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Move to Nullify the Electoral College
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May 22, 2019 18:51:01   #
confused one
 
proud republican wrote:
Why rewrite Constitution just because hillary lost???Would you feel the same if she would of won and President Trump lost???..What if President would of said we need to do away EC,what would you say then???.....You people need to realize that President Trump won because he was a better candidate then she was,because people voted for him and not for her..Its time to stop her whining and go back to the woods or where ever she came from!!!
Why rewrite Constitution just because hillary lost... (show quote)


I never mentioned Hillary or President Trump. Personally, I see Democrats cheering for open borders because in their minds that's forever going to change the demographics that will keep them in power. It's a shortsighted vision easily derailed by the emergence of a multiparty system. We might be watching the death of the Democrat Party as we've known it today. The reelection of President Trump might be the final straw.

Reply
May 23, 2019 05:48:36   #
crazylibertarian Loc: Florida by way of New York & Rhode Island
 
dtucker300 wrote:
This is getting serious. There is a civil war raging in the USA in case you have not noticed. Everything except shooting between combatants has begun.


https://www.dailywire.com/news/47520/nevada-passes-bill-give-electoral-votes-national-james-barrett?utm_source=shapironewsletter-ae&utm_medium=email&utm_content=052219-news&utm_campaign=shapiroemail


Nevada Passes Bill To Give Electoral Votes To National Popular Vote Winner
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton arrives onstage during a primary night rally at the Duggal Greenhouse in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, June 7, 2016 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Drew Angerer/Getty Images



By JAMES BARRETT
May 22, 2019
If Nevada's Democratic governor signs a bill passed by the state senate Tuesday into law, his state will have moved the National Popular Vote movement six votes closer to effectively nullifying the Electoral College as established in the U.S. Constitution.


By a vote of 12-8, the Nevada Senate passed AB 186 on Tuesday, which if signed by Gov. Steve Sisolak, will add Nevada's six electoral votes to the 189 votes already pledged by 14 other states in the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which would "guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes across all 50 states and the District of Columbia." If triggered, the pact would override the majority decision of voters in particular states.

Thus far, 14 states and one district have officially passed the measure, their collective electoral vote total currently at 189. The compact requires a minimum of 270 total pledged electoral votes to go into effect. Should Sisolak sign the bill, the total would edge up to 195 votes.

The 15 jurisdictions, which are predominantly blue, that have signed on thus far are: California (55), Colorado (9), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), the District of Columbia (3), Hawaii (4), Illinois (20), Massachusetts (11), Maryland (10), New Jersey (14), New Mexico (5), New York (29), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), and Washington (12).

"The bill has passed one house in 9 additional states with 82 electoral votes (AR, AZ, ME, MI, MN, NC, NV, OK, OR), including a 40–16 vote in the Republican-controlled Arizona House and a 28–18 in Republican-controlled Oklahoma Senate, and been approved unanimously by committee votes in two additional Republican-controlled states with 26 electoral votes (GA, MO)," the National Popular Vote website explains.

As CNN underscores suggestively, the Electoral College "clinched President Donald Trump the 2016 presidential victory despite Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton winning a popular-vote majority by nearly 3 million votes." Among the high-profile Democrats pushing for the elimination of the Electoral College are presidential candidates, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (MA), Sen. Kamala Harris (CA), and former Rep. Beto O'Rourke (TX), CNN notes.

Including Trump's victory over Clinton, there have been a total of "five instances where a presidential candidate has been elected without winning the popular vote since the Electoral College was created in 1787," The Hill reports.

In a video for PragerU (below), Electoral College expert Tara Ross explains the rationale behind the current U.S. presidential voting system and summarizes some of the arguments against the National Popular Vote agreement, including the impact of states' widely varying voting policies, the exponentially increased threat of voter fraud, and the encouragement of presidential candidates neglecting the needs and concerns of rural areas and smaller states.

"If NPV is adopted, and winning is only about getting the most votes, a candidate might concentrate all of his efforts in the biggest cities, or the biggest states," she argues. "We could see the end of presidential candidates who care about the needs and concerns of people in smaller states or outside of big cities."



Video and partial transcript below via PragerU:


In every presidential election, only one question matters: which candidate will get the 270 votes needed to win the Electoral College? Our Founders so deeply feared a tyranny of the majority that they rejected the idea of a direct vote for President. That's why they created the Electoral College. For more than two centuries it has encouraged coalition building, given a voice to both big and small states, and discouraged voter fraud.

