Tara Ross, NRO:
Opponents of the Electoral College have conjured up yet another scheme by which they hope to undermine America’s unique system of electing presidents. If they are successful, the Electoral College could essentially be eliminated at the behest of a handful of states, without the bother of a constitutional amendment.
[…]
This latest anti-Electoral College effort, the Campaign for the National Popular Vote, was announced on February 23. Five states are currently considering the NPV plan: Illinois, Colorado, Missouri, California, and Louisiana. The Colorado state senate acted on the bill quickly, approving it on April 14.
If enacted, the NPV bill would create an interstate compact among consenting states. Each participating state would agree to allocate its entire slate of electors to the winner of the national popular vote. The compact would go into effect when states representing 270 electoral votes (enough to win the presidency) have agreed to the compact. The eleven most populous states have 271 electoral votes among them, and could thus make this change on their own. If one populous state failed to enact the plan, it could easily be replaced by a handful of medium-sized states.
NPV touts the ease of this change as one of the plan’s best features. Electoral College opponents have tried and failed many times in their efforts to obtain a constitutional amendment. Such a process requires the consent of two thirds of Congress and three-fourths of the states. It’s much easier to obtain the consent of a mere eleven states. And if eleven states get to change the rules of the presidential-election game, without so much as a nod to the remaining thirty-nine states, then why should NPV supporters care? After all, presidential elections can already be won with the votes of only eleven states. So any unfairness in the NPV plan merely reflects the inherent unfairness of the Electoral College system.
It is true that America’s presidential-election system technically could allow the eleven largest states to pick the president. But the incentives inherent in the Electoral College work in the opposite direction, making such an outcome extremely unlikely. The Electoral College encourages presidential candidates to build national coalitions of voters. The compromises that a presidential candidate would have to make to obtain the votes of, say, California and Texas, guarantee that any candidate who manages to obtain the votes of the eleven largest states will also obtain the votes of a majority of states. The last presidential candidate to accomplish this feat was Reagan in 1984, and he obtained the votes of every state except Minnesota. (He also lost the District of Columbia.)
NPV’s legislation, on the other hand, does not ensure national coalition building. To the contrary, the proposal gives the eleven largest states incentives to work against the remaining states: Getting rid of the Electoral College would allow presidential candidates to win with positions that are not at all in the interest of less populous states. To be sure, and as NPV points out, candidates now focus largely on battleground states, but the only reason other states aren’t battlegrounds is because they are, by and large, happy with one of the candidates positions. Moreover, so-called “safe” and “swing” states change constantly. As recently as 1988, California voted consistently Republican. Texas was a safe Democrat state until it began voting Republican in 1980.
Proponents of national presidential elections point out that the president almost always wins the popular vote anyway. But the question is how these votes were won. Changing the system would change the way in which presidential candidates campaign. NPV proponents make much of their slogan “Every Vote Equal.” It’s a nice sounding slogan which appeals to a sense of fairness. But if every vote counted exactly the same, the system would end up being quite unfair to the less populous states. The true question here is whether the nation should vote in a state-by-state presidential election or a national presidential election. Changing from one process to the other would have significant ramifications.
John F. Kennedy once stated that America’s presidential election system is like a solar system of governmental power. If one aspect of the solar system is changed, others will inevitably be impacted. If the gravitational pull of the sun is changed, then the Earth will be pulled out of its orbit. In the same way, if the Electoral College is removed from the nation’s system of electing presidents, then other aspects of the political system will inevitably change. For example, the two-party political system will likely be seriously undermined. Also, presidential candidates will have less incentive to build national coalitions, and they will instead campaign primarily in high population areas.
If NPV succeeds in passing its legislation, citizens living in a majority of states will likely have been denied the opportunity to have a say in the decision about whether America will live in this political solar system or a new one. If getting rid of the Electoral College is such a great idea, then why do its proponents seem to want to bypass the people in enacting it? If it is such a great idea, and one that will serve our interests, why not go national with their case? Apparently they’re not so into voting after all.
[My emphases]
Like many illiberal movements (here, circumventing the Constitutional Amendment process by playing on the populist impulses of those uninformed about the electoral college and hoping to cobble together a coalition that makes the amendment process moot), proponents rely on high-minded soundbites and easy-to-remember slogans, hoping that such bumpersticker argumentation will be an effective substitute for real debate and an actual airing of the issues.
