The Oregon legislature adjourns for the year on Monday, July 10. The National Popular Vote plan bills both had a hearing in the Senate Committee on June 21, but the committee has not moved either bill. HB 2927 is the standard National Popular Vote Plan bill, and it has already passed the House. SB 825 is a version that says the pact would not be passed until the voters vote on it. Although Senate leaders said they would support that idea, it is even further from passing than HB 2927, because SB 825 has never had a House vote.
No other state passed the National Popular Vote plan idea this year.
Good.
I’ve always been a supporter of the Electoral College and this is nothing more than a backdoor attempt to eliminate it.
If there had been five presidential elections in which the Democrat was sworn into office, even though another party’s nominee got more popular votes, would you still support the existing mechanism?
Democrats have been cheated out of the presidency in 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016, in my opinion. I don’t know why the Democratic Party passively stands by and lets this happen to it.
Probably Jim Riley will chime in and say Democrats deserved to lose in 1876 and 1888 because Democrats suppressed the black vote in some southern states in those years. But in that case, one could say it was unjust that Democrats won the presidential elections of 1884 and 1916, because those elections were very close and Democrats suppressed black voters in the south in those years also. Blacks voted Republican in those years.
Richard Winger will let Jim Riley speak for his self.
In 1824 the contest was between four Democrats. Recall that John C Calhoun was named on almost every electors ballot. Besides the Democrats seem to be disclaiming Jackson, having stripped his name off their annual dinner, along with Thomas Jefferson, because they were slaveholders. Since Aaron Burr was not a slaveholder, you might claim that the Democrats had the presidency stolen from them in 1800. And you once again overlook 1960.
In 1960 more voters cast votes for John F. Kennedy than for Richard Nixon. The only people who disagree with that statement are people who subtract six-elevenths of John Kennedy’s Alabama popular vote from his national vote total, on the grounds that he didn’t have a full slate of presidential electors. But those same people never do the same thing to Harry Truman in 1948, even though in Tennessee he did not have a full slate of presidential electors. Nor do they subtract any popular votes from Norman Thomas in all his presidential runs, even though he didn’t have a full slate of presidential elector candidates in Minnesota.
In 1960, no voters in Alabama cast a vote for John F. Kennedy. That there were in effect five faithless electors who voted for Kennedy does not change that fact. If you are going to count the popular votes for Kennedy, then in 2016, Washington popular votes for Faith Spotted Eagle and Colin Powell, and Texas popular votes for Ron Paul and John Kasich should be tallied.
The 1960 Alabama Kennedy electors were not faithless. They announced their intention to vote for Kennedy, not only before the general election, but even before the Alabama Democratic primary which chose them. Alabama’s Democratic Party back then chose candidates for presidential elector in its primary.
What about the electors who announced they were going to vote for Kennedy before the primary, but who were not nominated?
How do count the popular votes for the fusion tickets in 1860?
If the reverse had taken place last year, I would still support the Electoral College, Richard.
The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the majority of Electoral College votes and the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in the country. It does not abolish the Electoral College.
The National Popular Vote bill would replace state winner-take-all laws that award all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who get the most popular votes in each separate state (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), in the enacting states, to a system guaranteeing the majority of Electoral College votes for, and the Presidency to, the candidate getting the most popular votes in the entire United States.
The bill retains the constitutionally mandated Electoral College and state control of elections, and uses the built-in method that the Constitution provides for states to make changes. It ensures that every voter is equal, every voter will matter, in every state, in every presidential election, and the candidate with the most votes wins, as in virtually every other election in the country.