On April 1, the Connecticut Joint Government Administration & Elections Committee passed HB 6163 by a vote of 10-5. This is the National Popular Vote Plan bill. In a previous legislative session, the bill had passed the Connecticut House but had failed in the Senate.
NO uniform definition of an Elector-Voter in the NPV SCHEME from Hell.
NO approval of the obvious inter-state compact scheme from Hell by the gerrymander Congress.
Blatant violation of the EQUAL protection clause regarding Votes INSIDE a sovereign State of the Union.
SCOTUS awaits to smash the NPV scheme from Hell.
A survey of 800 Connecticut voters conducted on May 14-15, 2009 showed 74% overall support for the idea that the President of the United States should be the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states.
Voters were asked:
“How do you think we should elect the President: Should it be the candidate who gets the most votes in all 50 states, or the current Electoral College system?”
By political affiliation, support was 80% among Democrats, 67% among Republicans, and 71% among others. By gender, support was 81% among women and 66% among men. By age, support was 82% among 18-29 year olds, 69% among 30-45 year olds, 75% among 46-65 year olds, and 72% for those older than 65.
Then, voters were asked a second question that emphasized that Connecticut’s electoral votes would be awarded to the winner of the national popular vote in all 50 states, not Connecticut, vote. In this second question, 68% of Connecticut voters favored a national popular vote.
“Do you think it more important that Connecticut’s electoral votes be cast for the presidential candidate who receives the most popular vote in Connecticut, or is it more important to guarantee that the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states becomes president?”
By political affiliation, support was 74% among Democrats, 62% among Republicans, and 63% among others. By gender, support was 75% among women and 59% among men. By age, support was 75% among 18-29 year olds, 57% among 30-45 year olds, 68% among 46-65 year olds, and 70% for those older than 65.
http://nationalpopularvote.com/pages/polls.php#CT_2009MAY
What often appears simple is not. The Compact would cobble the national popular vote onto a flawed system designed for the Electoral College, with no means to change that system. It would result in unanticipated, yet predictable consequences that are overlooked and glossed over by advocates for the national popular vote
There is no official national popular vote number compiled in time, such that it could be used to officially and accurately determine the winner in any close election.
Even if there were such a number, it would aggravate the flaws in the system. The Electoral College limits the risk and the damage to a few swing states in each election. With a national popular vote, errors, voter suppression, and fraud in all states would count against the national totals.
There is no national recount available for close elections, to establish an accurate number. Only in some individual states, if close numbers happened to occur in those states, would there be even a fraction of a national recount.
With the Compact there is every reason to believe that any close election would be decided by partisan action of the Congress or the Supreme Court – the same Court that ruled in Gore v. Bush, that not having a uniform recount law in Florida was grounds to stop the recount to avoid harm to the apparent winner. Citizens and candidates can be expected to bring court challenges of Governors and Secretaries of State for relying on and providing inaccurate results in awarding Electoral College votes. As in Gore v. Bush, since the founding, close election controversies have all been decided in seemingly partisan decisions by Congress, special commissions, or the Supreme Court.
Current federal law (Title 3, chapter 1, section 6 of the United States Code) requires the states to report the November popular vote numbers (the “canvas”) in what is called a “Certificate of Ascertainment.” They list the electors and the number of votes cast for each. The Congress meets in joint session to count the electoral votes reported in the Certificates of Ascertainment. You can see the Certificates of Ascertainment for all 50 states and the District of Columbia containing the official count of the popular vote at the NARA web site at http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/2008/certificates-of-ascertainment.html
The process is explained at http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/state_responsibilities.html
The current state-by-state winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes maximizes the incentive and opportunity for fraud. A very few people can change the national outcome by changing a small number of votes in one closely divided battleground state.
The potential for political fraud and mischief is not uniquely associated with either the current system or a national popular vote. In fact, the current system magnifies the incentive for fraud and mischief in closely divided battleground states because all of a state’s electoral votes are awarded to the candidate who receives a bare plurality of the votes in each state.
