This is what the left does. Politics is war to them. The sooner the right realizes this the better.
“A republic if you can keep it”-Benjamin Franklin
Art I, Section 10: No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, ... enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State...
Supreme Court decision would be necessary to determine if this is constitutional.
On the one hand, the Constitution gives each state legislature absolute authority to determine how its electors are chosen.
OTOH, the Constitution prohibits compacts between states without permission of Congress.
Does this thing fall into the category of prohibited interstate compacts? I have no idea.
Of course, if Congress were to agree it would be indisputably constitutional.
There is no national popular vote as such.
We have 50 state elections, plus an election in the District of Columbia, to choose electors to the electoral college.
I need to brush up on the constitution, but, I think elections are always conducted by the states, within the states, with the federal government having very limited roles in how elections are conducted.
The 12th amendment indicates that states choose their electors to the electoral college. They aren’t even required to choose electors by popular vote. Every state does use the popular vote, but are not required to.
This plan is sunk if any state decided not to have a popular vote for presidential electors. Then you would be comparing apples to oranges to try to determine the national popular vote winner.
The left wants mob rule...
This “compact” of states is quite odd, really. It is a law within a state that awards that state’s electoral votes to the winner of the popular election in that and other states. It is as if decisions about local issues were, by statute, determined on the basis of what the electorate in Nevada decides to do. Perhaps I should argue for legislation in Rhode Island that determines the state income tax rate to be whatever the people of Texas decide it should be. Or better yet, whatever the people of Estonia deem best. Perhaps the state of Vermont could subordinate sanitation laws to the popular consensus in Mumbai. This opens up all sorts of fun ideas. However, it doesn’t make much sense unless you expect socialists to dominate all national votes for all time going forward. It homogenizes and subordinates states to a socialist federal gov’t.
The whole push for a "national popular vote" gained momentum after the 2000 and 2004 elections. I've been under the impression that the whole issue died off after Obama was elected in 2008.
Even these popular vote agreements that have been passed in state legislatures are idiotic no matter how you look at them. The problem is that all of the states that have passed these measures are deep "Blue" states, which makes the measures completely one-sided the wrong way, for them. If California, for example, has a law that says its electoral votes will be cast for the candidate who wins the national popular vote, then there are only two scenarios that could unfold in any given presidential election:
(1) a Democrat wins the national popular vote and California's electoral votes are cast for the Democratic candidate ... who would have won more popular votes in California anyway.
(1) a Republican wins the national popular vote, and California's electoral votes are cast for the Republican candidate ... even though the Democrat would have won more votes in California.
The whole thing is a joke. If this measure had been in effect in California in 2000, then California's electoral votes would have remained unchanged (Gore won California).
If this measure had been in effect in California in 2004, then California's electoral votes would have gone to Bush even though Kerry won the state by a wide margin.
Actually, the scheme is anti-democratic, because it nullifies the votes of the majority of voters in states who supported the candidate with the lesser popular vote nationally.
This would make every presidential election a landslide, with the winner getting ALL of the electoral college votes. There is something creepy and totalitarian about that.
“If they want to make the case for the popular election of presidents and a Constitutional amendment, they should make the case.
They don’t want to make the case.
They prefer working in the dark.
Some people enjoy winning by manipulation and deceit and, after decades or centuries (or, at a personal level, years) of this sub-surface behavior, they aren’t capable of functioning, and have no desire to act, in light.
They got a big boost recently when NY decided to go along.
There's a poll to FReep on the right hand side of the page. Scroll down.
An objection I haven’t seen laid out is that this law would provide massive incentive for voter fraud.
In today’s CA, for the Democrats, or Texas, for the GOP, there’s no real incentive for fraud. Doesn’t matter the margin by which they win the state, they still get only the same number of EC votes.
With the Compact in place, “safe” states will have massive incentives to run up their vote totals via fraud, if necessary. Under the present system, these incentives exist only in swing states like Florida.
The website of the sponsoring entity features the following words: ‘”The State legislature’s power to select the manner for appointing electors is plenary” - U.S. Supreme Court’
If so, how can they be barred from leaving the compact (and choosing another means of appointing electors) within six months of a presidential election?
In case of a disputed popular vote total, the votes of each participating state would be in limbo.
Democracy - government is run by a vote of the people.
Can be contrasted with autocracy or oligarchy where government is run by the decisions of one person or a small group of people.
Republic - One larger state consisting of smaller autonomous states. In contrast with Confederation, Kingdom, Caliphate. North Korea is also a republic.
Constitution - A written document which lays out the fundamental principals and structure of a government. North Korea also has a constitution.
We live in a Republic which has a Constitution and uses Democratic means to elect our representatives. Only one of those things is different than North Korea.
There is nothing special what so ever about being a "Republic" it does not make a nation better. The power given to the government which is subject to the "democratic" vote of the people can be different in every "Democracy". The limiting factors are the specifics laid out in the constitution. This is what made our Constitution so special. It was nearly perfectly devised. The main purpose of the U.S. Constitution was to limit the accumulation of power by the government and any individuals or factions that may participate in the government. It set out to severely limit what was subject to the "democratic" will of the people. It worked for a while.