This Is Nuts, Even by California Standards
I don’t know how else to describe it (bolds are mine):
For more than 200 years America has chosen its presidents as the Constitution provides: through the Electoral College. Traditionally, each state has cast its electoral votes–equal to its total representation in Congress–for the candidate who receives the most votes statewide.
But last week the California Senate passed legislation to award the state’s Electoral College votes to the candidate who has received the most popular votes nationally–whether Californians chose him or not. A similar bill passed the Assembly on May 30, so it will soon be up to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to sign or veto the bill. Such a bill also passed the Colorado Senate in April, part of a national to change the way we choose our presidents. The mandate doesn’t take effect until enough other states sign on to provide a majority of electoral votes. If it were in effect in 2004, George W. Bush would have taken California’s 55 electoral votes, even though John Kerry carried the state by a margin of nearly 10%.
It is an odd idea, an “interstate compact” switching the Electoral College votes of member states from their state’s vote winner to the national vote winner. And the direct election of presidents would be a political, electoral, and constitutional mistake that would radically change America’s election system.
Pete duPont has all kinds of good arguments against this idea at the Opinion Journal link, and he barely scratches the surface.
I’m a big believer in the autonomy of the states, but I don’t see states having the right to give away their sovereignty. California voters should be outraged that the people they have elected would be willing to give their state’s electoral votes away to the rest of the country. I can’t imagine Arnold not vetoing this.
He ought to make this nonsense a very big campaign issue, and every challenger to a legislator who supported this should jump on their opponent’s giveaway vote with both feet.
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UPDATE: Yes, I realize that this is an end-run around the Electoral College, but it doesn’t change the fact that a state legislature is willing to let the rest of the country determine who is president, and, in effect, totally nullify millions of votes if they happen to be in the opposite direction of the person who got the most popular votes nationwide.
UPDATE 2: Redhawk Review calls the idea “Eviscerating the Constitution.”
UPDATE 3, Sept. 22: Allah weighs in at Hot Air based on a NewsMax article. Better late than never, guys. It is worth noting that Governor Schwarzenegger has until September 30 to veto the legislation.
This is very similar to how the progressives forced a change in the way senators were chosen. In the old days, they were chosen by legislatures, often corruptly so. The Progressives forced state legislative candidates to promise to choose senators based on the popular vote, regardless of political party. It worked. Senators were increasing chosen by popular vote instead of by corrupt legislatures. Finally, a constitutional amendment was approved to change the way senators were elected.
In this case, the Constitution does not forbid state legislatures from adopting any method they want for allocating electoral votes.
Contrary to your simple-minded protest, this move actually empowers milions of voters who would otherwise be silenced. Such as milions of Republicans in California and hundreds of thousands of Democrats in Utah. Direct election of the president is the next improvement we need to make a stronger democracy. Under the current system, candidates have no incentive to broaden their appeal outside of the red state-blue state divide. As everyone knows, there are plenty of blue voters in red states and vice versa. Our democracy would be vastly improved by direct election of the president. Small states foolishly believe the current system gives them some special status, but the reality is that no presidential candidate cares very much about small-state voters.
Comment by fred c. dobbs — August 28, 2006 @ 12:10 pm
Direct election of the president is the next improvement we need to make a stronger democracy.
Fine. If you feel that way, stop playing games with the Electoral College and do the dirty work and use your *superior intellect* to convince us *simple-minded* folks to have our congress and state legislatures pass a constitutional amendment for direct election of the president. That is how it was designed to be done in our system.
But I suspect that the reason you do not find that appealing is that you know the country will not ever accept it. So this stealth tactic, put together for the sole intention of wrecking the carefully designed electoral college system put together by those *simple-minded* Founders, does things to it that they would have thought no reasonable or ethical person would ever consider. But they underestimated what a combination of *superior intellect* and lack of constitutional grounding is capable of conceiving.
Comment by TBlumer — August 28, 2006 @ 12:28 pm
#1, if you feel the all-or-none approach is problematic, you can always have CA do what Maine and Nebraska are doing, which is to assign electoral votes based on the vote results in each congressional district.
Comment by TBlumer — August 28, 2006 @ 12:38 pm
#1, I also am totally unconvinced, especially because political contributions are allowed across state lines (see this post for my thoughts on that), that the direct-election system for choosing senators is any less corrupt than it might have been in the 1800s.
Senators do not represent their states, they represent the people who contribute to them. This is an improvement?
Comment by TBlumer — August 28, 2006 @ 12:41 pm
[...] In 2000, Gore would have gotten the electoral votes — but then, he got them anyway. What a stupid law this would be. Tom Blumer first told me about it. He blogs it here. And Armed Liberal comes out against it here. [...]
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