Electoral college: Ignoring the popular vote--SCOTUS stinks!

According to law professor Peter M. Shane, writing in the Washington Post on July 19th, in the decision where SCOTUS selected *, they also ruled that state legislatures do not have to take the popular vote into account in choosing electors. SCOTUS wrote that, "The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States unless and until the state chooses a statewide election as the means to implement its power to appoint members of the Electoral College."

According to Shane, this means that in a state where pukes control the state legislature, and have a puke governor or enough votes to override a veto, they can simply decide that the majority party can choose electors without regard to the popular vote.

Shane says that in the past the "public outrage factor" has kept state legislatures from doing this, but that he is concerned because of, "....the number of recent occasions on which neither common sense nor the prospect of citizen outrage was sufficient to elicit responsible leadership from those who govern us."

This article was forwarded to me by my local Save Democracy group, which is working against BBV. So we make sure we get the votes and that the votes count, and then, thanks to SCOTUS, the states can simply ignore our vote and choose whatever electors they want.

The only thing that gives me any hope at all is that the current regime has run up such a huge deficit that the big money people probably realize that if they don't get a Democrat in to rebuild the economy, there's nothing left for them to steal. Sheesh.

The Florida legislature was poised to do just this - justifying it over the supposed 'illegal' intervention by the Florida Supreme COurt.

very interesting, as it evolved into discussion of whether this is written into the constitution in a way that yields this power to ALL states, thereby obviating the necessity for any popular vote at all

question started regarding, IIRC, whether a LIHOP/MIHOP scene close to the election would allow legislatures to just skip voting altogether, and could result in states choosing electors by party vote

can't remember what was decided, but it's a KEY question, obviously

cause you KNOW if they got away with it in Florida, they'll try it again


BUT WAIT!!! they took care to say that this decision was NOT precedent setting, so this could be another constitutional nightmare

States decide how to allocate their electoral votes, they always have. It wasn't established by the SCOTUS ruling of 2000, which in any case stated that the ruling itself established no precedent.

Take a look at Article 2, Section 1, paragraphs 2 and 3 -- it's long and so I won't quote it . . . but the state legislatures can take a presidential election back from the electorate any time they want, or are willing to pay the political price.

That part of Bush v. Gore is a shock -- I GUESS I learned that in the 8th grade, but I'd sure forgotten it.

"States' Rights." Ugh. Maybe Texas will make good its threat and secede. Good riddance.

I believe there was one or more States where some Electors DEFIED the popular vote, and cast their votes for Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond. This was despite the fact that they were on the ballot as "Electors for Harry S. Truman".

There was of course NO political price paid then, and they gloried in their "valorous defiance of Federal despotism". It would probably be a harder sell today though.

pnorman

One elector, I forget from where but Texas would be a logical assumption, reversed his vote, casting his ballot for President to Lloyd Bentsen and his VP ballot for Dukakis.

As with most things of this nature, the legal rules vary by state.

the states can do that. But they always could - the issue has nothing to do with the Supreme Court or Bush v Gore. It's the constitution itself - which is why we need an amendment guaranteeing our right to vote for President and to have that vote counted.

the system was set up to screw us.

...to do away with the Electoral College.

Still don't understand what's wrong with one person/one vote...whoever gets the most votes wins. Makes sense to me.

The small states that would be 'harmed' by it have sufficient numbers to prevent a Constitutional Amendment that would be required to do so.

Now if there was a Constitutional COnvention, who knows ...

I guess I just did not understand this post. What we have has worked pretty well for 200 years. I see the point on a state level and state rights were so big in the early days. Could we have got the Constitution any other way? It was many years after that war that we got something that worked at all. That took taking a lot of power away from each state but things were not working the other way. So I think things were done to get the Constitution in at the time. Now maybe it is time to change it. Generally I hate to see the Constitution changed.

Before everyone jumps on the bandwagon of altering the current system into one that is based on a national election administered by the federal government and not the states, consider for a moment what that means. I know it is popular to claim the FF's were trying to screw the little guy in the way they set up the election of the executive, but that's a half truth. There are some very complex issues involved that, if not addressed with care, could lead to a much worse system than we currently have. This was one of the stickier issues at the Constitutional Convention precisely because it was so complex, and even those originators of the provision generally agreed it was filled with problems and potential problems.

Without some sweeping and careful changes to the Constitutional provision for the election of a President, all we'll end up with is a national election that can be set aside by the sitting President. How? Rather than 50 state legislatures and 50 governors amounting to several thousand separate people providing final oversight and ratification of the election process, we'd have one legislature and one "governor" (the then current POTUS) administering it. Depending on how it is constructed legally, the final arbiter could be a single individual. Would we really feel any better if the Board of Elections responsible for ratifying every single vote was in the hands of a Dubya Bush appointee rather than a sub-set of those votes being overseen by Katherine Harris? Personally, I wouldn't.

The system definitely needs to be changed, but before the changes are made, we need to consider carefully how those changes should be implemented. A nationally run election with no electoral college could be decided by SCOTUS, or maybe a single bureaucrat in an executive office, just as easily as it was in 2000. Be careful what you ask for.

I am not sure why one person would check it over but guess it would be like country wide and not state wide. As I have said I hate to see amendments with out a lot of thinking. Republicans like one new one a week and each takes away some freedom as I see it.

It just depends on how the system would be structured. Those who want to abolish the electoral college all have a basic mental picture of what they want to replace it. Problem is, there are about as many different pictures as there are people imagining them.

One of the more benign systems advanced by voter advocacy groups could still leave the machinery of elections in the power of the states with the same sorts of ratification process that is in place now. The difference would be that a certified total number of votes would pass from the governor's office to some national headquarters given the duty of compiling the totals. The only thing over which the national director of the board of elections would have control would be tallying the certified results from 50 separate states.

The problem with this method is that it does little to solve the problem that arose in Bush v. Gore. Sure, it looks like it would solve the problem because the decision led to the certification of a number of votes that gave Bush Florida's EC votes but still left Gore in the lead with overall votes. Unfortunately, had total vote been the deciding number, the lawsuit simply would have taken a different form, and most likely would have involved a number of states that managed to escape the extreme focus of Florida. There were efforts under way at the time of the decision to toss a large number of precinct totals all over the country.