If you can't win fair and square, cheat...

[MrScorpio]

California Ballot Initiative Would Rig Next Presidential Election For Republicans

BY IAN MILLHISER ON DECEMBER 3, 2013 AT 9:00 AM

Last winter, shortly after President Obama won his second term in office, many Republicans rallied behind a pair of election-rigging plans designed to make it virtually impossible for a Democrat to win White House again. Though the two plans differ in important ways, the crux of both plans is to rig the Electoral College by requiring blue states to award a significant portion of their electoral votes to Republican presidential candidates — all while ensuring that red states will award 100 percent of their electoral votes to the Republican as well. Though these election-rigging plans appeared dead after a wave of Republican officials came out against them, one of them has just returned to life in California.

On November 22, a man named Hal Nickle filed a proposed ballot initiative in California which would change the way that state allocates electoral votes to ensure that a large chunk of California’s 55 electors go to the GOP, even though Californians consistently prefer Democratic candidates to Republicans. Rather than allocating all of California’s electoral votes to the winner of the state as a whole, as nearly all states currently award their votes, the election-rigging initiative would allocate the states votes proportionally according to the percentage of votes won by each candidate. Thus, if this plan had been in effect in 2012, Mitt Romney would have received 37.12 percent of California’s electors — adding 20 to his overall total.

The trick behind this proposal is that if would only change the law in California, while leaving red states free to award all of their electors to the Republican:



http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/12/03/3007311/gop-plan-rig-electoral-college-republicans-rears-head-california-2/

[DetlefK]

1. What would it take for the US to get a national election-law?

Seriously, the state-government-of-the-day deciding how votes should be counted in national elections?

Would it legally (not politically) be possible for Congress and/or Senate to get rid of the whole Electoral College-system in one fell swoop?

[unblock]

2. a constitutional amendment would never fly, because it needs supports from small red states; however

there is a movement in state legislatures to agree that if the based all their electoral votes on the national vote total, with the law becoming active in each state that passes this law only if and when the total of these states exceeds 50% of the total electoral votes in the nation.

that is, if and when this bloc of states is large enough to make a national majority vote stick, then they do so. in theory this could lead to some "weird" results, e.g., a state could go 70% for the "other guy" but still make all its electors go for the national winner.

in any event, this is much more politically plausible as it doesn't require support from those states most heavily vested in the electoral college system.

[mvymvy]

3. The National Popular Vote Bill - 50.4% toward going into effect

The U.S. Constitution permits states to conduct elections in varied ways. The National Popular Vote compact is patterned directly after existing federal law and preserves state control of elections.

To abolish the Electoral College would need a constitutional amendment, and could be stopped by states with as little as 3% of the U.S. population.

Instead, by state laws, by 2016, The National Popular Vote bill could guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).

Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections. No more distorting and divisive red and blue state maps. There would no longer be a handful of 'battleground' states where voters and policies are more important than those of the voters in 80% of the states that now are just 'spectators' and ignored after the conventions.

When the bill is enacted by states with a majority of the electoral votes– enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538), all the electoral votes from the enacting states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC.

The presidential election system that we have today was not designed, anticipated, or favored by the Founding Fathers but, instead, is the product of decades of evolutionary change precipitated by the emergence of political parties and enactment by 48 states of winner-take-all laws, not mentioned, much less endorsed, in the Constitution.

The Electoral College is now the set of 538 dedicated party activists, who vote as rubberstamps for presidential candidates. In the current presidential election system, 48 states award all of their electors to the winners of their state. This is not what the Founding Fathers intended.

The Founders in the Constitution did not require states to allow their citizens to vote for president, much less award all their electoral votes based upon the vote of their citizens.

The presidential election system we have today is not in the Constitution. State-by-state winner-take-all laws to award Electoral College votes, were 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.

Unable to agree on any particular method for selecting presidential electors, the Founding Fathers left the choice of method exclusively to the states in section 1 of Article II of the U.S. Constitution-- "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors . . ." 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 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 entitled to any special deference based on history or the historical meaning of the words in the U.S. Constitution. It 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.

[mvymvy]

5. The National Popular Vote Bill - 50.4% toward going into effect

On August 8, 2011 California Governor Jerry Brown signed the National Popular Vote bill.

In a 2008 survey of Californians, 70% of residents and likely voters supported a national popular vote, while 21% of residents and 22% of likely voters preferred that the current state winner-take-all Electoral College system continue. Democrats (76%) and independents (74%) were more likely to support a change to popular vote than Republicans, but 61% of Republicans supported this change.

