Posted on 04/19/2024 2:31:03 PM PDT by Baladas
Earlier this week, Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) decided not to veto an obscure law called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPV), which calls for the state's 4 Electoral College votes to be awarded to the presidential candidate who gets the most votes nationally regardless of the outcome in the state. The law doesn't go into effect, however, until states totaling 270 electoral votes join the compact. That's the number of Electoral College votes required to win the presidency. Once dismissed as an unworkable, almost farcical fantasy, the NPV just tallied its 209th electoral vote with Maine, and now has a clear path to victory. And that means that the Electoral College as we know it might not survive past the 2024 election cycle.
This is incredible news. The U.S. Electoral College is, by a quite considerable margin, the most unfathomably stupid democratic institution in the world. It has already malfunctioned twice this century by awarding the presidency to the person who received fewer votes from the American electorate. The 2000 election of George W. Bush, who steered us directly into three distinct catastrophes—the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the Great Recession—sent our new century disastrously off course in ways we are still feeling today. The even-more egregious 2016 elevation of former President Donald Trump, who lost the popular vote more decisively than Bush, resulted in the capture of the Supreme Court by reactionary conservatives for at least a generation.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
So who is the enforcing mechanism in this Compact? If a signing state ever decides to violate the Compact, to cast its electoral votes how it wants... who is going to make them abide?
Only entity that can enforce inter-state compacts is the federal government.
BUT...
the federal government has a duty to uphold the Electoral College which is stipulated in the Constitution.
So you can have a compact with no power, no means to enforce it because the very power a state has to cast its electors wasn’t repealed.
It is a compact until the first state decides to violate it...
It is vaporware.
It’s as if these smaller states want to “service” the California, New York, Illnois, etc. larger states. By service, take that any way you want but think hooker.
I don’t get it. If I was a smaller state, I’d be saying @#$% what large states think. But it’s like they are wanting the large states to do it to them...you know....do it to me baby.
As Johnny Carson used to say all the time, especially after a hilarious joke with unnatural sexual overtones..........”weird”
“unfathomably stupid“
I tried to explain to my girlfriend why we have the electoral college and that small states demanded it so they would have a say in governance.
No matter how hard I tried to explain she just didn’t get it. She went to one of the most expensive private schools in town so I am sure this was taught to her.
I still can’t seem to explain to her that we are a Republic not a democracy.
She is a teacher and voted for, you guessed it, Biden.
>>I wish the states would adopt electoral colleges. Then Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area wouldn’t control California,<<
Nebraska and Maine actually have that system. The winner in each congressional district gets one electoral vote, and the statewide winner gets the last 2 electors
https://www.270towin.com/content/split-electoral-votes-maine-and-nebraska/
I would like to see an electoral college for electing governors.
David Faris is an associate professor of political science at Roosevelt University and the author of It’s Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics.
DemocRATS never stop looking for ways to gain an electoral advantage. Republicans never start.
Well, the NPV is blatantly unConstitutional, so even if it “goes into effect”, it’ll be struck down. Or SHOULD be struck down.
I’d settle for the Nebraska/Maine setup of one electoral vote for each congressional district, and the two senatorial electoral votes going to whoever won the majority of the districts. That would put an end to the current system, so common in all of the western states, of one or two counties determining all of the electoral votes.
Trouble is, that’s a matter to be decided within each particular state, and guess where all the votes are.
The U.S. Electoral College is, by a quite considerable margin, the most unfathomably stupid democratic institution in the world.
David Faris Associate Professor, Roosevelt University is, by a considerable margin, the most obtuse professor in the United States.
The President gets zero votes nationally as there is no national vote. There are 50 State votes held under the varying laws of 50 States, any of which which can, if they choose, eliminate the popular vote.
Under the alliance favored by the professor, the citizens of a state in the alliance could vote 100% for Trump and have 100% of their votes in the Electoral College go to Biden because other people in other States voted that way. That's the new Democracy. Any clear path to victory may find an obstacle in the U.S. Supreme Court when it comes to finding that Alliance emanating from a penumbra.
The United States is a republic of republics. The members of the union are the States. The President is elected by the votes of the States, the members of the union, to be President of said union. Those State votes are cast in the Electoral College. The vast majority of States choose to cast all of that State's votes to the candidate who wins the majority of votes within that State.
The purpose of the Electoral College is to resist regional dominance and to keep small States relevant. From the pitch of Professor Faris' squeal, it is an apparent success.
No citizen has any constitutional right to cast a vote in the presidential election. The States have no requirement to hold a popular vote and early elections did not have one. It is simply a matter of what the State legislatures choose.
Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98, 104 (2000)
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 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.).
So, article is by Newsweak. Should have been apparent to me.
This Associate ‘Professor’ doesn’t understand the purpose of the college. It was established to ensure that the hopes, dreams, wants and needs of the collective Union are considered.
Philadelphia and New York City back then could completely control the UNION just by pure population and we’d likely have seen the Civil War earlier. Same thing today. You let the 20 or so cities and counties that have so many leftists crammed in them control the government and you get the same.
All the nails are already in the Republic’s coffin, loss of the electoral college is lowering it into the ground and bulldozing cement into the hole...
Fixed it...
The EC is called the Connecticut Compromise because Connecticut knew small states would be ignored by the Federal government. The Midwest, Northeast, most of the South would be ignored if the EC was eliminated.
There are a few...Hillsdale is one, Palm Beach Atlantic is another...just look around...
Grove City in Pennsylvania may be another. King’s College NYC wanted to be one, but it’s closing. University of Austin is a recent start up and Florida’s public colleges are reportedly being transformed by DeSantis, but somebody will always object that such attempts aren’t purist enough.
I have to disagree..My college PolySci professor is. She told me that I need to vote Carter to pass her class. I told her I might write in Reagan (instead of Ford, this was in 1976) and she told me that I'll get an F, if I vote for Reagan. I voted Ford, but I didn't pass her class...
She said Reagan would cause WW3...she was dumb...
Georgia had the county unit system to keep rural Democrat counties running things, but the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in the 1962 reapportionment decision.
Why not just a Coin Toss?
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