Move to Dump Electoral College Defeated in Montana, North Dakota

Newsmax ^ | 2-9-07 | AP via Newsmax

[Alia]

A movement to essentially dump the Electoral College and give the presidency to the winner of the nationwide popular vote has been defeated in North Dakota and Montana, after opponents said it would eliminate any influence states may have in presidential contests.

Thursday's votes represented the first legislative setbacks this year for the National Popular Vote plan, said spokeswoman Breeanna Mierop. It is a proposed agreement among states to cast their electoral votes for the presidential candidate who wins the popular vote.

"If you look at the population trends ... if this were to become the law, our presidential elections would be controlled by the vote in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Houston," said North Dakota state Rep. Lawrence Klemin, a Bismarck Republican. "They would decide who the president was, not the rest of us."

North Dakota's House voted 60-31 Thursday to defeat the plan. In the Montana Senate, it lost 30-20.

[SoFloFreeper]

Democrats are remembering only 2000. Here is a link to the 2004 election results. This manuver would have forced big blue states like NY, CA, MA, MD, RI, NJ and even PA to vote their electors for GW Bush. Think about the mandate he could have claimed then.

Would not have mattered. All we would be treated to is a cavalcade of the "injustice" that the people of New York, California, et al. had their votes "ignored" because of the unfair law/bad voting machines, etc.

The MSM is in the tank for the libs, regardless of the facts.

[Cheburashka]

So, why, do you think the Dems continue to raise this as a platform "peg"?

To "turn out the vote"? Something else?
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Right now if the Daley Machine steals 100,000 votes in Chicago, it only affects election results in Illinois.

If this were put in place the 100,000 votes stolen in Chicago will offset 100,000 real Republican votes in the rest of the country. Suddenly the ability to commit vote fraud become key to winning Presidential elections. Who are the experts in voter fraud? Democrats. Who supports this proposition? Democrats.

Do you sense a pattern developing?

Yeah, I suppose that could be considered "voter turnout", in a sense.

[kabar]

Many posters don't even read the entire article that is posted. Many don't even understand that this proposal has nothing to do with eliminating the electoral college. It is an endrun on the Constitution and there are Reps also advocating it. This is a serious attack on the way we elect the President. It is not a bunch of nuts who have not done their homework.

[Cheburashka]

Exactly. I was just discussing this matter with my son night before last. I pulled out a map of CA; showed him the blue/red. The producers would be punished, those mostly producing nothing would be "electing" our presidents should the electoral college be abolished. He got the Founding Father's wisdom in a snap!, and replied: "so is this why the Democrats build dependency zones via their policies?"
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Smart kid.

[dfwgator]

The founding fathers knew what they were doing when they created the electoral college. I'm glad to see that the move to dump it failed. Evidently intelligence prevailed.

Exactly, imagine if the popular vote was close, then you would have to count every single vote in the entire country, and not just from one state. What a mess.

[kabar]

This is the advisory board pushing this nonsense.

John Anderson (R-I–IL)

Birch Bayh (D–IN)

John Buchanan (R–AL)

Tom Campbell (R–CA)

Tom Downey (D–NY)

D. Durenberger (R–MN)

Jake Garn (R–UT)

[kabar]

Nationwide election of the President would reduce the possibility of close elections and recounts. The current system regularly manufactures artificial crises even when the nationwide popular vote is not particularly close. Even though President Bush was 3.5 million votes ahead of Kerry in 2004 on election night, the nation had to wait until Wednesday to see if Kerry would dispute Ohio’s all-important 20 electoral votes. A shift of 60,000 votes in Ohio in 2004 would have given Kerry a majority of the electoral votes, despite President Bush’s 3,500,000-vote lead in the nationwide popular vote.

Similarly, the disputed 2000 presidential election was an artificial crisis created by one candidate’s 537-vote lead in Florida in an election in which the other candidate had a 537,179-vote lead nationwide (1,000 times greater). In the nation’s most controversial presidential election, Tilden’s 3.1%-lead in the popular vote in 1876 was greater than Bush’s substantial 2.8%-lead in 2004; however, a constitutional crisis was created by very small popular-vote margins in four states (889, 922, 1,050, and 1,075). With a single massive pool of 122,000,000 votes, there is less opportunity for a close outcome or recount (and less incentive for fraud) than with 51 separate smaller pools, where a few hundred popular votes can decide the Presidency.

[Basheva]

The Electoral College was one of the three great compromises of the Constitutional convention.

First we have F. D. Roosevelt trying to pack the Supreme Court and now the dems trying to get rid of the Electoral College.

Do you see a trend?

[ridesthemiles]

It is a very sad comment on today's "educated" persons that it got 51 votes to dump the Electoral college.

Apparently the lack of American History being taught in today's schools has worked.
The electoral college protects the states with smaller population, like Montana and the Dakotas.

[dfwgator]

Popular vote is irrelevant, because people vote with the knowledge of the rules currently in place.


How many people didn't bother to vote in Texas, because they figured their vote wouldn't make a difference since it was assumed that President Bush would take the state.