Texas Rainmaker’s Jason Smith notes:
The man that dreamed up the concept, and founded National Popular Vote Inc. is John Koza, a professor at Stanford and a staunch Democrat supporter. He’s donated almost a million dollars to Democrats and Democrat causes since 1990. The President of the organization is Barry Fadem, who supported John Kerry in 2004.
And the liberal MSM is right there in the mix, pushing this measure. The New York Times endorsed it, so did the Chicago Sun Times, the Denver Post, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Houston Chronicle, U.S. News & World Reports and more.
It’s obvious why Democrat supporters and their allies in MSM would push such a measure. They can’t win an election under the procedure that’s been in place for over 200 years. It’s another attempt to make the United States of America look less like the U.S.A.
[…]
We often say that Democrats don’t have a plan, but we’re dead wrong. They have a plan. It’s just not a plan that will make America better or improve the lives of Americans. It’s simply a plan to circumvent our historical electoral process, sidestep a Constitutional amendment and bypass the rights of citizens in an attempt to obtain political power and control.
And it must be stopped.
Even Al Gore agrees… or did:
“[U]nder our constitution, it is the winner of the Electoral College that will be the next president. Our constitution is the whole foundation of our freedom and it must be followed faithfully.â€Â
I wonder when he’ll make public his opposition to the NPV movement. I’m not holding my breath.
When a system that has served us well for over 200 years is challenged by a motivated political group looking to circumvent the amendment process and the considered thoughts of our founders, we should all be wary.
That these groups have become expert at marketing and packaging such programs in populist language meant to prey on those whose knowledge of the electoral process is superficial at best, is perhaps where the real danger lies—particularly if they can manage to get the press on their side.
Anybody feel like launching a high profile national campaign to fight back against this latest attempt by certain Dems to take back power through any justification they can conjure up?
Equality isn’t fair. Because some are more equal than others.
The system that served is for 200 years is one where states allocated their electoral votes on their own, sometimes ignoring large parts of their own populations. Still today almost all states allocate their electoral college votes by ignoring the minority position in their states.
The beauty of this reform is that it builds on this tradition of federalism of the electoral college. Each state decides how to allocate its own votes. The power of the small states to allocate their votes is the same as before.
Thanks for introducing me to this interesting effort.
Ooh, lookie! Actus engages in cheap snark! What a surprise!
Glad I could introduce you to something you can get behind, actus. But while you’re at it, I say you help “reform” the Senate, too. After all, that whole 2 Senators per state thing doesn’t seem fair to some of the bigger states.
Tell me about it. I live in DC.
So these states are proposing to neutralize the popular votes of their entire populations in preference to the popular votes of other states?
Why not just save time and vote to disenfranchise their citizens entirely?
Why am I not surprised by this? And it certainly explains a lot.
TW: special No wonder his comments are always so special
Wouldn’t work anyway because the States can’t bind the votes of the electors…nobody can.
Ooh, I love their sense of irony. Take away the electoral college… without a national vote… Brilliant… Wish I’d thought of it to be honest.
Thanks for bring this one up.
The electorial college was, of course, set up to stop the domination of individual states by a national majority.
That the Colorado Senate has slipped this in is good evidence that state legislators can do quick legislative damage that is difficult to undo before correct review or the input of a majority of informed voters.
Has Colorado really passed this for certain though? Not apparent from the article. (Someone needs to remind Colorado that they are not on the list of 11 big states—CA, FL, TX, NY, OH, PA, IL, MI, NJ, NC, GA or VA)
I am sorry that states like CA or NY have to hampered with care of states like Idaho or Colorado.
That is, unless, this year’s hurricane season sends all the Florida snowbirds to Arizona, Utah, or some such small state. Then you’d get the electorial college written permanently in stone and who cares about CA or NY.
We won’t have to. Any X-File character pretty much nailed why: the first slate of electors to go against the election results in their state will be drawn and quartered in the streets.
Still, I am up for suing the Democratic Party to change their name to something else. After their 2000 performance in Florida, Lautenburg, legislators crossing state lines to flee votes, etc., calling themselves “Democrats” is wholly fraudulent. As this piece demonstrates, they simply aren’t democrats anymore, they’ve become something else.
If I may, I humbly submit “the Trial Lawyer Party” as their new name.
yours/
peter.
