51% IS NOT A MANDATE - Especially When All the Votes Were Not Counted

51% IS NOT A MANDATE

Especially When All the Votes Were Not Counted

Blogged by JC on 05.02.05 @ 03:03 PM ET

The mainstream media seems to be waking up to the idea that all of the post-election talk about a mandate was just that: talk. Under the understated headline, "Doubts About Mandate for Bush, GOP," the Washington Post reports that the President's poll numbers are plummeting, his social security privatization plan and cuts are unpopular, and Congressional Republicans are abusing their power and are, likewise, very unpopular. They conclude that maybe there was never a mandate after all. In other words, they conclude "the main question facing Bush and his party is whether they misread the November elections."

-snip-

The second point is the continued disregard of the most obvious explanation for these low poll numbers by the mainstream media. They wonder: how can a President, just re-elected, have such low poll numbers and hold positions on the issues that are so unpopular? Is he already a lame duck? Better questions: was he just re-elected legitimately, or was voter suppression and machine malfunction or malfeasance used to manipulate election results? In other words, maybe these polls, rather than our broken election system, better reflect the true will of the people.

-snip/more-

http://www.conyersblog.us/archives/00000075.htm

the true will of the people. No shit sherlock. :)

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majority and have the balls to stand up and say BULLSHIT when they try to steal it again.

...Jon Corizine

THE REPUBLICANS DO NOT REPRESENT THE MAJORITY OF VOTERS--LOOK AT THIS
WYOMING AND R.I HAVE AS MANY SENATORS AND CA AND NY SEE STORY

PLEASE TELL YOUR FRIENDS
Who is the Senate Majority?
Since shortly after the 2004 elections, Senate Republicans have publicly discussed rewriting the filibuster rules so that a minority can no longer block a floor vote. Republicans' justification for doing this rests on the claim that the GOP represents the popular will, while Senate Democrats are an "obstructionist minority" that "refuses to accept reality."

But do Senate Republicans truly represent the majority of voters?
Not at all. Although Republicans gained four Senate seats in the 2004 elections, Republican Senate candidates actually lost the nationwide popular vote. In 33 Senate races across the country, 41.6 million Americans cast votes for Democratic candidates, while just 38.1 million voted for Republicans.

Though only a third of the Senate was chosen in 2004, the 2002 election had a similar bias: Republicans won 65% of the available seats with just 50.1% of the popular vote (52% ignoring votes for third parties). In 2000, Democrats won 56% of the available seats with a bare plurality of the popular vote, but this was not enough to balance the results of 2002 and 2004. In all, over the past three Senate elections, Democrats have beaten Republicans by nearly 2 million votes -- yet Republicans hold a 55-seat Senate majority

Popular votes
Senate seats
Democratic Republican Other Democratic Republican Other
2000 36,788,222 36,729,792 5,797,467 19 15 0
2002 20,470,371 22,198,747 1,606,029 12 22 0
2004 41,630,347
38,142,004 2,114,685 15 19 0
Total 98,888,940 97,070,543 9,518,181 44* 55** 1**
*46 Democrats won election, but only 44 are in the Senate today. (Mel Carnahan died, and Zell Miller served just a four-year term.)
**56 Republicans won election, but one (Jim Jeffords) became an independent in 2001.

This is the second time in four years that the popular vote has failed to determine control of the federal government. In 2001, we inaugurated a Republican President even though a plurality of voters had chosen a Democrat. In 2005, we have a Republican-controlled Senate even though a plurality of votes were cast for Democrats.

These failures have the same basic cause: Democratic votes tend to be concentrated in large urbanized states. In the 2004 Senate race, Democratic candidates won three large states (Illinois, California, and New York) by more than 2 million votes each; Republicans had a million-vote victory in only one state (Ohio). Overall, in 2004 Democrats won 15 states by a total margin of 10.8 million votes, while Republicans won 19 states by a total margin of 7.3 million votes.

"By reference to the one person, one vote standard," write the political scientists Frances Lee and Bruce Oppenheimer, "the Senate is the most malapportioned legislature in the world." Defenders of the Senate point to history and the Constitution, but the historical record is ambivalent. The apportionment of the Senate nearly nearly broke up the Constitutional Convention; the current system passed only after small-state delegates threatened to walk out. Framers including James Madison, James Wilson, and Alexander Hamilton opposed giving small and large states an equal number of Senators. Under such a scheme, Madison feared, "the minority could negative the will of the majority of the people." This is exactly the situation that we have today.

Madison also feared that "the evil instead of being cured by time, would increase with every new State that should be admitted." He was right. Today, a party could in principle control the Senate by winning the 26 least populous states -- though those states contain less than 18% of the U.S. population. The actual distribution of parties is much less extreme that this, but Republicans do gain some excess power by winning less-populous states.

Although they hold a majority of Senate seats, Republicans do not represent a majority of voters or a majority of the population.
When a majority of voters are represented by a minority of legislators, those legislators have a special obligation to make their voice heard. The filibuster represents an important way to do this. By weakening the filibuster, Senate Republicans would further magnify the power of the minority who elected them. It may be legal, but it is not democratic.

Just like the Congressman says: no way did he win in November. It was another crooked election. Maybe Conyers can reveal the latest stolen election and throw out Bush.

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was under 51. more like 50.7 and we KNOW that tons didn't go to the chimp.