Posted on 08/05/2011 9:58:30 PM PDT by STARWISE
A move to change the way America elects its president got a clear thumbs down in a vote by members of the Republican National Committee on Friday.
A resolution opposing the National Popular Vote initiative won support of every voting RNC member but one who voted "present" instead of "yes."
*snip*
The initiative has been gaining momentum in state legislatures at what for opponents is an alarming rate, with Republican lawmakers being told top officials of the RNC support it.
Members' emotion against abandoning the electoral college was running so high that dozens of members lined up behind two microphones to give individual 10-minute impassioned arguments against the initiative.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Pffft!
So let it be written,
So let it be done...
As you deem it.
/S
It's also anti-state. It disenfranchises the majority voters in a given state who voted against the Democrat candidate. It's abusive tyranny, plain and simple.
A state's electoral college votes should reflect the votes of the people within that state alone. Stop blurring the lines. Stop diluting votes.
They're embittered because they happen to be three-for-three historically being on the losing end of Electoral College vs. popular vote.
If that happens, every state except NY and CA would be stuppid not to secede.
Maybe, maybe not ...
The article that is the basis of the thread does not specify exactly what the National Popular Vote [NPV] debate is all about.
What the states are wanting to do is this: allow you to vote in your state and awarding the electoral votes of your state to the winner of the popular vote in your state.
EXCEPT that IF the winner of your state LOSES the NPV. Then, your state takes away the electoral votes of the winner of your state and awards them to the winner of the NPV.
READ your Constitution ...
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.
Each state can select its electors in any manner it wishes - BUT it might NOT be able to choose its electors based on the votes of citizens of other states.
The Supreme Court has previously held that:
The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States unless and until the state legislature chooses a statewide election as the means to implement its power to appoint members of the Electoral College. U.S. Const., Art. II, §1. This is the source for the statement in McPherson v. Blacker, 146 U.S. 1, 35 (1892), that the State legislature’s power to select the manner for appointing electors is plenary; it may, if it so chooses, select the electors itself, which indeed was the manner used by State legislatures in several States for many years after the Framing of our Constitution.
HOWEVER, the Supreme Court has ALSO held that:
When the state legislature vests the right to vote for President in its people, the right to vote as the legislature has prescribed is fundamental; and one source of its fundamental nature lies in the equal weight accorded to each vote and the equal dignity owed to each voter. The State, of course, after granting the franchise in the special context of Article II, can take back the power to appoint electors. See id., at 35 (“[T]here is no doubt of the right of the legislature to resume the power at any time, for it can neither be taken away nor abdicated”) (quoting S. Rep. No. 395, 43d Cong., 1st Sess.).
The right to vote is protected in more than the initial allocation of the franchise. Equal protection applies as well to the manner of its exercise. Having once granted the right to vote on equal terms, the State may not, by later arbitrary and disparate treatment, value one person's vote over that of another. See, e.g., Harper v. Virginia Bd. of Elections, 383 U.S. 663, 665 (1966) (“[O]nce the franchise is granted to the electorate, lines may not be drawn which are inconsistent with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment”). It must be remembered that “the right of suffrage can be denied by a debasement or dilution of the weight of a citizen’s vote just as effectively as by wholly prohibiting the free exercise of the franchise.” Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 555 (1964).
The DEMS bank on the Supreme Court ruling that the states' right to choose electors is plenary [per the Constitution], while opponents cite the Supreme Court has ALSO ruled that every citizen's vote MUST be treated equally and that 14th Amendment Equal Protection applies.
If a state takes away its electoral votes from the winner of its state and awards them to the winner of the NPV, then the state is valuing the votes of citizens of other states over its own citizens ...
This is a constitutional question that will have to be decided by the Supreme Court IF it ever happens ...
If the NPV is ruled to be unconstitutional - then YES, a constitutional amendment would be required ...
Thank you for some sanity. The socialists can propose anything they like, but certain things need a Constitutional amendment. Changing or eliminating the Electoral College will not happen in our lifetime. Hell, we can't even get the Congress to vote 2/3rds on a Balanced Budget Amendment.
