Let’s Talk About The National Popular Vote

12 Comments on Let’s Talk About The National Popular Vote

1. What makes sense is for states to split their electoral votes like Maine does now, based on the popular vote in congressional districts. This most closely maintains the spirit of the Electoral College. But democraps would never go for this. Let’s face it, this is all about tilting the scales in one party’s favor or the other.

2. Anyone who thinks a popular vote is good idea should move to a state ruled by a big city and see if you find swirled pea’s or just the poop on the streets rule

3. The National Popular Vote bill is states with 270 electors replacing state winner-take-all laws that award all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who get the most popular votes in each separate state (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), in the enacting states, to guarantee the majority of Electoral College votes for, and the Presidency to, the candidate getting the most popular votes in the entire United States.

   The bill retains the constitutionally mandated Electoral College and state control of elections, and uses the built-in method that the Constitution provides for states to make changes. It ensures that every voter is equal, every voter will matter, in every state, in every presidential election, and the candidate with the most votes wins, as in virtually every other election in the country.

   Under National Popular Vote, every voter, in every state, for every candidate, would be politically relevant and equal in every presidential election. Every vote would matter equally in the state counts and national count.

   The vote of every voter in the country (Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, or Green) would help his or her preferred candidate win the Presidency.
   Every vote in the country would become as important as a vote in a battleground state such as Pennsylvania or Florida is now.
   Every vote, everywhere, for every candidate, would be politically relevant and equal in every presidential election.
   No more distorting, crude, and divisive and red and blue state maps of predictable outcomes, that don’t represent any minority party voters within each state.
   No more handful of ‘battleground’ states (where the two major political parties happen to have similar levels of support) where voters and policies are more important than those of the voters in 38+ predictable winner states that have just been ‘spectators’ and ignored after the conventions.
   We can limit the power and influence of a few battleground states in order to better serve our nation.

   The bill would give voice to every voter in the country, as opposed to treating voters for candidates who did not win a plurality in the state as if they did not exist.

   The bill would take effect when enacted by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes—270 of 538.
   All of the presidential electors from the enacting states will be supporters of the presidential candidate receiving the most popular votes among all 50 states (and DC)—thereby guaranteeing that candidate with an Electoral College majority.

4. [The] difference between a democracy and a republic [is] the delegation of the government, the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest.”
   In a democracy, the people meet and exercise the government in person; in a republic, they assemble and administer it by their representatives and agents.”- Madison

   Being a constitutional republic does not mean we should not and cannot guarantee the election of the presidential candidate with the most popular votes. The candidate with the most votes wins in every other election in the country.

   Guaranteeing the election of the presidential candidate with the most popular votes and the majority of Electoral College votes (as the National Popular Vote bill would) would not make us a pure democracy.

   Pure democracy is a form of government in which people vote on all policy initiatives directly.

   Popular election of the chief executive does not determine whether a government is a republic or democracy. It is not rule by referendum.

   We would not be doing away with the Electoral College, U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, state legislatures, etc. etc. etc.

   The presidential election system, using the 48 state winner-take-all method or district winner method of awarding electoral votes used by 2 states, that we have today was not designed, anticipated, or favored by the Founding Fathers. It is the product of decades of change precipitated by the emergence of political parties and enactment by states of winner-take-all or district winner laws, not mentioned, much less endorsed, in the Constitution.

   The Constitution does not encourage, discourage, require, or prohibit the use of any particular method for how to award a state’s electoral votes

   • “Pure democracy is a form of government in which people vote on all policy initiatives directly.”

     First, there is no such thing as a pure democracy, other than someone’s imaginary ideal.

     Second, there is evidence suggesting that the organic, grass-roots, original version of democracy was not intended to place absolute, arbitrary, power in the hands of a few oligarchs.

     The Athenian Constitution:
     Government by Jury and Referendum
     “The practice of selecting government officials randomly (and the Athenians developed some fairly sophisticated mechanical gadgets to ensure that the selection really was random, and to make cheating extremely difficult) is one of the most distinctive features of the Athenian constitution. We think of electoral politics as the hallmark of democracy; but elections were almost unknown at Athens, because they were considered paradigmatically anti-democratic. Proposals to replace sortition with election were always condemned as moves in the direction of oligarchy.
     Why? Well, as the Athenians saw it, under an electoral system no one can obtain political office unless he is already famous: this gives prominent politicians an unfair advantage over the average person. Elections, they thought, favor those wealthy enough to bribe the voters, powerful enough to intimidate the voters, flashy enough to impress the voters, or clever enough to deceive the voters. The most influential political leaders were usually Horsemen anyway, thanks to their social prominence and the political following they could obtain by dispensing largesse among the masses. (One politician, Kimon, won the loyalty of the poor by leaving his fields and orchards unfenced, inviting anyone who was hungry to take whatever he needed.) If seats on the Council had been filled by popular vote, the Horsemen would have disproportionately dominated it — just as, today, Congress is dominated by those who can afford expensive campaigns, either through their own resources or through wealthy cronies. Or, to take a similar example, in the United States women have had the vote for over half a century, and yet, despite being a majority of the population, they represent only a tiny minority of elected officials. Obviously, the persistence of male dominance in the economic and social sphere has translated into women mostly voting for male candidates. The Athenians guessed, probably rightly, that the analogous prestige of the upper classes would lead to commoners mostly voting for aristocrats.
     That is why the Athenians saw elections as an oligarchical rather than a democratic phenomenon. Above all, the Athenians feared the prospect of government officials forming a privileged class with separate interests of their own. Through reliance on sortition, random selection by lot, the Council could be guaranteed to represent a fair cross-section of the Athenian people — a kind of proportional representation, as it were. Random selection ensured that those selected would be representatives of the people as a whole, whereas selection by vote made those selected into mere representatives of the majority.”

     Third, the so-called “founders” were at least 2 groups: 1. Federalists, 2. Nationalists hiding behind a false federalist label.

     Suggesting that the “founders” who illegally usurped the existing federation are one group of people raises the vital question of which group?

     • Part 2 of comment that would not publish without Moderation and division:

       The false Federalists managed to get their summary justice courts propped up over the common law jurisdiction. The true Federalists lost that battle. The false Federalists managed to get their subsidized slavery crimes against humanity secured for 20 years. The true Federalists lost that battle. The false Federalists managed to get their central banking fraud. The true Federalists lost that battle. The false Federalists managed to get arbitrary war profits flowing to them in “Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace” or variations on that lie. The true Federalists lost that battle. The false Federalists managed to get their “Mob Rule” under the pretense of a fraudulent democracy. The true Federalists lot the battle for equal footing which is the principle behind true federation, and true law for that matter. The false Federalists managed to get into every single individual’s pocket at will, to steal anything worth stealing. The true Federalists lost that battle too.

       The battle over the minds of people is demonstrably lost on the modern generation. Fake news prevails. Ignorance is bliss. Independent thought is against the fake law. Communicating independent thoughts is against the law, just ask Martin Luther King Jr. or Lavoy Finicum. Oh, wait, you can’t ask them, they were murdered by the criminals running the dictatorship.

       To the citizens of the United States by Thomas Paine
       November 15, 1802
       “But a faction, acting in disguise, was rising in America; they had lost sight of first principles. They were beginning to contemplate government as a profitable monopoly, and the people as hereditary property. It is, therefore, no wonder that the “Rights of Man” was attacked by that faction, and its author continually abused. But let them go on; give them rope enough and they will put an end to their own insignificance. There is too much common sense and independence in America to be long the dupe of any faction, foreign or domestic.
       But, in the midst of the freedom we enjoy, the licentiousness of the papers called Federal (and I know not why they are called so, for they are in their principles anti-federal and despotic), is a dishonor to the character of the country, and an injury to its reputation and importance abroad. They represent the whole people of America as destitute of public principle and private manners.”

       Federalist Papers = CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX, Facebook, Newsweek, and most of the propaganda spewed forth from Hollywood.

5. With statewide winner-take-all laws, a presidential candidate could lose despite winning 78%+ of the popular vote and 39 smaller states.

   With the current state-by-state winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), it could only take winning a bare plurality of popular votes in only the 11 most populous states, containing 56% of the population of the United States, for a candidate to win the Presidency with less than 22% of the nation’s votes!

   But the political reality is that the 11 largest states, with a majority of the U.S. population and electoral votes, rarely agree on any political candidate. In 2016, among the 11 largest states: 7 voted Republican(Texas, Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Georgia) and 4 voted Democratic (California, New York, Illinois, and New Jersey). The big states are just about as closely divided as the rest of the country. For example, among the four largest states, the two largest Republican states (Texas and Florida) generated a total margin of 2.1 million votes for Bush, while the two largest Democratic states generated a total margin of 2.1 million votes for Kerry.

   With National Popular Vote, it’s not the size of any given state, it’s the size of their “margin” that will matter. Under a national popular vote, the margin of your loss within a state matters as much as the size of your win.

