“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.”
U.S. Constitution, Art. II, Sec. 1
Seems pretty damned clear to me. Each state legislature is free to appoint their states’s electors in whatever manner they choose.
EXACTLY!!! Maine and Nebraska currently use the Congressional Districts +2 method for determining Electoral Votes. No need for a Constitutional Amendment to go to this method Nationwide. Just 48 legislatures with some sense and whatever controls the DC area...
Constitution?
Leftists don’t need no stinkin’ Constitution.
The objective is to have the states vote their delegates in relation to the popular vote within that state rather than all of the delegates going to the overall winner of the state. It would have the states divide the delegates proportionately rather than en-bloc.
They recognize that changing the constitution to effect the popular vote is hard so they hope to have the individual states move towards this goal by splitting the delegates in a manner that more closely follows the popular vote count.
There is nothing stopping the state legislature from declaring that there will be no popular vote, and that the electors will be assigned by a vote of legislators.
. . . which obviously does not require a popular vote to be conducted. And if it does not even require a popular vote at all, it can hardly be construed to allow any Federal court challenge at all to the decisions which come from the states. And that makes Bush v. Gore bad law [SCOTUS should have punted, IMHO on the basis that Florida's Electors had, under FL law, already cast their ballots (for Bush)].But if Federal courts have no jurisdiction over the selection of Electors, it follows that Federal courts would have no jurisdiction over how the election within a state is conducted. Hence, the legislature has plenary authority to determine who is, and who is not, on the ballot. State legislatures should pass laws enforcing things like
by keeping people like SoS Clinton (who was scoffing up money from foreign “princes” like it was going out of style) off their ballots for Electors. It wouldn’t be necessary to get all states to do so; it would only take a few purple states doing that to make electing a scofflaw like Hillary “too hard."
- Article 1 Section 9:
- No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States: and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.
This would mean, for example, that California 2016 Hillary would have gotten 34 EV instead of 55 and Donald Trump would have gotten 17 EV instead of 0.
Someone should do the math (maybe someone already has) to see the outcome of a Fourteenth Amendment reform of the Electoral College.
Even the most radical court could not change the distribution of electors among the States, since that is fundamental in a way that "winner take all" is not.