And you’re going to sue them to make them change the name to that!
So, in 2004 California would have been obliged to award its 55 electoral college votes to Bush even though Kerry won the state and even if Kerry had managed to eke out an electoral college victory. Right. Why California would even consider such a scheme is beyond me. Pre-1988 notwithstanding, California is a reliably Democratic state, run by Democrats for the benefit of Democrats. This trend is likely to continue well into the foreseeable future. The idea that the Democratic candidate would win the national popular vote and not California’s is laughable. And I thought Colorado was considering proportional allocation of its electoral votes. When did it switch over to this crazy plan?
The only people who advocate end runs around the Constitution or a judiciary that behaves like a legislature are those who can’t get their candidates elected or their agendas advanced legislatively. Pay them no heed.
And other commenters are quite right about the electors.
I agree Jeff, this sort of thing is shocking, but I think that it’s primary purpose is that it will inevitably lead to a host of constitutional challenges, and will effectively allow the courts to choose the president.
Basically, it gives the side that loses a mulligan. If they win the popular vote, but not the electoral vote, they insist on enforcement of the compact. If they win the electoral vote but lose the popular vote, they (i.e. even the people who proposed and supported this plan) can challenge it. Under the specific plan, state legislators could decide up until July 20 of election year whether their state is “in or out” of the pact.
The constitutional amendment process has the distinct advantage that when the rules change, they change everywhere at the same time. This idea would result in their being two different electoral systems in effect at the same time (in different states).
Given that ratification of this end-run around the Constitution in even one state would be bad, I think the Colorado lower-house and governor are the best targets for a “high profile campaign”.
I note that the Left already tried something similar to steal Colorado’s electoral votes with Amendment 36 in 2004. The main reason Amendment 36 failed was that Colorado Democrats, who originally supported the idea and hoped to steal a handful of electoral votes from Bush, began to believe that Kerry might actually win the state outright, and withdrew their support.
We can look forward to electoral and legal gamesmanship on much wider scale if states start adopting this plan.
It probably wouldn’t happen in teh courts. The way it would happen is a legislature of a state that supports one party would pull out of the compact if another party won the popular vote.
And who would the other side (the one that doesn’t control the legislature) turn to challenge that decision, if they weren’t happy about this?
Think real hard now.
Maybe the courts?
What would the courts do? Enforce this compact? How? sounds like it would be hard to get standing or a cause of action.
BECAUSE OF THE DECEASED VOTE!!!!
This point is made in the articles above, but isn’t spelled out clearly enough perhaps. The electoral college provides one enormous benefit which should not so lightly be tossed away.
Namely, a presidential candidate gains no additional benefit if he carries 50.5% of a state or 90% of a state. As such, once he’s happy with his polling numbers in a given state, it’s worth his while to move on to another state. Other states have other priorities, thus forcing presidential candidates to gravitate towards more moderate views.
So my message to the actus’s of the world: if you think George Bush is an extremist, then go ahead and abolish the electoral college. You ain’t seen nuthin yet.
There’s a second factor: home court advantage will become even more important. Since candidates typically carry a disproportionate number of the voters from their home state, it will behoove both parties to run candidates who are only from the most populous states.
Were it not for the electoral college, Bill Clinton never would have been the Democratic nominee in 1992, let alone the winner of the election.
Are you people so sure you want to abolish this system? There’s a peculiar notion, completely irrational and unsupported by facts, that the electoral college favors republicans. This notion came about because George Bush beat Al Gore without winning the popular vote.
The fact that John Kerry was only one state away from returning the favor never crosses their minds.
The Founders could not have known that the Electoral College would protect us against vote fraud. Vote fraud is much easier in dense population centers, where adding 10,000 votes might not be noticed. Less-populous areas can have their legitimate votes easily swamped by such fraud.
Unfortunately, this is only partially effective, and only nationally. Certain states do have this problem. Let’s just say election monitors are unwelcome in Detroit, since they get in the way of votes by people registered to vacant lots and cemetery plots. (Such monitors are, of course, called “racist” and threatened, never mind their legal right to be there.) And Detroit’s vote has determined more than one statewide election recently.
I can’t believe someone who is supposedly an attorney wrote that.
Q: How did Al Gore get SCOFLA to rewrite the state’s election laws for him after the fact in the 2000 election?
A: He (through his lawyers) asked them.
There was no real question or ambiguity about what the existing law mandated, but Gore et al. didn’t like the result, so they asked the courts to change the law, and the they did.
Anyone can “get standing” with a result-oriented court that is sympathetically inclined to grant it.
Peter Jackson  They could go back to their last name: The Confederacy.
Same thing happend with New Jersey’s supreme court to replace Toricelli with Lautenberg on the ballot too close to the election. The law was clear and unambiguous. The court said it didn’t matter, and the Democrats openly mocked Republicans for asking for the law to be followed.
It takes something like this to realize just how dense the left can be when it comes to history and the Constitution. the Electoral College was established not just to protect little states from big states, but to protect rural populations from urban ones. It’s easy to see why the left would support such a measure–their biggest constituencies are in large cities–but this has as much chance of being implemented on the national level as Saddam does of being leader of Iraq again. The argument that “not all of the states gain equal attention” is a poor reason to implement voting laws similar to the one person, one vote concept–instead of smaller or traditionally REpub and Dem states being ignored, all of the attention would be focused on gaining favor with urban areas, ensuring that rural voters become effectively disenfranchised. And this is supposed to be fair?
Not too mention the whole thing could backfire on the Dems. Did they even bother to see the voting patterns by county in the last election? It certainly didn’t favor them. The only reason Dems have ANY clout on the national level is because most of their base lives in large urban areas where population is naturally bigger. The fact that 3 rural representatives outweighs 1 urban one doesn’t seem to cross their mind.
TW: shot. As in, The person who came up with this idea should be shot.
One of the most easily understandable arguments for the Electoral College that I’ve seen goes like this:
The 2002 World Series featured Anaheim vs. San Francisco, and was the last one to go 7 games.
The individual game scores were as follows:
1: SF 4, Anaheim 3
2: Anaheim 11, SF 10
3: Anaheim 10, SF 4
4: SF 4, Anaheim 3
5: SF 16, Anaheim 4
6: Anaheim 6, SF 5
7: Anaheim 4, SF 1
Thus, Anaheim won the Series 4-3.
Now add up scores of the individual games:
SF: 44 runs
Anaheim: 41 runs
So San Francisco lost the Series, despite scoring more runs overall. In particular, they won one very lopsided game by 12 runs, but (under the best-of-seven format) that was worth no more than either of Anaheim’s one-run wins in Games 2 and 6. So, was the World Series format “unfair” to the Giants? Most would laugh at the idea.
Just as the World Series is based on who wins the most games, rather than who scores the most total runs, the Electoral College prevents lopsided outcomes in a few states from determining the overall winner. It is not enough to “run up the score” in contests where you already have the advantage; you have to win a (population-weighted) series of contests across the whole country, and moreover, the contests which matter most are the closely-fought ones at the margins, which has a moderating effect on the platforms of the candidates, who must attempt to appeal to as broad a constituency as possible.
I don’t think this idea is even constitutional:
Unless Congress has approved this deal, I doubt it will fly.
I wouldn’t worry about it. It is completely unconstitutional. First, an intrastate compact is invalid unless ratified by congress. Second, the pact attempts to rewrite the express provisions on the electoral college of the constitution and cannot be allowed to stand.
BTW, that’s Article 1, Section 10 of the constitution.
Lets just say I trust the founding fathers’ wisdom on this far more than I do people now. The Electoral College is the last buffer between “charismatic maniac” winning office and US tyrrany.
Good catch Robert.
According to the proponents of this deal (and not surprisingly, in view of their contempt for the Constitution), they seem to maintain that the despite the seemingly clear language in Article 1, Section 10, there is precedent for compacts which are not endorsed by Congress in areas that are traditionally within the sole purview of the states and do not encroach on the sovereignty of the federal government. Since the selection of electors is an authority granted solely to the states (they argue) congressional approval may not be required under a variety of legal precedents.
So if Congress does not approve, they would presumably try to get the courts to say Congress’s approval is unnecessary. The point is that adoption of state legislation may be the last opportunity to head this off by democratic (i.e. non-judicial) means.
The proponents have written a book which is posted online and outlines their legal strategy in some detail. Obviously an valuable resource for opponents as well as supporters…
Amusing that supposed law student Actus did not spot the Article I problem.
Didn’t do so well in Con Law, Actus?
