Posted on 06/29/2010 2:34:23 AM PDT by Scanian
The state Senate may be clueless about how to fix New York's fiscal mess, but it's absolutely confident that it knows how to reform the nation's electoral system. It just endorsed the so-called National Popular Vote plan, which would radically alter the nation's presidential election system without bothering to amend the Constitution. The Assembly and the governor should kill this scheme.
The idea is to prevent a repeat of the 2000 election, when Al Gore won the popular vote but George W. Bush won the electoral vote and the presidency. Sounds reasonable -- but this "solution" would only bring greater chaos.
The plan creates an interstate compact in which signatory states agree in advance to pledge all of their electoral votes to the presidential candidate who leads in the national popular vote. This way, figure the law professors who contrived this scheme, the "reform" circumvents the Constitution's amending process: Once states with an aggregate majority of electoral votes sign the compact, no constitutional amendment would be necessary.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Worst idea I ever heard of ...
Rx for dictatorship.
Tyrany of the majority over minorities.
This has to be stopped at all costs. For our nation to be run by Boston, NYC, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles, etc. where the left would consolidate their powers and turn this country into a Soviet-NK-Communist China-Zimbabwe-Venezuela-etc. world, it would be preferable to enter into another civil world to ‘reset’ this fanatacism.
Right.
same goes for any other demhole controlled state that signs onto this...
Right.
same goes for any other demhole controlled state that signs onto this...
Good point. They might as well just pass a law saying all NY EV’s go to the Dem, period.
The purpose of our "Electoral Vote" system is to prevent the "railroading" by the majority. Looking back at the Gore/Bush election, Gore votes came from densely populated areas characterized by high crime rates and heavily subsidized by government benefits, whereas the landowners of "fly over" country were overwhelmed and outvoted by people with a vested interest in continued bennies. As a result we are headed for God-less tyranny and economic ruin by the evil tax and spend Democrats.
IMO people collecting checks from the government should not be permitted to vote until they become responsible, tax-paying citizens. These folks clearly have a vested interest in supporting the Socialist Party, Democrats. Even before the game starts, the score is 40 to 0 in favor of the Democrats!
So a Democratic Secretary of State is going to certify a Republican Presidential candidate if the Republican got the majority vote nationally even if New York voters went overwhelmingly for the Democratic candidate.
Suuuuuuuuurrrrre.
As usual, intellectual dishonesty is at the heart of this. Why not just amend the Constitution if this is such a good idea? Why all the circumventing? Intellectual dishonesty.
Horrible horrible horrible idea.
Aside from the fact that it would destroy vestiges of federalism, the national voting concept suffers from a fatal flaw:
Each state does it own voting, sets its own ballot standards, and conducts its own elections. With different standards, it will be an INHERENTLY unequal and unfair system ... unless you completely nationalize every little thing about elections.
NY's voters would be told we're not voting for our electors but that our votes are just be dumped into a mythical "popular vote" pool and that pool will choose our electors.
The writer mentioned a scenario where a state tries to pull out of the pact because they don't like the result. Each state's participation in the pact is predicated on the pact's members having at least 270 EVs. If one dropped out after the fact, the pact would no longer have the 270 EVs and all the other states would revert back to picking their own electors.
So now voters are told you're not picking electors, but rather dumping your votes into a pool, unless the pact falls apart, then you're choosing our own state's electors.
Here's another scenario: The popular vote is too close to call; One candidate has a 150,000 vote lead. Every state would go through Florida 2000 because even a couple thousand vote swing would be significant.
Further, let's suppose one of the non-pact states has a law that absentee votes for the general election are only counted if they could change the state's choice of electors. That state has 300,000 absentee ballots and went 65% for either one of the candidates. Now the popular vote winner cannot be determined. Worse, absentee ballots are being counted in some counties because local races there are close. So now compact states are suing non-compact states to force them to count all their absentee ballots. But only the states where they think their candidate will gain votes.
Naturally, all of these legal shenanigans cause the compact state's EVs to be undetermined by the time the Electoral College meets. So one state legislature chooses their electors by themselves. Now that state has dropped out of the compact so all the compact states are back to choosing their own electors.
You can probably envision another dozen scenarios where this contraption falls apart.
Article I, Section 10, Paragraph 3
"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."
The former senator from NY, who is now the feckless SecState has long been for the popular vote.
Leftists have been working for this at least since the formation of the Soros-sponsored organizations like Center for American Progress - a particularly Orwellian name.
John Podesta is the official head of this group, but it has always been considered Hillary’s personal think tank.
Thank you. I was trying to remember why this was illegal when it came up before.
I still say the Constitution forbids this. There aren’t supposed to be any inter-State compacts without Congressional approval.
I doubt there are 60 votes in the Senate for this.
End the Electoral College and disenfranchise all rural areas. This uis a commie rat scheme to destroy America.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.