Posted on 04/01/2019 5:24:47 AM PDT by Kaslin
Ronald Reagan was reportedly fond of referencing the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Monahan’s admonition, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.”
Today, that would most particularly include opponents of the growing drive to enact the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which would award 270 electoral votes and the presidency to the candidate who wins the most popular votes across all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Of all the myths conjured up by naysayers to try and torpedo the compact, perhaps the most egregious portray the measure as either unconstitutional or an effort to eliminate the Electoral College. Both are patently false.
The compact isn’t the same thing as the national popular vote that the 2020 presidential candidates are calling for. The compact is 100 percent constitutional and consistent with the intent of the Founding Fathers, who explicitly gave states the authority under the Constitution to form agreements among themselves for any number of reasons. There is no issue with the states usurping the power of the federal government.
Moreover, while some reform advocates argue for elimination of the Electoral College through a long and cumbersome effort to amend the Constitution, the compact preserves the Electoral College intact, exactly as the Constitution specifies. In fact, the compact states that if the Electoral College is done away with, the compact goes away.
Under the Constitution, states are free to award their electors in any way they see fit. There is absolutely nothing in the Constitution either mentioning or mandating the current winner-take-all system by which most states award their electoral votes. The Founding Fathers never approved it. By entering the compact, the states agree to direct their Electoral College votes through a popular vote.
The myths and falsehoods aren’t limited to the Constitution and the Electoral College. Another falsehood imagines the votes of large, populous states running roughshod over smaller, less populated states. This is patently untrue. More people live in rural areas and small towns than in the big cities. If Republicans direct their campaign efforts in the former areas, they should be able to win the popular vote, since they dominate those areas. Right now, they direct their energy at the swing states instead.
Under the current system, we don’t so much elect the president of the United States as we do the president of the battleground states. The 12 states where the candidates spend virtually all of their time — and money — chasing blocks of electoral votes that can swing back and forth every four years. The other 38 states and the District of Columbia — encompassing roughly 70 percent of the population — are ignored because they are so faithful in voting either Republican or Democrat every four years.
In an election fought under the compact, the 12-state election model becomes a 50-state contest in which candidates are compelled to chase down every single voter in every nook and cranny of the nation. The states are essentially working with other states to make their votes more relevant.
Oregon is a great example of why the compact is needed. Over the last eight presidential elections from 1988 to 2016, a total of 5,429,496 Oregonians cast their popular votes for the Republican ticket. And in all of that time, their efforts have failed to produce one single GOP electoral vote. Because eight out of eight times, the Democratic ticket won Oregon’s popular vote and all of its electoral votes.
Under the compact, voters gain a direct voice over the disposition of the 270 electoral votes. No voter in any state would have their vote cancelled out because they didn’t go along with the majority of others in their state. Every voter would have their vote counted directly toward their choice for president. And the presidential candidate who gets the most popular votes would become president.
Florida is gradually becoming more Democratic, as Puerto Ricans move into the state and overwhelmingly vote Democrat. Republicans are going to lose this swing state and will be unable to win presidential elections through the existing system much longer. It’s a good time to switch. The movement in support of the compact is gaining momentum with Delaware and New Mexico having just passed bills joining it for a projected total of 189 of the 270 electoral votes necessary to switch to the compact (a majority of the 538 electoral votes). It has bipartisan support because Democrats erroneously think large cities will end up deciding elections. Republicans need to do their homework on this issue before blindly repeating falsehoods.
Not quite. The Electors must cast their votes based on the election in their state, not elections in other states.
It is important to understand that the very independence of the Electors gives them the authority to refuse to allow their vote to be cast for a candidate who failed in their state. This “pact” denies the right of the Elector to cast their vote as they see fit and makes them rubber stamps of whichever candidate dominates in big cities.
This compact means candidates will be spending 90% of their campaign time in Los Angeles and NYC. This is precisely the problem the EC was created to overcome.
“Democracy” is killing this nation, we shouldn’t be advocating for more of it.”
I predict that a majority of readers will not grasp the truth of what you are saying. Most still think that this nation was formed as a democracy and that democracy is the greatest thing since sliced bread. In reality true democracy is guaranteed misery. The decision to drop the voting age to eighteen illustrated the problem and now some kooks want to lower it to sixteen. Just imagine what triumphs we could enjoy with teenyboppers voting to elect Mouseketeers to congress.
The single biggest Constitutional violation is Article IV Section 4:
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.
I can't imagine any state scheme that bypasses the votes of its own people as being a "republican form of government." People in these states will be represented by people in other states, not their own.
Under the Constitution, states are free to award their electors in any way they see fit. There is absolutely nothing in the Constitution either mentioning or mandating the current winner-take-all system by which most states award their electoral votes. The Founding Fathers never approved it. By entering the compact, the states agree to direct their Electoral College votes through a popular vote.
