Yeah, which is particularly galling considering most of those states are solidly in one camp or the other, and don’t really benefit from the EC at all. The states that benefit are the swing states with moderate to large EC vote totals.
I’ve thought that if we didn’t have the EC, we would’ve ended our idiotic trade embargo against Cuba 40 years ago. But the politicians of both parties have to suck up to the exile community in Miami to try to swing that state to them.
Five states with five or fewer electors have already enacted the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Presumably they would also choose to ratify a constitutional amendment having the same effect. And why would they not? The electoral college in actual practice gives the most advantages to large swing states, not to small states. To take the 2016 election as an example, South Dakota and Florida would have been equal under a popular vote system (assuming the votes went the same way, they both would have added a net of about 110,000 votes for Donald Trump) but under the electoral college Florida’s 110,000 marginal voters were worth 9.7 times the marginal voters of South Dakota.
And even if it were clearly the case that states would give up power (rather than sharing it more equally) due to a constitutional amendment, we have examples of politicians voting for amendments that took away their power: The 17th Amendment was ratified by the very state legislatures that it disenfranchised, because it was politically popular.
Moderator Note
SwissMan, please be aware that political commentary of this kind is not permitted in General Questions. Please refrain from this in the future.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
I’m not sure I see a constitutional issue here.
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
I don’t see that states even need to have an election to pick E.C. electors.
Huh?
No-one said that they do. In fact, the state legislature could probably choose to select its electors by throwing darts at a telephone book.
The argument in this case is that whether or not, having chosen the electors (by whatever means), the state has the power to compel those electors to make a pledge to vote in a particular way, and to enforce such pledges through penalties. Once a state legislature chooses to have a popular election, and selects electors based on the party of the person who wins that election, the state legislature can also demand and enforce a pledge that the electors will vote for the party that put them forward.
IIRC state political parties chooses their own electors via various means but, in general, they select from the party faithful (there are a few restrictions…e.g. the person can not be serving in congress).
In theory this lot can be relied on to vote for your guy.
I have no doubt that if there was a close election that could be turned by a faithless elector those who stood to gain would buy that elector off immediately (if not outright then with a wink and a nod). Certainly they’d cover any monetary penalties incurred would would be chump change for them.
That’s correct. In the early decades of the countries many states didn’t use popular vote at all, the state legislatures would just pick the electors to be sent to vote for president.
But the question isn’t whether popular vote has to be the method by which electors are chosen but whether once an elector is chosen whether the state can bind (or attempt to bind through punishment) their vote. Whether “We’re sending you to vote for president because you promised you’d vote for A” can be enforced.
I suppose my meaning is, the point the court decided seems kind of moot, because of course the state can bind its electors, because it’s the state that has the power to select the electors in the first place. My employer, for example, has the power to bind me to complete expense reports in a certain way, or else suffer punishment.
The fact that the state defers appointment of electors to political parties doesn’t seem to detract, in my mind, from the the fact that it’s the state that’s ultimately responsible for the elector.
It wasn’t moot, because it was the very question at the heart of this case.
The electors themselves argued that, while the constitution gives the states the power to appoint electors, the constitution also says nothing about the states having power to determine how the electors vote, and the constitution doesn’t give the states any power to bind an elector to a pledge, or to penalize an elector for violating such a pledge. Their basic argument was that the power to appoint is not the same as the power to control, or the power to remove. Nowhere does the constitution say, for example, that the state can remove an elector once s/he is appointed. Some legal scholars argued that, once appointed, an elector is, or should be, outside of state control, because they are now performing a federal rather than a state function (i.e., voting for President).
I’m happy enough with the outcome in this case, but I also think that the electors had something of a point. There is little doubt that most of the framers of the constitution intended electors to exercise their own good judgment, and not be merely tools of the state legislatures or of the popular will. In fact, the role of electors was created precisely because so many of the framers were suspicious of democracy.
Concur is punishment in and of itself.
To me it seems obvious that electors should be free to make their own decision who to vote for, because otherwise why even have electors? The State could just send their vote totals to some national committee and call it a day. Why have electors if not for them to make a decision?