Unfortunately, there is now a well-financed, below-the-radar effort to do away with the Electoral College. It is called National Popular Vote or NPV, and it wants to do exactly what the Founders rejected: award the job of President to the person who gets the most votes nationally.

Even if you agree with this goal, it's hard to agree with their method. Rather than amend the Constitution, which they have no chance of doing, NPV plans an end run around it.

Here's what NPV does: it asks states to sign a contract to give their presidential electors to the winner of the national popular vote instead of the winner of the state's popular vote.

What does that mean in practice? It means that if NPV had been in place in 2004, for example, when George W. Bush won the national vote, California's electoral votes would have gone to Bush, even though John Kerry won that state by 1.2 million votes! Can you imagine strongly Democratic California calmly awarding its electors to a Republican?

Another problem with NPV's plan is that it robs states of their sovereignty. A key benefit of the Electoral College system is that it decentralizes control over the election. Currently, a presidential election is really 51 separate elections: one in each state and one in D.C.

These 51 separate processes exist, side-by-side, in harmony. They do not -- and cannot -- interfere with each other. California's election code applies only to California and determines that state's electors. So a vote cast in Texas can never change the identity of a California elector.

NPV would disrupt this careful balance. It would force all voters into one national election pool. Thus, a vote cast in Texas will always affect the outcome in California. And the existence of a different election code in Texas always has the potential to unfairly affect a voter in California.

Why? Because state election codes can differ drastically. States have different rules about early voting, registering to vote, and qualifying for the ballot. They have different policies regarding felon voting. They have different triggers for recounts.

Each and every one of these differences is an opportunity for someone, somewhere to file a lawsuit claiming unfair treatment. Why should a voter in New York get more or less time to early vote than a voter in Florida? Why should a hanging chad count in Florida, but not in Ohio? The list of possible complaints is endless.

And think of the opportunities for voter fraud if NPV is passed! Currently, an attempt to steal a presidential election requires phony ballots to appear or real ballots to disappear in the right state or combination of states, something that is very hard to anticipate. But with NPV, voter fraud anywhere can change the election results -- no need to figure out which states you must swing; just add or subtract the votes you need -- or don't want -- wherever you can most easily get away with it.

And finally, if NPV is adopted, and winning is only about getting the most votes, a candidate might concentrate all of his efforts in the biggest cities, or the biggest states. We could see the end of presidential candidates who care about the needs and concerns of people in smaller states or outside of big cities.
This is getting serious. There is a civil war rag... (show quote)



Actually, it is entirely constitutional for any state to allocate its electoral votes in any way it decides. There is no requirement to even have an election. As a born New Yorker and former Rhode Islander, I can unequivocally assert that they are among the most communist of the the states from top to bottom.

Reply
May 23, 2019 09:08:55   #
Smedley_buzkill
 
Kevyn wrote:
Everyone’s vote will count the same as they should. As it is people in low population states have significantly more representation than those in larger states. A resident in Wyoming has two senators representing only a bit over a half million people while those in California have two senators for almost forty million. This gives Wyoming voters proportionally 80 times more representation in the senate than Californians.


Actually, Trump was ahead in the popular vote also until the California returns came in. Hillary's approximately 3 million vote margin in the popular vote was directly due to California. It was still not enough to overcome Trump's vast electoral lead, in spite of the 54 California votes going to Hillary.
So you are contending that we should let the voters in the flakiest state in the Union decide on a president for the entire country.
I almost wish it would happen, so I could watch you and people like you squirm when you had to live in the mess you have championed for so long. It would almost be worth it.

Reply
 
 
May 23, 2019 09:40:27   #
johnsorrell7
 
Is this legal. Is it not a constitution violation???
Anybody???

Reply
May 23, 2019 09:56:54   #
okie don
 
Who should rule?
The unqualified majority or qualified minority?

Reply
May 23, 2019 10:22:05   #
johnsorrell7
 
The voter fraud will kill the conservative vote. Ther are States today advocating hi wing the illegal the legal right to vote. We cannot won against these odds.
Something must’ve done to protect the American vote.

Reply
May 23, 2019 10:52:50   #
Hug
 
woodguru wrote:
The reason the electoral college was implemented has no valid reason today...

One person one vote


It is more valid today than it has ever been. Surely the majority of citizens do not want the folks running around pooping on the street running our country.

