Posted on 10/26/2017 3:06:23 AM PDT by markomalley
Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez incorrectly stated "the Electoral College is not a creation of the Constitution" during a Tuesday night speech.
"The Electoral College is not a creation of the Constitution," Perez said during a lecture at Indiana University Law School. "It doesn’t have to be there."
The Electoral College, a mechanism for indirect election of the president created by the Founding Fathers as a compromise between smaller states and larger states, is clearly laid out in Article II of the Constitution: "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."
Perez has previously stated that President Donald Trump "didn’t win" last November’s election because Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, but he has never denied the fact that it is part of the Constitution.
The DNC did not respond to an inquiry into whether Perez truly thinks the "Electoral College is not a creation of the Constitution."
There are many educational resources available on the Internet that provide clear explanations of what is in the document, including many from the National Constitution Center, which was established by Congress to provide a "non-partisan … understanding of the Constitution among the American people."
"Rather than being elected directly by the people, the president is elected by members of the Electoral College, which is created by Article II, Section 1," it explains.
Following his comment, Perez went on to explain his hopes that states agree to a "national popular vote compact," in which states agree to give their allocated electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote.
"There's a national popular vote compact in which a number of states have passed a bill that says, we will allocate our vote, our electoral votes, to the person who wins the national popular vote once other states totaling 170 electoral votes do the same," Perez said. "I’m frankly proud to tell you that the first state to pass such a law was Maryland."
The main supporters of the plan put forward by Perez seem to understand it is a plan to circumvent the system created by the Constitution, not an argument that the system doesn’t exist.
Most critiques of the Electoral College, such as this one from Slate, which describes it as "a democratically indefensible anachronism that dilutes minority votes while disproportionately amplifying whites votes," also recognize that it is part of the Constitution.
"The Electoral College remains lodged in our Constitution, and this year, for the fourth time in history, it elevated to the presidency a candidate who lost the popular vote," writes Slate in its lead paragraph.
The comment from Perez came during a lecture honoring former Indiana Democratic Sen. Birch Bayh, who was accused last year of sexual assault by a writer who said Bayh groped her in the backseat of a limousine.
The DNC did not respond to an inquiry into whether Perez was aware of the allegations when he accepted the speaking opportunity.
The DNC was criticized earlier this month when it announced it would be keeping much of the money it was given by Hollywood megadonor Harvey Weinstein, who has been widely accused of rape and sexual assault.
IU is a cesspool of liberal propaganda.
this kind of cr@p is not going to fly on election day.
Every time someone makes this claim I say. “So, NY and California should be the only states allowed to elect the president?”
The light comes on.
Well, Señor Perez, there is a way to get rid of the Electoral College, spelled out in the same Constitution that created it.
Better get to work. It could take a while...
I don’t know if the founding fathers envisioned the Electoral College as a bulwark against fraudulent voting, but either deliberately or accidentally, it turned out to be just that.
And for that reason alone it should remain.
His word search failed him.
All this talk....change the weapons wording, change militia wording, dump the Electoral College, etc...there are very simple instructions that a 6th grade kid can grasp on how to change the Constitution. Instead of whining, just pick out one of the three methods, and do it.
But I would pause and think over getting people hyped up. They might just want to do term limits on top of the dump of the Electoral College...or maybe even limit each state to one single Senator with no real function other than approving cabinet officers, perhaps even write a single line into the Constitution that says you must spend 120 days per year in your home of record.
The guys FOC
Here’s a sports analogy to that “Hillary won” nonsense: on Sunday, 49ers rookie QB C.J. Beathard threw for 235 yards, whil Dallas QB Dak Prescott threw for 234. Dallas won the game, 40-10.
As for election night, the best argument against the “Hillary won” noise is: In addition to trouncing Hillary in the electoral vote, Trump won the popular vote of the aggregate of 49 states and DC by 1.7 million and the election was long decided before motor-voter California tabulated vote. That state hasn’t figured decisively into an election for generations.
*tabulated a single vote
The keep saying she won the popular vote, which does not exist.
So she won a game that nobody else was playing.
If the “popular vote” is how you get elected President, then candidate Trump would have changed his game plan and fought for that instead of electoral votes.
Hildabeast won huge in California. Guess what, candidate Trump never went there. He didn’t spend a dime on a state he knew he could not win.
Candidate Trump knew the rules of the game and planned his strategery accordingly.
It is like the world series. You win the series if, and only if, you win the most games. It doesn’t matter how many runs you score.
Stupid is as stupid does
NYS is mostly red, geographically speaking. We in the red bits love the Electoral College, too.
I don't think a Court could abolish the Electoral College, but the Federal Courts could do a lot of damage to it, following their "one-man, one vote" precedents. Baker v. Carr did not exactly ABOLISH State Senates, but it did change their design and their character by voiding 50 State Constitutions which allocated State Senate seats according to non-population based schemes.
Of course, States appoint their electors, and they are not required to do so by people voting. It would be perfectly constitutional for no persons (except State legislators) to be allowed to vote for Presidential electors.
A court could decide, however, that for states which choose to allow popular voting as the mechanism to appoint electors (as all 50 do at the moment, plus the three electors Congress awarded itself in 1960), that the distribution of electors would have to follow the popular vote in that state.
I mapped the result of such a system on the 2016 election, and I came up with the following:
Clinton 256.13 EV, Trump 249.74 EV, Third party 32.13 EV.
This distribution is not based on national popular vote, but on popular vote percentages in each state - for example, in California under a "one-man, one vote" modified Electoral College, Trump would have gotten 17.39 EV instead of zero, but in Texas Clinton would have gotten 16.43 EV instead of zero.
Perez needs to counter-immigrate to the Dominican Republic
and take Juan Williams with you ...
Vamanos !
“Mit der Dummheit kaempfen Goetter selbst vergebens.” —
Schiller, The Maid of Orleans (1801),Act III.
D**n, I love busting out this quote.
2,626 - 487
Tom Turkey, and he is.
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