LagunaDave,
I can see why they might think that, and it’s true that they can choose their electors in any manner, but Congress has to accept the validity of the electors. That’s why there is a federal statute that grants a “safe harbor” date, wherein Congress will not question the validity of the electors if submitted by that date, with some other qualifications.
Clearly Congress has a role in determining the validity of the electors and they could reject them based on that compact not being approved by Congress.
There’s a lot to consider on this issue and I hope they fail. This strategy stinks because it is so obvious that they’ll never get an amendment through, so they’ve opted for stealth techniques.
This is an attack on the constitution. Period. Be afraid of this precedent, regardless of what party you are in.
Again, I think the real point is not even to get the compact passed, but to create another avenue for overturning lost elections.
It’s sort of ironic that up until the weekend before the 2000 election, when the Democrats sprung their October surprise, there were quite plausible scenarios in which Bush would have won the popular vote, while Gore won the electoral college. In fact, until the poll trends shifted in the wake of the DUI dirty trick, it was considered Gore’s best chance to pull out the election…
Another reason why the popular vote is a bad idea is that it means that fraud anywhere in the country (especially in states that are completely controlled by one side) is much more likely to change the outcome of the election nationwide.
Suppose (say) Milwaukee, Chicago or Philadelphia (all Democratic strongholds rife with vote fraud) all announce totals that are inflated by hundreds of thousands of votes in favor of the Democrats (in 2004, the “Democratic” mayor of Milwaukee requested 938,000 ballots for his city, which had only 382,000 registered voters!). This fraud would have to be investigated by the very local and state officials who perpetrated it, and who, by construction, completely control the apparatus of government in their area.
Well, You certainly are correct that it violates the letter of the Consitution. But I’m still worried, as evidenced by Florida and New Jersey.
T/W: Far, the past is like a far off country, they do things differently there.
An odd attitude. I worry about it precisely because it is completely unconstitutional…
What are they going to do? There’s always a way to not make it as a compact. Simply say you’ll assign your EC votes a certain way, unilaterally, but only if other states do so too. No compact. No agreement
But I don’t see the worry. As soon as say, texas, agrees to assign its votes to a democrat, you can bet the legislature will rush back into town to pull out of whatever scheme they set up.
Another reason why the popular vote is a bad idea is that it means that fraud anywhere in the country (especially in states that are completely controlled by one side) is much more likely to change the outcome of the election nationwide.
Not that I’m a LagunaDave sockpuppet or anything, but I wish to give a “hear, hear” on that point above. On the surface, there are pleasing and plausible reasons to give the national vote the nod over the E.C.
But only if we have a very secure, fraud-resistant method of voter screening and counting. Most fraud occurs in precincts with outsized (say, upwards of 80% vs. 20% for the opposition) partisan majorities, because it’s easier, with fewer chances of getting caught.
Those tend, these days and for quite a few decades running, to be Democratic fiefdoms. There are about as many pubblies as there are Dems nationally, but the Dems tend to be heavily concentrated. And Lo! Their turnout can be quite remarkable in, say, Milwaukee or Philadelphia or Chicago.
If there can be real voter and ballot security, then this proposed tinkeing might be given consideration. But not before.
LagunaDave rocks, all the same.
Cordially…
Any X-File character!
That’s a pretty good one, but it would still be deceptive because the Confederacy was democratic.
Robert Prather, that was a great catch. I don’t even recall reading that clause. So to make this fly they now have to subvert two parts of the Constitution. So you got that Democrats? If you want to ditch the Electoral College, amend the Constitution properly. Please.
When I was in my twenties I used to think that the Electoral College was an anachronism needing to be eliminated too. But as I got older I became more and more cognizant of the fact that I wasn’t as smart as the 200 years-worth of Americans that came before me, so I never really thought about it again until the 2000 election. It was only then that I realized just how important it really was. Had it not been for the Electoral College, we wouldn’t have had one Florida in 2000, we’d have had fifty Floridas. Like LagunaDave says above, any city of any size could change the outcome of a close election under a national popular vote system. I don’t mean to sound hysterical, but I can easily envision the end of the republic resulting from that situation. Under a national popular vote system, If the 2000 election ever would have been settled at all, we would probably only just be figuring it out around now.
Shortly after the 2004 election George Will wrote a great column about just how close most of the Presidential elections of the last 50 years really were. In each one he described how 10,000 votes here and 40,000 votes there could have turned around relatively large blocs of electors and changed the outcome of the election. The truth is, the Electoral College has performed a great service for us over the generations by making most of our Presidential elections appear less close and therefore more decisive than they actually were, making it easier for all of us to accept the results and move on.
yours/
peter.
Moreover, it requires a national campaign, and a majority (of electoral votes).
Under the proposed direct election system, the winner is the one with the *most* popular votes.
In a field of, say, 10 candidates from small, regional or single-constituency parties, the winner might conceivably garner as little as 20% of the vote.
While it is true that occasionally we have elections where the winner does not command a popular majority (not only Bush in 2000, but Clinton in 1992 and 1996), they are almost always close.
In some countries, this problem is addressed by having a run-off election between the top two candidates if nobody gets 50%+1 (so that the eventual winner has a majority), but obviously a compact between states can’t provide for a run-off presidential election in the US.
Another baleful effect of doing away with the Electoral College would be the demise of the two-party system, and the rise of a more Balkanized and fragmented political system, where smaller fringe parties would yield disproportionate influence by their ability to tip the balance. One sees this happen regularly in many parliamentary systems.
The two-party system and the electoral college, OTOH, tend to pull political discourse toward the center, giving the most influence to moderate voters who might be receptive to the message of either side.
This problem of splinter political parties is even worse in cases where electors are allocated proportionately, of course.
I’m sure he caught it.
But like any other good little lib, he most likely just ignores the parts of the Constitution that are inconvenient. It’s a “Living Document” you understand…
If this goes into law in any state whatsoever you may expect to see the return of the old tradition of widespread violent removal from public office at the state level, sometimes referred to as asasification, or something like that.
You must wonder who changes the diapers and bedpans of the fools who dream up these schemes.
I must say that article I sec 10 wasn’t mentioned.
ABA accredited school?
Of course. Never heard of one that covers every section of the constitution. Like the speech and debate clause? we didn’t really go over that.
Reading it was assigned, of course, but we didn’t go over it.
Laguna Dave,
“There was no real question or ambiguity about what the existing law mandated, but Gore et al. didn’t like the result, so they asked the courts to change the law, and the they did.”
Sort of, but the FSC was never asked by Gore to intervene – they just decided that they didn’t like the results of the election, so they inserted THEMSELVES. Almost unheard of.
Liberals have absolutely no respect for the law, and don’t care who knows it.
As far as I can see, this plan to pool electoral votes would be unconstitutional. But then again, I am no actus (Thank God)…
Ahem, separation of Church and State; This is an official BushKultist MySpace account. If you must refer to G-d, you will type “G” “dash” “d”, as in G-d.
I’m not sure this is right. Certainly their second (December) intervention was based on an appeal of a lower state court’s ruling against Team Gore’s formal contest of the election.
In the first (November) intervention, this contemporaneous news article indicates that Gore appealed Katherine Harris’ decision that the results of the automatic recount mandated by Florida law should be certified on the date stipulated by law. The first SCOFLA intervention overturned a lower court judge (Terry Lewis, a Democrat) who ruled that Harris had acted reasonably within the discretion granted her as Secretary of State under Florida’s laws in making preliminary certification of the machine recount.
So I don’t think you are right about this specific point. They didn’t have to “insert themselves”, because in both cases Gore’s lawyers appealed unfavorable lower-court rulings.
Laguna Dave,
After ignoring SCOTUS’s first ruling on the FSC ruling, the second intervention was at the FSC’s whim. Gore’s lawyers affected surprise that the FSC had intervened.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think so, because I was so pissed off at the time that I read every spot of ink that I could find about it.
Maybe someone else could straighten us out. It’s really late here, and I am just too old, tired, and lazy to go to Google right now. If no one else remembers this, I will check it out tomorrow. I am almost positive that I am right, though.
Thanks
(Way) Lost Dog
What are they going to do? There’s always a way to not make it as a compact. Simply say you’ll assign your EC votes a certain way, unilaterally, but only if other states do so too. No compact. No agreement
Actus,
There is recourse, I believe. Congress can use the same power it used to create a safe harbor date for validation of the electors to say that any electors sent via a compact or any other form of collusion (like State laws that trigger one another) will be rejected.
The election would then be kicked into the House of Representatives because 270 votes will have been thrown out. That’s one possible way to deal with it.
