Mass. Legislature approves plan to bypass Electoral College

Source: Boston Globe

The Massachusetts Legislature has approved a new law intended to bypass the Electoral College system and ensure that the winner of the presidential election is determined by the national popular vote.

"What we are submitting is the idea that the president should be selected by the majority of people in the United States of America," Senator James B. Eldridge, an Acton Democrat, said before the Senate voted to enact the bill.

Under the new bill, he said, "Every vote will be of the same weight across the country."

But Senate minority leader Richard Tisei said the state was meddling with a system that was "tried and true" since the founding of the country.

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Under the law, which was enacted by the House last week, all 12 of the state's electoral votes would be awarded to the candidate who receives the most votes nationally.

Read more: http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/07/mass_legislatur.html?p1=News_links

....other than, perhaps, getting Tabasco sauce on a cut finger...

n/t.

"The Congress may determine the time of choosing the electors, and the day on which they shall give their votes; which day shall be the same throughout the United States."


Guess Congress could have given Gore more time for vote counting.

they would have given the state to Nixon instead of being one of the two places (DC being the other) that had the good sense to vote for McGovern.

I wouldn't have been able to have that "Don't blame ME.." bumper sticker on my car for the next 4 years.

I don't like this at all. If they want to bypass the stupid EC, make it proportional. That's the best way to make it vestigial, at best, and ready to be eliminated.

.. popular vote, once removed.

I don't like this idea at all. If people bitch and moan that California, New York, Texas, and Florida have way too much influence now, wait til they're the only states where a candidate actually visits under a popular vote scenario.

The first step to getting rid of the EC is to make it vestigial, irrelevant, and a waste of time and money. It's the only way to get conservative dead letter constitutional literalists to support such a move.

The best way to make it vestigial, irrelevant and a waste of money is to make it proportional.

I don't agree with changing the electoral college at all- all the alternate schemes I've heard of end up screwing over anything but the population centers even more.

Changing the way we elect our leader should be hard.

I disagree. the Senate and districting (mostly gerrmandered) ensures low population areas will be taken care of as much as they should be, if not more. No reason why electing the Pres. has to be ore about arbitrary lines on a map than it is about people. the Framers were workig with a much different map, population and set of circumstances than has come to be.

People should elect Presidents, not an artificial entity like a corporation--or a state.

Since amending the Constitution has become impossible, as a practical matter, what do you suggest?

but I agree that it's the best balance between federalist and anti-federalist concepts.

their yachts.

takes great pains to avoid his. Hypocrisy from the guy who can afford to pay lots. Taxes? They are for little people, not billionaires.

Compare that with the number of times the popular vote chose one "winner" while the EC put a different man in the WH.

Proportional seems more fair. However, if we make it proportional, you'll be too busy worrying about California to even think about Massachusetts. Calfornia Republicans have been trying for years to get a proportional electoral vote for their state.

electors will vote.

At least... not in the next few decades.

And it doesn't "bypass" the EC (no state has that power), it just determines that MA's EC votes will be case by people in some other state. A proposition that can only see the light of day as long as nobody in the state actually believes it will ever happen.

Candidate A gets 60% of the vote in Massachusetts.

Candidate B gets 51% of the vote nationally.

Candidate B wins Massachusetts?

Unless all 50 states approve similar legislation, this looks like a horrible idea.

Oh, but it gets better...

"If the president were picked by national popular vote, he argued, candidates would spread their attention out more evenly."

Uh, no. If the president were picked by national popular vote, candidates would *still* target states with high populations. In fact, they could almost completely ignore flyover states and concentrate even more heavily on population centers.

Someone didn't think this through very well.

When the city of Houston has a higher population?

After Kerry wins 62% of the Massachusetts vote. They may have just disenfranchised their own voters.

I can see them splitting their electoral votes by percentage of state voters. This just tells every person in the state that the just don't need to vote. The government will giver their electoral votes to whoever is elected by the other 49 states.

The way to do this is to amend the Constitution.

and takes away any incentive for presidential candidates to be responsive to local concerns.

Echh... I don't like it. :(

I don't support measures like this. Here in California, Republicans have tried to get proportional splitting of the electoral vote. They problem is that Republicans don't care to split their vote proportionally in states that reliably vote for Republican Presidents.

This is a bad idea.

This next election (2012) is going to be more interesting than I care to think about, ESPECIALLY if Jeb Bush is in the race....which you can count on it he and the bush crime syndicate are jumping at the bit to get into it. Those voting machines only showed Obama winning by a few million. It was probably more like 15 million if the truth was told. But no computerized voting machines would EVER allow a democrat to win by that much, no matter what the people vote for.

A quick look at the population stats of the states bears this out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population

82% of the U.S. population lives in half the states. While the less populated states don't usually vote the way I'd like, I would prefer that they be given a little extra leverage.

Also, as a resident of Massachusetts, this would disenfranchise me if the rethuglican candidate won the popular vote in 2012 and my state's electoral votes went to him/her, even though my state voted for Obama. I don't like that idea at all.

Can you expand on the reasoning behind that preference?

Well, not since we became 50 states--and even that was a decision that affected people.

that was going to assign the electoral votes to the candidate that won in that particular congressional district, kind of like what they do in Maine and Nebraska. It was being pushed in California and if implemented could have peeled off 20 or so electoral votes for the GOP candidate. Of course there was no such plan being pushed in Texas or Florida that were traditionally RED States but could have given some electoral votes to the Democratic candidate.

