Posted on 05/16/2019 6:15:12 AM PDT by Innovative
Maine's lawmakers passed a bill that would give the state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who won the national popular vote, taking a step toward becoming the 15th state to enact such a law. The Maine Senate voted 19-16 Tuesday to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which would give all committed states' electoral votes to the winning popular vote candidate should the group accrue the 270 votes necessary for a majority.
California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington state and the District of Columbia have all committed to the pact. The most recent addition, New Mexico, put the total at 189 electoral votes.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Seems to me that since Federal courts can knock down redistricting because changing a district boundary deprives a portion of the voters of significant say so in elections that depriving what could well be a State wide majority voting for one Presidential candidate of their votes based on what the national vote total initially appears to be.
> Can they do this? <
Yes, it seems like they can. The Constitution gives the states great latitude in deciding how they will assign their electoral votes.
So if you believe in the giving the states as much power as possible, then you’ve got to accept that this is constitutional. Stupid, yes. But not unconstitutional.
California’s ballot harvesting laws have ensured that no Republican will ever win the popular vote again in a 2-party race.
What will be hilariously funny is if a serious 3rd party contender like Howard Schultz runs and splits the center-left voters. These “popular vote compact” states are going to panic!
And when trump wins popular vote...
Imagine the democrat winning your state by a wide margin, but the Republican wins the country’s popular vote, so your delegates go to the Republican.
If I lived in main, I would be quite upset and utterly disenfranchised if I was a democrat voter, and I’d be in the wide majority. I wonder if this passes the constitutional test.
I don't know how the National Popular Vote Compact could ever pass constitutional muster. Of course, liberals don't care about the constitution which was written by old, white slaveholders.
Proving once again that democracy is mob rule.
The US is a bit like the EU. That is, a bunch of mostly sovereign states under a single government umbrella. Imagine “Joe” winning the popular vote as “ruler of the EU”, And the UK widely favored Bill. But, since Joe got the overall popular vote thanks to France, Germany, Greece, etc, the UK throws their weight behind Joe.
If I lived in the UK and voted for Bill (like most of my countrymen did), I’d be royally pissed.
Thus, taking away the state's rights/votes of the people!
Besides the fact that it’s unconstitutional, of course, the problem with this is that the “popular vote” is not reliable, since there’s mass voting fraud thanks to the Democrats allowing millions of illegal aliens to vote.
So, anyone care to take a bet how long these same folks in CO and ME will be filing lawsuits to stop this law, when Trump wins the popular vote in 2020?
These laws are unconstitutional, and these same lawmakers will be filing lawsuits to void these laws when Trump wins the popular vote in 2020
Good point. This is, at the root, an inter-state compact.
Oh are the leftists in the electorate going to be pissed if Trump wins the popular and the electoral in 2020
> Inter-state compacts are unconstitutional... <
That’s a very good point. But there is an easy way around it. All a state has to do is drop the word “compact”.
Right now Maine is saying: As soon as the Compact goes into effect, all of our electoral votes will go to the national popular vote winner.
Instead, just say: Starting with the next election, all of our electoral votes will go to the national popular vote winner.
I wonder why they’re not saying that now. Perhaps they are not as serious about the idea as they want you to believe.
I wonder why that is.
>>Can they do this? The US constitution can be crumpled up like this?<<
Nope. It will never hold up against a constitutional challenge before the SCOTUS.
It’s all a dog and pony show.
One can make a case that it is even worse than you think. In many jurisdictions challenged votes, provisional ballots, etc. are not counted unless the election is close enough that they might make a difference. It is not difficult to imagine a scenario where they would not matter on a local level, but nationally the totals could be closer than in any given state.
And, who tallies the "national popular vote"? New York Times? CNN? Fox? There sure isn''t any official government body that does this.
Dunno...Constitutionally the states have a lot of latitude as to how they assign their electoral votes.
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