To: Wuli
Prior to arriving at the eventual wording of section 1 of Article II, the Constitutional Convention specifically voted against a number of different methods for selecting the President, including ● having state legislatures choose the President, ● having governors choose the President, and ● a national popular vote. After these (and other) methods were debated and rejected, the Constitutional Convention decided to leave the entire matter to the states. Section 1 of Article II of the U.S. Constitution-- "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors . . ." The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as "plenary" and "exclusive." The constitution does not prohibit any of the methods that were debated and rejected. Indeed, a majority of the states appointed their presidential electors using two of the rejected methods in the nation's first presidential election in 1789 (i.e., appointment by the legislature and by the governor and his cabinet). Presidential electors were appointed by state legislatures for almost a century. Most Americans understand the current system is "rigged." Voters want to know, that even if they were on the losing side, their vote actually was directly and equally counted and mattered to their candidate. Most Americans think it's wrong for the candidate with the most popular votes to lose. We don't allow this in any other election in our representative republic. Most Americans don't appreciate being politically irrelevant to presidential candidates during elections and between elections. More than 2/3rds of the states and people have been just spectators to the presidential elections. Thats more than 85 million voters. Policies important to the citizens of flyover states are not as highly prioritized as policies important to battleground states when it comes to governing. States have the responsibility and power to make all of their voters relevant in every presidential election and beyond. National Popular Vote has NOTHING TO DO with pure democracy. Pure democracy is a form of government in which people vote on policy initiatives directly. With National Popular Vote, the United States would still be a representative democracy, in which citizens continue to elect the President by a majority of Electoral College votes, to represent us and conduct the business of government in the periods between elections.
93 posted on
02/03/2012 10:25:46 AM PST by
mvymvy
To: mvymvy
“Voters want to know, that even if they were on the losing side, their vote actually was directly and equally counted and mattered to their candidate.”
The only place that exists, the only place it is intended to exist, in OUR REPUBLIC, is within one’s own voting district, for one’s own representative.
Beyond that, it is our representives (or electors) who vote and they each, indiviudally, DO NOT REPRESENT an equal number of citizens.
The electoral college system enshrines that fact - a republic, representative government, not pure democracy, not national popular vote.
States cannot make a legislative end run around the Constitutuonal purpose of the electoral college to rig how it is used to subvert it’s own purpose - avoiding “popular” vote as the means of selecting the chief executive.
Now - go away; go move to maybe Greece, where even today you can see the results of “one man one vote” pure democracy - chaos and national political dysfunction.
94 posted on
02/03/2012 10:42:47 AM PST by
Wuli
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson