Posted on 02/15/2014 6:14:40 AM PST by LD Jackson
Here in Oklahoma, we like to call ourselves the reddest of red states. But even here, the insanity is encroaching and hard to keep at bay. That is why it is ever so important to keep a watchful eye over those who represent us, both on the national and state level.
The President and Vice President of the United States are elected by a process known as the Electoral College. I'm not going to bore you with a long and complicated explanation of why that is the case, so here is my simple and condensed version. The United States is made up of 50 states (I told you this was simple) that are populated. The Electoral College is formed by electors that are chosen by the individual states, to equal the number of the member of Congress, plus three additional electors for the District of Columbia. The states are free to choose and allocate those electors as they see fit. This gives both the people of the states, and the states themselves, sway over who is elected President and Vice President. This prevents the smaller, or less populated, states from being overwhelmed by states that have many more residents and losing their national influence.
As a side note, this was also why the states were supposed to elect the members of the United States Senate, instead of the people. We have since changed that, via the 17th Amendment. The debate over how smart that move was is for another time and place.
The Electoral College has served us well since its creation. Only three times has it failed to produce the same results as the national popular vote, with the latest being in 2000 and the Bush/Gore fight over the White House. Because of that, there has been a growing voice for doing away with the Electoral College completely, or simply tying its results to the results of the national popular vote. And yes, that voice has found movement even here in Oklahoma. So it was on Wednesday, February 12, 2014, that the Oklahoma State Senate voted 28-18 in favor of Senate Bill 906, binding Oklahoma's electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, rather than the winner of the vote in our state. Details of the election, as well as more commentary, can be found at Muskogee Politico. The measure still has to pass through the Oklahoma House of Representatives and go to Governor Mary Fallin for her signature.
I am trying to contact my State Representative, John Bennett, to see how he stands on this issue. I am hopeful he will be against it and will help defeat it in the House. If it clears that hurdle, I am hopeful the Governor will see fit to veto it into the trash bin, where it belongs. Oklahoma does not need to tie its electoral votes to the national popular vote. If enough states do this, it would effectively do away with the system of national elections designed by the Founding Fathers and implemented by the Electoral College. This would lessen our influence over national affairs and delegate us to being subject to the whim and fancy of the more populated states. I would ask our State Representatives, State Senators, and Governor Mary Fallin, is this what they want, disguised as what some people are calling reform?
One other thing about our system of government. I have seen statements saying it is time to abolish the Electoral College because it is an outdated system that violates democratic principles. Even some websites that explain the Electoral College and the reasoning behind its creation call our country the "oldest continuously functioning democracy" in the world. A word of note to anyone who makes either of those statements. The United States of America is not a democracy, with good reason. The last thing the Founding Fathers wanted was mob rule in America. That is why they created a representative republic for our system of government. Again, not a democracy. There is a big difference between the two and I believe the Electoral College is part of that difference. Are we going to throw it away, all in the name of democracy? Something our founders never intended to happen? I don't think that's a good idea and I am hopeful enough of our leaders feel the same to stop this movement in its tracks in Oklahoma.
No state’s electoral college votes would be negated. All states would be represented in choosing the President. Non-enacting states would award their electors as they choose.
Because each state has independent power to award its electoral votes in the manner it sees fit, it is difficult to see what “adverse effect” might be claimed by one state from the decision of another state to award its electoral votes in a particular way. It is especially unclear what adverse “political” effect might be claimed, given that the National Popular Vote compact would treat votes cast in all 50 states and the District of Columbia equally. A vote cast in a compacting state is, in every way, equal to a vote cast in a non-compacting state. The National Popular Vote compact does not confer any advantage on states belonging to the compact as compared to non-compacting states. A vote cast in a compacting state would be, in every way, equal to a vote cast in a non-compacting state. The National Popular Vote compact certainly would not reduce the voice of voters in non-compacting states relative to the voice of voters in member states.
If states can exercise this power in the absence of a compact, then why don't they? Are they afraid of throwing their vote away if they independently chose to award their electoral college votes to the winner of the national popular vote?
-PJ
Why did you leave that fact out when presenting your argument now, where others will read it for the first time?