Reply
 
 
May 23, 2019 11:33:47   #
johnsorrell7
 
California, more than the other states, is the worrisome problem. Do we have any idea how many illegals California will encourage to vote in the 2020 federal election? They alone could make the difference on winning and us losing.
Why do we think the democrats are so against photo id’s to be allowed to vote? This alone is a real worry.
Am I the only one concerned here???

Reply
May 23, 2019 11:35:21   #
Smedley_buzkill
 
Hug wrote:
It is more valid today than it has ever been. Surely the majority of citizens do not want the folks running around pooping on the street running our country.

Abolition of the Electoral College requires a Constitutional Amendment.

Reply
May 23, 2019 12:04:20   #
TrueAmerican
 
Kevyn wrote:
Oh the horror, it will be the end of the world if each Americans vote was counted equally.


Ignorant people make ignorant, moronic, stupid and assinine comments !!!!!!

Reply
May 23, 2019 12:13:36   #
woodguru
 
It's just a matter of time, the US is the only democratic nation in the world that doesn't have a straight popular vote.

Reply
 
 
May 23, 2019 12:35:17   #
America 1 Loc: South Miami
 
crazylibertarian wrote:
Actually, it is entirely constitutional for any state to allocate its electoral votes in any way it decides. There is no requirement to even have an election. As a born New Yorker and former Rhode Islander, I can unequivocally assert that they are among the most communist of the the states from top to bottom.


The Electors shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice-President and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate;



Amendment 12 - Choosing the President, Vice-President
The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted;

The person having the greatest Number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President.
https://www.usconstitution.net/xconst_Am12.html

Reply
May 23, 2019 13:14:30   #
dtucker300 Loc: Vista, CA
 
woodguru wrote:
It's just a matter of time, the US is the only democratic nation in the world that doesn't have a straight popular vote.


Yes, it's called American exceptionalism because we have not relinquished our sensibilities to mass passions no matter how misguided they may be. It also why we are not as flaky as so many other nations.

CA wants to let 16 year-olds vote in local elections. Remember John Walker Lindh, who was a teenager when he succumbed to the brainwashing of Al Queda and went to join the jihad against the USA. They don't have the mental or intellectual maturity to be an informed voter.


https://www.dailywire.com/news/47565/hammer-electoral-college-under-assault-heres-why-josh-hammer?utm_source=cnemail&utm_medium=email&utm_content=052319-news&utm_campaign=position5

HAMMER: The Electoral College Is Under Assault. Here’s Why It’s Worth Saving.
James Benet via Getty Images



By JOSH HAMMER
@JOSH_HAMMER
May 22, 2019
It has never been clearer that the Electoral College is under systemic assault.

It has become de rigueur for 2020 Democratic presidential candidates to casually excoriate the institution in no uncertain terms, and oftentimes vow to eliminate it via constitutional amendment. Furthermore, as The Daily Wire reported this morning, Nevada is the latest state to pass a bill that adds the Silver State to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPV), which, if upheld as constitutional after 270 Electoral College votes' worth of states join, would guarantee the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. As I explained last month, the NPV project is largely funded and promoted by partisan Democratic activists, including a California-based computer scientist named John Koza.

The constitutionality of NPV is debatable. Such a backdoor route toward the abolition of a core constitutional structural provision would indubitably violate the Framers' intent, but the question from a purely textualist perspective is murkier. After all, Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the Constitution seems to provide that state legislatures have plenary power over allocation of their states' electors: "Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress." As long as NPV amounts to a purely voluntary and non-binding compact for each state that joins, constitutionalists would be severely misguided to rely on our black-robed judicial overlords to save We the People from our own self-inflicted follies.

But NPV ought to be countered on a state-by-state basis, because the Electoral College is an important institution worthy of protection and preservation.

Alexander Hamilton most expressly defended the Electoral College in The Federalist No. 68. The Electoral College, Hamilton argued, "affords a moral certainty, that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications." Specifically, Hamilton added that "it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union."

More generally, the Constitution's Framers envisioned the Electoral College as one of their many structural securities against majoritarian tyranny — what James Madison described in The Federalist No. 10 as the problem of "faction":

By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.

There are two methods of curing the mischiefs of faction: the one, by removing its causes; the other, by controlling its effects.

