On January 19, attorneys for the Colorado Secretary of State filed this nine-page brief in Baca v Colorado Department of State, 1:17cv-1937. This is the lawsuit over whether presidential electors have a right to vote for anyone for president who meets the constitutional qualifications, or whether they must vote for the person who received the most popular votes in their state.
Colorado claims the plaintiffs don’t have standing, but to support that contention, it relies on precedents that say local governments can’t sue their state governments, and state legislators can’t sue state governments, in federal court.
Colorado also claims that the Twelfth Amendment, passed in 1804, was intended to make sure that the electors “carried out the desires of the people.” This seems obviously incorrect, because in the 1804 presidential election, the first election conducted under the Twelfth Amendment, six states did not have a popular vote to choose presidential electors (out of 17 states in the union at the time).
One more reason to abolish the time bomb E.C. —
PR and AppV
How many FATAL time bombs in the USA and State Consts ???
1860 E.C time bomb went off — about 750,000 DEAD, multi-multi-000s injured for life in 1861-1865
Colorado’s brief quotes ‘Ray v Blair’ which in turn quotes the debate in Congress when the 12th Amendment was being debated.
See ‘Annals of Congress, House of Representatives, 7th Congress, 1st Session’ at the bottom of Column 1289 continuing to 1290.
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llac&fileName=011/llac011.db&recNum=641
The Constitution did not work in the manner of Larry Lessig’s fantasies, or the hopes of wiser persons such as Alexander Hamilton. By 1801 Alexander Hamilton recognized this. Lessig is 216 years behind the time.
137 of 138 electors voted for the same pairs of candidates. One dissenter voted for Adams and John Jay, rather than Adams and Charles Pinckne, but this was a conspiracy to prevent a tie. While electors were not all popularly elected, the state legislatures that appointed the electors, or controlled the method of appointment were popularly elected. The legislative election in 1800 in New York was fought over control of the electors. In Pennsylvania, a deadlock over how to elect the electors resulted in a compromise to appoint the electors, the only time that the electors from that state were chosen by the legislature.
The only thing the 12th Amendment changed was that electors would designate one person as president, and another vice president. The only reason for doing this was that electors would be acting as agents of whoever chose them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_v._Blair
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/343/214/case.html
The JR Annals stuff is in footnote 15.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1800
makes the 2016 Trump v Clinton machinations mild hostile by comparison —
IE — the USA regime ALMOST BLEW UP in 1800-1801 — a preview of 1860-1865.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelfth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
Machinations to get the 12th Amdt