-PJ
You make some good points, but major metropolitan, voter rich areas (and states) would more likely call the shots with national popular voting. Consider California. I have absolutely nothing in common with the political majority in California. In fact, I consider them to be almost diametrically opposed to everything I hold dear. However, they have a lot of voters and some very big cities, and they don’t believe in federalism. If they win, they will most certainly use the federal government against my state.
California has some pretty dense areas of population. They also have a big chunk of electoral votes of course, but let’s say we have an unusual race where California is energized to vote for the Marxist, aka Democrat, and gives him (or her) 70% of their vote. For sake of argument, let’s say that’s 10 million votes (4.5 million to the loser). That’s a 5.5 million vote margin that would have to be made up by the rest of the states in a national popular vote. With the electoral college, it doesn’t matter how many Californians turn out to vote or how many vote for the Marxist. They still only have 55 electors.
I suppose you could argue the opposite is also true. Let’s say my state hates Marxists (we do), so we have an amazing 90% vote against him. No matter how many turn out, we are also limited by our number of electors.
I’m not saying the electoral college is a perfect system. It’s not, but the simple truth is Democrats have a lock on most of the major population centers. You could go so far as to say they are the city party, and Republicans are the country party. Under national popular voting, why would a candidate bother with low population states at all when they could reach far more people in the cities?
You’re not helping your cause by pointing out we would have had President Gore. That man is a nut job, and I’m pleased the electoral college prevented him from being president. True. It was a messy election, but that was caused by sore loser Gore. An honorable man wouldn’t have kept trying to recount “every vote” until he could steal a win.
Bottom line: the electoral college stalled the leftist takeover of America for 8 years (two Gore administrations had he won).
So, are you saying that this bill would apportion each state’s electoral votes, within that particular state, to each candidate according to the percentage of the popular vote within that given state?
Also, unless that particular state has a mechanism whereby each county within the state only has so many electoral votes, then the major population centers would, once again, control the electoral votes of the whole state - wouldn’t it?
re: from the article: “So it was on Wednesday, February 12, 2014, that the Oklahoma State Senate voted 28-18 in favor of Senate Bill 906, binding Oklahoma’s electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, rather than the winner of the vote in our state.”
This doesn’t sound like what you were saying. I don’t want my state’s electoral votes to go with the “winner of the national popular vote”. I want them to go with how my particular state voted as a state.
And yet, I am not particularly fond of the “winner take all” withing a given state.
I would be in favor of each state dividing itself into electoral precincts (the number of which is determined by the number of electoral votes that state receives) and that each electoral precinct is allowed only ONE vote - that that electoral vote is determined by the candidate with the most votes in that electoral precinct.
Because the compact would become effective only when it encompasses states collectively possessing a majority of the electoral votes, the presidential candidate receiving the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia would be guaranteed enough electoral votes in the Electoral College to be elected to the Presidency.
No single state would ever be likely to unilaterally enact a law awarding its electoral votes to the nationwide winner. For one thing, such an action would give the voters of all the other states a voice in the selection of the state’s own presidential electors, while not giving the enacting state the benefit of a voice in the selection of presidential electors in other states. Moreover, enactment of such a law in a single state would encourage the presidential candidates to ignore the enacting state. Such unilateral action would not guarantee achievement of the goal of nationwide popular election of the President.
With National Popular Vote, every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections. Wining states would not be the goal. Candidates would need to care about voters across the nation, not just undecided voters in the current handful of swing states.
The indefensible reality is that more than 99% of campaign attention was showered on voters in just ten states in 2012- and that in today’s political climate, the swing states have become increasingly fewer and fixed.
Where you live should not determine how much, if at all, your vote matters.
The current state-by-state winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but since enacted by 48 states), ensures that the candidates, after the conventions, will not reach out to about 80% of the states and their voters. Candidates have no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, campaign, or care about the voter concerns in the dozens of states where they are safely ahead or hopelessly behind.
Presidential candidates concentrate their attention on only a handful of closely divided “battleground” states and their voters. There is no incentive for them to bother to care about the majority of states where they are hopelessly behind or safely ahead to win.
10 of the original 13 states are ignored now.
