Posted on 04/09/2014 6:27:33 PM PDT by ReformationFan
Lawmakers line up behind plan that dumps Electoral College without constitutional amendment
The National Popular Vote effort, which could see the 14 states with the largest populations decide the presidency, is more than halfway to its goal of legally bypassing the Electoral College established in the Constitution.
Last week, the Maine state Senate voted in support of the plan one week after both houses of the New York legislature overwhelmingly supported it.
Now the governors of both states will need to decide whether to formally back the National Popular Vote, or NPV.
The plan is more than halfway to its goal of electing future presidents via the popular vote, after Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee, an independent, signed on last July.
The NPV campaign seeks to obtain the consent of the majority of the 538 votes in the Electoral College to award its electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote.
Now 10 jurisdictions possessing 136 electoral votes are part of the plan, just over half of the 270 electoral votes needed to bring the National Popular Vote interstate compact into effect.
The states will not be required to award their electoral votes to the national popular vote winner until the NPV has signed up enough states to garner 270 electoral votes.
The NVP effort is fully partnered with a George Soros-funded election group, as WND was first to report.
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
Black Sabbath: “Mob Rules”.
I will not stand for my vote to be cast for the candidate that I voted against! This denies my CONSTITUTIONAL right to cast my vote and have it counted on a level basis with every other vote cast.
They need to be careful, lest they get what they ask for (unbeknownst to themselves).
States like NY are losing population (and electoral representation) to states like Florida. That’s why they want to switch to the popular vote. Presidential races will be reduced to campaigning mostly at or near the high population centers.
This would change elections from trying to get votes for your candidate to trying to keep your opponents voters from coming out.
Texas doesn’t have to accept it. But Texas might gain by it. Right now Presidential candidates ignore Texas because its vote is a foregone conclusion.
The Constitutional grounds are that each state is free to appoint their Electors any way they see fit.
Ohio could have a convention of PTA Presidents choose its Electors and there’d be nothing to say about it.
It is one thing for a state to decide to do something stupid like this, but quite another to make an interstate pact to vote as a block.
As if the elections had no effect? This cannot be constitutional.
This simply will not stand.
No way the majority of the nation will accept this insanity.
This is NOT a good thing, here’s the failure of this commie power grab!!..and may it’s corpse never come roaring back to life..
The US Constitution provides no method for choosing a President ‘other than’ Electors.
To do so is a violation of Article II of the US Constitution. But that doesn’t mean they can’t get away with it. Nor does it mean there aren’t consequences.
To effect this plan the Electors in those States must be fully complicit in this scheme.
Just curious...how does the map of this ‘scheme’ compare with a map of the most aggressive gun control regimes???
(rest of comment self-censored)
that’s what I was just thinking. If there ever was a reason to stand up armed, this is it right here. This is nothing short of an overthrow of the constitution by one political party.
Seems to me that the voters who voted in the majority for Candidate A in State X, only to have State X cast its electoral votes for Candidate B, would have clear reason to request redress under "equal protection under the law".
I don’t think this is going anywhere. But the ComDems are desperate and will try anything to stay in power.
Remember the state of CA considering breaking into multiple states to multiply their Senate representation?
No treachery is too low for them.
Even though a number of states have adopted this law, it won’t go into effect until enough states totalling 270 electoral votes also adopt the law.
That being said, the constitutionality of this law has not [and will not be] tested until it goes into effect.
Many constitutional scholars believe that the law exceeds the provision in the Constitution that allows the States to choose the manner with which they appoint electors within their respective states.
In Bush v. Gore [2000], the 7-2 SCOTUS majority concluded on the grounds of violation of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause:
“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. Id., at 28—33. History has now favored the voter, and in each of the several States the citizens themselves vote for Presidential electors. 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 7-2 majority cited the following as the basis for its decision:
” ... 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 ...”
And:
“ ... Once 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).”
In other words, if a state grants its citizens the right to choose its electors, it cannot invalidate the vote of the majority if that candidate did not win the national popular vote.
The real problem is that a few states with no voter role integrity will be able to produce phantom votes which will override your vote. Wherever you reside you will be up against Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston voter fraud. As soon as this is passed the Democrats will pull out all the stops.
Yes, and when the good folks of this country decide to enforce the Constitution, 36 states are going to need a grant to get more rope to hang these traitorous bastards.
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