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Connecticut Bill for National Popular Vote Pact — 26 Comments

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

    Sorry Const Amdt needed —
    1. Uniform definition of Elector-Voter in ALL of the USA.
    2. P.R.
    3. Nonpartisan App.V.

  2. Seems to me to be a violation of the United States Constitution, Article XII (Amendment 12 – Election of President). See what you think …

    The Electors shall meet in their respective states, […]
    they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as
    President, and […] Vice-President and of the number of votes for each
    [by their own state voters clearly implied] […]

  3. The states were charged with determining how they would determine the vote. So I think their legislatures could determine by state the Electoral College vote. My question is a what happens if we have a dual system? Currently under the National Popular Vote Compact, 11 states and D.C. have approved and their Governor’s have signed to use the Popular Vote for their electors and reached 165 Electoral Votes for future Presidential elections. But the other states use the state winner to determine their Electoral vote. Is this dual system valid?

  4. Please cite in the Constitution where it says state’s can shred the votes of their own citizens and that their Electors can vote instead based on the votes in other states, or anything close.

  5. The states can appoint the Electors however they see fit. They can be elected by the voters of the state, or they can be elected by the legislature, or they could be appointed by the Governor, or they could be chosen at random out of a hat.

    “The slate of elector candidates whose presidential candidate shall have received the largest number of popular votes in all of the states and D.C.” is as valid as “The slate of elector candidates whose presidential candidate shall have received the largest number of popular votes in the state.”

  6. “[by their own state voters clearly implied]”

    That is not what the section you referred to is talking about. The electors certify to Congress how *they* voted, they don’t certify their state’s popular vote.

  7. I think I see your point, that Electors can vote for anyone and throw their states voters under the bus (except several states require Electors to vote according to the people of the state they are representing).

    This should be looked into by the Supreme Court to interpret what the founders intended in context with the Federalist Papers and so on and whether it is unconstitutional or not.

    To Dems: All of the other tricks you have tried so far to gain an advantage (recount, faithless Electors) have backfired on you, what do you have to suppose this one won’t also backfire down the road? It could wind up installing Republicans forever. Perhaps you could develop a platform that people will like, mmm? This one in 2016 was heavily based on hurling insults and labels (racism, xenophobia, misogyny etc) and rejected by the majority popular vote by 1.4M in favor of Trump. Except in California where they automatically register illegals to vote when they obtain a driver’s license under Jerry Brown’s AB 1461 in 2015. [I called the CA Sec’t of State today and verified they do no vetting, was told that happens at the county level and yet Los Angeles County Elections office also knew nothing of any vetting of their automatic voter registrations from new driver’s licenses. So it is open season, because CA likes the cheap illegal labor and sees it as downright peachy to cheat Americans for power for themselves].

  8. One point about the vote. Absent California, Trump would have “won” the popular vote. However, no candidate got a majority (defined as 50% plus 1) in the national results. In a reconstituted election absent California, Trump would have won, but he would not have gotten a “majority.” According to Dave Leip’s Atlas, the total US vote was about 137 million. California accounted for about 14 million of that. That means 123 million votes were cast outside of California. Trump got slightly under 63 million votes nationally and about 4.5 million in California. If you back out his California vote, he has 58.5 million. That would be the “most” votes, but it’s not a “Majority”. Getting a “Majority” of 123 million votes would require getting 61.5 million votes, plus one.

    The misuse of the word “Majority” is a real pet peeve of mine.

  9. In any NPV scheme the communist States like CA would give the right to vote for Prez/VP to children, ALL INVADERS and even foreign folks — China, Russia, etc — in order to get the current MONARCHY POWER of each HACK Prez.

  10. I was looking thru the spreadsheet, downloaded ‘2016 National Popular Vote Tracker – Google Sheets – Google Docs’. A few observations:

    Without California, Trump won the national popular vote by 1,405,004.

    Total votes for each, solely from the states they won:
    Trump: 40,811,511 (55%)
    Clinton: 33,390,769 (45%) including California

    Clinton’s votes in CA, NY and IL total were almost the same as
    the total in all of her other winning states combined.

    Trump biggest state win was Texas: 4,685,047 to 3,877,868 (surprised me)

    Jill Stein’s recount states MI, PA, WI combined 77,744 win for Trump.
    Margins in NV, ME, NH for Clinton were closer at 52,080 and ignored by Stein.

    Stein claimed her recount was not intended to benefit Clinton.
    Aside from that, I think I would always be in favor of recounts.

    There’s an open-source vote-count initiative out there called Clarity, I think we should adopt.
    Even if there was no cheating this time, there could be in the future.
    ‘Clarity’ would make so I can trust results better. Fewer public fears and suspicions surely.

