Posted on 08/21/2019 2:28:30 PM PDT by mplc51
DENVER — A U.S. appeals court in Denver said Electoral College members can vote for the presidential candidate of their choice and aren’t bound by the popular vote in their states. The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that the Colorado secretary of state violated the Constitution in 2016 when he removed an elector and nullified his vote when the elector refused to cast his ballot for Democrat Hillary Clinton, who won the popular vote. It was not immediately clear what effect the ruling might have on the Electoral College system, which is established in the Constitution. Voters in each state choose members of the Electoral College, called electors, who are pledged to a presidential candidate. The electors then choose the president. Most states require electors to vote for the candidate who won the popular vote in that state, but the Denver appeals court said the states do not have that authority. The Constitution allows electors to cast their votes at their own discretion, the ruling said, “and the state does not possess countervailing authority to remove an elector and to cancel his vote in response to the exercise of that Constitutional right.”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Electors choose the President.
Voting by members of the public has nothing to do with it.
[[[This decision also renders that legislation unconstitutional.]]]
By allowing the elector to ignore the state law?
This actually is not a big problem. In general, the candidates and the party select the slate of electors in each state. You might get one or two “faithless electors” but that would be a rare case. The candidates just need to be sure about the reliability of the people they place on that slate of electors...
The Court made an unconstitutional decision. The Constitution guarantees the States a Republican form of government.
Article IV: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened), against domestic Violence.”
[I’m a Vietnam vet & my knees are officially shot]
So this state directed that an elector could be nullified if he didn't follow the state's instructions which was to vote according to the state's popular vote.
Where does the judge get off overriding the state legislature when the Constitution clearly assigns the power to the state legislature?
Should appeal this to SCOTUS.
The danger is people buying elector's votes, or threatening electors and people running as electors with evil intent.
It's the Constitution.
What the hell would be the point of even voting? All the parties would have to do is control the mechanism of appointing the electors. This decision has to be reversed and pronto.
oh geez...this opens up the door to bribe electors.
“They are not bound by anything but their own conscious.”
There is no Constitutional provision or Federal law that requires Electors to vote according to the results of the popular vote in their states. Some states, however, require Electors to cast their votes according to the popular vote. These pledges fall into two categories—Electors bound by state law and those bound by pledges to political parties.
The U.S. Supreme Court has held that the Constitution does not require that Electors be completely free to act as they choose and therefore, political parties may extract pledges from electors to vote for the parties’ nominees. Some state laws provide that so-called “faithless Electors” may be subject to fines or may be disqualified for casting an invalid vote and be replaced by a substitute elector. The Supreme Court has not specifically ruled on the question of whether pledges and penalties for failure to vote as pledged may be enforced under the Constitution. No Elector has ever been prosecuted for failing to vote as pledged.
Therefore, if the electors are given to state laws concerning their vote, and not by the federal law that created the electoral college and abides by it to over rule popular vote, then we have a conflict of interest for the actions taken voting either way. I see it as unconstitutional and not within states rights to over-rule a federal election using independent voters by state decisions.
rwood
Step one.....Sow dissension and question the value in the Electoral College concept.
When I become king I will re-open Alcatraz as a “special” one way stopping point for our errant judges.
If the state law as passed by the legislature says they are bound, then it is indeed constitutional for them to be bound.
That said, I think the Compact is unconstitutional on other grounds as well, such as the Equal Protection one man one vote rule.
we need to be mindful that the commie/nazi/dnc/progressive/ecxtreme leftist Puppetmeisters (the $$$ and scheming BEHIND the politicians’ faces on parade every day)
desperately want to seize power again.
this is why they’re not only funding a bunch of puppet-candidates (that will obey their orders if elected)....
but the Puppetmeisters are also...
a. funding or controlling much of the mass media Big Lie propaganda mill
2. Soroznazi has been buying up Secretary of State or similar positions across the country whereever he could...
these are usually not very political offices and seldom see well-financed candidates other than when someone like Soroz runs one of his puppets.... so he can often win these races. Who cares? Its these office holders that, in most states, certify their states’ election results.
Or not.
3. Huge purchasing of caravans, buses, etc... to round up and deliver more votes (legal and otherwise)
4. Fielding, supporting, funding local elections officials and poll watchers
5. Huge advertising and daily propaganda on several foreign-language media reaching “minority” voters, always stressing the racial slurs against R’s and PDJT.....Spanish and Chinese language media especially but others too
6. internet censorship including the socalled ‘social media’...
7. internet censorship of available information.. if and when any honest voter tries to look anything up about almost any subject or issue, say with a googoo search....its the first page of results that counts the most. And that is almost always slanted hard left
8. more and more...
its an attempted coup on all fronts...
legit and otherwise
and the irony is that PDJT is hardly hard-right, politically speaking...indeed he would be considered a centrist by many (and a center-leftist 50 years ago)....his problem is that he’s not under direct puppetmeister-control....period....
even if he came out for several hard-left programs.....
the Puppetmeisters would still be trying to oust him...
because they can’t control him, its all a matter of control...much more anyway than politics
How dare you rob FR’s pearl clutchers of their doom and gloom!
Alexander Hamilton explained it all in Federalist #68.
Thank you for your analysis.
I seem to recall that this has already gone up at least once before, and the courts ruled that the electors were free to vote their own decisions.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.