Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: Political Junkie Too
Why will no state step up and unilaterally do this to be a leader for the cause?

I am all for California and New York doing it.

56 posted on 10/19/2017 11:58:47 AM PDT by Bubba_Leroy (The Obamanation has ended!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 53 | View Replies ]


To: Bubba_Leroy
I posted this last December to another Electoral College thread:


I'd like to see a discussion of the National Popular Vote movement relative to Article IV Section 4:

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government...

According to Wikipedia:

This clause, sometimes referred to as the Guarantee Clause, has long been at the fore-front of the debate about the rights of citizens vis-à-vis the government. The Guarantee Clause mandates that all U.S. states must be grounded in republican principles such as the consent of the governed. By ensuring that all states must have the same basic republican philosophy the Guarantee Clause is one of several portions of the Constitution which mandates symmetric federalism between the states. ...

The Federalist Papers also give us some insight as to the intent of the Founders. A republican form of government is distinguished from a direct democracy, which the Founding Fathers had no intentions of entering. As James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 10, "Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."

The National Popular Vote movement certainly creates an asymmetric federalism between the states by having half the country's states voting separately while the other half votes as a direct democracy bloc.

Even if Congress accepted the National Popular Vote compact, wouldn't it still be a violation of Article IV Section 4?


-PJ

57 posted on 10/19/2017 12:07:19 PM PDT by Political Junkie Too (The 1st Amendment gives the People the right to a free press, not CNN the right to the 1st question.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 56 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson