The Associated Press has this article on how the Electoral College works. The article has many useful details that are not generally known. It is encouraging that there seems to be greater awareness this year, than in a normal presidential election year, that the electors, not the voters, choose the president. If everyone understood that, no one would think that sore loser laws relate to the presidential election.
Good job, up until the point that the article states that the effect of the NPV would be that states that join the compact would “bypass” the Electoral College.
That’s a typical misrepresentation of how the NPV would work if implemented.
Yes it’s a sloppy statement to say ‘bypass’
Nothing in NPV bypasses or eliminates the college just that a state would force it’s EC voters to cast the votes for the winner of the national vote even though that state may have voted for the other candidate.
It could mean Texas EC votors casting their ballots for a Democrat !
I’m not sure the strict (when it suits them) constitutionalists in many states accepting that – especially if the ‘normal’ EC vote would mean their party winning the Presidency even though the popular vote went the other way
In Texas, independent candidates file for president themselves. They include the name of the Vice Presidential candidate and the 38 elector candidates, each of whom must give their permission. It is absurd for anyone to think that it is not the presidential candidate who is being voted on.
The article is wrong when it says that the electors meet in the State Capital. There is no such requirement, and for that matter no requirement that a state designate a state capital, or a single state capital.
The article also ignored the 1836 vice-presidential election, and that the elector names are printed on the ballot in some states.
The President of the Senate is not necessarily the Vice President, and this was even less true when the 12th Amendment was passed. If Joe Biden were unable to attend, Orrin Hatch would preside.
More of the standard brainwashing about the E.C. —
one more EVIL and VICIOUS ANTI-Democracy part of the 1787 Const.
Result — most attention in about 10 marginal gerrymander E.C. States.
Other 40 States + DC are ignored.
—
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
Chris C – “The bottom line is that the electors from those states who cast their ballot for the nationwide vote winner are completely accountable (to the extent that independent agents are ever accountable to anyone) to the people of those states. The National Popular Vote states . . . have made a policy choice about the substantive intelligible criteria (i.e., national popularity) that they want to use to make their selection of electors. There is nothing in Article II (or elsewhere in the Constitution) that prevents them from making the decision that, in the Twenty-First Century, national voter popularity is a (or perhaps the) crucial factor in worthiness for the office of the President.”
– Vikram David Amar – professor and the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the UC Davis School of Law. Before becoming a professor, he clerked for Judge William A. Norris of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and for Justice Harry Blackmun at the Supreme Court of the United States.
Proposals to split state votes are not meant to “streamline the process.”
There is a concerted effort by some Republican legislators to split state electoral votes in states that have recently voted Democratic in presidential elections.
While those same Republican legislators do not want to split electoral votes in states that recently voted Republican in presidential elections.
Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus made the goal of the scheme clear when he endorsed it last year, saying, “I think it’s something that a lot of states that have been consistently blue that are fully controlled red ought to be looking at.”
Current attempts by some GOP legislators to affect the 2016 presidential election by dividing the electoral college votes of Michigan (and only some other Republican controlled states that have recently voted Democratic in presidential elections) ” . . . can initially seem reasonable, even to progressives, many of whom are wary of the electoral college system. But this isn’t a good-government plan to change the way our presidential elections are conducted. It’s a targeted plot to get more electoral votes for Republicans, even when they’re losing the popular vote. It’s no coincidence that these plans have often been quietly introduced in lame duck sessions, when voters are paying less attention. These measures, if allowed to be passed quickly in a few states with little debate and attention, could have national implications and change American political history.”
– Michael B. Keegan, PFAW
Otto –
I have defended the NPV plan against attacks that it is an end-around the Constitution. Of course it is not. If state legislatures choose to allocate their EC votes to the national popular vote winner, it is fully within their constitutional right to do so. But in fairness I have to observe that too that if state legislatures controlled by one party move to change the manner in which electors are allocated within because their state typically votes for the other party in the presidential election, some of us might cluck our tongues and accuse them of rank partisanship (which of course it would be), but in fact the legislatures would only be taking advantage of the opportunity the Founding Fathers unwittingly created when they created the ridiculous, decrepit EC scheme.
I view the NPV as only the first of two steps. Get it in place and elect a few presidents on the basis of national popular vote totals. THEN, after the country gets accustomed to results being determined thusly (which a clear majority of Americans support), and sees that the pillars of our republican democratic system have not cataclysmically crumbled into the sea as some predict, we can get about the business of amending the constitution to get rid of the EC…forever.
And good riddance.
Baron — I appreciate your support.
National Popular Vote is a nonpartisan coalition of legislators, scholars, constitutionalists and grassroots volunteers committed to guaranteeing the presidency to the candidate who earns the most votes in all fifty states and DC.
In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided).
Support for a national popular vote is strong among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in every state surveyed recently. In the 41 red, blue, and purple states surveyed, overall support has been in the 67-81% range – in rural states, in small states, in Southern and border states, in big states, and in other states polled.
Most Americans don’t ultimately care whether their presidential candidate wins or loses in their state or district . . . they care whether he/she wins the White House. Voters want to know, that even if they were on the losing side, their vote actually was equally counted and mattered to their candidate. Most Americans think it is wrong that the candidate with the most popular votes can lose. We don’t allow this in any other election in our representative republic.
From 1932-2008 the combined popular vote for Presidential candidates added up to Democrats: 745,407,082 and Republican: 745,297,123 — a virtual tie.
Over the last few decades, presidential election outcomes within the majority of states have become more and more predictable.
From 1992- 2012
13 states (with 102 electoral votes) voted Republican every time
19 states (with 242) voted Democratic every time
If this 20 year pattern continues, without the National Popular Vote bill in effect,
Democrats only would need a mere 28 electoral votes from other states.
If Republicans lose Florida (29), they would lose.
The National Popular Vote bill has passed 34 state legislative chambers in 23 rural, small, medium, large, Democratic, Republican and purple states with 261 electoral votes, including one house in Arizona (11), Arkansas (6), Maine (4), Michigan (16), Nevada (6), New Mexico (5), North Carolina (15), and Oklahoma (7), and both houses in Colorado (9).
The bill has been enacted by 11 small, medium, and large jurisdictions with 165 electoral votes – 61% of the 270 necessary to go into effect.
National Popular Vote