Under the current system, the national outcome can be affected by mischief in one of the closely divided battleground states (e.g., by overzealously or selectively purging voter rolls or by placing insufficient or defective voting equipment into the other party’s precincts). The accidental use of the butterfly ballot by a Democratic election official in one county in Florida cost Gore an estimated 6,000 votes– far more than the 537 popular votes that Gore needed to carry Florida and win the White House. However, even an accident involving 6,000 votes would have been a mere footnote if a nationwide count were used (where Gore’s margin was 537,179). In the 7,645 statewide elections during the 26-year period from 1980 to 2006, the average change in the 23 statewide recounts was a mere 274 votes.
Senator Birch Bayh (D–Indiana) summed up the concerns about possible fraud in a nationwide popular election for President in a Senate speech by saying in 1979, “one of the things we can do to limit fraud is to limit the benefits to be gained by fraud. Under a direct popular vote system, one fraudulent vote wins one vote in the return. In the electoral college system, one fraudulent vote could mean 45 electoral votes, 28 electoral votes.”
Hendrik Hertzberg wrote: “To steal the closest popular-vote election in American history, you’d have to steal more than a hundred thousand votes . . .To steal the closest electoral-vote election in American history, you’d have to steal around 500 votes, all in one state. . . .
For a national popular vote election to be as easy to switch as 2000, it would have to be two hundred times closer than the 1960 election—and, in popular-vote terms, forty times closer than 2000 itself.
Which, I ask you, is an easier mark for vote-stealers, the status quo or N.P.V.[National Popular Vote]? Which offers thieves a better shot at success for a smaller effort?”
The possibility of recounts should not even be a consideration in debating the merits of a national popular vote. No one has ever suggested that the possibility of a recount constitutes a valid reason why state governors or U.S. Senators, for example, should not be elected by a popular vote.
The question of recounts comes to mind in connection with presidential elections only because the current system so frequently creates artificial crises and unnecessary disputes.
A nationwide recount would not happen. We do and would vote state by state. Each state manages its own election and recount. The state-by-state winner-take-all system is not a firewall, but instead causes unnecessary fires. The larger the number of voters in an election, the smaller the chance of close election results.
Recounts in presidential elections would be far less likely to occur under a national popular vote system than under the current state-by-state winner-take-all system (i.e., awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in each separate state).
Based on a recent study of 7,645 statewide elections in the 26-year period from 1980 through 2006 by FairVote:
*The average change in the margin of victory as a result of a statewide recount was a mere 274 votes.
*The original outcome remained unchanged in over 90% of the recounts.
*The probability of a recount is 1 in 332 elections (23 recounts in 7,645 elections), or once in 1,328 years.
The common nationwide date for meeting of the Electoral College has been set by federal law as the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December. Under both the current system and the National Popular Vote approach, all counting, recounting, and judicial proceedings must be conducted so as to reach a “final determination” prior to the meeting of the Electoral College. In particular, the U.S. Supreme Court has made it clear that the states are expected to make their “final determination” six days before the Electoral College meets.
#3, there is a national official popular vote total. The Federal Election Commission compiles it and prints it in a booklet that is free to anyone who requests it.
Proper remedy –
Const. Amdt.
Uniform definition of Elector-Voter in ALL of the U.S.A.
P.R. and App.V.
Way too difficult for NPV math MORONS from Hell ???
How many States manage to survive by having statewide elections for executive and judicial officers — even with recounts ???
#4 Dear Susan Mvymvy,
The certificate of ascertainment for the District of Columbia does not show any popular votes for Bob Barr. What is up with that?
#4 Dear Susan Mvymvy, the certificate of ascertainment for Arizona doesn’t show any popular votes for Barack Obama. Is that because he is not a native born citizen?
#4 Susan Mvymvy, The certificate of ascertainment for West Virginia is dated December 16, 2010. Wasn’t that after the presidential electors met?
#4 Dear Susan Mvymvy, USC Title 3, Chapter 1, Section 6, requires each state to produce a certificate of ascertainment which shows the final determinative basis by which a State’s presidential electors are appointed. In the case of a State that appoints its electors on the basis of “popular votes” it would be the total number of votes in all jurisdictions that a State uses to determine each appointment.