If people knew the winner would be determined by popular vote, then Bush probably would have won the popular vote in 2000 anyway.

[deport]

Thanks for the links.

The States already use a differing approach to the allocation of Electors in that a couple do it different that the rest.

Excerpt regarding the process showing how two states do it differently that the others.....

Click

The number of electors for each state is equal to the number of Representatives (1 to 53) plus the number of Senators (2). The 23rd Amendment grants the District of Columbia the number of electors it would be entitled to if it were at state, but not more than that of the least populous state. In 2000, the District received 3 electors. Wyoming, the least populous state, has 3 electors.

The candidate with the highest popular vote tally receives all of the state's electoral votes, with the exception of electoral votes from Maine and Nebraska.

In Maine and Nebraska the 2 at-large electoral votes go to the winner of the statewide popular vote. In addition, the presidential candidate with the highest popular vote in each of the state's Congressional Districts wins 1 electoral vote from that particular district. Maine has been doing this since the 1972 presidential election. Nebraska is a newcomer to this "districting" system of allocating electoral votes to the presidential candidates in the November General Election- having had this in place only beginning with the 1996 election.

The relevant statutes governing this procedure in each state are:

Maine Revised Statutes Title 21-A, section 802. Presidential Electors; Representation:

• "One presidential elector shall be chosen from each congressional district and 2 at large"

Nebraska Revised Statutes 32-710. State postprimary conventions; selection of presidential electors [excerpt]:

• "One presidential elector shall be chosen from each congressional district, and two presidential electors shall be chosen at large"

The U.S. Constitution- in Article II, Section 1, clause 2 (which was not altered by the later 12th Amendment)- reads, in part, as follows: "Each State shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors... etc." [italics ours]; it is this constitutional provision which permits the several States to do what Maine and Nebraska have already done in switching over to the "districting" system from the more usual so-called "general ticket" system for allocating electors.

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The Constitution on compacts between the states....

Section. 10. No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection Laws; and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress.

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.

[Cheburashka]

If I recall correctly, we don't vote directly for President. We vote for a slate of electors ostensibly committed to vote for a certain Presidential candidate.

So even if a state "agreed" to this compact, a slate of electors committed to a specific candidate could still run.
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It would work one of two ways.

1) The slate of electors would be "forced" to vote for the winner of the "national election". Some states forbid their electors to vote for anybody but the candidates on their slate right now. They would simply change the law to forbid them to vote for anyone other than the winner of the "national election".

2) The slate of the winner of the "national election" would be selected, no matter what the state vote said.

Both give the same result: the electoral votes go to the winner of the "national election" without reference to the wishes of the voters within the state.

Go to the links in post #46 above for details.

[Wallace T.]

Of course, the reverse argument could have been used in California, New York, and Massachusetts, where there was little doubt that Gore would carry those states.

[dfwgator]

But my point is that the arguments about who won the popular vote should carry absolutely no weight.

[Wallace T.]

In the early 1960s, the Supreme Court mandated that state legislatures and city and county councils and commissioners' courts require numerically proportional districts, under the "one man, one vote" rule. Before that ruling, most state legislatures had a lower house established with numerically proportional districts and an upper house based on geographical areas, usually counties. In other words, most states had a miniature version of the Federal Congress.

The effect of this court decision was to weaken the political influence of rural, mostly conservative counties. If such a system were still in place, states like California, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, where the vast majority of counties are "red", would have a state Senate controlled by moderate to conservative senators that would put a brake on spendthrift, socialistic Democrats and their RINO buddies.

The bottom line is that America is a republic with a balance of powers, not a direct or pure democracy. The Electoral College must stay, and the states should be permitted to apportion their legislatures as they see fit.

[Wallace T.]

Ditto. The Electoral College saved us from Gore and (maybe) Kerry. It needs to remain in place.

[BlueMondaySkipper]

As it sits, when the ballot stuffing machines are churning away into the wee hours of the morning in Philadelphia it can only affect the awarding of Pa's 23 electoral votes. If there was a nationwide popular vote these machines would keep running until the whole state of Pennsylvania had 110% voter turnout.

No thanks

[Publius Valerius]

The Supreme Court has held, in cases past, that the guarantee of a Republican form of government is non-justiciable.

[Verginius Rufus]

Yes, the Democrats have a century and a half of experience at election fraud ("vote early and vote often!"), and have won who knows how many close elections as a result by that method at the local or state level, most recently the gubernatorial race in Washington state.

The electoral college system allowed them to steal the election of 1960, and probably the election of 1884 (where a 1,000-margin in New York state gave Cleveland the election), and almost let them steal the election of 2000...but with a national popular vote there would be much more incentive to stuff ballot boxes in all the Democrat-controlled big cities...so the "cure" would be worse than the disease.

[Alia]

That's not what they are advocating. They want enough states to enter a compact that would require them to allocate their electoral votes on the basis of the national popular vote. The states have that right. Maine and Nebraska allocate their electoral votes differently than other statesm i.e., winner take all.

You are exactly right: This is, in fact, what the Dems are up to. And have been.