NJ Gov. Signs Popular Vote Measure

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — New Jersey on Sunday became the second state to enter a compact that would eliminate the Electoral College's power to choose a president if enough states endorse the idea.

Gov. Jon S. Corzine signed legislation that approves delivering the state's 15 electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. The Assembly approved the bill last month and the Senate followed suit earlier this month.

Maryland — with 10 electoral votes — had been the only state to pass the compact into law.

The measure could result in the electoral votes going to a candidate opposed by voters in New Jersey, which has backed Democratic presidential candidates since 1988.

The compact would take effect only if enough states — those with a majority of votes in the Electoral College — agreed to it. A candidate needs 270 of 538 electoral votes to win.

The compact has also passed both houses of the Illinois Legislature, according to the National Popular Vote movement, and has been approved by one legislative house in Arkansas, Colorado and North Carolina.

Governors in California and Hawaii, though, vetoed bills to join the compact.

The goal is to ensure that the national popular vote winner becomes president. Democrats who sponsored the bill have noted that their party's 2000 presidential nominee, Al Gore, won the popular vote but lost in the Electoral College.

Sponsors contend the agreement would ensure that all states are competitive in presidential elections and make all votes important. It also would guarantee the presidency to the person who received the most votes.

Republicans in the state criticized the bill as undermining federal elections. "This legislation is a constitutional travesty," Assemblyman Richard Merkt said. "It's a backdoor end-run of the federal Constitution."

On the Net:

* National Popular Vote: http://www.nationalpopularvote.org

New Jersey on Sunday became the second state to enter a compact that would eliminate the Electoral College's power to choose a president if enough states endorse the idea.... Maryland .. had been the only state to pass the compact into law. ... The compact has also passed both houses of the Illinois Legislature ... The compact would take effect only if enough states (blah blah blah)...

Darn, I hate having to get technical on Monday mornings.

U.S. Constitution - Article 1 Section 10
Section 10 - Powers Prohibited of States
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.

Besides the above we have those little things called the 14th Amendment, Section 1, the 15th Amendment, Section 1, and about 27 Quadrillion Federal Voting Rights Laws.

'Compacts', sheesh. Talk about voter disenfranchisement. STOO-PID^™ Morons

I'm sure the ACLU will be all over this just as if they had seen a Bible in a Publik Skuul.

Dave, it might have been nice if the Corzine would have given the people of NJ the choice of voting for this measure. I dont recall it being on any ballot in November.

It might be nicer if every state had a procedure to recall the governor and any state legislators that the people decided were so badly f'ing up their job that they need to be removed. Such measures in all 50 states would tremendously reduce the odds of removal via instantaneous lead poisoning.

Wait. What am I thinking? Giving the peasants any actual control over how a country is run...its so, so American. We can't have any of that around here.

The following is from The Conservative Newsletter, 20 December 2000:

History Teacher Speaks Out

Thank you, Al Gore. As a high school history teacher, I owe you a debt of gratitude. You see, the way you have conducted your campaigns (the election campaign and the ballot-manipulation campaign) has provided me with endless opportunities to show my students the beauty of our Constitution and the wisdom of our founding fathers.

Take the Electoral College system. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Al. For six years, I have done my best to explain the logic and benefits of the system hammered out by Mr. Madison and a few of his cronies. High school students just don't get why they chose such a complicated process. Why not simply go by popular vote? I'd patiently explain that the electoral system was designed to allow the people to speak through their states. The tricky part was making my students understand why that was especially beneficial to small states like ours. I knew that, proportionally, Rhode Islanders have more clout in the presidential election under this system, but I wasn't able to illustrate it dramatically until this year.

When I showed my students the U.S. map, colored red for Governor Bush and blue for you, they finally got it. Anyone can clearly see that the popular vote of only a handful of major cities is almost equal to that of the entire rest of the U.S. Thank God the founding fathers had the wisdom and insight to provide this protection to those of us in small states or sparsely settled areas. The look of shock on my pupils' faces when they realized that public policy could easily be dictated by a handful of the largest and most liberal population centers made me realize that I had them hooked.

They could begin to see why Senator-elect Hillary Clinton, in one of her first post-election speeches, promised to fight to abolish the electoral college. This was too good an opportunity to pass up. Pulling out my well-worn copy of The Federalist Papers, I seized the advantage and began to read from No.68. "It was also peculiarly desirable to afford as little opportunity as possible to tumult and disorder. Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue and corruption," Alexander Hamilton wrote in defense of the electoral college system. As I told my students, you can insert the phrase "in the year 2000 in Florida" throughout this letter and be amazed at Hamilton's gift of prophecy.

The spectacle we are now witnessing in your campaign to overturn the election in Florida, Al, is the very thing that our Founding Fathers most feared. Although they couldn't anticipate the advent of television, they were familiar with the harm that an inflamed and largely uninformed populace could wreak. What a tremendous lesson you have provided the youth of our country.

No longer are Hamilton, Madison et al "dead white men," incapable of teaching us anything. Rather, they reach out to us through the ages, warning us of "these most deadly adversaries of republican government."

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