That is why Maine and Nebraska report the popular vote for each congressional district. If a State were to base its appointment on the popular vote from some other State, it would report the popular vote for that State. If it were to base its appointment on the popular vote in all 50 States, then it would have to gather up all the individual State totals add them up, and put the totals on its certificate of ascertainment.
How would they get it done in time?
#6 Dear Sudan Mvymvy,
Didn’t we already go through how flawed and useless the Fairvote study is? Fairvote should fire Rob Ritchie for such an incompetent effort.
Ritchie did not study 7,645 statewide elections over a 26-year period. He counted the number of statewide elections over a seven-year period, which included 4 even-numbered election years.
He derived an “average” by dividing by 6, even though there were 7 years in this sample. This inflated the average by 16.7%. And since there were more even-numbered years, there were likely more statewide elections since most states conduct their statewide elections in even years. If we assume that 3/4 of elections over a 2-year period are in the even year, then this produces an additional 7.1% error. Multiply these two errors together, and you have have a 25% error in the estimated number of elections over 26-years.
So Ritchie manufactured 1500 elections, but it doesn’t matter because he didn’t actually study the older elections. The only reason that he included them is because he knew the number of recounts over that period. Were the number of elections the same over the period where he did not actually compile results? BTW, the recounts have become more frequent in recent years.
But the worst flaw is that Ritchie assumed that Statewide elections were representative of national presidential elections. That is, if there was a Texas judicial race in which there was no Democratic candidate, and the Republican beat the Libertarian by an 85-15 margin, then Ritchie treated that as a possible outcome of a national presidential election. And it might actually be representative of an election in which there was no Democratic candidate. But how likely is that? Ritchie counted non-partisan, referendums, and partisan races in decidedly one-party States like Idaho or Massachusetts.
We have 46 elections worth of national popular vote totals: 1828-2008. It would be easy to test whether the State results for 2000-2006 were anything like the national presidential results.
#6 In 2008, how many Certificates of Ascertainment were issued after 6 days before the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December?
#6 Susan Mvymvy, Does the National Archives have the Certificate of Ascertainment for Alabama in 1960?
#7 What is publication date for that booklet for the 2008 election?
# 16
http://www.fec.gov/general/library.shtml
Federal Elections series 1996-2008.
2010 version circa July 2011.
The ANTI-Democracy gerrymander stats for all to see.
P.R. and App.V.
Would I have status to challenge the vote count in Florida, Ohio, or any other state especially in a close election if I suspect vote fraud? After all my states electoral vote would be cast in part based on those results.
Congress counts the electoral vote in January. It is up the any U.S. Senator to challenge the vote tally for any particular state. In 2000, no U.S. Senator challenged any state’s returns. In 2004, Barbara Boxer challenged the Ohio results, but her challenge was overwhelmingly defeated by a vote of the U.S. Senate.
Even if the Electoral College needs to be eliminated, this Bill, (HB 6163) is NOT the way to do it.
The Electoral College affords small states like Connecticut the benefit of not living in the shadow of big cities like L.A. and New York City.
This legislation would further erode our State’s sovereignty, and joining this multi-state compact is an “end-run” around the constitutional amendment process.
This legislation would also allow for the following circumstances:
* A President can be elected by ANY plurality: 15, 20 or 25 percent of the vote is enough. NPV does not provide for run-offs, nor does it require candidates to meet a certain threshold.
* The margin between two candidates could be very close, yet Connecticut could find itself unable to participate in a recount.
* Connecticut could be forced to award its 7 electors to a presidential candidate who was not on its ballot.
* Other states might use recount standards that differ from Connecticut’s. They might thus cause election totals to tilt in favor of their candidate, as opposed to Connecticut’s.
* Connecticut could be forced to award its 7 electors to a candidate who was overwhelmingly rejected by Connecticut voters.
HB 6163 must die and rot in the Hell it came from!
Congressional consent is not required for the National Popular Vote compact under prevailing U.S. Supreme Court rulings. However, because there would undoubtedly be time-consuming litigation about this aspect of the compact, National Popular Vote is working to introduce a bill in Congress for congressional consent.
The U.S. Constitution provides:
“No state shall, without the consent of Congress,… enter into any agreement or compact with another state….”
