Letters 19

I'm writing to encourage Vermonters to attend the public meetings that the Agency of Transportation has begun to hold throughout the state.

[susan]

RE: Questions about The National Popular Vote bill

Under the current system of electing the President, no state requires that a presidential candidate receive anything more than a plurality of the popular votes in order to receive all of the state’s electoral votes.

Not a single legislative bill has been introduced in any state legislature in recent decades (among the more than 100,000 bills that are introduced in every two-year period by the nation’s 7,300 state legislators) proposing to change the existing universal practice of the states to award electoral votes to the candidate who receives a plurality (as opposed to absolute majority) of the votes (statewide or district-wide). There is no evidence of any public sentiment in favor of imposing such a requirement.

And there are no run-off provisions in any state now. The National Popular Vote plan does not change the status quo on this issue.

The National Popular Vote is intentionally "minimalist" in the sense that does not attempt to solve "problems" that the current system does not address or where there is no public consensus that there is a "problem." No state requires a run-off election if the leading presidential candidate does not get a majority, despite the fact that no presidential candidate received an absolute majority of the popular votes in 1992, 1996, and 2000, that third parties frequently affect the outcome of presidential elections (e.g., Nader in 2000, Perot in 1992, Anderson in 1980), and that the states clearly already have the power to create a run-off election for president if they so desire.

The current winner-take-all system does not protect the two-party system. It simply discriminates against third-party candidates with broad-based support, while rewarding regional third-party candidates. In 1948, Strom Thurmond and Henry Wallace both got about 1.1 million popular votes, but Thurmond got 39 electoral votes (because his vote was concentrated in southern states), whereas Henry Wallace got none. Similarly, George Wallace got 46 electoral votes with 13% of the votes in 1968, while Ross Perot got 0 electoral votes with 19% of the national popular vote in 1992. The only thing the current system does is to punish candidates whose support is broadly based.

[Peter Tinkham]

I KNOW WHAT WE SHOULD DO ... RAISE TAXES!

Congress is currently considering the idea of raising fuel taxes by ten cents. Right now we pay 18.4 cents a gallon on gas and 24.3 cents on diesel. Congress thinks that this would be a great time to increase those taxes that you are paying at the pump.

Why???? Well, it seems that our federal government doesn't have enough money to spend on highway projects. The chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Jim Oberstar (D-MN) presented the House with a list of how many jobs we will lose if we don't continue to spend tax dollars on highway construction and infrastructure. Oberstar says, "We'll put all things on the table ... but the gas tax is the cornerstone. Nothing else will work without the underpinning of the higher user fee gas tax." Gas tax revenues are down, of course, because the high price of gas is forcing people to consume less.

Here's an FYI for you ... If you include state and local taxes, Americans pay about 47 cents on average in taxes for a gallon of gas. In many European countries, gas costs $8 to $9 a gallon, and at least half of that goes to taxes