In a close election it could have made all the difference.

Whatever changes are made need to be done uniformly.

"if everyone else does too" clauses, some time back.

With the Electoral College we know that Texas (for example) will always vote Republican and will pick up all of that state's electoral college votes. So we don't have to worry about vote fraud in Texas. But with a popular vote system, can we really be 100% confident that some rootin tootin gun-totin electoral official deep in the heart of Texas is not going to be tempted to manufacture a few extra votes to help kick that socialist sumbitch out of the White House?

it sounds nice in theory, and certainly there are obviously drawbacks to the current system.

but one advantage of the current system is that the fraud you need to worry about is limited to the evenly balanced states, which are the most likely to have a relatively even mix of democratic and republican officials (down to the local level), and therefore are the hardest states in which to commit fraud (though obviously fraud is still possible).

but with the nationwide popular vote plan, the hugely red or hugely blue states with totally partisan officials could easily doctor the vote count far away from the eye of anyone.

plus, watch the red states enact laws letting people cast extra votes on behalf of their children and fetuses!

Corrupted states have an incentive to run up the vote count in favor of the candidate selected by The Man.

That incentive would quickly grow larger with each additional state that ties its electoral votes to the national total.

But the other side of that coin is that a gerrymandered state like Texas already delivers a disproportionate number of electoral votes to the process, and totally discounts the votes of the minority. A corrupted Texas currently delivers all of its electoral votes to the criminals. But as corrupt as Texas is, it can never steal all of the popular votes in the state, and those votes against the criminal would be counted, in some small way, by Massachusetts and other states that joined the idea.

I haven't thought it all the way through yet, but I think that "popular vote" states would quickly gain the same status that the "flyover states" (except Iowa) currently have, although the large urban centers in those states would of course still be the target of candidates' attention (and, if you're a Republican, attempts to suppress turnout).

Oh, yeah, then which way will MA vote? Jeepers? They'll have to vote for Jenna Bush since she was called the winner by her cousin,........ again. That'll help. :sarcasm:

The ifs saying to look back are stupid. The campaigns would have been different.

Let the electoral college remain, please.

so now instead of Mass being super solid blue...it could go Red, based on OTHER states voters. Truly moronic legislators in that pathetic state!

You should have read the OP: "Illinois, New Jersey, Hawaii, Maryland, and Washington have already approved the legislation, according to the National Popular Vote campaign's website."

As a general rule, Jerseyites may want to be careful about calling another state "a joke of a state." I know. While I've lived in several states, including Massachusetts, I was born and raised in Jersey.

those reality shows ain't called Cape Cod National Seashore, or Massachusettslicious, Massachusetts Coutre, or Real Housewives of Massachusetts, either.

so...you are judging states by reality shows huh? Quite intelligent of you. We're very happy you have left Jersey!!!

it happens all the time but will this pass Constitutional muster?

The only way to get rid of the Electoral College (and create just as many issues as it solves IMO) is to amend the Constitution.

This law just begs a challenge on the grounds MA electors can act contrary to the majority of the voters of their state thus, effectively, disenfranchising them.

It circumvents the electoral college at the state level, so no Constitutional amendment is required, that's why it's cool. Any set of states with a combined majority of EC votes have it in their own hands to make national popular vote election of Presidents a reality, and it would take a Constitutional amendment to stop them. The big states have every incentive to do so too, it's just a matter of time.

The Constitution clearly gives the state legislatures the authority to determine how their electors are chosen (Art. II, § 1, Cl. 2).

However, the explicit establishment of the electoral college strongly indicates that a work-around to abolish it might be unconstitutional (in much the same way that the Constitution implicitly restricts the amendment process regarding the abolishment or restriction of the amendment process itself).

As a personal matter, I favor abolishing the electoral college completely.

the totally unprincipled Roberts Court would protect the electoral college if the case ever gets there. Would a Presidential candidate who lost bc of a law like this ever try to take it to the Supremes? If a Republican, maybe his or her Party would push him or her so to do?

The whole point of the electoral college is that the president is elected by the states, not the people directly. If you want to do change that, you've got to amend the constitution.

Explicit constitutional provisions generally trump implicit ones. Plus, the electoral college would not be abolished - the states participating in the "work-around" would be free to change their minds at any time.

"Supporters are campaigning, state by state, to get such bills enacted. Once states accounting for a majority of the electoral votes (or 270 of 538) have enacted the laws, the candidate winning the most votes nationally would be assured a majority of Electoral College votes. That would hold true no matter how the other states vote and how their electoral votes are distributed.

Illinois, New Jersey, Hawaii, Maryland, and Washington have already approved the legislation, according to the National Popular Vote campaign's website. The new system would only go into effect once a sufficient number of states have passed laws that would make it work."

The EC was created for a reason, and eliminating it is just as likely to work against one's interests as for them.

"Supporters are campaigning, state by state, to get such bills enacted. Once states accounting for a majority of the electoral votes (or 270 of 538) have enacted the laws, the candidate winning the most votes nationally would be assured a majority of Electoral College votes. That would hold true no matter how the other states vote and how their electoral votes are distributed.

Illinois, New Jersey, Hawaii, Maryland, and Washington have already approved the legislation, according to the National Popular Vote campaign's website. The new system would only go into effect once a sufficient number of states have passed laws that would make it work."

designed to preserve the status quo?