Although this language may seem straight forward, the U.S. Supreme Court has method, in 1893 and again in 1978, that the Compacts Clause can “not be read literally.” In deciding the 1978 case of U.S. Steel Corporation v. Multistate Tax Commission, the Court wrote:
“Read literally, the Compact Clause would require the States to obtain congressional approval before entering into any agreement among themselves, irrespective of form, subject, duration, or interest to the United States.
“The difficulties with such an interpretation were identified by Mr. Justice Field in his opinion for the Court in [the 1893 case] Virginia v. Tennessee. His conclusion [was] that the Clause could not be read literally [and this 1893 conclusion has been] approved in subsequent dicta.”
Specifically, the Court’s 1893 ruling in Virginia v. Tennessee stated:
“Looking at the clause in which the terms ‘compact’ or ‘agreement’ appear, it is evident that the prohibition is directed to the formation of any combination tending to the increase of political power in the states, which may encroach upon or interfere with the just supremacy of the United States.”
The state power involved in the National Popular Vote compact is specified in Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 the U.S. Constitution:
“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors….”
In the 1892 case of McPherson v. Blacker (146 U.S. 1), the Court wrote:
“The appointment and mode of appointment of electors belong exclusively to the states under the constitution of the United States”
The National Popular Vote compact would not “encroach upon or interfere with the just supremacy of the United States” because there is simply no federal power—much less federal supremacy—in the area of awarding of electoral votes in the first place.
The Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment says:
“no state [shall] deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”
It has been argued by some that it is not permissible, under the Equal Protection clause, for some states to close their polls at 6 PM while others close at 9 PM ; for some states to conduct their election entirely by mail while other states conduct their (non-absentee) voting at the polls; and for some states to permit violent felons to vote while others prohibit it (absent a pardon). However, the U.S. Constitution does not require that the election laws of all 50 states are identical in virtually every respect. The Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment only restricts a given state in the manner it treats persons “within its jurisdiction.” The Equal Protection Clause imposes no obligation on a given state concerning a “person” in another state who is not “within its [the first state’s] jurisdiction.” State election laws are not identical now nor is there anything in the National Popular Vote compact that would force them to become identical. Indeed, the U.S. Constitution specifically permits diversity of election laws among the states because it explicitly gives the states control over the conduct of presidential elections (article II) as well as congressional elections (article I). The fact is that the Founding Fathers and the U.S. Constitution permits states to conduct elections in varied ways.
The National Popular Vote bill does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
Most people wrongly believe the presidential election system we have today is in the Constitution, and think that any change would need an amendment. But state-by-state winner-take-all laws to award electoral college votes, are an example of state laws eventually enacted by states, using their exclusive power to do so, AFTER the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, Now our current system can be changed by state laws again.
After days of debating and rejecting possible methods for selecting the President, the Founding Fathers at the Constitutional Convention left the entire matter to the states by only saying in the U.S. Constitution about presidential elections “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors . . .” That’s all the Constitution says about what we now call the Electoral College. The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as “plenary” and “exclusive.”
The constitution does not prohibit any of the methods that were debated and rejected. Indeed, a majority of the states appointed their presidential electors using two of the rejected methods in the nation’s first presidential election in 1789 (i.e., appointment by the legislature and by the governor and his cabinet). Presidential electors were appointed by state legislatures for almost a century.
Neither of the two most important features of the current system of electing the President (namely, universal suffrage, and the 48 state-by-state winner-take-all method) are in the U.S. Constitution. Neither was the choice of the Founders when they went back to their states to organize the nation’s first presidential election.
In 1789, in the nation’s first election, the people had no vote for President in most states, only men who owned a substantial amount of property could vote, and only three states used the state-by-state winner-take-all method to award electoral votes.
The winner-take-all method is not entitled to any special deference based on history or the historical meaning of the words in the U.S. Constitution. The current 48 state-by-state winner-take-all method (i.e., awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in a particular state) is not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, the debates of the Constitutional Convention, or the Federalist Papers. The actions taken by the Founding Fathers make it clear that they never gave their imprimatur to the winner-take-all method.
