As reported by 9News, Republican gubernatorial candidate Greg Lopez thinks the present plan of getting Colorado voters vote for statewide candidates after which counting these votes is to implement a rewards-based “electoral faculty” the place each county within the state will get a minimum of three electors, no matter inhabitants, however will be rewarded with as much as 11 electors based mostly on their voter turnout percentages.
Bought a excessive voter turnout? Your county will get 11 electoral votes. Have an infinite inhabitants however not good turnout? Sorry, your county will not be getting as many votes.
I am positive in some unspecified time in the future this gave the impression of a effective plan, and in virtually precisely the identical means that issues Elon Musk goals up whereas excessive sound like nice plans. (What if as an alternative of getting site visitors, we now have site visitors in tunnels? And with that, the day is saved.) However very like Musk’s variations, the issues must be instantly obvious after you have had an opportunity to sleep issues off.
Giving each county the identical variety of votes no matter inhabitants blatantly violates our democratic ideas as at the moment (this week) understood as a result of which means a county of 1,000 residents will get the identical state illustration as, say, Denver.
And if these 1,000 rural residents vote extra constantly than these of extra populated counties do, then now they’ve extra illustration than any of Colorado’s precise inhabitants facilities.
A 9News calculation of the outcomes estimates that Lopez’s plan has skewed the final governor’s race by practically 30 factors within the Republican course, turning a strong Democratic win into an absolute drubbing by the hands of the much less standard Republican. On the bottom, the outcomes of Lopez’s plan could be so manifestly ridiculous that it appears like a joke:
“Lopez’s weighting system would have given the two,013 mixed voters in Hinsdale, Kiowa and Mineral counties a complete of 33 electoral votes, greater than double the 14 electoral votes of Denver, Arapahoe and Adams counties’ mixed 761,873 voters.”
Whether or not Lopez simply did not assume this via or whether or not he thought it via lots and simply (cough) occurred to selected a plan that will give vacant rangeland extra illustration in authorities than precise individuals is for now a thriller, besides that Republican politicians hold proposing plans to strip American cities of illustration and hand it over to conservative rural areas as an alternative. Humorous that.
Anyhoo, we’re more likely to hear extra from Lopez within the month between now and the Colorado primaries, and never in a great way. Lopez got positively bodied when going through the identical 9News reporter for an prolonged interview. It was an interview through which reporter Kyle Clark requested how he squared his hard-hard-right abortion views along with his arrest for “violently assaulting your then-pregnant spouse.” Defending himself, Lopez reminded his interviewer that he and his spouse “have been each arrested for assault,” not simply him, and that he is not Jesus, in any case.
I’ve all the time, all the time hated that line. A non secular zealot will get caught after doing one thing completely horrible and feigns outrage about how clearly he isn’t Jesus Himself. The “no one’s excellent” protection.
“Mr. Lopez, you have been arrested after a sequence of brutal serial killings and in your home they discovered 14 half-eaten corpses. When police arrived you have been chewing on a human foot.”
“Properly excuse me, mister judge-a-lot. I by no means claimed to be excellent. I am not Jesus, who I love and who’s my savior. The Bible says that you just should not choose individuals—are you able to cross the mustard, please?—so in the event you ask me the one doing essentially the most sinning round right here is you.”
See, there’s fairly a little bit of zone between “actually Jesus Christ” and, say, “I ate 14 individuals,” and fairly a little bit of that zone nonetheless falls into “not a mass assassin, however in all probability additionally not one of the best individual to place able of serious energy.” We do get to evaluate, and voters do get to determine whether or not or not they need you, personally, explaining morality to them in the event you’ve received a previous historical past that implies you won’t be fully reliable with such issues!
That is, after all, simply one of many causes Republicans are actually stuffed to the brim with concepts about which American votes ought to depend extra and which of them ought to depend solely somewhat or by no means. The subsequent apparent Republican revision might be to declare that any more solely Jesus Himself can vote towards them. He will get all of the electoral votes and also you get none. Oh, however he is on the telephone and he says the Republicans win.
