Posted on 02/28/2019 5:31:35 PM PST by Ben Mugged
Think we are a republic and not a democracy? Think our Electoral College specified by our Constitution protects that republic? Think again folks. I borrowed some of this reasoning from a friend.
In the last presidential election, Nevada had six electors (one assigned for each US Senator and one for each US Congressman from the state). Individual states may pass laws binding the electors to vote for the candidate of their respective party or impose any manner of "pledge" obligation on the electors. While it is rare, some electors (fewer than 1% since 1789) have been "faithless" and not voted for the candidate to whom they were pledged. That has never turned a presidential election, though.
A 1952 Supreme Court case (Ray v. Blair) concluded that states have the right to govern how they choose electors and how they manage their voting. This modern Popular Vote Movement purports to pledge all of a state's electors to vote for the winner of the NATIONAL popular vote, regardless of how he/she fares in their own state's voting.
Under that approach, both Al Gore and Hillary Clinton would have won. So, what kept them from winning? That many states (mostly small population states, like Nevada) have a proportionately greater weight in electors than in registered voters. For example, since Nevada has only 6 electors and California has 55, it works out that we have about 450k people per elector, while California has 680k per elector. The argument is, therefore, that small, rural states have more power per person than urban, populous states.
There are good arguments both for and against big state domination versus disproportionate small state power. Twelve Blue states have adopted the idea in 12 years, and they comprise about 2/3 of the 270 Electoral College votes necessary for a win. Thus, it is edging closer to becoming the standard nationwide ... thanks to Democrats who believe their views and candidates will continue to prevail in popular election, if not in the Electoral College. If the majority of states decide all their electors will go to the winner of the popular vote, the Electoral College is worthless and we are in effect a democracy with the President elected by popular vote. They will have bypassed the intent and protections of the Constitution.
I believe the Electoral College had a solid logical purpose in preventing centers of large population from deciding every election. DEFEAT THE POPULAR VOTE MOVEMENT EFFORTS TO GIVE ALL ELECTORAL VOTES TO WHOEVER WINS THE NATIONAL POPULAR VOTE!!
Our fathers knew so much more truth than _modern_ man. Scary how lost we’ve become.
Amend the constitution!! Go head. It won’t happen.
Think we are a republic and not a democracy?
2. The republic has been dead for a while. We are a nation-state. There are no barriers to the reach of federal government. Forget enumerated powers. The Bush administration finished the republic off in 2004 with Gonzales v Raich.
One thing to consider is that if it is a popular vote, then campaigns will be aimed at the most populous states. Trump could win that contest. I guarantee you that if Trump won the popular vote, but would lose under the electoral collage standard; The dems would sue in court all the way up to the SCOTUS and win.
Read it carefully. Doesn’t require the Constitution be changed.
The electoral college proved its worth by preventing states like California from stealing the election with illegal votes.
It’s a national illegal alien enfranchisement movement.
We know aliens, in CA in particular, are changing totals in a big way, by the millions. The big Dem states are padding their Congressional seats with these aliens and adding them to voter rolls.
So when, say, CO says our electoral votes go to the national popular vote, they are giving them to the popular-vote-changing illegals, disenfranchising themselves directly in the process.
I am not sure what this country is anymore and where it is headed.
This way California and New York will be the two tails that wag the US dog.
Keep the Electoral College.
We have two more years, maybe six, before the country starts its fatal decline.
If your friend thinks that republics and democracies are mutually exclusive, you need to be more selective of your friends. Either that or more selective of what they pass off as "reasoning" that you choose to borrow from them.
every time the demonrats lose the presidential election - it is time to change how election is run or votes are counted or electors are directed to vote.
The demonrats do not like to lose- so they try to stack the deck in the favor
“The argument is, therefore, that small, rural states have more power per person than urban, populous states. “
There is no error in the electoral college formula.
