Activists celebrate blows to Electoral College

WorldNetDaily ^ | 04/07/2009 | Drew Zahn

[GoldStandard]

Activists seeking to eliminate the Electoral College in favor of a popular vote to elect the president boast that their movement is almost one-fifth the way to its goal.

Four states – Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland and New Jersey – which represent 50 of the 270 electoral votes needed to declare a presidential election winner, have committed to an agreement whereby they would grant their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, a move that – if adopted by enough states – would reduce the Electoral College to irrelevancy.

With most of the nation's states considering similar bills pending in their respective legislatures, activists are looking to 2016 as a possible death date for the Electoral College.

[dr huer]

If the result is to be chosen by popular vote, then a recount would take forever. A fraud in Maine would be of intense interest to California. Boxes of absentee ballots kept in storage to be thrown into the count at a critical moment. Florida 2000 times fifty!

[edcoil]

“but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.”

What is an office of Profit? Is that a Board member to a company?

[uncitizen]

This is what the Constitution says regarding the selection of Electors by the States.

Doncha know the Constitution is just a piece of paper now? I'm surprised BO didn't present it as a gift to Queen Elizabeth. Heck, he doesn't need it anyway.

[My Favorite Headache]

Obama was talking about his administration being the only thing protecting corporations from pitchforks....we ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

[nathanbedford]

My first reaction is to observe there is a real distinction between a constitutional grant of power in the state legislature to choose an elector and vesting power in the state legislature to make the choice a nullity even before the choices is made.

A quick look at Wikipedia indicates that there is not a dispositive case on the issue. Here's part of what is said there:

"Faithless electors

Main article: Faithless elector

A faithless elector is one who casts an electoral vote for someone other than whom they have pledged to elect, or who refuses to vote for any candidate. There are laws to punish faithless electors in 24 states. In 1952, the constitutionality of state pledge laws was brought before the Supreme Court in Ray v. Blair, 343 U.S. 214 (1952). The Court ruled in favor of state laws requiring electors to pledge to vote for the winning candidate, as well as removing electors who refuse to pledge. As stated in the ruling, electors are acting as a functionary of the state, not the federal government. Therefore, states have the right to govern electors. The constitutionality of state laws punishing electors for actually casting a faithless vote, rather than refusing to pledge, has never been decided by the Supreme Court. While many states may only punish a faithless elector after-the-fact, some such as Michigan specify that his or her vote shall be cancelled.[20]

As electoral slates are typically chosen by the political party or the party's presidential nominee, electors usually have high loyalty to the party and its candidate: a faithless elector runs a greater risk of party censure than criminal charges.

Faithless electors have not changed the outcome of any presidential election to date. For example, in 2000 elector Barbara Lett Simmons of Washington, D.C. chose not to vote, rather than voting for Al Gore as she had pledged to do. This was done as an act of protest against Washington, D.C.'s lack of Congressional voting representation.[21] That elector's abstention did not change who won that year's presidential election, as George W. Bush received a majority (271) of the electoral votes. "

What the state legislatures are doing here is actually disenfranchising voters of their own state in favor of voters in another state will have established the majority for a candidate. That is significant because a situation as occurred in 2000 might well occur again in which the minority candidate wins the most electoral votes. A situation that this reform is designed to prevent. But do not the voters of this state who voted for the minority candidate have a right to have him elected if their own electoral votes would have put them over the top in the College?

If they do not, why bother conducting an election in that state? The Secretary of State for such a state in question simply waits until 49 other states have established the majority candidate and certifies the election for that candidate within the subject state. This argument holds until enough states adopt this rule which make it impossible to determine a majority.

Finally, there is the argument that the Constitution calls for electors not legislatures themselves directly to determine the winner in the state. This proposed reform entirely goes away with the function of an elector. Presumably they had a function or they would not have been inserted by the framers into the process. The argument is that the legislatures cannot take away that function-whatever it is.

[cripplecreek]

I think people better take a long hard look at the map from the Nat pop vote site if they think they’re safe.

http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/

[dpwiener]

This is what the Constitution says regarding the selection of Electors by the States.
"Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector."
Sounds like the States can do what they want regarding the appointment of the Electors.

That's correct, so in that respect this effort to effectively void the Electoral College without a Constitutional Amendment could work and still be constitutional. It's a clever plan.

However, it runs into a problem with Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution: "No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, ... enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State ...". So there's a strong argument (but not bullet-proof, given the way that the courts give flexibility to the Constitution) that Congress would have to approve a formal agreement among the states. That would only require a majority of both houses of Congress, but Senators from the smaller states would likely oppose it so it wouldn't be easy passing such consent.

Of course this Constitutional issue could be avoided if states made no formal agreement among themselves, but merely promised to cast their Electoral votes for the popular vote winner (when other states totalling 270 Electoral votes had made similar promises). The problem with that is that any state could easily renege on such a promise if it didn't like the outcome.

[ZULU]

Imagine.

Imagine the ENTIRE UNITED STATES ruled by voter in NEW JERSEY, HAWAII, ILLINOIS, MARYLAND, and........ Perhaps California, New York, New York and FLORIDA????

THAT would be the result of the elimination of the Electorall College - government by corrupt, Democrat ridden Urban enclaves.

Its all over. George Bush dug the hole and Obama, Pelosi, and Reid are conducting the Funeral. The burial will come when this is accomplished.

[Vaduz]

If voting worked the government wouldn’t let us do it see president obama election ACORN snickers.

[Vermont Lt]

If I recall correctly, the Constitution leaves it up the to states to determine how the electors are apportioned. For example, MA is a winner take all state, yet Maine assigned electors by congressional district.

These people voting for this type of assignment of electors are simply handing the presidency over to New York and California.

Stupid.....

[19th LA Inf]

Texas will be a Democratic State by 2020.

Or maybe two states. Didn't the original admission of Texas to the Union specify that the citizens had the right to form up to five states at will? Some argue that the Civil War secession nullified this right.

[IYAS9YAS]

Plus I believe the Supreme Court would probably invalidate this anyways.

Nope. How the electoral votes are allocated is strictly up to the states.

IIRC, Maine and Nebraska give the winner of each district the electoral vote for that district, then the two senatorial votes go to the overall state winner. I would actually prefer this method, over a state giving 100% of the electoral vote to the winner of 51% of the total vote. We could actually have a real representation again.

[nathanbedford]

It Is true that the Constitution gives the legislatures the power to appoint electors. The question is does the Legislature have the power to deprive those electors of their discretion? The very language you quoted, denying persons holding offices of trust or profit from being electors was clearly written to prevent corruption among electors. If the electors were to have no discretion there is no room for corruption therefore the language indicates that the framers intended that the electors have discretion.

Evidently the cases are few and divided and not particularly on point. Although I think it has been held permissible to have the electors to be required to vote majority winner who won in the state.

Moreover as I indicated in my post number 45, this reform denies voters within the state who comprise a majority within in that state their very franchise if the majority count across the nation goes against their choice. It seems to me that once the Legislature appoints electors according to a process-in this case voting by the populace-the Legislature cannot set aside the process by fiat because that would be violative of all our case law arising out of civil rights. It would render the process a nullity. It would render it an absurdity.

God only knows what our Supreme Court as presently constituted would do with such case but it would take the nimble mind of a liberal justice to find justification for an absurdity in the permutations and emanations of the Constitution.

One final thought: if there ever were to be a way to make Obama a tyrant, no path could be straighter or smoother than this.

[pleikumud]

The Constitution, which is our country, has been trashed and is being trashed on a daily basis. An excellent book on this subject is “The Dirty Dozen” by Robert Levy and William Mellor. It’s about 12 Supreme Court decisions that undermine the letter and intent of the Constitution.

One of the most vocal critics of the Electoral College is Senator Bill Nelson of FL, who thinks it should discarded. Like all Demo-Socialist demagogues, he believes in mob rule, not our republican form of government.

Without the Electoral College, which the founders wisely provided for, it would be possible for a presidential candidate to ignore about 21 States while campaigning. He could focus on those States which have the major cities and win. This would disenfranchise about 1/3 of the voters. And it would kill the concept of this being a union of “sovereign” States.

Right after killing the Electoral College, the Demo-Socialists would finally kill freedom.

[DuncanWaring]

Mathematical proof of the legitimacy of the Electoral College:

Math Against Tyranny.

[WOSG]

“50 out of 270 isn’t that special.”

Actually, it is special. These states are now irrelevent from the perspective of political campaigns. This is a decision they will regret come 2012.

If we can keep Red States to holding on to the electoral college, it will help a Republican sweep the board. Winning Illinois electoral votes without having campaigned there? Priceless!

[WOSG]

“There is no way they would want the “blue” states like California voting for a Republican.”

Ah, but it would make a fine ‘hoisting on their own petard’ moment for this awful idea.

[WOSG]

“These people voting for this type of assignment of electors are simply handing the presidency over to New York and California.”

... where they get illegals to vote, manufacture votes the old-fashioned machine-Democrat way and/or otherwise browbeat people to vote for uber-liberalism.

[GraceG]

If this gets passed it gives the liberals enough leeway to manipulate the elections via lawsuits and SCOTUS decisions.

They will most definitely sue if they think they can win the crooked way.

I am beginning to think that the main reason Liberals hate the constitution is it’s unwavering set of rights and laws is the fact it can’t be manipulated in the courts.

Laws should always be written to be concise and specific, but any law these days is written by career lawyers so we get bloated easily manipulated and/or ignored legislation.

[WOSG]

These insights came quickly, but it was many years before Natapoff devised his formal mathematical proof. His starting point was the concept of voting power. In a fair election, he saw, each voter’s power boils down to this: What is the probability that one person’s vote will be able to turn a national election? The higher the probability, the more power each voter commands. To figure out these probabilities, Natapoff devised his own model of a national electorate--a more realistic model, he thought, than the ones the quoted experts were always using. Almost always, he found, individual voting power is higher when funneled through districts--such as states--than when pooled in one large, direct election. It is more likely, in other words, that your one vote will determine the outcome in your state and your state will then turn the outcome of the electoral college, than that your vote will turn the outcome of a direct national election. A voter therefore, Natapoff found, has more power under the current electoral system.

Good article. The point is that the electoral college doesnt dilute our voting power, it sharpens it. We have more change of influencing the election as part of the state voting majority, which in turn can make or break a Presidential candidate, then as part of the blob of 100 million voters.

The liberals know this. They know the urban, not-too-informed Democrat sheeple will punch the ticket automatically. They want to disenfranchise the smaller states in 'flyover country'...

James Madison, chief architect of our nation’s electoral college, wanted to protect each citizen against the most insidious tyranny that arises in democracies: the massed power of fellow citizens banded together in a dominant bloc. As Madison explained in The Federalist Papers (Number X), a well-constructed Union must, above all else, break and control the violence of faction, especially the superior force of an . . . overbearing majority. In any democracy, a majority’s power threatens minorities. It threatens their rights, their property, and sometimes their lives.

Madison was right to be concerned. That's exactly what the liberals are trying to do.