The Electoral College, in attempting to ensure that smaller, more rural states would not be politically overrun by parochial urban interests, was one means by which the Framers sought to "control[ the] effects" of faction. Other examples of counter-majoritarian protections abound, and are woven into our constitutional structure: A bicameral legislature at the national level, a senior legislative chamber whose (pre-17th Amendment) state representative nature was intended as a deliberative counterweight to the more populist proclivities of the people's more junior legislative chamber, a tripartite separation of powers framework borrowed from the French political theorist Montesquieu, and the uniquely American political innovation of a federalist system of genuine dual sovereignty.

The Daily Wire's own Michael Knowles explained it well on his show in March:

[The Electoral College] has a few purposes. One, it's to restrain pure democracy. Very good, very important, that's a wonderful thing. What is another purpose of the electoral college? It doesn't just restrain democracy — let's say all of the American people voted for super-duper mecha-Hitler or they elected Stalin Jr. to be president, the Electoral College could then come out and say nope, sorry we are going to disagree with the American people and we're going to elect a good candidate, so there's that aspect. ... The people participate in votes in their states to choose electors to elect the president, but the people don't elect the president. We are not a democracy; we are a democratic republic. We have a representation system of government.

Rebelling as they did from the tyranny of Britain's King George III, the Framers were doubtlessly petrified at the prospect of monarchy — and all the unpredictability, impulsivity, and tyrannical threats to individual liberty that rule by one necessarily entails. At the same time, the Framers also feared the wrath of unchecked ochlocracy — the equally petrifying tyranny of mob rule, which is best encapsulated by a plebiscite such as that which NPV aspires to be. Constitutional structural provisions such as the Electoral College and the Senate are not bugs, but features, of the Framers' genius in securing the people against their own zealous caprices. As Jonah Goldberg succinctly put it, the Framers understood that "democracy depends on some undemocratic mechanisms to maintain liberty."

At its core, the NPV movement lacks this fundamental, key insight into human nature.

"If men were angels, no government would be necessary," Madison mused in The Federalist No. 51. But men are not angels. And because men are not angels, structural constitutional provisions are necessary to chasten the whims of the frothing mob. The Electoral College is one such constitutional mechanism and, as such, it is worth preserving.

Reply
May 23, 2019 13:22:10   #
dtucker300 Loc: Vista, CA
 
okie don wrote:
Who should rule?
The unqualified majority or qualified minority?


That's the problem with Leftists. They think they should be the ruling elite minority while everyone else is a Plebian. They are just like the pigs in Animal Farm.

Reply
May 23, 2019 14:17:52   #
badbob85037
 
dtucker300 wrote:
This is getting serious. There is a civil war raging in the USA in case you have not noticed. Everything except shooting between combatants has begun.


https://www.dailywire.com/news/47520/nevada-passes-bill-give-electoral-votes-national-james-barrett?utm_source=shapironewsletter-ae&utm_medium=email&utm_content=052219-news&utm_campaign=shapiroemail


Nevada Passes Bill To Give Electoral Votes To National Popular Vote Winner
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton arrives onstage during a primary night rally at the Duggal Greenhouse in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, June 7, 2016 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Drew Angerer/Getty Images



By JAMES BARRETT
May 22, 2019
If Nevada's Democratic governor signs a bill passed by the state senate Tuesday into law, his state will have moved the National Popular Vote movement six votes closer to effectively nullifying the Electoral College as established in the U.S. Constitution.


By a vote of 12-8, the Nevada Senate passed AB 186 on Tuesday, which if signed by Gov. Steve Sisolak, will add Nevada's six electoral votes to the 189 votes already pledged by 14 other states in the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which would "guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes across all 50 states and the District of Columbia." If triggered, the pact would override the majority decision of voters in particular states.

Thus far, 14 states and one district have officially passed the measure, their collective electoral vote total currently at 189. The compact requires a minimum of 270 total pledged electoral votes to go into effect. Should Sisolak sign the bill, the total would edge up to 195 votes.

The 15 jurisdictions, which are predominantly blue, that have signed on thus far are: California (55), Colorado (9), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), the District of Columbia (3), Hawaii (4), Illinois (20), Massachusetts (11), Maryland (10), New Jersey (14), New Mexico (5), New York (29), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), and Washington (12).