BWAAAHAHAHAHA! The biggest supporter has gotta a plane to catch!
Are you sure that you're not overestimating their intelligence?
The founders wisely designed this compromise system of vote accounting. A state gets a certain amount of weight in the choice of a president just because it’s a state. The rest of its weight in the choice comes from the number of people it has. Back in the Gore concede/unconcede debacle of the year 2000, one liberal Chicago newspaper commentator even first said that the E.C. was the best way to choose a “mushy middle” president who had a reason to address his campaign promises to the entire country. (The commentator soon got yanked back onto the orthodox liberal plantation and was stumping vigorously for Gore.) Tiny states, at least, who agree to toss their votes away like this deserve what it gets them in lost local control later. And it would give, say, California politicians a reason to dive into fifty different states’ recount petitions, not just one.
You will have “Democracy” over a Representative Republic, which equals chaos.
It is a very bad idea, why does Fred Thompson support it?
In the baseball world series, a team can win the series by scoring 4 runs and the losing team can score 42 runs.
1-0
0-14
1-0
0-14
1-0
0-14
1-0
It just doesn’t seem fair! Time to reform the World Series to allow the team scoring the most runs in total to win the series.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2705097/posts?page=29#29
A resolution opposing the National Popular Vote initiative won support of every voting RNC member but one who voted "present" instead of "yes."This is a sideshow -- the thing to be dealing with and passing resolutions about is the consistent, decades-long policy of the Demwits to steal elections with falsified ballots and bogus recounts. Let the larger blue states ALL pass this NPV, and watch a solid unbroken line of Republican presidents form. That'll give everyone around here something to *really* bitch about.
Anyone know who the other members of the RNC who were in favor were?
Sure, Al Gore had a nominal electoral vote majority in 2000 of 500,000+ votes. HOWEVER ... while I'm not a close student of the matter, the estimates I've seen of illegally cast votes in 2000 range from around 500,000 up to two million. The dems fight bitterly to block voter verification for obvious reasons (about which they of course lie), but absent the Electoral College, it would be essential to guarantee the integrity of the rolls. I doubt that's a bridge the dems really want to cross.
Take away the illegal votes, and I'm not at all sure that Bush didn't win the popular vote majority in 2000.
Take away the scandalously early network (mis)call on Florida, which suppressed Republican voter turnout in the West, and Bush would almost certainly have won the popular vote majority.
The end game of an election like 2000 would also be different. In 2000, most of the battleground states leaned blue. The bulk of campaign funds were spent on democrat turf, where Republicans were swimmming uphill to try to take away a blue state in an Electoral College-driven strategy. Take away the EC, and those resources could have been spent running up Republican margins in solid red states that, because they were never in doubt, received little national party funding. Bottom line: I don't accept for a moment that Al Gore, absent fraud, would have won in 2000 in a majority vote contest. Too many other factors in play.
Yes! That is what gave us McCain. In the Virginia primary, you just walk into the polling place and they ask you whether you want a Democrat or a Republican ballot. I know a Virginian on the Far Left who is planning to walk in and vote Republican for the first time in his life.
While we control the House it seems to me we would want to ENCOURAGE Blue States to join into such an interstate compact so we could kick out a substantial number of their Representatives!
I think it’s time to counter with the “If You Don’t Pay Taxes, You Can’t Vote” program.
The Constitution has been taking a back seat in both Houses and in SCOTUS for so long that even the slightest drip could become a waterfall - when things like this start to get a foothold in any debate, we need to be ready to pounce on it.
We've been "waiting for it to get bad enough to take action" for so long that we have probably over-waited and the despots are way ahead.
There is a group called the National Tea Party that favors this change, along with universal national service. They have put out a video that sounds conservative until you get to the very end, when these two atrocities are promoted.
Never underestimate the knavish tricks of the opposition.
It's a lot harder than you imagine, and if you are using Hannity as your source, he's just wrong.
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