Just saw a news story in yesterday’s San Diego Union Tribune that didn’t get much coverage because of bigger events (UK riots, natioanl debt debates, etc.): Gov. Brown signed into law a bill that awards California’s 55 Electoral College votes to the winner of the national popular vote (instead of the winner-take-all from just the California voters).
The newspaper article states that “Supporters hope changing the law will force presidential candidates to campaign in all 50 states, because they would need votes from all around the country.”. I don’t think it would have that effect; I think the candidates would ignore (or continue to ignore) the rural states for the more populated ones.
The article also staes “The movement by a group called National Popular Vote aims to prevent a repeat of 2000, <snip>”.
I think this also could come to bite the state in the ass: Let’s say Incumbant Obama wins the California vote, but gets 3 million (1% of the total US pop) votes less than [insert challenger here]. Why should the challenger get the CA electoral votes?
What is the angle behind this measure, from a cynics point of view?
(The board software did not like all caps in the thread title. )
In the grand tradition of changing election law as we go along, I am curious to know what would happen if this were to pass, but California’s votes suddenly made a difference between a Democrat who carried the state getting the White House or a Republican who carried the country getting it.
Silly me, I think there would be court challenges from lots of people. And the sad thing is that most of them would be right. Why should their votes for a slate of electors, winning votes at that, go to a candidate they did not favor?
I forsee massive constitutional problems.
The schemes that divide electoral votes according to the proportion of the popular vote won by the candidates in that state are less problematic. It would have been better had California gone with this.
I would have been less cynical about this approach, too. If the intent is to make sure the candidates actually campaign aggressively in your state, make it this way.
I think I must be misunderstanding something here. If California’s electoral votes now go to the winner of the national popular vote, doesn’t that mean a vote in California is almost worthless?
It doesn’t go into effect unless enough states pass it to make up a majority of the electoral college.
I’ve mentioned in other threads that I oppose this law. It’s an attempt to make an end-around the Constitution. If people wish to eliminate the electoral college, there’s a tried and true method of doing so: amend the Constitution.
Further, there is no way a state can direct the vote of a member of the electoral college. In 2000, it might not have only needed three or four faithless electors to swing the election back to Bush anyway.
I dunno. States have great latitude in deciding how to choose their electors. If the state decided that the electors should be the winners of the dart tournament down at Finney’s Pub and Grill, I don’t think there’s anything that could stop that.
Until enough states sign on, absolutely nothing happens. When enough states do sign on, then all of the laws kick in at once, and all of those states deliver their electoral votes to the nationwide popular vote winner. And since the criterion used for “enough states” is “representing a majority of the votes in the electoral college”, this means that those states all throwing in for the nationwide popular vote winner guarantees that candidate the victory, regardless of the states that have not yet adopted the compact. Which would make the Electoral College basically irrelevant.
Quoth Frank:
I can’t see this being a significant issue. Even if a few of the compact-state electors are unfaithful, that just means that all of the non-compact states combined can reverse the outcome. But they’re almost certainly not going to all be combined: Some of those states will be sending their votes to one candidate, and some to the other. In any plausible scenario where all of the non-compact states are unanimous, or nearly so, in their decision, that candidate is probably going to be the national popular vote winner anyway.
The article mentions that California is the eighth state to sign this “compact”, bringing the effort to 132 out of 270 electoral votes to take effect. Almost half way there. Is the compact looking for 4 more electoral votes to take effect?
You’re in California yourself, right? The electoral college already makes your vote completely insignificant, given current demographics. You can’t get any less significant than zero.
It it also what makes one of their reasons for passing this bill bullshit. They say it will force the politicians to campaign in California. California has gone to the Democrats since 1992. It’s pretty safe to say that it will keep going Dem so the Dems know they don’t need to waste any time or money to campaign here. The Rep. canidate might do a cursury pit stop here for a photo op like McCain did.
Which is exactly why they want to pass this bill. Under the current system, there’s no point in either party campaigning in California. If we went to going by the nationwide popular vote, though, then a candidate looking to pick up X votes could pick them up as easily in California as anywhere else. You wouldn’t care any more who’s going to “win the state”.
Excuse me, but where in the Constitution does anyone find mention of the “Electoral College?”
California is free, under the Constitution, to determine who her electors are by any means the Legislature wishes to impose. And while no case has been decided by the Supreme Court regarding faithless electors (an elector who votes for someone other than the person they are pledged to vote for), the Court DID allow Alabama to refuse to certify an otherwise validly chosen elector when the elector refused to make the pledge required by Alabama law as to whom they would vote for (Ray v. Blair, 343 US 214 (1952)). There are 24 states with laws regarding punishment of faithless electors, and in light of the Blair case, it seems likely the Court would allow such a state to carry out whatever punishment is decreed in the event of a faithless vote.
(Caveat: Michigan has a law which would actually nullify a faithless elector’s vote; that might have some difficulty before the Court)
So California, should it choose to do so, can certainly require from electors that they pledge to vote for the candidate who wins the majority of the national votes on Election Day, and can probably enforce that pledge. There are no Constitutional barriers to this method.
The constitution mentions the electoral college in Article II, Section 1, Clause 2; Article II, Section 1, Clause 4; and the Twelfth Amendment, which supersedes Article II, Section 1, Clause 3.
It is true that the phrase “Electoral College” does not appear in the constitution. Which is of no particular importance. The “State of the Union Address” doesn’t appear either, but the president still has to give it from time to time.
Exactly right. I think the current electoral system is a grotesque anachronism that groups people according to 18th-century political lines (i.e., along geographic terms, rather than socioeconomic or cultural terms). Even back then, things like Shae’s Rebellion revealed flaws in the groupings by state, but now it’s completely ridiculous. Anything that privileges the popular vote over these 18th-century political divisions is good in my book.
A lot of the national popular vote comes from California. So a vote in California is far from worthless: It becomes just as valuable as a vote anywhere else.
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