Individuals do not with their “popular vote” vote for a presidential candidate. They vote for a slate of electors FROM THEIR STATE pledged to vote for a particular candidate. Then, it is the states, that in essence vote for president, via their elctoral college vote. That electoral college vote is numerically the same as the number of their representatives in Congress, House and Senate together. That is NOT a “disproportionate” representation favoring small states any more than it is disporportionate that small states get the same number of Senators as large states. Why? Because the Senate is that part of the legislature where the States, as entities deserving a voice in Congress are to be represented, as part of the Federal nature of our constitutional republic.
We are a republic and not a democracy. We have represnentative government, not one-man-one vote democratic government. The founders knew from history that one-man-one vote only works in small political units, and when it expands beyond thet it descends into first a tryanny of the majority and eventually dictatorship.
There is nothing wrong with the electoral college. There is nothing about it that needs fixing.
What needs fixing is the sheeples education.
So was the natural born citizen requirement, restricting the office to someone who could not be anything but an American, born here of citizen parents.
We left the Constitution behind when BOTH parties cooperated to allow Barack Obama to usurp the office.
I agree.
I wonder if "equal protection" could be the ultimate undoing of the National Popular Vote movement.
The problem with the compact is that large state votes would now cross state borders and count towards the whole. Small states could never have the influence in such a scheme relative to the influence they have in a bounded Electoral College scheme. They just don't have the total votes to exert any influence like California or New York.
I know the argument would be made that even in the Electoral college, a 3-vote state can't compete with a 55-vote state, but we know that the large state is capped at 55 votes regardless whether 10 million people vote or 25 million people vote. But under the National Popular Vote scheme, the excess votes in California alone will negate all the votes in New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Delaware, etc.
It's not that the smaller states have a relative influence, it's that they will have no influence at all given the smaller total voting population in those states. That's where equal protection comes in -- these states will have no protection at all.
Furthermore...
No state today can technically vote directly for the President. The Constitution expressly states that all votes are for electors.
The technical argument would be that there is no true national popular vote because the candidate's name is technically only a convenient placeholder for electors, and since the slate of voters is different in each state there is no actual uniform national vote.
Congress can't even pass legislation standardizing a national regulation of popular voting because the Constitution gives each state legislature absolute power to choose its electors any way it wants. The state's right to choose is supreme law over anything Congress might try to do to force a national popular vote on the states. Congress or the courts can't do anything about a state's plenary power given to it in the Constitution. There can be no regulation of a popular vote that infringes on a state's power to end popular voting, regardless of whether it chooses to do it or not.
Furthermore...
The terms of the compact can't violate the Constitution.
A state cannot agree to give up its Constitutional power, nor can the compacting states deny non-compacting states their Constitutional powers, even incidentally by virtue of the existence of their compact.
This argument is similar to the one posed by James Madison regarding a state's right to secede.
LETTER FROM MR. MADISON ON THE RIGHT OF SECESSION.
Madison argues that the ratification of the Constitution was a compact between the states, and as such, each state has equal say in all matters. When one state declares itself to secede unilaterally, it says that its own decision is elevated above all the rest.Applying Madison's reasoning to the National Popular Vote compact, it would suggest that the compacting states desire to use their own unbalanced popular votes to select the President elevates their decision above all the rest.Madison then suggests that if a state declares its own desire supreme over the others, then that right extends to all the other states too. That means that if a state has a right to secede from the others, then the others have the right to secede from it. In other words, a body of states has the right to oust a state against its wishes, which is a dangerous precedent.
The compacting states are effectively ousting the non-compacting states from the Union as regards the selection of the President.
-PJ
The first time a strong third party candidate running from the center-left, say Howard Schultz, results in a Republican popular vote win, they'll be rethinking this idea real quick.
Also, the first time you see a Republican candidate campaigning to get out the vote in conservative districts in blue states, you'll see a bunch of liberals crying, "You're not supposed to do that! You're not supposed to campaign in California!"
People forget, Hillary Clinton and Al Gore won games that nobody was playing.
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