Posted on 02/05/2018 9:04:48 AM PST by SunkenCiv
Article II of the Constitution gives states broad authority to decide how their electoral votes are selected and divided among the candidates. In 48 states, the candidate who gets the most votes wins all of the state’s electoral votes. But the Constitution doesn’t require that rule. Maine and Nebraska have implemented district- by-district voting. One electoral vote goes to the winner in each congressional district, and the remaining two electoral votes are awarded to the winner of the statewide popular vote.
Assume, however, that a state enacts a law giving all its electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the national popular vote. And assume further that the law says it will not be effective unless enough other states pass the same law to yield a total of at least 270 electoral votes. That would be perfectly valid under Article II. It would force a majority of electoral votes to be cast for the national popular vote winner -- without amending the Constitution.
But is it a good idea? The Framers meticulously crafted an electoral model that reduced sectionalism and reinforced minority rights. Instead, popular voting would favor regions with high voter density and large states over small. "One man, one vote" may be the rallying cry of a democracy; but that is not our form of governance. We are a constitutional republic; political outcomes are not always determined by majority rule. For example, it takes two-thirds of Congress to override presidential vetoes, approve treaties, impeach a president, or expel a member of Congress. Imagine if NPVIC had been operative in 2004: George W. Bush would have received all of California’s electoral votes even though John Kerry trounced Bush statewide by 10 percentage points.
(Excerpt) Read more at cato.org ...
If the NPV advocates made any sense, or could discern any, yes, quite. In 2004 though, GWB won anyway, while Lurch spent election night trying to buy replacement medals on eBay.
The fixed size of the House is part of the reason the Electoral College is perceived to be a little off-kilter. The fact is, if the House membership were permitted to rise based on legal US population, more and more of the House would be under defacto control of the gerrymandered, corrupt, single party state of California.
Electoral college termination would kill us as quick as Texas going democrat
Oops, I have to redact myself in that, my maths was wrong, it would be 8 electoral votes for Republicans and a paltry 4 for democrats.
The States can decide on how to allocate their electoral votes. There is nothing preventing the states from abolishing an election altogether and declaring it from the Governor’s office.
Of course that is extreme and the 2nd amendment would gain in popularity after they tried it.
But the point is that all the reform you wish to grant at the state level is open to the states. The constitution is never going to be changed for that, and even discussing it is really a waste of time.
Hi.
I have a better idea
Partition Kalifornia.
5.56mm
No.
We do need to reform the census.
Non-citizens, legal or otherwise, should not be counted for the purposes of creating congressional districts or allocating electors.
Next Question.
” who wins the national popular vote”
Kinda defeats the purpose of voting by state.
It all boils down to the fact that under the Constitution, the states elect the POTUS. And that an animus against the states is entailed in anything which democratizes the selection of officers whose number is related to the number of states.Article V defines the way the Constitution can be amended, and that is by the states. The Constitution itself was originally ratified by the states. The Constitution defines a republic, and it is a “messy” governmental structure. By design. It woulda been easy to define a democracy, but the framers of the Constitution were dead set against that. And they had sound reasons.
That has it's downside though. In most presidential elections, the difference in votes between the candidates in almost every state is great enough that a recount isn't likely to change the results. Therefore the outcome of the election in each state is known on election night, and in turn, the candidate receiving the most electors nationwide is known that night. However, nationwide, there may well be dozens of districts which may need a recount to determine a winner. Enough districts may still be "too close to call" on election night that no winner can be declared. In order to know which candidate will actually receive the most electors nationwide, those recounts will all need to be completed first. We'd go into the Florida recount debacle to an exponential degree. Lawsuit after lawsuit, and one court decision after another (many contradictory to decisions by other courts) about which districts actually need to be recounted, and fights over how the counts are done.
There being only 3 districts in Nebraska and 2 in Maine makes the risk of those electoral college votes being up in the air extremely unlikely that the next president isn't known on election night. It's a completely different game when you change it from those 5 districts, to the 435 nationwide.
About the only thing worse would be electors being awarded based on the nationwide count. That would too often result in every single vote in the US having to be recounted in order to determine the winner, and the lawsuits and court decisions back and forth on what votes will be counted would go up to a level to where the Supreme Court will basically need to just declare a winner instead of counting the votes of the voters.
We have elections in order to choose which candidate gets elected. When people vote, they want the votes counted so they can know the same day if their candidate won or if the other candidate did. They DON'T want to be put on hold for weeks while the court battles play out.
Award electoral votes by congressional districts with the overall popular vote winner of the state getting the additional 2 senate votes. That would cut down considerably the influence of the big liberal costal states.
Yeah, good idea — the current proposal for that would see California split five ways, thus the de facto votes in the House would remain, but they’d pick up eight new senators.
California is registering illegals to vote as they issue them driver’s licenses.
That would work. It definitely would put a voice to every district, not just the ones with high rises.
That would give the libs something to whine about.
I’ve heard this bandied about for some time... why would a small rural state ever care to be part of this? The only reason they have a say, is because the electoral college doesn’t care what the mob says.
The first purpose of the Electoral College was to elevate men of only the highest virtue, wisdom and talents to the executive office.
In order to exercise his powers for the greater good of the nation, these exceptional men were not to be beholden in any way to the electors who put them into office or to anyone else. Like hereditary kings, un-beholden presidents were to stand above factional disputes. They were to execute their sworn duty to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States,” without the encumbrance of paying off political debts.
To do this, society in each state forms a temporary pool or college of presidential electors. Instead of imposing the exact procedure to be used, the Framers assisted the cause of ratification by assigning to the states the responsibility of designing their particular elector selection systems. The people or state legislatures would hopefully vote for upstanding men as presidential electors, who in turn would likewise use their measured judgement in their vote for president.
Soon after the electors are determined, have them caucus in their states and vote on the same day nationwide for their choice of president. With so little time between the creation of electors, whose identity is unknown to the public, and their vote for president, the Framers’ design rendered corruption of the electors all but impossible.
State elector ballot results were then sealed and sent to the President of the US Senate, who would open the certificates in a joint session of congress. Under the Framers’ design, the outcome of presidential elections wasn’t known until the results were made public in the presence of congress.
More at Donald Trump - The Echo of our Framers' Uncorrupted President.
http://articlevblog.com/2016/07/donald-trump-the-echo-of-our-framers-uncorrupted-president/
Just a few COUNTIES, actually! Al the big RAT-infested cities and their suburbs would dominate.
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