Four out of five Americans were ignored in the 2012 presidential election. After being nominated, Obama visited just eight closely divided battleground states, and Romney visited only 10. These 10 states accounted for 98% of the $940 million spent on campaign advertising. They decided the election.
None of the 10 most rural states mattered, as usual.
About 80% of the country was ignored —including 24 of the 27 lowest population and medium-small states, and 13 medium and big states like CA, GA, NY, and TX.
It was more obscene than the 2008 campaign, when candidates concentrated over 2/3rds of their campaign events and ad money in just 6 states, and 98% in just 15 states. Over half (57%) of the events were in just 4 states (OH, FL, PA, and VA).
In 2004, candidates concentrated over 2/3rds of their money and campaign visits in 5 states; over 80% in 9 states; and over 99% of their money in 16 states.
80% of the states and people have been merely spectators to presidential elections. They have no influence. That’s more than 85 million voters, 200 million Americans, ignored. When and where voters are ignored, then so are the issues they care about most.
The number and population of battleground states is shrinking.
Seven western states (Arizona, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming), with only about a third of California’s population, generated almost the same popular-vote margin (1,219,595) for George W. Bush in 2004 as John Kerry’s margin in California (1,235,659). But, John Kerry received 55 electoral votes from California, while Bush received only 33 from the seven western states.
With National Popular Vote, every vote would be equal. Candidates would reallocate their time, the money they raise, and their ad buys to no longer ignore 80% of the states and voters.
16% of Americans live in rural areas.
With National Popular Vote, big cities would not get all of candidates’ attention, much less control the outcome.
The population of the top five cities (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Philadelphia) is only 6% of the population of the United States and the population of the top 50 cities (going as far down as Arlington, TX) is only 15% of the population of the United States.
Suburbs and exurbs often vote Republican.
Any candidate who ignored, for example, the 16% of Americans who live in rural areas in favor of a “big city” approach would not likely win the national popular vote.
If big cities controlled the outcome of elections, the governors and U.S. Senators would be Democratic in virtually every state with a significant city.
A nationwide presidential campaign, with every vote equal, would be run the way presidential candidates campaign to win the electoral votes of closely divided battleground states, such as Ohio and Florida, under the state-by-state winner-take-all methods. The big cities in those battleground states do not receive all the attention, much less control the outcome. Cleveland and Miami do not receive all the attention or control the outcome in Ohio and Florida.
The itineraries of presidential candidates in battleground states (and their allocation of other campaign resources in battleground states) reflect the political reality that every gubernatorial or senatorial candidate knows. When and where every vote is equal, a campaign must be run everywhere.
With National Popular Vote, when every vote is equal, everywhere, it makes sense for presidential candidates to try and elevate their votes where they are and aren’t so well liked. But, under the state-by-state winner-take-all laws, it makes no sense for a Democrat to try and do that in Vermont or Wyoming, or for a Republican to try it in Wyoming or Vermont.
Even in California state-wide elections, candidates for governor or U.S. Senate don’t campaign just in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and those places don’t control the outcome (otherwise California wouldn’t have recently had Republican governors Reagan, Dukemejian, Wilson, and Schwarzenegger). A vote in rural Alpine county is just an important as a vote in Los Angeles. If Los Angeles cannot control statewide elections in California, it can hardly control a nationwide election.
In fact, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland together cannot control a statewide election in California.
Similarly, Republicans dominate Texas politics without carrying big cities such as Dallas and Houston.
There are numerous other examples of Republicans who won races for governor and U.S. Senator in other states that have big cities (e.g., New York, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts) without ever carrying the big cities of their respective states.
With a national popular vote, every vote everywhere will be equally important politically. There will be nothing special about a vote cast in a big city or big state. When every vote is equal, candidates of both parties will seek out voters in small, medium, and large towns throughout the states in order to win. A vote cast in a big city or state will be equal to a vote cast in a small state, town, or rural area.
Candidates would need to build a winning coalition across demographics. Any candidate who ignored, for example, the 16% of Americans who live in rural areas in favor of a “big city” approach would not likely win the national popular vote. Candidates would have to appeal to a broad range of demographics, and perhaps even more so, because the election wouldn’t be capable of coming down to just one demographic, such as waitress mom voters in Ohio.
