Posted on 07/06/2020 8:41:53 AM PDT by Jayster
Misleading headline.
The court ruled (correctly) that IF a State Legislature CHOOSES, pursuant to its SOLE authority to appoint Electors for President and Vice President, to allow idiots to vote AND ALSO CHOOSES to require Electors thus chosen to vote as specified by the idiots voting method, then they can be punished if they don’t,as long as the punishment is specified by the State Legislature as part of the appointment process.
Yes, this just created an incentive for all Republicans in the evil states to vote. Even though we would lose Can and Ny, we might still win their EVs by winning the popular. It is a really bad idea for your state though.
Praise God for that one!
Good post.
There are currently 15 states with such a law.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/12/politics/oregon-joins-national-popular-vote-compact/index.html
“No they are separate questions. Electors may be required to vote according to state law, but that doesn’t mean the interstate compact is legal.”
Great, now find me a citation of wherein the US gov’t tabulated such a thing and publishes it as a finding of law. None exists. So, who’s count counts as ‘the official national popular vote?
Clearly, any state’s electors that vote for a candidate other than the one the populace of the state’s voter’s choose is fraud and unlawful, even if a law is on the books that so authorizes them to so do. Equal representation, etc comes to mind.
Maybe the next president will be selected by devolved law while some such silliness is passed through the scouts on an emergency cert.
You’re absolutely correct. I am astonished that anyone thinks otherwise.
That's the risk, sure, but at least that means the elected officials of the state have to change state law and effectively risk disenfranchising their own people's votes by saying NY & CA can negate your choices.
I don't think we're YET at that point but it means the debate and necessary education about the electoral college is ever more important.
You can't champion federalism and then attack it because some states 'go rogue' in how they want to conduct their elections.
THIS. But we don't know if such compacts are legal and should they be legal?
The Left has been playing both sides of the argument so either they can try to convince faithless electors to vote against the Republican who won or they can rubber stamp changes in state law so no elector can defend the votes of the state population by going against the "national popular vote."
The Left knows they can fool a lot more people with the "national popular vote" argument because they control what passes for education.
Eventually they win. Look at CA, by total numbers in SF & LA they overwhelmed the voices, views and values of rural areas and the Orange & San Diego counties. No matter how hard people in those areas tried to get fair representation or break away from the hard-Left population centers in the state, they were trapped and drowned and either died off or left CA like I did when the policies and total costs became too much. That state, like Illinois, NY & a few others are tyranny of the majority cases.
Now in CA, with their scam election system where the top two go to run off you mostly only have one party choice in the general election cycle. The phony sales pitch was to produce more moderate candidates out of the primaries. I admit I fell for the term limits scam and warn every freeper and conservative who say something about congressional term limits that you do not want to go down that rabbit hole.
I agree with your comments. And can’t imagine why the majority of voters, regardless of affiliation, in a “small” state would want to see what little impact they now have in presidential elections diminished. If electors could be manipulated to fine tune electoral college totals, I doubt “small” and “swing” states would never again see a presidential candidate campaign in them.
correction: change “never” to “ever” in last sentence.
I certainly agree that Congress's consent would be necessary under the Compacts Clause. But does anyone really view this as a serious obstacle? They just need to wait for the next Democrat Congressional majority.
As for the constitutionality, I think today's ruling as well as Bush v. Gore make clear that the Supreme Court takes a broad view of a state legislature's power under Article II to "direct" the "manner" in which its "state shall appoint" electors.
The stakes are large: In the last 30 years, the Democrats are 6 and 1 in national popular votes for President. I agree that Republicans might do better if they were actually contesting the national popular vote, but that works both ways: Democrats currently have no incentive to get out the vote and run up the score in deep blue states like California and New York.
Make no mistake. If NPV's proponents can get it passed by enough states to carry a majority of the electoral votes, the NPV compact is happening. The fight will be won or lost in state legislatures. Republicans have done very well in state legislatures over the last couple decades, but they need to keep winning, and they need to act when they do win. For example, if Republicans take control of a state house in a state that has enacted the NPV compact (which doesn't seem likely this year), repealing the NPV compact needs to be a high priority.
There was already a correction mechanism in place, don’t need another one..
One thing to add: Based on my glance of the maps, it looks like all but 3 states where Democrats control both houses of the state legislature has enacted the NPV compact. The only ones that haven’t are Nevada, Maine, and New Hampshire, but it has come close in two of those. The Nevada legislature passed it last year, but the Democrat governor vetoed it. In Maine, the Senate passed it last year, but the House defeated it after a couple reversals.
Passing NPV is clearly a high priority for Democrats in state legislatures. Defeating it needs to be a high priority for Republicans.
Four of the five times that the “winner” of the popular vote failed to win the electoral vote, that person had less than 50% of the popular vote. The exception was 1876, where Tilden may have had a slight majority of the popular vote (like 51%), but there was so much fraud in that election that I don’t know if we can state that for sure.
Ok ...then, which Article and Section does cover the Electoral College, and how?
Who cares if a candidate doesn’t get 50% of the voting population as long as they get the most votes in the Electoral College is all that matters. That is how the USA Presidential elections work. The candidate with the most electoral votes wins. Even in a popular vote election (not the Presidential Election, talking in general here) there could be a 1 vote lead and the person with 1 more vote over all other candidates wins. You could have 15 candidates vying for office in a popular vote election where none of them gets over 10 percent of the total vote. In a popular vote election the one with the most votes wins. You could have a population of 5 trillion people and only 1 million people (1/2,000,000th of the entire population) vote for their respective candidate. The candidate with one more vote than everyone else wins; even if it is not 50.01 percent of 1 million.
The point is even in the Electoral College, it is the one with the most votes win. To look at the Electoral College in a different way, it is still a popular vote that has been drilled down from a much larger popular vote. Why? Because he who hath the most Electoral votes wins, provided that candidate has 270 at least and at the time of this writing.
People can argue all friggin day there is no “National Popular Vote” in the Presidential Election. Yet, unofficially and technically there is. By counting all the votes in every state for a certain candidate yields a total count for that candidate. This has become to be known as the Popular vote in the national election. States can mandate whatever method and process for their election but if in the end there are two Presidential candidates, Candid A and Candid B, then by the process of addition a person can get the tally from Florida and add it to Alaska, add it to Alabama, add it to the rest of the 50 states plus territories and DC to get a total national vote for a particular candidate. This unofficially became the National Popular vote for that candidate. So you can argue there is no “official” National Popular Vote but you would be “unofficially” wrong because all one has to do after the votes have been certified in all states would be to add all of them up to get what is now being called the National Popular vote. Or do you not know approximately how many people across the country voted in the last election? And how many people across the country voted in total for a particular Candidate. True the US Constitution does not have a clause for a National Popular vote, but we can find out this number just through the process of addition and voila! a National Popular vote. I am not arguing for a National Popular vote, but people need to use some common friggin sense as to where this is coming from because like it or not it is here and being taught as such. You want to change the way it is being taught, get civics back into the schools then become a teacher. And that is why this ruling has far reaching implications.
Great explanation. thanks
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