Ilya Shapiro has this piece in USA Today, suggesting that three individuals might receive electoral votes in November 2016, thus depriving any candidate of a majority in the electoral college. He suggests the third person to receive electoral votes might be Gary Johnson. He speculates that Johnson could conceivably carry New Mexico. Then he also speculates that some Republican presidential electors from other states might “disobey” or “be faithless” and vote for Johnson instead of Trump. Thanks to the Center for Competitive Politics for the link.
Ballot Access News
Edited By Richard Winger
How many MILLIONS D-E-A-D IF there is another Civil WAR due to a minority rule Prez chosen in one of those dark rooms behind closed doors by the OLIGARCHS — aka an ANTI-Democracy gang ???
Abolish the time bomb Electoral College and ALL of its possible EVIL machinations.
—
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
If it wasn’t for the Electoral College they would have been recounting every vote in every precinct, in every county, in every state in the USA, and not in just four counties in Florida.
@Michael: And with even greater differences in standards for counting (and for recounting) too. Until we have one truly national popular vote for President, with equal (or *MAYBE* equally high) standards in all areas of the process, the National Popular Vote plan wouldn’t work — it would just make the current inequities play out nationwide, for higher stakes.
Again – the robot party hack MORONS in SCOTUS have built up the Prez to be a LAWLESS tyrant emperor monarch – esp. since 1933.
ANY USA citizen who is NOT powermad N-U-T-S (like Clinton and Trump) can be Prez and enforce USA laws and treaties.
Michael –
Your statement regarding recounts and the Electoral College is 100% wrong. The U.S. Constitution, which creates the Electoral College, makes no requirement for, or regulation of, recounts of popular votes in the states. Neither does the National Popular Vote Compact, if approved, create any regulation for recounts of popular votes in the states. Whether a recount takes place in any state will be determined by state law, and only state law, just as is presently the case under the current deployment of the Electoral College.
You may not like the NPV plan, but you might stick to the facts when arguing against its adoption.
John Anthony – Your first statement is incorrect as well. NPV makes no new or changed requirements of the states as to the counting or recounting their popular votes for President. Those procedures would still be a matter of state law which can, and does now, vary from state to state. As to your closing statement, I’d be curious as to how you would support the argument that NPV would “make the current inequities play our nationwide”. What inequities? Inequities under our perfect EC system? Really? And how would they “play out nationwide” under NPV?
Now cue the Great Obfuscator…
@Baronscarpia: My concern with the national popular vote plan is that it increases the motivation for corruption in terms of additional ballots being “found” (i.e. created). Under the electoral college system, if a Democratic presidential candidate wins in a Democratic state, or a Republican presidential candidate wins in a Republican state by, say, 100,000 votes, there’s no benefit to dishonest election officials in creating an additional number of votes for their favored candidate.
But in a close race under the NPV system, there would be such an advantage because doing so could help swing the national popular vote.
Joshua –
Think this through. In an election where the popular vote margin is a million, five million, even ten million, swinging one state could give he election to one candidate or another. In that state, therefore, the party that controls the mechanisms for administering the election before (registration) during (voting) and after (counting) could influence the result in that state and the election as a whole. Think Ohio in 2004…Florida in 2000, any one of your states in 1876. The popular vote nationwide was irrelevant in those contests…because of the winner take all EC method. In 1876, threats of death were even attendant to efforts to move Louisiana from one party to the other. It is much easier to move EC votes from one column to another (fewer people involved) than it would be to move popular votes from one to another in multiple states. How would YOU propose to change a million or so votes to swing an election without being caught? But in Ohio in 2004, let a Republican Guv and SOS cage out several thousand new Democratic registrants, move a few voting machines form heavily Democratic precincts to Republican precincts, and maybe let Ohio-based Diebold write the unauditable code for electronic voting machines…you win Ohio and Bush wins reelection.
Another election another state, another controlling party, it could be Dems who perpetrate the fraud.
No, NPV LESSENS the opportunity for stealing an election.
Ah, Baron — I’ve pointed these things out to you here many times before, with no visible impact. Repeating them again isn’t likely to change your mind now — and repeating your overblown and under-evidenced misstatements of my position doesn’t make those misstatements any more accurate now. So I decline to prosecute (or be persecuted on) this disagreement.
(If anyone else is curious . . . well, we can’t search for those exchanges of comments within this site, but regular search engines can retrieve them — and likely find other related comments under my name . . . and the Baron’s keyboard name.)
All you need to do, John Anthony, is substantiate your assertion that NPV has any impact whatsoever on counting and recounting standards. The NPV compact does not dictate how any participating state should count or recount their votes. It just doesn’t.
If facts don’t support your position, you can’t just wish them away. And a Google search won’t reveal any single instance in which you have cited an actual fact to support your contention on the matter of vote counting and recounting.
So here’s your challenge – find one such instance and post the link here. I won’t ask for a recount of all of your recitation of “fact”. Just one citation will do.
When you come up empty, readers will know that your contention is false.
Incidentally, if anyone is curious about what the NPV compact actually says, no what John Anthony imagines it says, here is a link to the bill passed by California which joined that state with others in adopting the compact. Perhaps John Anthony will do us the kindness of referring us to the passage that he believes changes standards and procedures of counting or recounting votes in California.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201120120AB459
Misstating my position again, Baron. I haven’t said that NPV would dictate how individual states would count or recount their votes. I have said it needed to in order to be constitutional — and it doesn’t, so it isn’t.
As you have said right here, Baron, NPV doesn’t set any national standards for counting and recounting (etc., etc.) — on that we agree. But that fact itself shows that we don’t have a (lower-case) national popular vote — we have 51 separate votes under different rules. What NPV would change is how much impact one state’s rules on these points would have on other states’ voters — who under the Eleventh Amendment wouldn’t have any recourse. The impact wouldn’t even be limited to denying/abridging/diluting the voting rights of voters in states within the NPV compact.
That’s why NPV is unconstitutional — under the Fourteenth Amendment. Which came after the original-text language on compacts, plenary powers of legislatures to award electoral votes, etc. — which means it takes precedence over those clauses and limits their impact.
[drops mike]
For clarification (so even the Baron can understand):
When my response to Michael above referred to “even greater differences in standards for counting (and for recounting) too”, I was of course responding to his comparison of “recounting every vote in every precinct, in every county, in every state in the USA, and not in just four counties in Florida.”
JALP –
Michael said: “If it wasn’t for the Electoral College they would have been recounting every vote in every precinct, in every county, in every state in the USA, and not in just four counties in Florida.”
To which you added: ” And with even greater differences in standards for counting (and for recounting) too. ”
“TOO”
Adoption of the NPV addresses one and only one weakness of our current system of electing the President. It establishes the objective, which a clear majority of the people in this country support, of awarding the presidency to the candidate with the greatest number o popular votes. Period. It is not intended to correct inconsistencies in how voters are registered to vote in the various states, or how those votes are counted in those states. NOR DOES IT exacerbate the effects of any of those inconsistencies, which you clearly and inaccurately suggested it will.
So I ask again…provide evidence that it will.
Yet again with this straw man . . . it’s impossible to give an *example* of a harm from something which (fortunately) hasn’t happened yet. But I have explained how the harm would happen, and why it’s a harm.
I’m not wasting my time on any more responses to the Baron’s willful misstatements and misunderstandings. Anyone who wants to understand can — and can find my explanations, here and elsewhere . . . under my actual name.