The main media at the moment, TV, costs much more per impression in big cities than in smaller towns and rural area. Candidates get more bang for the buck in smaller towns and rural areas.
We will never know who would have won the national popular vote in the 2000 presidential election if it had been run under a National Popular Vote, when every vote, everywhere would have been equal and politically relevant to each candidate.
No.
When states with a combined total of at least 270 electoral votes enact the National Popular Vote bill, the candidate with the most popular votes in the country would get the needed majority of 270+ electoral votes from the enacting states. The bill would thus guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes.
Your lengthy post ignores two things.
First we are a republic with diverse processes for electing various offices. This process continues the disasterous course toward the tyranny of the rule by 51%.
Second the large urban leftist areas are more prone to vote fraud and vote total manipulation. It doesn’t matter how many votes you get when your opponent manufactures his total.
Democracy was not the intent of the founders. It is our problem not our solution.
The National Popular Vote is reallyy about letting the cities of Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Boston choose the president. The rest of the country won't count at all.
Is that what you are endorsing?
-PJ
No. What I have said is:
Candidates and campaign managers throughout the world know, that when and where every vote is equal, a campaign must be run everywhere there are potential voters for or against the candidate.
The indefensible reality is that in 2012 more than 99% of U.S. presidential campaign attention was showered on voters in just ten states - and that in today’s political climate, the swing states have become increasingly fewer and fixed.
Even in the recent handful of states where a presidential vote matters to the candidates, the value of a vote is different.
Where you live should not determine how much, if at all, your vote matters.
The current state-by-state winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but since enacted by 48 states), ensures that the candidates, after the conventions, will not reach out to about 80% of the states and their voters. Candidates have no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, campaign, or care about the voter concerns in the dozens of states where they are safely ahead or hopelessly behind.
Presidential candidates concentrate their attention on only a handful of closely divided “battleground” states and their voters. There is no incentive for them to bother to care about the majority of states where they are hopelessly behind or safely ahead to win.
10 of the original 13 states are ignored now.
Four out of five Americans were ignored in the 2012 presidential election. After being nominated, Obama visited just eight closely divided battleground states, and Romney visited only 10. These 10 states accounted for 98% of the $940 million spent on campaign advertising. They decided the election.
None of the 10 most rural states mattered, as usual.
About 80% of the country was ignored —including 24 of the 27 lowest population and medium-small states, and 13 medium and big states like CA, GA, NY, and TX.
It was more obscene than the 2008 campaign, when candidates concentrated over 2/3rds of their campaign events and ad money in just 6 states, and 98% in just 15 states. Over half (57%) of the events were in just 4 states (OH, FL, PA, and VA).
In 2004, candidates concentrated over 2/3rds of their money and campaign visits in 5 states; over 80% in 9 states; and over 99% of their money in 16 states.
80% of the states and people have been merely spectators to presidential elections. They have no influence. That’s more than 85 million voters, 200 million Americans, ignored. When and where voters are ignored, then so are the issues they care about most.
The number and population of battleground states is shrinking.
Policies important to the citizens of non-battleground states are not as highly prioritized as policies important to ‘battleground’ states when it comes to governing.
With National Popular Vote, every vote, everywhere would be equal, politically relevant, and matter to the candidates. Candidates would reallocate their time, the money they raise, and their ad buys to no longer ignore 80% of the states and voters.
With National Popular Vote, big cities would not get all of candidates’ attention, much less control the outcome.
16% of Americans live in rural areas.
The population of the top five cities (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Philadelphia) is only 6% of the population of the United States and the population of the top 50 cities (going as far down as Arlington, TX) is only 15% of the population of the United States.
Suburbs and exurbs often vote Republican.
If big cities controlled the outcome of elections, the governors and U.S. Senators would be Democratic in virtually every state with a significant city.
With a national popular vote, every vote everywhere will be equally important politically. There will be nothing special about a vote cast in a big city or big state. When every vote is equal, candidates of both parties will seek out voters in small, medium, and large towns throughout the states in order to win. A vote cast in a big city or state will be equal to a vote cast in a small state, town, or rural area.
