Posted on 01/29/2007 7:40:26 AM PST by seetheman
It works both ways. In 2004, Bush would have received all of CA's electoral votes because he had won the popular vote, presuming CA signed on to this compact. In 2000, Gore would have received FL's electoral votes.
You can bet your last dime that when this stupid idea goes against the left, they'll sue and try to get it not to count "this time".
You can bet the family farm that this would end up in the Supreme Court and I feel certain they would strike it down in a heartbeat.
Not to worry.
You can bet the family farm that this would end up in the Supreme Court and I feel certain they would strike it down in a heartbeat.
Not to worry.
Technically speaking, can't the Oregon legislature give its electoral votes to the tallest candidate if they want?
Good point, I would definitely characterize this as an Agreement or Compact and I think the Court would too (but you can never tell about that). Then with the consent of Congress they can do it.
This means they want to disenfranchise their voters and give their votes to whomever is leading.....what a crock! Your vote is meaningless under such circumstances.
And the incentive to fraudently manufacture votes will increase about a hundredfold. The Electoral College system may not be perfect, but it makes sense in its own way.
Of course, that means that Bush would have gotten those EV's in 2004.
This clause looks to me like it says that the state legislature may appoint electors any way they want ,but they can't tell them how or who to vote for. Nicht wahr?
I cannot see the voters of Oregon, or any state, agreeing to make their votes utterly irrelevant. It'll never happen.
Another problem with such a plan, is that first there would have to be an actual and agreed-upon nationwide "popular vote". There is no such official tabulation. The character and number of voters changes on voting day, as the poll-closings roll across the country. The first step would be to force all polls to open and close at the same time, with nobody counting *anything* until the last poll has closed.
It would be a massive mess. I think I'll stick with the electoral college.
I thought the same thing, but when confirming the number of Electoral votes for Ohio, I saw that Bush won by about 119,000 votes. I then took it that they were saying if you subtract 60,000 from Bush AND add it to Kerry, then Kerry would have won.
Of course since we 'stole' the election, those 119,000 votes were 'diebold' votes so the Dems would have needed 120,000 'Chicago' votes to make up the difference.
But who are we to spoil their fantasies?
Agreed. But still, in a system driven by the popular vote, the preponderance of the electoral power will reside in the blue bits.
Red regions will at best have a marginal influence on the outcome ... they have to provide "just enough" blue votes for the Democrats, and no more.
The left's reasoning -- probably sound -- is that they can reliably carry majorities in the large population centers, without too much effort. Then they could carefully choose where in the red states to get the marginal percentages needed to create a national majority.
In contrast, Republicans would have to pour in a lot of effort and money to gain a majority in the high-population areas, with little hope of success -- and the red states as a whole don't have large enough red majorities to overcome the difference.
The net result is that the blue areas will control presidential politics, and obviously that favors the Democrats.
So we'll end up with regional strife -- the dense "enfranchised" ruling over the scattered disenfranchised. There's a lot of ugly world history that has flowed from such dynamics.
Oregon cannot wait until it sees what the other states were doing, because it is then beyond the required date. In the first election, George Washington in 1789, three states did not participate. Rhode Island and North Carolina were out, because they had not yet ratified the new Constitution.
New York's failure is square on point, however. It's legislature was unable to agree on an election law. It missed the deadline, and therefore did not participate in that election.
Congressman Billybob
Latest article: "Announcement: I'm Not Running for President"
It seems to me that Oregon can select the electors at any time before the EC meets. Or can enact any mechanism that selects them before they meet.
There is time to do so (they'd have to have an "out" if the votes were not determined).
Of course, this is a profoundly stupid idea on every front -- no, seriously, anybody who wants this should be involuntarily committed -- I just don't see how it is unconstitutional.
Hey Oregon--why not just sell your vote to the highest bidder on eBay??
These EC threads continue to grow. If they go so far as a Constitutional amendment, Alaska will probably apply for admission to the Russian Federation.
Actually, no ... it's nefarious, but I think it's probably pretty clever if you look at it the right way.
Back when Tip O'Neil was Speaker, he had a saying that "all politics is local."
This "majority of the national vote" idea would seem to turn that around to a paradigm of "all politics is national."
If you put it that way, then the numbers show that the Democrats can undoubtedly count on being able to concentrate their money more efficiently than Republicans. The Democrats know that the high density population areas won't turn less blue with time. So they've got their safe blue areas where they can count on a significant portion of the national majority. The remaining few million votes can be addressed as best suits the Democrats' needs.
In the case of states like Oregon, their Democrat legislators are thinking of themselves as part of the national party. They don't care about Oregon's electoral votes so much as they care about getting a Democrat elected president. By doing this, they completely nullify the Republicans of their own state, and allow the Democrats to focus their money elsewhere.
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