In regard to other issues raised, yes, I believe the electoral college serves a valuable purpose by corraling vote fraud and such into the districts in which it originates. One of the many benefits of the electoral college.
– The IX and X preclude the Fed from enactment of any laws not expressively given to them by the federation of states. But since the EC was a “given” power” only the Fed could modify it, without an amendment. The same collection of articles implicitly gives soveriegnty to each state within its borders, but precludes “collusion” not ratified by all federation members. The forgotten articles. Got to love ‘em.
Those 13 stripes and fifty stars are not on the flag for nothing. They represent something. The citizens of New Hampshire and Carolina did not want to be ruled by New York City, Boston and Philadelphia in 1789, and they still do not to this day. So they struck a bargain to protect their rights, a Great Compact, the Constitution–which partisans now wish to circumvent in a naked political power-grab.
As has been mentioned, it violates Art.I, Sec.10:
“No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, …enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State”
Also Art.IV, Sec.4:
“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government”–When your votes are given to another candidate, it is not a Republican system.
Also Art.V, which lays out the only proper way to amend the Constitution.
Also Amdt. XII:
“The person having the greatest number of [electoral] votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors”–NOT the person with the greatest number of popular votes if a majority of the whole number of voters.
Also Amdt.XIV, Sect. 1:
“No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”–This proposed law would abridge the privileges of US citizens by assigning their votes to a candidate they rejected, also denying them due process and equal protection.
Also Amdt.XIV, Sect.2:
“the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States…of such State”–The right a state’s citizens to vote for electors is a non-transferable right; it may not be assigned to another state or states and given to a candidate who did not win it.
Also Amdt.XXIV:
“The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President”–Again, the right to vote for electors implies the right to have those votes count, and not be re-assigned against the express will of the state’s voters.
Not to mention it is an open invitation to massive vote fraud on a scale that would dwarf the current number of Dead Voters and Imaginary Friends for Kerry.
Why can’t you Lefties stop subverting the Constitution and win elections the old-fashioned way–by not being so radical and crazy that you scare off normal voters? Try it sometime.
“Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster and what has happened once in 6,000 years, may not happen again.”–Daniel Webster
One thing people don’t often mention about the EC is that it discourages election fraud. For example, no matter what they’re up to in Cook County, the most their ever able to steal would be Illinois 20+ Electoral votes, votes they had a good chance to get anyway.
But if you have a machine entrenched in a large city, and they’re basically the only ones monitoring the vote, they could easily steal as many as a million or more votes, more than enough to swing an election by itself.
The electoral college isn’t perfect, I’d like to see an amendment ensuring that those votes go to the popular vote winner in that state. That we haven’t had a problem with this yet, doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen.
But as the articles point out, there is something very safe and stabilizing about the EC. A place like DC has millions of people all voting in about 88 to 12 proportion for one party. In that sort of situation one city voting in near unaniminity in the whole country is enough to swing a close election. I don’t think that’s the way for a country as large as this to run an election.
And if you think the smaller/rural states are going to lie back and take this if it happens, you’re not paying much attention to politics in those areas. This sounds like a great way to fracture the country even more in half than it already is.
I always thought the people chirping about how bitterly partisan things have gotten didn’t know their history and didn’t know exactly how bitterly partisan things have always been. But somehow lately I’m starting to see their point. It’s starting to sound like both sides are done trying to persuade the other and are just going to try and beat their opponents into submission. No good at all…
I more or less watched the news coverage of this from Election day to the ultimate SCOTUS decision, so I sympathize with you.
But I think you are wrong on the details.
In November, Gore’s team requested that a Florida court bar the preliminary certification. They lost in the county court, and appealed to SCOFLA.
SCOFLA more or less re-wrote the Florida election statutes after the fact, to achieve the result they wanted by allowing a third, subjective hand recount in the counties most likely to give votes to Gore (this SCOFLA decision was 7-0).
There followed something like 11 days of hand counting of ballots in those counties, and when it was over, Bush still had the lead, and Katherine Harris certified (on the new deadline created by SCOFLA) that Bush had carried the state. This happened on Thanksgiving weekend.
After the certification, Florida laws provided for a procedure to contest the certified results. This was argued before a Florida county judge for about a week. Having heard the evidence, and the testimony, this judge ruled that the law had been respected and there was no legal basis for the challenge to the certified results (I watched every minute of the testimony and legal arguments). Unsatisfied by this outcome, Gore’s team appealed this decision to SCOFLA, which resulted in the second (4-3) decision.
