Law Professor Vikram David Amar Discusses Legal Arguments Against National Popular Vote Plan

Justia has this interesting analysis of some of the arguments against the National Popular Vote Plan. The piece is authored by law professor Vikram David Amar.


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Law Professor Vikram David Amar Discusses Legal Arguments Against National Popular Vote Plan — No Comments

  1. NO uniform definition of Elector-Voter in the NPV scheme from Hell.

    How many Chinese communists will be voting for Prez/VP in 1 or more of the usual suspect leftwing States IF NPV somehow takes effect ???

  2. The Amar brothers in the past have argued that the electoral college was sexist. Their argument was that if the popular vote had been used, States would have rushed to add additional voters, adding non-property owners, those under 21, women, etc. to the voting rolls so as to skew the results in their favor.

    One can see the effect on the 1896 election, where the granting of female suffrage in Colorado in 1893 results in trimming about 10% off the McKinley-Bryan popular vote margin, even though Colorado was only about 1% of the national electorate.

    But millions of adults in the United States can not vote because they are not citizens, and there are several million more over the age of 14 who might be permitted to vote.

  3. From the article:

    “And the words of Article II on their face give states broad latitude to pick any kind of electors they want. Surely that would have been the ordinary meaning attached to the phrase “in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct.” Under any variant of Scalian textualism/originalism, these words—absent some evidence that persons outside Philadelphia would have interpreted them differently—foreclose Professor Williams’s argument. (To be sure, subsequent amendments to the Constitution, like the First and Fourteenth Amendments, might limit the kinds of criteria that states may take into account in picking electors—prohibiting, e.g., racial and religious discrimination in elector selection—but these limits do not come from Article II, the provision on which Professor Williams relies.)”

    If and when NPV arrives at the USSC, and if Scalia is still on the bench, it will be entertaining to see him hoisted on his own “originalist” petard. But of course that won’t stop him from making yet another purely politically motivated ruling.

  4. Obama in 2012 was de facto elected by 29.9 percent of the popular votes in the usual suspect leftwing 23 States / DC

    — i.e. the EVIL E.C. gerrymander — due to the EVIL small States and slave States CONSPIRACY in the top secret 1787 Federal Convention – OLIGARCHS at work — behind closed doors.

    other evil stuff – The 2 Senators per State, Fugitive slave clause, etc. etc. etc.

    Abolish the timebomb electoral college.
    See 1860 and the about 750,000 DEAD Americans on both sides in 1861-1865 — to get the 13th, 14th and 15th Amdts.
    —-
    Uniform definition of Elector-Voter

    P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.

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