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 virtually every state surveyed in recent polls in recent closely divided Battleground states: CO – 68%, FL – 78%, IA 75%, MI – 73%, MO – 70%, NH – 69%, NV – 72%, NM– 76%, NC – 74%, OH – 70%, PA – 78%, VA – 74%, and WI – 71%; in Small states (3 to 5 electoral votes): AK – 70%, DC – 76%, DE – 75%, ID – 77%, ME – 77%, MT – 72%, NE 74%, NH – 69%, NV – 72%, NM – 76%, OK – 81%, RI – 74%, SD – 71%, UT – 70%, VT – 75%, WV – 81%, and WY – 69%; in Southern and Border states: AR – 80%, KY- 80%, MS – 77%, MO – 70%, NC – 74%, OK – 81%, SC – 71%, TN – 83%, VA – 74%, and WV – 81%; and in other states polled: AZ – 67%, CA – 70%, CT – 74%, MA – 73%, MN – 75%, NY – 79%, OR – 76%, and WA – 77%.
Americans believe that the candidate who receives the most votes should win.

More than 2,110 state legislators (in 50 states) have sponsored and/or cast recorded votes in favor of the National Popular Vote bill.

The bill has passed 32 state legislative chambers in 21 rural, small, medium, and large states with 243 electoral votes. The bill has been enacted by 10 jurisdictions with 136 electoral votes – 50.4% of the 270 necessary to go into effect.

NationalPopularVote
Follow National Popular Vote on Facebook via NationalPopularVoteInc

[jberryhill]

4. How is that "cheating"?

Or are we supposed to be ashamed of the 1 electoral vote we picked up in Nebraska this way?

States are allowed to allocate their electoral votes this way. Attempting to change the rules, within the rules, is not "cheating".

[mvymvy]

6. The initiative is obviously partisan

After Obama won the 1 electoral vote in Nebraska, the leadership committee of the Nebraska Republican Party adopted a resolution requiring all GOP elected officials to favor overturning their congressional district method for awarding electoral votes or lose the party’s support.

Maine and Nebraska use the congressional district winner method, not the proportional method of the new California initiative.

Maine and Nebraska voters support a national popular vote.

Most Americans don't 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 directly and equally counted and mattered to their candidate. Most Americans think it's wrong for the candidate with the most popular votes to lose. We don't allow this in any other election in our representative republic.

Republican legislators who want to split state electoral votes in states that have recently voted Democratic in presidential elections, do not want to split electoral votes in states that recently voted Republican in presidential elections.

Obvious partisan machinations like these should add support for the National Popular Vote movement. If the GOP is continually tempted to consider rewriting election laws with an eye to the likely politically beneficial effects for their party in the next presidential election, then the National Popular Vote system, in which all voters across the country are guaranteed to be politically relevant and treated equally, is needed now more than ever.

[jberryhill]

7. Yes, it is obviously partisan

I'm still grappling with finding out where "cheating" comes in.

The word "cheating" implies some rule is being broken.

The notion that someone is using the rules in order to win, doesn't suggest "cheating" to me.

[tkmorris]

8. A lot of people equate "unethical" with "cheating"

You don't. Fine, it's just semantics. The fact that you made the effort you did to lodge that protest though, that's just plain odd. Unless of course you will maintain that such behavior is not unethical either, which would be even odder.

[jberryhill]

10. Unethical is even further removed....

If you have a belief in the rightness of your cause, and you play within the rules to advance that cause, what is "unethical" about it?

So, it was unethical for us to pick up an electoral vote from Nebraska?

"Unethical" is sending things like misleading polling place notices and many other forms of voter suppression.

Seeking to increase one's political power in a democracy by democratic means is not "unethical". I absolutely disagree with these people, but I don't see how some ethical principal is being violated by this attempt, nor what rule is being broken.

[rock]

11. I suppose you find gerrymandering perfectly ethical too

After all it is perfectly legal and within the rules.

[jberryhill]

12. No

In point of fact, legislative districts which are not reasonably compact are illegal. The problem there is that the standard is so vague.

Why would you assume such a thing about me, and why is it relevant to the topic here?

[rock]

13. Because you seem to be showing a Republican leaning

of thinking that if it is legal, it's OK (i.e. they don't seem to be able to distinguish moral, ethical, and legitimate.) Now I admit that you have caught me in assumption, so I may be wrong.

[jberryhill]

14. Let me ask you something

Was it okay for our candidate to get an electoral vote from Nebraska in 2008?

Yes or no?

States can use whatever formula they want for assigning electoral votes. Several states, such as Maine and Nebraska apportion theirs.

There is nothing "underhanded" about someone working within the laws to change the apportionment formula for electoral votes.

What you show, if you think it was okay for out candidate to benefit from this in Nebraska is an ethical deficit in that you apparently believe it is okay when it works for us, but not okay when it works against us.

This initiative in California doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of passing, but I'm having a hard time figuring out why it is "cheating" and why this form of "cheating" is okay when it works in our favor, but not okay when it doesn't.

THAT is the kind of moral reasoning generally associated with Republicans.

[rock]

15. OK

Good enough.

[jeff47]

9. If it was applied to all states, it would not be cheating.

The cheating is trying to get it in only "blue" states.

Republicans are pushing for this change only in "blue" states. They are not pushing for the change in "red" states. In fact, they are fighting against the change in "red" states.