If we're going to go back to the times of the Framers, then we have to acknowledge that communications were poor, limited by the speed of horses, and that news from the north took weeks to reach the south. Why would the Framers have contemplated a method of choosing Electors to the Electoral College that required waiting weeks or months for all of the states to canvass all of their regions, and then have all of them report their totals to all of the others?
No, it was exactly because of this remoteness of states from other states that the Electoral College was formed. States chose Electors who were otherwise unaffiliated people in their states who would travel . Note that Article II Section 1 Clause 2 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.
Right there, we see a Constitutional restriction on how a state can award Electors.
States cannot compact together to deny other states their Constitutional powers. These compacting states are taking away the right of the states to expect a republican form of government, where the people in each state are represented within their state to chose their own Electors to the Electoral College. It is on these grounds that the National Popular Vote Compact is unconstitutional.
-PJ
It appears a State can change it’s position any time the leadership changes Parties.
If a lib State votes for a Dem and and a Rep wins the pop vote the awarding of EC votes to the “enemy” would likely piss off a lot of Dems in the State and cause poblems for them in a coming election.
The 10th amendment to the Constitution says that the states will make their own laws where it is not prohibited.
Taking away states rights is not the smartest thing to do by people who are supposed to be the smartest people in
the world especially since the fed government was only granted limeted powers by no the states to begin with.
Why keep going over it? ...because you’re wrong. This is unconstitutional on multiple levels, just an end-around the EC system and is completely out of line with the founders intent. States don’t get to decide how the national election works. It’d only take a single State to have widespread fraud (CA!) and be able to determine a national election.
This also negates the will of the people in States that voted differently than the popular vote.
How about this. Electoral votes are awarded by congressional district with the winner of the popular vote in each district getting that vote. Then the other two EVs per state go to the over all winner of the popular vote in that state.
As an example, let’s use Indiana. We have I believe nine reps at this time plus two senators. 6-7 of those districts go reliably republican so those six or seven EV’s go to the republican candidate, the others go to the democrat, but the state as a whole goes republican so those 2 EV’s go to the republican also. So of Indiana’s 11 EV’s 8/9 go republican, 2/3 go democrat.
If the democrats are really interested in one man/one vote this is the plan. With this plan people outside the big cities in NY, CA, IL etc. will have their votes count which doesn’t happen now, plus it would make it worth your while to campaign in at least every state, if not every district, because every EV would be up for grabs. My guess is they won’t be too interested.
And non-citizens are not allowed to vote!
A supposed conservative. We know she’s not when she describes amending the constitution as “long and cumbersome “
Using the popular vote only to assign the EC votes is redundant, and would assure tyranny of the cities over all smaller towns and farm villages.
I have thought about this a lot over the past 20 years or so. My concept would allow the 2 votes which represent the Senate assignment per each state would vote for the winner of the state’s popular vote for President; the remaining votes from that state would be assigned to the popular vote for President in each Congressional District in that state.
In Minnesota, my vote for President has only been tallied in the EC once - in 1972 when Nixon vs McGovern resulted in MN going GOP. Using my plan, the Dems would have gotten a minimum of 2 votes in every election since 1972 in Minnesota, but the GOP would have always gotten a few votes from the more conservative districts.
I doubt the Democrats would ever approve such a more sensible solution, since the GOP controls more real estate and often more of the rural districts.
It is claimed that they want each vote to count. If that were true, electors would be handed out via congressional district. That would really make your vote count!
I suspect where this whole thing hits a roadblock is due to the fact that many of the states (if not all of them) have little or no ballot integrity measures in place:
Can’t look at citizenship
Can’t remove dead voters
No voter ID
Ballots mailed to voters not requesting them
(and now) Vote harvesting
This national compact would institutionalize, enshrine, and reward all of those things, and probably a few I’ve not thought of yet.
The courts may step in, for this reason.
Oh, and hurry up RBG.
I live in California and I see what the popular vote does. Republicans here have no voice in anything.
I support the EC but I don’t support the winner-takes-all approach. If a candidate wins 51% of the vote in a state, they shouldn’t get 100% of the EC’s, they should get 51% of the EC’s in that state.
I live in California, and I would be more compelled to vote if this were the case. Because even if my candidate only won 35% of the EC’s, at least I’d know I contributed to that. I think it would represent people more accurately and encourage more people to be part of the election process while at the same time avoiding the mob rule and protecting the sanctity of the constitution.
That quote is mind-numbingly stupid.
To her way of thinking, your vote only counts if you win?
How can this country have a "national popular vote" when election and ballot standards are subject to individual state laws?
This moron acts like there was no such thing as a "swing state" before 1990.
I don’t believe state legislatures have a “blank check” at all. The first time a candidate wins a state and yet loses that state’s electoral votes, you can be damn sure that every racial/ethnic minority voter in that state who voted for that candidate will have a solid civil rights case over their disenfranchisement.
Posted: Apr 01, 2019 12:01 AM
This is unconstitutional on multiple levels...
Name one, with the pertainent portions of the Constitution.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.