Since the late 19th century, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws has been recommending model state laws on various topics. The group has a great deal of prestige, and it is normal for state legislatures to accept the group’s recommendations.
The group has been working on a model state election law to prevent the perceived problem of faithless electors — that some presidential electors do not vote for the presidential candidate that carried that state in the November vote. On July 21, it released this proposed text. The text is not completely final. Where brackets appear in the text, that means the particular state may want to substitute different language. For example, some states put elections under a Secretary of State, but other states put elections under an Election Board, so each state must modify the recommendation to take measure of that detail.
If this proposed law were enacted, it would require each political party to submit twice as many candidates for presidential elector as that particular state has electoral votes. Each candidate for presidential elector would have an alternate. If that party’s slate won, and one of its electors voted for a presidential candidate other than the presidential candidate nominated by that party, then that elector would be deemed to have resigned, and he or she would be replaced by the alternate.
The proposed law does not deal with the problem that, on rare occasions, a candidate for presidential elector is nominated by two different parties, each of whom has its own separate presidential candidate. For example, in 1948 in Tennessee, two candidates for presidential elector were nominated by both the Democratic Party, and also the States Rights Party. The Democratic Party was running Harry Truman for President and the States Rights Party was running Strom Thurmond for President. Both of these dually-nominated candidates for presidential elector were elected. One of them voted for Truman in the electoral college, and one voted for Thurmond in the electoral college (prior to the November election, both had publicly said they would vote for Thurmond).
If the proposed law were enacted in each state, unchanged from this text, it seems that states would no longer require independent presidential candidates to list their candidates for presidential elector on the petition to get the presidential candidate on the ballot. That would be a big improvement for presidential candidates who must petition to get on the November ballot. It would simplify the petition, and also solve the problem that sometimes candidates for presidential elector listed on a petition later decide they don’t want to serve in that capacity, which can create big problems for the petition. Or, the need to list candidates for presidential elector delays the start of the petition, while the independent presidential candidate rounds up candidates for elector. For example, in 1992, Ross Perot’s petition to get on the California ballot couldn’t start for a month after Perot announced, because it was not easy for the Perot campaign to choose who should have the honor of being listed on the petition as one of Perot’s electors.
The text says an independent presidential candidate should tell the state elections office the names of his or her presidential elector candidates. The signers of the petition would not themselves be nominating the candidates for presidential elector, so logically their names would not be on the petition.
Abolish the timebomb Electoral College.
See the 620,000 DEAD Americans dying in 1861-1865 in the horrific Civil War as a direct result of the 1860 minority rule Prez election.
The EVIL Elephant party hacks kept the E.C. despite such dead.
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Uniform definition of Elector.
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
As a supporter of the National Popular Vote Plan I would like to formally declare that I do not share Demo Rep’s belief that the Civil War was caused by the Electoral College.
Many people think that Abraham Lincoln only got elected President in 1860 because the Democratic Party was split and had two opposing national tickets. But even if all the popular votes cast for both tickets of the Democratic Party, and all the popular votes cast for the Constitutional Union Party, had been cast for a single Democratic ticket, Lincoln would still have won in the Electoral College.
A plurality of the votes in a number of States/DC having a bare majority of the E.C. votes = about 28-30 percent of the total votes = minority rule = OLIGARCHY.
Now only about 6 gerrymander States of Prez/VP E.C. interest – the so-called *battleground States* — based on the most recent Prez/VP gerrymander election results.
The rest are ignored by both the party hack Donkeys and Elephants. A zillion TV attack ads in such about 6 States in Sept-early Nov. for the poor suffering voters to try and ignore.
The U.S.A. is quite ready for Civil WAR II — just in case folks have been on Mars and out of touch since 1964.
This looks obviously unconstitutional. An elector who doesn’t vote the right way is removed from elected office? Where does it allow that in the Constitution? What if something happens after election day? Like the presidential candidate dies, or there’s some scandal and the party nominates a replacement. This could conceivably cause a constitutional crisis. If you want to change the Constitution propose an amendment, don’t try to get around it.