   In 2004, among the 11 most populous states, in the seven non-battleground states, % of winning party, and margin of “wasted” popular votes, from among the total 122 Million votes cast nationally:
   * Texas (62% R), 1,691,267
   * New York (59% D), 1,192,436
   * Georgia (58% R), 544,634
   * North Carolina (56% R), 426,778
   * California (55% D), 1,023,560
   * Illinois (55% D), 513,342
   * New Jersey (53% D), 211,826

   To put these numbers in perspective,
   Oklahoma (7 electoral votes) generated a margin of 455,000 “wasted” votes for Bush in 2004 — larger than the margin generated by the 9th and 10th largest states, namely New Jersey and North Carolina (each with 15 electoral votes).
   Utah (5 electoral votes) generated a margin of 385,000 “wasted” votes for Bush in 2004.
   8 small western states, with less than a third of California’s population, provided Bush with a bigger margin (1,283,076) than California provided Kerry (1,235,659).

6. The Constitutional Convention rejected states awarding electors by state legislatures or governors (as the majority did for decades), or by Districts (as Maine and Nebraska now do), or by letting the people vote for electors (as 48 states now do).

   Anyone who supports the current presidential election system, believing it is what the Founders intended and that it is in the Constitution, is mistaken. The current presidential election system does not function, at all, the way that the Founders thought that it would.

   Supporters of National Popular Vote find it hard to believe the Founding Fathers would endorse the current electoral system where 38+ states and voters now are completely politically irrelevant.
   10 of the original 13 states are politically irrelevant now.

   Policies important to the citizens of the 38 non-battleground states are not as highly prioritized as policies important to ‘battleground’ states when it comes to governing.

   “Battleground” states receive 7% more presidentially controlled grants than “spectator” states, twice as many presidential disaster declarations, more Superfund enforcement exemptions, and more No Child Left Behind law exemptions.

   The Founders created the Electoral College, but 48 states eventually enacted state winner-take-all laws.

   Unable to agree on any particular method for selecting presidential electors, the Founding Fathers left the choice of method exclusively to the states in Article II, Section 1
   “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.”

   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, a majority of the states appointed their presidential electors by appointment by the legislature or by the governor and his cabinet, the people had no vote for President in most states, and in states where there was a popular vote, 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 winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes is not in the U.S. Constitution. It was not debated at the Constitutional Convention. It is not mentioned in the Federalist Papers. It was not the Founders’ choice. It was used by only three states in 1789, and all three of them repealed it by 1800. It is not entitled to any special deference based on history or the historical meaning of the words in the U.S. Constitution. The actions taken by the Founding Fathers make it clear that they never gave their imprimatur to the winner-take-all method. The winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes became dominant only in the 1880s after the states adopted it, one-by-one, in order to maximize the power of the party in power in each state. The Founders had been dead for decades

   The constitutional wording does not encourage, discourage, require, or prohibit the use of any particular method for awarding a state’s electoral votes.

7. “But….our explanations have far exceeded the Liberal comprehension. We lost em’ when we went beyond a sound byte…..”

   A sound bite, to some:

   “There are but two modes by which men are connected in society, the one which operates on individuals, this always has been, and ought still to be called, national government; the other which binds States and governments together (not corporations, for there is no considerable nation on earth, despotic, monarchical, or republican, that does not contain many subordinate corporations with various constitutions) this last has heretofore been denominated a league or confederacy. The term federalists is therefore improperly applied to themselves, by the friends and supporters of the proposed constitution. This abuse of language does not help the cause; every degree of imposition serves only to irritate, but can never convince. They are national men, and their opponents, or at least a great majority of them, are federal, in the only true and strict sense of the word.”

   Is that too wordy still?

   National government bad, federal government good.

   How about that?

   A National government (subsidizing slavery) employing any method imaginable to put the dictator at the helm of the dictatorship is bad government. A federal government (voluntary association, not a dictatorship) employing any method imaginable to put the employee in charge of the workload remains a good government.

   Did I go beyond a sound byte?

   People fighting over which dictator is put at the helm of the dictatorship is predictable.

   Robert Yates, Brutus I, October 18, 1787:
   “The judicial power of the United States is to be vested in a supreme court, and in such inferior courts as Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The powers of these courts are very extensive; their jurisdiction comprehends all civil causes, except such as arise between citizens of the same state; and it extends to all cases in law and equity arising under the constitution. One inferior court must be established, I presume, in each state at least, with the necessary executive officers appendant thereto. It is easy to see, that in the common course of things, these courts will eclipse the dignity, and take away from the respectability, of the state courts. These courts will be, in themselves, totally independent of the states, deriving their authority from the United States, and receiving from them fixed salaries; and in the course of human events it is to be expected, that they will swallow up all the powers of the courts in the respective states.”

   Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000)
   “Concerned that the majority had violated federalism principles separating the federal government from the states, Stevens argued that the decision had undermined the authority of the state court system. He felt that popular confidence in the impartiality and competence of state judges would be unnecessarily eroded.”

8. Well put Steve ! It’s plain that, If Clinton had been elected – God forbid ! – we wouldn’t be hearing a peep from the Dems about the Electoral College….The structure and function of the College can be traced back to, as you said, The size disparity between the States. Why would a state with a tiny population, like Delaware or New Hampshire, agree to any popular voting scheme that left them voiceless in national elections ? Some means had to be found to level the field. The same population disparity among states exists today…Can you believe that Wyoming has less than a million ? But….our explanations have far exceeded the Liberal comprehension. We lost em’ when we went beyond a sound byte…..

   • The National Popular Vote bill was approved in 2016 by a unanimous bipartisan House committee vote in both Georgia (16 electoral votes) and Missouri (10).
     Since 2006, the bill has passed 40 state legislative chambers in 24 rural, small, medium, large, Democratic, Republican and purple states with 271 electoral votes, including one house in Arizona (11), Arkansas (6), The District of Columbia, Maine (4), Michigan (16), Minnesota (10), North Carolina (15), and Oklahoma (7), and both houses in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada (6), New Mexico, New York, Oregon (7), Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington.
     The bill has been enacted by Colorado (9), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), the District of Columbia (3), Hawaii (4), Illinois (20), New Jersey (14), Maryland (10), California (55), Massachusetts (10), New Mexico (5), New York (29), Vermont (3), Rhode Island (4), and Washington (13). These 15 jurisdictions have 189 electoral votes – 70% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect.

     It would change state winner-take-all laws (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), to guarantee the majority of Electoral College votes and the presidency to the candidate with the most national popular votes, without changing anything in the Constitution, using the built-in method that the Constitution provides for states to make changes.

   • Trump, April 26, 2018 on “Fox & Friends”
     “I would rather have a popular election, but it’s a totally different campaign.”

     Trump, October 12, 2017 in Sean Hannity interview
     “I would rather have a popular vote. “

     Trump, November 13, 2016, on “60 Minutes”
     “ I would rather see it, where you went with simple votes. You know, you get 100 million votes, and somebody else gets 90 million votes, and you win. There’s a reason for doing this. Because it brings all the states into play.”

     In 2012, the night Romney lost, Trump tweeted.
     “The phoney electoral college made a laughing stock out of our nation. . . . The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.”

     In 1969, The U.S. House of Representatives voted for a national popular vote by a 338–70 margin. It was endorsed by Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and various members of Congress who later ran for Vice President and President such as then-Congressman George H.W. Bush, and then-Senator Bob Dole.

     Past presidential candidates with a public record of support, before November 2016, for the National Popular Vote bill that would guarantee the majority of Electoral College votes and the presidency to the candidate with the most national popular votes: Bob Barr (Libertarian- GA), U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R–GA), Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO), and Senator Fred Thompson (R–TN).

     Newt Gingrich summarized his support for the National Popular Vote bill by saying: “No one should become president of the United States without speaking to the needs and hopes of Americans in all 50 states. … America would be better served with a presidential election process that treated citizens across the country equally. The National Popular Vote bill accomplishes this in a manner consistent with the Constitution and with our fundamental democratic principles.”

     Eight former national chairs of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) have endorsed the bill

     In 2017, Saul Anuzis and Michael Steele, the former chairmen of the Michigan and national Republican parties, wrote that the National Popular Vote bill was “an idea whose time has come”.

     On March 7, 2019, the Delaware Senate passed the National Popular Vote bill in a bi-partisan 14-7 vote

     In 2018, the National Popular Vote bill in the Michigan Senate was sponsored by a bipartisan group of 25 of the 38 Michigan senators, including 15 Republicans and 10 Democrats.

     The bill was approved in 2016 by a unanimous bipartisan House committee vote in both Georgia (16 electoral votes) and Missouri (10).

     In 2016 the Arizona House of Representatives passed the bill 40-16-4.
     Two-thirds of the Republicans and two-thirds of the Democrats in the Arizona House of Representatives sponsored the bill.
     In January 2016, two-thirds of the Arizona Senate sponsored the bill.

     In 2014, the Oklahoma Senate passed the bill by a 28–18 margin.

     In 2009, the Arkansas House of Representatives passed the bill