This is what the Constitution says regarding the selection of Electors by the States.
"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."
Sounds like the States can do what they want regarding the appointment of the Electors.
“but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.”
What is an office of Profit? Is that a Board member to a company?
Doncha know the Constitution is just a piece of paper now? I'm surprised BO didn't present it as a gift to Queen Elizabeth. Heck, he doesn't need it anyway.
That's correct, so in that respect this effort to effectively void the Electoral College without a Constitutional Amendment could work and still be constitutional. It's a clever plan.
However, it runs into a problem with Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution: "No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, ... enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State ...". So there's a strong argument (but not bullet-proof, given the way that the courts give flexibility to the Constitution) that Congress would have to approve a formal agreement among the states. That would only require a majority of both houses of Congress, but Senators from the smaller states would likely oppose it so it wouldn't be easy passing such consent.
Of course this Constitutional issue could be avoided if states made no formal agreement among themselves, but merely promised to cast their Electoral votes for the popular vote winner (when other states totalling 270 Electoral votes had made similar promises). The problem with that is that any state could easily renege on such a promise if it didn't like the outcome.
Evidently the cases are few and divided and not particularly on point. Although I think it has been held permissible to have the electors to be required to vote majority winner who won in the state.
Moreover as I indicated in my post number 45, this reform denies voters within the state who comprise a majority within in that state their very franchise if the majority count across the nation goes against their choice. It seems to me that once the Legislature appoints electors according to a process-in this case voting by the populace-the Legislature cannot set aside the process by fiat because that would be violative of all our case law arising out of civil rights. It would render the process a nullity. It would render it an absurdity.
God only knows what our Supreme Court as presently constituted would do with such case but it would take the nimble mind of a liberal justice to find justification for an absurdity in the permutations and emanations of the Constitution.
One final thought: if there ever were to be a way to make Obama a tyrant, no path could be straighter or smoother than this.