Candidates would need to build a winning coalition across demographics. Candidates would have to appeal to a broad range of demographics, and perhaps even more so, because the election wouldn’t be capable of coming down to just one demographic, such as waitress mom voters in Ohio.
With National Popular Vote, every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections. Wining states would not be the goal. Candidates would need to care about voters across the nation, not just undecided voters in the current handful of swing states.
The main media at the moment, TV, costs much more per impression in big cities than in smaller towns and rural area. Candidates get more bang for the buck in smaller towns and rural areas.
I and National Popular Vote agree
The U.S. Constitution specifically permits diversity of election laws among the states because it explicitly gives the states control over the conduct of presidential elections (article II) as well as congressional elections (article I). The Founding Fathers in the U.S. Constitution permit states to conduct elections in varied ways. The National Popular Vote compact is patterned directly after existing federal law and preserves state control of elections.
Under the current system, the electoral votes from all 50 states are comingled and simply added together, irrespective of the fact that the electoral-vote outcome from each state was affected by differences in state policies, including voter registration, ex-felon voting, hours of voting, amount and nature of advance voting, and voter identification requirements.
Current federal law (Title 3, chapter 1, section 6 of the United States Code) requires the states to report the November popular vote numbers (the “canvas”) in what is called a “Certificate of Ascertainment.” They list the electors and the number of votes cast for each. The Congress meets in joint session to count the electoral votes reported in the Certificates of Ascertainment. You can see the Certificates of Ascertainment for all 50 states and the District of Columbia containing the official count of the popular vote at the NARA web site.
Under both the current system and the National Popular Vote compact, all of the people of the United States are impacted by the different election policies of the states. Everyone in the United States is affected by the division of electoral votes generated by each state. The procedures governing presidential elections in a closely divided battleground state (e.g., Florida and Ohio) can affect, and indeed have affected, the ultimate outcome of national elections.
For example, the 2000 Certificate of Ascertainment (required by federal law) from the state of Florida reported 2,912,790 popular votes for George W. Bush and 2,912,253 popular vote for Al Gore, and also reported 25 electoral votes for George W. Bush and 0 electoral votes for Al Gore. That 25–0 division of the electoral votes from Florida determined the outcome of the national election just as a particular division of the popular vote from a particular state might decisively affect the national outcome in some future election under the National Popular Vote compact.
Most Americans don’t ultimately care whether their presidential candidate wins or loses in their state . . . they care whether he/she wins the White House. Voters want to know, that even if they were on the losing side, their vote actually was directly and equally counted and mattered to their candidate. Most Americans think it would be wrong for the candidate with the most popular votes to lose. We don’t allow this in any other election in our representative republic.
The current state-by-state winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes maximizes the incentive and opportunity for fraud, coercion, intimidation, confusion, and voter suppression. A very few people can change the national outcome by adding, changing, or suppressing a small number of votes in one closely divided battleground state. With the current system all of a state’s electoral votes are awarded to the candidate who receives a bare plurality of the votes in each state. The sheer magnitude of the national popular vote number, compared to individual state vote totals, is much more robust against manipulation.
National Popular Vote would limit the benefits to be gained by fraud or voter suppression. One suppressed vote would be one less vote. One fraudulent vote would only win one vote in the return. In the current electoral system, one fraudulent vote could mean 55 electoral votes, or just enough electoral votes to win the presidency without having the most popular votes in the country.
The closest popular-vote election count over the last 130+ years of American history (in 1960), had a nationwide margin of more than 100,000 popular votes. The closest electoral-vote election in American history (in 2000) was determined by 537 votes, all in one state, when there was a lead of 537,179 (1,000 times more) popular votes nationwide.
For a national popular vote election to be as easy to switch as 2000, it would have to be two hundred times closer than the 1960 election—and, in popular-vote terms, forty times closer than 2000 itself.
Which system offers vote suppressors or fraudulent voters a better shot at success for a smaller effort?
Unable to agree on any particular method, the Founding Fathers left the choice of method for selecting presidential electors exclusively to the states by adopting the language contained in section 1 of Article II of the U.S. Constitution— “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors . . .” The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as “plenary” and “exclusive.”