The constitutional wording does not encourage, discourage, require, or prohibit the use of any particular method for awarding the state’s electoral votes.
As a result of changes in state laws enacted since 1789, the people have the right to vote for presidential electors in 100% of the states, there are no property requirements for voting in any state, and the state-by-state winner-take-all method is used by 48 of the 50 states. States can, and frequently have, changed their method of awarding electoral votes over the years. Maine and Nebraska currently award electoral votes by congressional district — a reminder that an amendment to the U.S. Constitution is not required to change the way the President is elected.
The normal process of effecting change in the method of electing the President is specified in the U.S. Constitution, namely action by the state legislatures. This is how the current system was created, and this is the built-in method that the Constitution provides for making changes.
The powers of state governments are neither increased nor decreased based on whether presidential electors are selected along the state boundary lines, along district lines (as has been the case in Maine and Nebraska), or national lines.
Under National Popular Vote, when every vote counts, successful candidates will continue to find a middle ground of policies appealing to the wide mainstream of America. Instead of playing mostly to local concerns in Ohio and Florida, candidates finally would have to form broader platforms for broad national support. It would no longer matter who won a state.
Now political clout comes from being a battleground state.
Now with state-by-state winner-take-all laws presidential elections ignore 12 of the 13 lowest population states (3-4 electoral votes), that are almost invariably non-competitive, and ignored, in presidential elections. Six regularly vote Republican (Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, and South Dakota), and six regularly vote Democratic (Rhode Island, Delaware, Hawaii, Vermont, Maine, and DC) in presidential elections. Nine state legislative chambers in the lowest population states have passed the National Popular Vote bill. It has been enacted by the District of Columbia and Hawaii.
Most of the medium-small states (with five or six electoral votes with a combined total of 166 electoral votes) are similarly non-competitive in presidential elections (and therefore similarly disadvantaged). In fact, of the 22 medium-lowest population states (those with three, four, five, or six electoral votes), only 3 states with a total of 14 electoral votes, have been battleground states in recent elections, and received attention– New Hampshire (with 4 electoral votes got 12 events), New Mexico (5 electoral votes got 8 events), and Nevada (5 electoral votes got 12 events).
The 25 least-populous states divided 13–12 in favor of the Republicans in 2008, and their electoral votes divided 58–57.
Because so few of the 22 small and medium-small states are closely divided battleground states in presidential elections, the current system actually shifts power from voters in the small and medium-small states to voters in a handful of big states. The New York Times reported early in 2008 (May 11, 2008) that both major political parties were already in agreement that there would be at most 14 battleground states in 2008 (involving only 166 of the 538 electoral votes). In other words, three-quarters of the states were ignored under the current system in the 2008 election. Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida contain over half of the electoral votes that mattered in 2008.
Anyone concerned about the relative power of big states and small states should realize that the current system shifts power from voters in the small and medium-small states to voters in a handful of big states.
After more than 10,000 statewide elections in the past two hundred years, there is no evidence of any tendency toward a massive proliferation of third-party candidates in elections in which the winner is simply the candidate receiving the most votes throughout the entire jurisdiction served by the office. No such tendency has emerged in other jurisdictions, such as congressional districts or state legislative districts. There is no evidence or reason to expect the emergence of some unique new political dynamic that would promote multiple candidacies if the President were elected in the same manner as every other elected official in the United States.
Based on historical evidence, there is far more fragmentation of the vote under the current state-by-state system of electing the President than in elections in which the winner is simply the candidate who receives the most popular votes in the jurisdiction involved.
Under the current state-by-state system of electing the President (in which the candidate who receives a plurality of the popular vote wins all of the state’s electoral votes), minor-party candidates have significantly affected the outcome in six (40%) of the 15 presidential elections in the past 60 years (namely the 1948, 1968, 1980, 1992, 1996, and 2000 presidential elections). The reason that the current system has encouraged so many minor-party candidates and so much fragmentation of the vote is that a presidential candidate with no hope of winning a plurality of the votes nationwide has 51 separate opportunities to shop around for particular states where he can affect electoral votes or where he might win outright. Thus, under the current system, segregationists such as Strom Thurmond (1948) or George Wallace (1968) won electoral votes in numerous Southern states, although they had no chance of receiving the most popular votes nationwide. In addition, candidates such as John Anderson (1980), Ross Perot (1992 and 1996), and Ralph Nader (2000) did not win a plurality of the popular vote in any state, but managed to affect the outcome by switching electoral votes in numerous particular states.