In the interim, SCOTUS (unanimously, 9-0) ordered SCOFLA to revisit its original (11/16) decision, which SCOTUS felt had over-reached and failed to pay due respect to the statutes enacted by the state legislature (as provided by the Constitution).
So it is certainly true that SCOFLA ignored both the law, and the SCOTUS decision when it intervened a second time in December. But this second intervention was in response to Gore’s appeal of the lower court’s finding regarding Gore’s contest of the certified results.
SCOFLA certainly exceeded their legitimate authority in re-writing Florida election law after the fact, but the case *was* properly before them both times, as a result of Gore’s appeals.
What a joke. The Founders meant for this country to count its votes state by state. The liberals have done their best to chip away at all of the Framer’s ideas—from state’s rights to the idea that we should be a Christian nation—so why should we be surprised that they’re going after the bedrock of this Republic—the Electoral College?
Imagine how many more problems we’d have in a very close election without the electoral college. Imagine Florida 2000 and the Sore Loserman debacle played out on a national scale. And statistically, the larger the sample, the more likely things are to end up very close, so we’d be likely to have this kind of controversey much more often without the electoral college.
The liberals want this in part because it becomes a way to shout out people who live away from the populous coasts. Getting rid of the electoral college would, in effect, weigh the votes of the coastal elites more heavily while exiling “fly over country” to the dust bin of politics.
I like this proposal because it amounts to shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic. It is just as likely to result in a Republican being elected who would have lost the Electoral College vote without it as it is to help a Democrat. Kerry could have won the presidency with a 120,000 more votes in Ohio; under this scenario it would have taken him 3,000,000 more votes nationally; a much harder task.
This is simply a diversion from the Democrats’ real task, which is to disassociate themselves from the radical left. The left, seeing the writing on the wall, is trying all sorts of maneuvers to try to avoid the purge. They are smartly appealing to liberals’ “something for nothing” mindset. Here’s something that won’t cost us anything that would have resulted in Al Gore’s election in 2000. It’s really akin to the ridiculous Lakoff book, which claims that simply by changing “the frames”, the Democrats can start winning again.
Brainster, that Lakoff book is the most silly thing I’ve ever seen. It talks about things like using the “mother earth” frame to argue for eco-extremism. Far out, man!
The Dems will continue to lose as long as they fail to embrace American values: faith, patriotism, strength, and capitalism. They can come up with all the proposals they want, but the American people aren’t policy wonks. They’ll vote for Jesus and the flag over Marx and flag burning, no matter how ostensibly populist the Democrats’ proposals are.
Millions? In DC? Try quarter of a million. Tops
Actus,
Shame about that poor performance in Con Law.
Oh, and we meant “millions” in D.C., we’ve seen the kind of voter fraud that Democrats engage in.
Its kept me from a lot of high paying corporate jobs.
That really wouldn’t work, as the population is half a million at most.
The biggest benefit of the Electoral College is that it reduces the big state/small state effect. Because the discrepancy between states is smaller, the power of larger states is reduced compared to smaller states.
For example, in a straight by-vote popular election, the only states anyone would have to win would be Texas, Illinois, New York, and California. They could break even or do slightly less than 50% in the rest and win easy. The rest of the states simply have too few population. With the Electoral College, this is broken down into a smaller number each, reducing the relative difference in population.
heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh……
TW: hell. Seriously. As in actus going, “Oh, hell, I shoulda paid more attention to the Constitution!”
Or else, that big corporate money just won’t come calling.
Mayhaps. And mayhaps not, actus. You likely will never find out, though.
TW: College is often the summer of life…..
Now we’re back into that part of the internets where people know me so well. And its a fascinating land.
Dumbest complaint I’ve read all day. This wouldn’t do anything to the big state / small state division, because most small states aren’t in play right now anyway. You don’t see presidential ads in Montana, for instance.
What it would do is lessen the inordinate concentration of presidential ad dollars being spent in Fla., Mo., Mich., Pa., and the other classic battle-ground states. To the extent that Colo. and N.M. are becoming battle-ground states and are at least nominally “less populous,” yes, I suppose suppose instituting popular-vote elections would disadvantage less-populous states. Two of them.
Sheesh.