Posted on 06/16/2006 4:26:42 PM PDT by Graybeard58
Some states try to ensure that the winner of popular vote becomes president.
SAN DIEGO
Picture it: On election day in some future year, a presidential candidate ends up with the most popular votes but not enough electoral votes to win.
It's a repeat of the 2000 election in which one contender, Democrat Al Gore, took the majority of the national popular vote, while the other, Republican George W. Bush, clinched the most electoral college votes and, hence, the presidency.
But this time there's a twist: A bunch of states team up and give all their electoral college votes to the nationwide popular-vote winner, regardless of who won the most votes in their state. Then, the candidate who garners the most citizen votes in the country moves into the White House.
Legislative houses in Colorado and California have recently approved this plan, known as the National Popular Vote proposal, taking it partway to passage. Other states, too, are exploring the idea of a binding compact among states that would oblige each of them to throw its electoral votes behind the national popular-vote winner.
At issue is the nation's presidential election system governed by the electoral college. Established by the US Constitution in 1787, the system has occasionally awarded the presidency to candidates who couldn't muster the most votes nationwide, as happened in 1824, 1876, 1888, and 2000.
While an amendment to the Constitution could change or eliminate the electoral college, battleground states and small states would probably oppose any change that would leave them with less influence. Indeed, since the system's inception, numerous efforts to amend it have been defeated.
Instead, reformers have turned to the interstate compact, saying it would be constitutional because agreements between states already exist.
The compact is designed to take effect only if states representing 270 electoral votes approve the compact legislation, giving those states majority control of the electoral college. The result: The "compact" group of states would be able to determine a presidential election.
The plan is supported by electoral reform activists and a bipartisan advisory group including former GOP Rep. John Anderson (a presidential candidate in 1980) and former Sen. Birch Bayh (D).
They say the compact would allow long-ignored states to get attention again in presidential campaigns. The current system has "just taken a lot of states off of the presidential map," complains Rob Richie, executive director of FairVote, a nonpartisan organization based in Maryland, which supports the compact.
The compact proposal passed the California Assembly on May 30 with all but one Republican opposing. It awaits a vote in the state Senate and, if it passes, approval or rejection by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), who hasn't publicly expressed an opinion about it.
Colorado's Senate approved the plan in April with bipartisan support, but it has not advanced because the legislative session there has ended.
Five GOP Assembly members are pushing a popular-vote bill in New York, and legislators in Missouri, Louisiana, and Illinois have introduced bills. Advocates hope to put the legislation before every state by 2007, says Mr. Ritchie.
Meanwhile, several newspapers have come out in favor of the plan, including The New York Times, which calls it an "ingenious solution."
But in California, GOP Assemblyman Chuck DeVore derisively refers to the proposal as a way to "amend the Constitution without amending the Constitution."
"It's like cheating," says Mr. DeVore, who predicts that the plan would force candidates to campaign primarily in urban areas with large populations to win the popular vote.
Under the current system "we discourage regional candidacies and basically force people who are running for president to have a message that resonates with the vast middle of America," he says.
DeVore supports a system that would allocate some of a state's electoral votes based on the popular vote in congressional districts, an approach that exists in Nebraska and Maine. All other states and the District of Columbia award all their electoral votes to the presidential candidate who gets the most votes in their state.
It takes 270 electoral votes out of 538 total votes in the college to win the presidency. That total equals the number of members each state has in both houses of Congress, with the District of Columbia getting three of its own.
The electoral college system is "distinctly American," says Shaun Bowler, a political scientist at the University of California, Riverside.
But the proposed system would have another idiosyncrasy: Electors, typically faithful party members, could be forced to cast votes for the opposing party. "You'll be asking dyed-in-the-wool Democrats to vote for Republicans, and that's not going to go down well," Mr. Bowler says.
In US history, there have been about 700 failed proposals in Congress to change the electoral college system, according to the Office of the Federal Register.
"It's safe to say that there has been no aspect of what the founders worked up in Philadelphia that has received more criticism than the electoral college," says historian Rick Shenkman of George Mason University.
If any state approves this new proposal, legal challenges are inevitable, Bowler says.
