Posted on 08/21/2019 8:25:28 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
This affects the electoral vote compact. If you cannot compel to a specific candidate you cannot compel to the national popular vote either.
With bells on.
And vice-versa.
Seems like a set of voters in a State could sue for being disenfranchised...
Yes!
Wouldn’t this also mean those states who are vowing to following the national election could ignore that too?
“cannot be required to follow the results of the popular vote in their states.”
Where does the Constitution say anything about popular voting for President? That’s a custom, not a requirement.
Once 535 Electors are appointed by their States, they are free to act as they think best. I’m not sure about the 3 Electors Congress awarded itself in 1960, since they are not appointed by a State Legislature.
Anyone remember Pledged and Unpledged slates of electors? Alabama had such an issue on their ballot in the sixties. Voters would not vote for a Republican, but didn’t want the liberal democrat. They voted for unpledged electors that were free to vote for the Republican. Someone clear me up on this. This may have happened under Kennedy and Nixon.
“Wouldn’t this also mean those states who are vowing to following the national election could ignore that too?”
There is no national election.
Yet in 2016 they were trying their hardest to get them to vote their conscious and to disregard how the state voted. Now they claim this is a crisis.
The vote was 2 to 1 in a court minority ruling. It will not stand.
Going to the popular vote would then become a preferable alternative. You think members of the Senate act like primped-and-preened royalty? Just wait until you see a couple of electors out there with their votes for sale.
The electoral college itself, which no elector is bound by law to vote anything other than his/her conscience, is all the proof I need.
On the presidential ballot, you vote for the electors for the candidate of your choice. You vote for them in good faith that they will vote for whom they said they would. I have never seen a choice for “Vote for who you think is best” on the ballot. But that said, there is nothing that binds them to vote for the candidate that they said they would.
That’s it. I am too old to remember, and, was too sleepy to look it up.
Thank You!
Which is my point. Ultimately (and as the court rightly found), electors are independent, and can vote for "whomever".
I contend that Trump needs at least 271 electors to win - and maybe more. I just don’t think the GOPe is capable of producing 270 electors without at least 1 covert Never Trumper in the group.
While there are typically a few electors who vote for someone other than their party’s nominee, there is no reason to believe they would do so in a tight race where every vote is needed.
But I would contend that Trump is different. There are so many Never Trumpers infecting the GOPe establishment that I just don’t see how you guarantee that every GOP elector would be faithful in a close race. In 2016 there is a faithless TX elector who voted for Kaysuck. I could tell from listening to him that he was a Never-Trumper through-and-through. That guy would not have voted for Trump under any circumstance.
But then you also have to ask yourself how many GOP electors shared his beliefs but chose to keep their powder dry since Trump won comfortably. If the race had been close, would they then have shown their cards?
Trump may need to be somewhere in the mid-270s to guarantee a win.
Massive bribery waiting to happen.
Even worse is the effort to bind one state’s electors not to the voters of that state, but to voters in other states. That violates every principal of democracy ever written except say those pertaining to the former [communist East-] German Democratic Republic.
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