    TomP: Your point is technically valid. It’s because there were 7,804,213 votes for candidates other than Trump and Clinton.
    My wording was loose. I could have said instead:
    Without CA, Trump would have had the highest number of votes of any candidates receiving votes, ahead of the next highest (Clinton) by 1.4 million votes. Just would have required more words. However you are correct.

    Meanwhile I compared your numbers to the spreadsheet above and they line up pretty well:

    Dave Leip Atlas David Wasserman
    Total US vote 137M 136,628,459
    CA 14M 14,181,595
    Outside CA 123M 122,446,864
    Trump nat’l 63M 62,979,636
    Trump CA 4.5M 4,483,810
    Trump w/out CA 58.5M 58,495,826

    I called the California Secretary of State’s office, man said they do no vetting of the voter registrations. When applying for a driver’s license, by Jerry Brown’s AB 1461, registration to vote is automatic unless checking a box to opt-out. He said any vetting would happen at the county level and gave me the phone number for Elections at Los Angeles county when I asked. There, a woman asked her supervisor and neither had any information about voter registrations. Weird. If anyone would like to know whether the DMV registration are vetted, I would suggest calling the Elections offices in some other counties to inquire how that works.

    It is likely that California’s bulging discrepancy vs the rest of the country is due to illegals voting.

  11. G Hawkins, didn’t mean to sound so harsh. The word you are looking for is “plurality.”

    The use of the word “majority” where “plurality” is correct is a pet peeve of mine because far too many politicians use that. They typically use it to claim that there is more support for them and their policies than there really is. As one example, I recall Al Gore’s supporters in 2000 claim that he “won” a “majority” of the popular vote, a claim that was used (with others) in an attempt to cast aspersions on Bush’s presidency. Gore “won”, but he only had a plurality of the popular vote, not a majority. The same is true in this election.

  12. Trump – less than 50 percent of the popular votes = MINORITY RULE = OLIGARCHY

    — means zero to the many brainwashed folks in the USA.

    Sorry – Each Prez is supposed to be the Prez of ALL folks in ALL States —

    reality — each Prez cares LOTS more for the gerrymander areas which elected him/her via the rotted E.C. math.

  13. Popular Vote: Trump beats Abraham Lincoln and Clinton in 1992 for example.

    Pop Vt Year Who _ Party
    44 _ 49.72% _ 1960 _ John Kennedy _ Dem
    41 _ 49.55% _ 1948 _ Harry Truman _ Dem
    15 _ 49.54% _ 1844 _ James Polk _ Dem
    33 _ 49.24% _ 1916 _ Woodrow Wilson _ Dem
    53 _ 49.23% _ 1996 _ Bill Clinton _ Dem
    25 _ 48.85% _ 1884 _ Grover Cleveland _ Dem
    24 _ 48.31% _ 1880 _ James Garfield _ Rep
    23 _ 47.92% _ 1876 _ Rutherford Hayes _ Rep
    54 _ 47.87% _ 2000 _ George W. Bush _ Rep
    26 _ 47.80% _ 1888 _ Benjamin Harrison _ Rep
    16 _ 47.28% _ 1848 _ Zachary Taylor _ Whig
    58 _ 46.10% _ 2016 _ Donald Trump _ Rep _ _ _ <==
    27 _ 46.02% _ 1892 _ Grover Cleveland _ Dem
    18 _ 45.29% _ 1856 _ James Buchanan _ Dem
    46 _ 43.42% _ 1968 _ Richard Nixon _ Rep
    52 _ 43.01% _ 1992 _ Bill Clinton _ Dem
    32 _ 41.84% _ 1912 _ Woodrow Wilson _ Dem
    19 _ 39.65% _ 1860 _ Abraham Lincoln _ Rep
    10 _ 30.92% _ 1824 _ John Quincy Adams _ D.-R.
    en.wikipedia. org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_elections_by_popular_vote_margin

    We have a Republic and many people want to come here.
    Venezuela has straight Democracy, popular vote.
    Jimmy Carter in 2012 said Venezuela's voting system is the best in the world.

    Some current news articles …

    Venezuela, a Failing State – The New Yorker
    newyorker. com/magazine/2016/11/14/venezuela-a-failing-state
    Once the richest country in South America, it now has the world’s highest inflation rate and is plagued by hunger and violent crime.

    Venezuela Is Falling Apart – The Atlantic
    theatlantic. com/international/archive/2016/05/venezuela-is-falling-apart/481755/

    Venezuela on the brink: a journey through a country in crisis | World …
    theguardian. com/world/2016/oct/11/venezuela-on-the-brink-a-journey-through-a-country-in-crisis

  14. Re: G Hawkins, the 2016 election was a close one. Venezuela’s voting system is well designed (it allows referenda and recall petitions), even if it’s a failure in practice. Both of these are irrelevant to the fact that Trump lost the popular vote.