But he figures there might be a way to dampen enthusiasm. "You could say the French elect their president directly," he says. "I'm thinking that will get people running away from any support: If the French do it, is it really right for the US?"
Any compact between states must be approved by Congress.
Of such things are revolutions made.
All the endorsement I need. NOT!!! We're doomed. Must be why we have all the RINOs, they're just changing with the times.
Because as leftist as some of those people on that Court can be, they do protect the literal words of that document. And there's no getting around the electoral college.
This is another example of useless state legislative action.
Even the Warren Court (and, if you think about it, especially the Warren Court would reject this.
Boy, when things don't go the Marxist's/Socialist's way, it's Katy bar the door as far as laws and rules go. What they can't get through their heads is that even if they were able to pull this off, it doesn't mean that elections are automatically guaranteed to go their way. Dummocrats. It HAS to be a mental disorder, truly.
the founding fathers devised a plan that would not let the population/city centers neutralize the rural voters.
We have to keep our heads up on this. If they manage to do this - we will quickly be a socialist country and we will never get back our freedoms in our - or our children's - lifetimes...
This is one of their biggest strategies - we coast on this one to our demise
You willing to coast along and rely on this?
You would never have made me believe that the SCOTUS would negate our right to private property either. But they did. Now anyone can take your home and property if they want it and will provide more taxes to the town. Seems like there was something against that also in the Constitution?
The liberal portions of the nation are losing ground with their societal engineering socialist crap (except where sucking up tax dollars is concerned), so now they want to alter the founding documents to their liking and force the rest of the nation paying the taxes they suck upon. Typically, Hillary Rodhamster clintoon endorsed this unConstitutional crap years ago, as soon as Al Goreghoul lost! It may be true that liberals actually hate this nation because it isn't swirling down their sewer fast enough to suit them.
Who needs a Constitution?
Yeah, I'll bet this is a non-partisan org. NOT!
The MD legislature has just passed what I call "Election Fraud" entitlements. Not only does the state have motor-voter registration (you can register in any DMV office, no id needed), and a ban on asking for id at polling places, but now you can vote in any precinct in the state (no matter where you live), vote absentee at will, or vote in one of a number of Dem. precincts for up to 5 days before the election.
And the state has no paper trail for their electronic voting machines.
This stuff was passed by the Dem legislature because they are still very annoyed that a GOPer is Gov., and they are afraid that another GOPer might win a Senate seat.
If this popular vote principle does away with the electoral college system, I'm sure that MD would join the list of late reporting states and come up with enough votes to give the Dems certain wins. MD already has turnout rates of >100% in some precincts. It wouldn't be hard to add more.
Article I.
Section 10........
No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.
I read an article by a constitutional lawyer who thinks this act, if approved by enough states, is illegal. Ann Althouse a law professor, and no conservative, thinks so too. In other words the courts would throw it out. Evidently states are prohibited from banning together to make law.
The compact is designed to take effect only if states representing 270 electoral votes approve the compact legislation, giving those states majority control of the electoral college. The result: The "compact" group of states would be able to determine a presidential election.
.and they can because states apportion their electoral votes as they wish....t
Actually, this violates Article I, Section 10 of the US Constitution, because the states can not create any compact with other states without the approval of Congress.
The democrats who are in favor of this are clueless. If this plan were in place in '04 Bush wouldn't even have even needed Ohio and a few other states because he would have had California(a state that supports this).
You are absolutely right. We should NEVER take our liberty for granted, that wonderful document must be safe-guarded with our very lives as so many who have paid with their lives have done for us.
We reap the benefits of their sacrifices and we must be willing to sacrifice likewise. My tagline credits a few treasured heroes that did that very thing. It is the only thing standing between liberty and slavery.
The author is wrong from the start. Gore got 50,999,897 votes which equals 48.38%. Not a majority.
The last Democrat to receive a majority of the popular vote was Jimmy Carter in 1976 - 50.08%
Of the four times when the "winner" of the popular vote lost the electoral vote, that person failed to win over 50% of the popular vote, with the possible exception of Samuel Tilden in 1876, who apparently got 51% of the popular vote (if you ignore efforts to suppress the black vote in the Southern states which were back under Democratic control).
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