Under the current system of electing the President, no state requires that a presidential candidate receive anything more than the most popular votes in order to receive all of the state’s electoral votes.
Not a single legislative bill has been introduced in any state legislature in recent decades (among the more than 100,000 bills that are introduced in every two-year period by the nation’s 7,300 state legislators) proposing to change the existing universal practice of the states to award electoral votes to the candidate who receives a plurality (as opposed to absolute majority) of the votes (statewide or district-wide). There is no evidence of any public sentiment in favor of imposing such a requirement.
Since 1824 there have been 16 presidential elections in which a candidate was elected or reelected without gaining a majority of the popular vote. – including Lincoln (1860), Wilson (1912, and 1916), Truman (1948), Kennedy (1960), Nixon (1968), and Clinton (1992 and 1996).
Americans do not view the absence of run-offs under the current system as a major problem. If, at some time in the future, the public demands run-offs, that change can be implemented at that time.
It is most unlikely that a serious candidate for President would run without qualifying for the ballot in all 50 states.
? Ross Perot was on the ballot in all 50 states in both 1992 and 1996.
? John Anderson was on the ballot in all 50 states in 1980.
? Ralph Nader (who received only about ½% of the national popular vote in 2008) was on the ballot in 45 states.
When voters were asked a question that emphasized that Connecticut’s electoral votes would be awarded to the winner of the national popular vote in all 50 states, not Connecticut’s, vote, 68% of Connecticut voters favored a national popular vote.
http://nationalpopularvote.com/pages/polls.php#CT_2009MAY
#27 Dear Susan Mvymvy,
Abraham Lincoln, Grover Cleveland, William Howard Taft, and John Kennedy were not serious candidates?
#26, Dear Susan Mvymvy,
When Congress set the uniform appointment date for presidential electors in 1845, they made specific provisions for States that required a majority vote for presidential electors, provisions that were utilized in 1848 and 1860.
Why should we assume that no States will implement a runoff procedure in the future? If a State did provide a runoff, which results would the members of the NPV compact use to determine the national winner?
#26 Dear Susan Mvyvmy,
How do you know “that Americans do not view the absence of runoffs under the current system a major problem”? Did any of your push polls explore the issue?
And what does it matter if they regard it as a major problem, a problem, or a minor problem? Maybe they are content with the current system, when no candidate receives a majority of the electoral vote? Certainly any system that resulted in Henry Clay becoming Secretary of State should be looked on upon with favor.
How could a change be implemented at some later date?
#26, Susan Mvymvy,
It is not true that no bill has been introduced that would provide for a runoff for presidential elections.
#25 Dear Susan Mvymvy,
The winner in Nebraska legislative elections is not the candidate who has received the “most” votes. It is of course a lie that every other official in the United States is elected by plurality vote.
How do you know that Ross Perot would nor have affected the outcome in 1992, if that election had been conducted under your NPV scheme? What about 1960?
#24 A national popular election of the President would like aggrandize the power of the President at the expense of the individual States.
#21 and # 22 What sayeth the 5 New Age rightwing SCOTUS folks — about the NPV scheme from Hell ??? Stay tuned.
They seem to have some brain power in the 2008 WA top 2 primary case about BASIC stuff.
What about the total lack of a uniform definition of Elector in the the NPV scheme from Hell ???
i.e. What is to stop a usual suspect State regime from having children, felons, mentally ill and even foreign folks (even in ENEMY nations) from voting for a Prez/VP in the NPV scheme from Hell ???
More on #22
U.S.A. Total
A 70,000,000
Z 70,000,001
In the State of Sanity
A 5,000,000 — who detect that candidate Z is from Hell.
Z 1
Will the NPV Scheme from Hell make it to the 9 SCOTUS folks before or after the 2012 Prez election ???