The National Popular Vote bill preserves the Electoral College and state control of elections. It changes the way electoral votes are awarded in the Electoral College. The candidate with the most votes would win, as in virtually every other election in the country.
Under National Popular Vote, every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in every presidential election. Every vote would be included in the state counts and national count.
When states with a combined total of at least 270 Electoral College votes enact the bill, the candidate with the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC would get the needed majority of 270+ Electoral College votes from the enacting states. The bill would thus guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes.
The Republic is not in any danger from National Popular Vote.
National Popular Vote has NOTHING TO DO with pure democracy. Pure democracy is a form of government in which people vote on policy initiatives directly. With National Popular Vote, the United States would still be a republic, in which citizens continue to elect the President by a majority of Electoral College votes by states, to represent us and conduct the business of government.
The fact that here on FR there are proponents of crude democracy is just another sign that historical America is over.
The bottom line is, “You can’t cheat an honest electorate.”
No political arrangement is going to save us from ourselves.
You do know that our Constitutional Republic was as system constituted by the states to manage cross-state disputes, and to unify national interests vis-a-vis foreign nations, right?
To that end, the House of Representatives was designed to be popularly elected by the People to represent the People, the Senate was designed to be appointed by the States to represent the States, and the President was to be selected by the States to faithfully execute the laws passed by the representatives of the People and the States.
The Electoral College was the means by which the States chose the Executive. The President was never meant to be the "king" of the People; he was meant to be the overseer of the disputes between the States, and therefore was selected by the States.
The 17th amendment broke the reins that the States held over Congress. That is why, today, we have a Congress that is disconnected from the People, and outright hostile against the States. The Senate is now beholden to the national parties who hand out campaign funds to those who toe the national party agenda line.
So now, you want to abandon federalism entirely, and take away the States' power to select their executive in the federal government?
-PJ
With the Electoral College and federalism, the Founding Fathers meant to empower the states to pursue their own interests within the confines of the Constitution. The National Popular Vote is an exercise of that power, not an attack upon it.
The Electoral College is now the set of 538 dedicated party activists who vote as rubberstamps for their party’s presidential candidate. That is not what the Founders intended.
During the course of campaigns, candidates are educated and campaign about the local, regional, and state issues most important to the handful of battleground states they need to win. They take this knowledge and prioritization with them once they are elected. Candidates need to be educated and care about all of our states.
The current state-by-state winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but since enacted by 48 states), under which all of a state’s electoral votes are awarded to the candidate who gets the most votes in each separate state, ensures that the candidates, after the conventions, in 2012 did not reach out to about 80% of the states and their voters. 10 of the original 13 states are ignored now. Candidates had no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, campaign, or care about the voter concerns in the dozens of states where they were safely ahead or hopelessly behind.
80% of the states and people were just spectators to the presidential election. That’s more than 85 million voters, 200 million Americans.
Policies important to the citizens of non-battleground states are not as highly prioritized as policies important to ‘battleground’ states when it comes to governing.
Since World War II, a shift of a few thousand votes in one or two states would have elected the second-place candidate in 4 of the 15 presidential elections
The National Popular Vote bill preserves the Electoral College and state control of elections. It changes the way electoral votes are awarded in the Electoral College.
Under National Popular Vote, every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in every presidential election. Every vote would be included in the state counts and national count.
When states with a combined total of at least 270 electoral votes enact the bill, the candidate with the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC would get the needed majority of 270+ electoral votes from the enacting states. The bill would thus guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes.
States have the responsibility and power to make all of their voters relevant in every presidential election and beyond.
Unable to agree on any particular method, the Founding Fathers left the choice of method for selecting presidential electors exclusively to the states by adopting the language contained in section 1 of Article II of the U.S. Constitution— “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors . . .” The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as “plenary” and “exclusive.”
Federalism concerns the allocation of power between state governments and the national government. The National Popular Vote bill concerns how votes are tallied, not how much power state governments possess relative to the national government. The powers of state governments are neither increased nor decreased based on whether presidential electors are selected along the state boundary lines, or national lines (as with the National Popular Vote).
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