Speaker 1: Texas Republicans are considering an amendment which would prevent Democrats
from winning any state election in Texas. Listen to this. Republicans are considering Republicans
in Texas are considering a number of amendments, that they, voted on. And we are awaiting results
on one of which would require any candidate for statewide office to win a majority of the
counties in Texas, 254 counties in Texas. The reality, of course, is that this would make
it absolutely impossible for Democrats to win in Texas, because when Democrats win in Texas,
they're not winning a majority of the land area. They're winning certain high population counties.
So if you say, hey, there's 254 counties, in order to win, you need to get half plus one,
which I guess would be 128 counties. If you win the popular vote in Texas in a statewide
office, but you did not win 128 counties, then you don't get to actually hold that
office. This basically means Democrats can't win. Republicans, as many of you probably suspect,
dominate most of the sparsely populated rural counties. So by the number of counties in Texas,
Republicans have a massive advantage. Now, it is true that on a population basis,
Texas is much more split. It's still a red state, but occasionally Democrats can win. And certainly,
there are races in which Democrats do have a shot at winning. But the idea here is that you
are going to allow Texas to be controlled by the barely populated red counties on the map,
even more so than it already is to a degree. Now, you might be saying, David, that that can't
possibly be legal, can it? There is controversy over whether this is legal and indeed your
instinct that it may not be legal, makes a lot of sense, because if you violate the principle of one
person, one vote, if you violate the principles of the Voting Rights Act, then whatever you're trying
to do may indeed be illegal. Now, what what is interesting to talk about is that what Texas wants
to do here, which is to say, regardless of the popular vote in Texas, if you don't win at least
half the counties, you don't get to hold office. It's the similar problem that we've identified
with the National. Electoral College. I've been an advocate of a national popular vote for a very
long time now. If you think about the concept concept of one person, one vote. The Electoral
College gives smaller states proportionally more power on a votes per capita basis than larger
states. It gives, therefore, the individual voter of Wyoming more power than the individual voter of
North Carolina. In a sense, it is not one person, one vote. Now, I'll give you the math of it in a
moment, but we already see this in practice. Presidential candidates focus their campaigns
on the swing states, where you have an uncertain outcome. Now, I know Trump is lying and saying,
we're going to win new Jersey and New York. He's not going to win new Jersey or New York. He
doesn't know what's going on. He's been spending a lot of time in a courthouse in New York. So
he's been doing rallies geographically nearby. But there's really no sense to either candidate, quite
frankly, going and doing rallies in California or Connecticut or places that are skewed very
much one way or the other. This is why they go to Wisconsin and they go to Georgia, and they go to
Michigan, and states that are potentially going to go one way or the other. So you have a predictable
majority in certain places, and then you focus just on these few spots. So now let's get back
to the math of it. How is it that if you get one vote in Wyoming, it's worth more than if you get
one vote in North Carolina? Isn't it just one vote either way? And the answer is very much not
because of the Electoral College. Let's see. I'm going to challenge myself to see if I can explain
this clearly. Wyoming has three electoral votes. Okay. North Carolina has 16 electoral votes,
three in Wyoming, 16 in North Carolina, the population of Wyoming is 581,000. Where is the
population of North Carolina is just under 11 million. So if we say how many electoral votes
per person are there in Wyoming, it's 5.2 times ten to the negative six power. Forget about times
ten to the negative six because both of these are times ten to the negative six. Okay. So in
Wyoming each voter controls 5.2 times ten to the negative. Sixth power votes in North Carolina with
16 electoral votes and nearly 11 million people, each vote is worth 1.5 rather than 5.2. So again,
forget about times ten to the negative six. We zero them out. 5.2 is your vote power in Wyoming
and 1.5 is your vote power in North Carolina in terms of the population relative to the electoral
vote. So a vote in Wyoming has 3.5 times the influence as a single vote in North Carolina.
That is not one person, one vote. By the way, if you look, you know, they love to talk about,
well, look at California 55 electoral votes on a population adjusted basis. Your vote is worth the
least in California, followed by Texas, Florida and New York. Very high population states. So
I would love one person, one vote. The way to actually get to one person, one vote is no more
Electoral college. And what Texas is considering what Texas Republicans are considering in light of
this amendment that they have going is essentially doing the same thing we've done nationally,
which is get away from one person, one vote, and get into this. Well, yes, everybody gets one vote,
but you've got to win half the counties and if not, you don't win. I can't imagine that this
is legal. Legal scholars are leaning towards it's not legal. Let's see what happens with the vote.
And and these people are desperate, okay? They see what's happening in Texas, which is not in 2024,
probably not in 2028. But things are definitely changing demographically in Texas. And political
orientation is also changing. And they are terrified. So what can they do? They say, hey,
let's give the empty rural counties more power. By requiring every candidate for statewide office to
win a majority of the counties. It's disgusting. They are desperate. It's probably illegal. And
let's hope it doesn't go any further. Let's take a super quick break. By the way, if you
missed or didn't get the email yesterday morning with a one day Memorial Day membership special,
the email did go out. Maybe the email went to spam, maybe it was blocked by your email server,
I don't know, but it did go out. If you missed it and you want to take advantage of it, no problem.
Just email info at David pakman.com and say, Hey David, give me that code please. Hey David,
give me that code please. And we will send you the code. You can still take advantage of it.