of a vote apiece.(They weren't actually allowed to vote, but this figure was used to juice up southern states' representation in the Electoral College. This reduction in the weight of their votes makes it possible for state legislators to push through the candidates of their choice (basically, it’s addition by subtraction). This, in turn, reuces the power of its constituents and places an inordinate value on the desires of a few, elite governmental officials. Instead, with universal regulations, the value of the minority vote can be preserved. And the third argument, while certainly valid, isn’t sufficiently relevant to match up with the arguments against the Electoral College.

ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE

Relevant arguments against the Electoral College include but are not limited to these facts:

• It devalues the national popular vote

• It gives more weight to voters in less populous states

• It discourages voter turnout

• It is a disadvantage to third parties

• In some states, there is a disincentive to vote at all

When the national popular vote isn’t the deciding factor, candidates are able to appeal to voters on a narrower range of issues. For instance, Vermont’s two votes are unlikely to affect who wins since it has only two Electoral Votes. Swing states—Ohio, Iowa, etc.—get the attention because of this all-or-nothing system, decreasing the representation of the states with fewer votes and those wherein the results can be intuited ahead of time. In this case, the smaller states aren’t the only ones to lose out: if a candidate can count of 51% of California’s vote, it can also count on 55 Electoral votes 10.2% of the national total. The 49%, on the other hand, will receive 0% of the electoral votes. For 2% of California voters to determine 10.2% of the Electoral College’s votes is a travesty. Since 2% of Californians constitute 0.12% of the nation’s population, this gives a single voter in California 415 times as much sway as he/she would have if each voter had the same influence as all the others.

This, in itself, is more than compensates for the arguments in favor of the Electoral College. And that’s just one issue.

While devaluing the national popular vote (which is wrong), the Electoral College also gives an inordinate amount of influence to voters in less populous states. Wyoming, for instance, accounts for 0.2% of our nation’s population, but gets 0.6 percent of its representation (also wrong). And by now, we should know that two wrongs do not make a right.

A logical extension of these two points lead to a third: the discouragement of voter turnout. A democrat living in Texas, for instance, won’t affect the results of the election in any way whatsoever, while, were California a swing state, each citizen therein could have up to 415 times that which he or she would if the election was determined by the national popular vote.

Finally, the Electoral College is a disadvantage to third parties because, in essence, they just plain won’t gather any Electoral votes. This entrenches us in a situation where the two-party system will always be in place. Even if that’s the best system, we the people should at least have the opportunity to make a change if we so desire.

WRAPPING UP 

I’ve acknowledged, in just over two pages, the merits of the Electoral College and the overwhelming arguments against it. When a convincing argument against an institution can be made in only a couple of pages, and when the issue at hand has such an influence on the election of our President, it becomes clear that the issue must be addressed and the system reformed. And the continuity of this system is undemocratic, disenfranchising, illogical, and ultimately destructive. This issue deserves far, far more attention than we give it.