  15. Re: G Hawkins, don’t be sore that Trump lost in California. California has voted for the Democratic candidate for over two decades, and the hypothetical voter fraud that you describe is very rare. If millions of fraudulent ballots were cast, enough to flip the state to the Democrats, then the reported voter turnout would either be abnormally high, or the eligible voter turnout would have to plummet steeply. Invalidating millions of ballots to make the results look normal and getting away with it is not a plausible scenario. I’d believe it if there was credible proof, but there is NONE.

  16. Trump and his supporters know that he won the battleground states, but they cannot reconcile with the reality that America (California is part of America) rejected him by millions of votes. They cannot accept that both a plurality and a majority of the people stands against Trump. No, the sore winners want it all, and they think they can change the facts through force of will.

  17. By the way, everyone, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact overwhelmingly consists of solid Democratic states right now. A proportional allocation of electoral votes in these states would actually benefit the Republican Party. You appear to have associated “popular vote” with “2016 election”, while ignoring the topic at hand.

  18. This is the 5th time EC determined the outcome without popular vote.

    “both a plurality and a majority”
    Clinton: 65,844,610 with CA, that’s 48.2%, not a majority. See above.

    Constitution:
    The Electors shall meet in their respective states, […]
    they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as
    President, and […] Vice-President and of the number of votes for each,
    ignoring the votes of their citizens.

    (added that last part)
    Supreme Court should weigh in on NPVIC.

  19. Re: G Hawkins,

    Trump: 62,979,879 (45.95%)

    No one won a majority of votes, but 54% of the people voted against Trump. Thus Trump lacks a plurality and a majority of support. I couldn’t care less about Clinton. Trump won the election, but we shouldn’t deceive ourselves about how he won.

    As for the NPVIC, the US Constitution allows states to determine how to distribute their electoral votes. It also requires congressional approval for interstate compacts, which the NPVIC’s supporters will seek before it goes into effect.

  20. He won fairly and sore losers out there try to minimize it. Would they have also pushed to reduce the perception of the 7 other presidents who received a lower popular vote percentage than Trump? Those include Abraham Lincoln and Bill Clinton. Just stop.

  21. Re: G Hawkins, a leader can, of course, be judged on more than their popular support. How Trump should be judged is for another discussion-but don’t make the mistake of ignoring where Trump has obviously fallen short-you can’t just count the votes “without California”. And please don’t shoot the messenger-I am not a sore loser for trying to set the record straight.

  22. > 54% of the people voted against Trump

    Also 52% of the people voted against Clinton.

    That works both ways for the record.

    I think it is an interesting point above that NPVIC states being mostly Democrat could wind up benefiting Repubs. Say it passes with its own 270 EC votes needed mostly Dem, and a GOP candidate manages to woo CA, NY, FL and enough others, all of those Dem states would wind up required to cast their votes Republican, and without NPVIC they would have won via EC. If I were Dem I’d be nervous taking that bet.

    [[[ I’ve noticed so many really thoughtful Liberals out there, self-effacing, funny, truly caring, responsible, very good people, it seems better to drop NPVIC and focus on victory by losing the Social Justice Warriors (SJW’s), mostly millenials, who noisily messed up 2016 with the belief their path to success is thru victimhood, group-think and name-calling. Form the new American Love Party or Responsibility Party or something, they won’t know what those are and will stay in their safe space lol. Feel free to ignore this, I’m off topic, bad. ]]]

  23. G. Hawkins — you need to get your data and fact straight about your own Republican Party before you keep ranting on.

    Consider -Of the 22 states with new voter restrictions in the past two years, 18 passed them through entirely Republican-controlled bodies. A study by social scientists Keith Bentele and Erin O’Brien of the University of Massachusetts Boston found that restrictions were more likely to pass “as the proportion of Republicans in the legislature increased or when a Republican governor was elected.” After Republicans took over state houses and governorships in 2010, voting restrictions typically followed party lines.

    Second the Founders of the Constitution were not perfect. The Electoral College served the primary purpose of giving southern states more weight in the election. “in a direct election system, the North would outnumber the South, whose many slaves (more than half a million in all) of course could not vote. But the Electoral College—a prototype of which Madison proposed in this same speech—instead let each southern state count its slaves, albeit with a two-fifths discount, in computing its share of the overall count.”

    ONE VOTE – ONE PERSON ITS A NATIONAL ELECTION

  24. @M MARLOWE
    You could make the same argument about illegal aliens today. States count the number of people living there in determining population and therefore the number of representatives and electoral votes, even though these people can’t vote. These states are diluting the votes from states where the illegal community is small and increasing the power of their own votes. The electoral college is not perfect, back then nor today. If the NPVIC passes there is bound to be court battles about what constitutes the requirements to vote, since it would be in a states best interest to allow as many people from their state to vote (even if that means blindly looking the other way on fraud)

  25. This is our best path back to a true representation of of voters’ intentions. This is not about this one election, it is about better representation which would give potential voters more motivation to participate. Their vote would truly be counted.

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