"The bill has passed one house in 9 additional states with 82 electoral votes (AR, AZ, ME, MI, MN, NC, NV, OK, OR), including a 40–16 vote in the Republican-controlled Arizona House and a 28–18 in Republican-controlled Oklahoma Senate, and been approved unanimously by committee votes in two additional Republican-controlled states with 26 electoral votes (GA, MO)," the National Popular Vote website explains.

As CNN underscores suggestively, the Electoral College "clinched President Donald Trump the 2016 presidential victory despite Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton winning a popular-vote majority by nearly 3 million votes." Among the high-profile Democrats pushing for the elimination of the Electoral College are presidential candidates, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (MA), Sen. Kamala Harris (CA), and former Rep. Beto O'Rourke (TX), CNN notes.

Including Trump's victory over Clinton, there have been a total of "five instances where a presidential candidate has been elected without winning the popular vote since the Electoral College was created in 1787," The Hill reports.

In a video for PragerU (below), Electoral College expert Tara Ross explains the rationale behind the current U.S. presidential voting system and summarizes some of the arguments against the National Popular Vote agreement, including the impact of states' widely varying voting policies, the exponentially increased threat of voter fraud, and the encouragement of presidential candidates neglecting the needs and concerns of rural areas and smaller states.

"If NPV is adopted, and winning is only about getting the most votes, a candidate might concentrate all of his efforts in the biggest cities, or the biggest states," she argues. "We could see the end of presidential candidates who care about the needs and concerns of people in smaller states or outside of big cities."



Video and partial transcript below via PragerU:


In every presidential election, only one question matters: which candidate will get the 270 votes needed to win the Electoral College? Our Founders so deeply feared a tyranny of the majority that they rejected the idea of a direct vote for President. That's why they created the Electoral College. For more than two centuries it has encouraged coalition building, given a voice to both big and small states, and discouraged voter fraud.

Unfortunately, there is now a well-financed, below-the-radar effort to do away with the Electoral College. It is called National Popular Vote or NPV, and it wants to do exactly what the Founders rejected: award the job of President to the person who gets the most votes nationally.

Even if you agree with this goal, it's hard to agree with their method. Rather than amend the Constitution, which they have no chance of doing, NPV plans an end run around it.

Here's what NPV does: it asks states to sign a contract to give their presidential electors to the winner of the national popular vote instead of the winner of the state's popular vote.

What does that mean in practice? It means that if NPV had been in place in 2004, for example, when George W. Bush won the national vote, California's electoral votes would have gone to Bush, even though John Kerry won that state by 1.2 million votes! Can you imagine strongly Democratic California calmly awarding its electors to a Republican?

Another problem with NPV's plan is that it robs states of their sovereignty. A key benefit of the Electoral College system is that it decentralizes control over the election. Currently, a presidential election is really 51 separate elections: one in each state and one in D.C.

These 51 separate processes exist, side-by-side, in harmony. They do not -- and cannot -- interfere with each other. California's election code applies only to California and determines that state's electors. So a vote cast in Texas can never change the identity of a California elector.

NPV would disrupt this careful balance. It would force all voters into one national election pool. Thus, a vote cast in Texas will always affect the outcome in California. And the existence of a different election code in Texas always has the potential to unfairly affect a voter in California.

Why? Because state election codes can differ drastically. States have different rules about early voting, registering to vote, and qualifying for the ballot. They have different policies regarding felon voting. They have different triggers for recounts.

Each and every one of these differences is an opportunity for someone, somewhere to file a lawsuit claiming unfair treatment. Why should a voter in New York get more or less time to early vote than a voter in Florida? Why should a hanging chad count in Florida, but not in Ohio? The list of possible complaints is endless.

And think of the opportunities for voter fraud if NPV is passed! Currently, an attempt to steal a presidential election requires phony ballots to appear or real ballots to disappear in the right state or combination of states, something that is very hard to anticipate. But with NPV, voter fraud anywhere can change the election results -- no need to figure out which states you must swing; just add or subtract the votes you need -- or don't want -- wherever you can most easily get away with it.

And finally, if NPV is adopted, and winning is only about getting the most votes, a candidate might concentrate all of his efforts in the biggest cities, or the biggest states. We could see the end of presidential candidates who care about the needs and concerns of people in smaller states or outside of big cities.
This is getting serious. There is a civil war rag... (show quote)


Cause that's what they do and will continue to do so until they win and destroy the Constitution or we gather these people up and relocate them 200 miles West of San Francisco allowing them to only take their chains and lead weights with them.

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