On January 17, the Colorado Senate committee that handles election bills (the strangely-named State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee) passed SB 46, which sets up the National Popular Vote plan compact for presidential elections. The bill has a vote set in the full Senate for the afternoon of January 22.
In Mississippi, the same bill was introduced on January 4 by eight Democratic State Senators. It is SB 2284. The lead sponsor is Senator Gloria Williamson, a former state chair of the Democratic Party. The Mississippi State Senate is tied, with 26 Republicans and 26 Democrats, but the Republican Lieutenant Governor breaks the tie and gives Republicans control. Senator Williamson herself said she doesn’t expect the bill to pass this year.
The chairman of the Mississippi Democratic Party is Wayne Dowdy of McComb, a former U. S. representative. His immediate predecessor as chairman was Rickey Cole.
The 26-26 tie in the Mississippi Senate is the result of recent special elections, but there are still some Democratic committee chairmen. (There have been Republican committee chairmen when the Democrats had the majority.) Even with a Democratic majority in the Senate, Gov. Haley Barbour, a Republican, has usually had his way with that chamber.
Since Sen. Williamson is not the chair, maybe she’s the table.
Dear Sirs:
The abolition of the Electoral College is more than a moral duty. The abolition of the Electoral College is more than politically correct. It is the legal duty of every person in the United States to render the Electoral College null and void as a constitutional principle.
Every government official (State and Federal) has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution. But which Constitution? The Congress that enabled states to come into the Union after Gettysburg demanded that the “Constitution” as used in that law be “consistent with and not repugnant to the Declaration of Independence.” In other words, the Slaveholder’s Constitution of 1787 was reconstituted by the Civil War. Had it not been “re-constituted” the State of West Virginia could not have been formed out of the territory of Virginia as that was done with the consent of the people of West Virginia but without the consent of the State of Virginia.
The Slaveholder’s Constitution of 1787 employed a system of “virtual representation” which set political representation before the election on the basis of a census that may be over ten years old. As a result of Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana has lost a whole “electoral vote” worth of direct voters. But the Electoral College will not reflect that change until the Presidential elections of 2012. Meanwhile, the citizens of Louisiana have lost “portability” of the power to determine their Louisiana electoral vote as they are locked out of their home state.
The Constitution to which your duty was sworn was consistent with the Declaration of Independence which mandated “all men are created equal;” that government is legitimate only where it has the consent of the governed (the majoritarian principle); political equality and consent of the governed are inalienable rights that cannot be surrendered (and were never surrendered in the making of the Constitution of 1787 in the first place).
This interpretation was accepted by the entire Republican Party. This interpretation was explicit in their party platforms of 1856 and 1860. This interpretation was written into your state constitution. This interpretation was written into the state constitutions of every state admitted beginning with Nevada in 1864. In other words, the basis of all these states is the people (who are equal) and not the states (whose equality exists only in the Senate and no where else). Your state exists because the “Union” prevailed while the “Confederacy” failed. Every one of the states are bound to regard the Declaration of Independence as fundamental law. As a consequence, every one of the states and all the inhabitants thereof are duty-bound to disregard the Electoral College.
The national Congress makes laws binding upon the people of the nation. The national courts of the United States interpretes the laws as binding upon the people of the nation. The Chief Magistrate enforces laws impartially without regard to the states as binding upon the people of the nation. Symmetry and reciprocity demands that the people of the United States directly elect the person who has the power of life and death over them.
The abolition of the Electoral College is the most important national mission since the abolition of slavery. In fact, the two missions are intimately related since the Electoral College was designed as a pillar of slavery and consistent with its principles. The abolition of the Electoral College is an integral part of the national mission to abolish slavery. Abraham Lincoln referred to this “unfinished business” at Gettysburg in 1863 when he spoke “Four score and seven years ago (referring to 1776), our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that ‘all men were created equal.'” Lincoln was referring to the Declaration of Independence of 1776 as the Supreme Law of the land, as “higher law” than the Constitution. Lincoln and all the republicans of his day understood the principle of equality of human beings as a constitutional principle binding upon the nation and upon its governing structure. The Electoral College cannot stand as it is inconsistent with and repugnant to the proposition that “all men were created equal.”
I am attaching the argument as an attachment. Check my citations and you will see that I am correct. The Declaration of 1776 is not just a moral force. It is the “true constitution” of the United States.
Yours truly,
Gary Michael Coutin, Esquire