I understand the SCOTUS differs.
It is very clear that the reason the founders wanted electors was to let them exercise discretion. This was made explicitly clear by Publius (Hamilton & Madison). The only thing is, they forgot to write that part into the Constitution. But even more importantly and explicitly, they expected electors to be elected on a district-by-district basis, not the winner-take-all approach 48 states use today.
As for why we have the EC instead of some national presidential election committee, the answer to that is corruption. They didn’t want a bunch of kingmakers gathering all in one place to decide who becomes the next President. Every state has to have all of its votes cast on the same day, in each state capital, then mailed to the United States capitol. There was no instantaneous communication back in the day, and indeed the original system totally screwed up the first three contested elections as political parties tried and failed to rig the system.
~Max
The electors are like the ambassadors from the State- they have autonomy, but only as much as the State allows. They are not independent actors. Back when information traveled by horse and the general voter couldn’t really keep track of what’s going on at the national politics level, it made sense to give those ambassadors a lot of latitude in making a decision, once they all arrived en-masse and could hammer out a compromise.
But in modern times, most states neither want nor need any degree of autonomy from the electors, and for good reason.
And yet procedurally we’re stuck with whatever words ended up on papyrus parchment back in Ye Olden Dayes. Whether as a result of political compromise or sloppy workmanship, the EC is a badly designed hermaphrodite that was malfunctioning from the day it was born.
Today it’s like the appendix in your abdomen; functionally useless and all it can do is cause you trouble. The best you can hope for is that it just sits there dormant.
Trying to fix this in the 21st Century is of course fraught. Doubly so in this hyper-partisan era that, despite being ~30 years old may have another 30 years yet to run.
I believe SCOTUS did the least bad thing here. Best of all the reasoning even has some basis in the actual Constitution. Not that I’m a strict constructionist. But some founding is nice.
Like it or not, the founders fouled up in a few places, punted in others, and made egregious short-sighted compromises in yet others. All of which we’re still living with minus a couple of interim course corrections which themselves haven’t been trouble-free.
I think that was the original intent of the founding fathers - vote for (or states select) people who then decide who should lead the country. The system was weighted against being able to win by sweeping a region, the person had to be popular across the country. (Like Washington was) Otherwise, it fell to the members of congress who knew national politics and national issues and most of the players to decide who best to lead the country.
Party politics mucked up all that.
I’m curious how this judgement is enforced? After all, the electors gather and cast their votes. If someone fails to perform their duty, wouldn’t it be too late? Or can the state simply say “you didn’t do what we wanted, go back and do it again?” until they like the result, then certify that? In some of the early elections, the states apparently did screw up their electoral process and thus send in blank vote counts, if I recall… or maybe that was the congressional vote for president.
(As I recall, one of the current cases was because the electors announced ahead of time what they were doing. The other was after-the-fact fines…)
It means that each state has the right to (a) add a penalty for failing to honor their pledges, but (b) also to have a process by which, IF an elector fails to honor their pledge, they can be removed and replaced BEFORE the final tally of votes is submitted to the electoral college. Both options were mentioned in the decision and both options appear possible (either or both) so it is, essentially, up to the states.
Each state has its own process, and if the state has a “you must cast your vote for the person you are pledged to” then the state CAN (if they have this process in place) remove you if you vote “faithlessly” and replace you with another elector. In essence the process of electors “voting” can be practically a completely irrelevant one and the only apparent reason actual people are chosen to cast these votes is to abide by the wording of the U.S Constitution which requires such “electors”. It would be far more efficient for the state to simply tally the votes in their state and then send in a “ballot” with the appropriate number of votes cast for the candidate with the majority of votes, but I think states fear doing such a thing would violate the Constitution so they all actually have “electors” (real people)… But with previous decisions and now Chiafolo, it makes the whole thing a real charade.
In reality they aren’t “sent” to vote at all. Each state has a meeting of sorts of their electors and each vote is tallied and then the totals are recorded and sent to Congress (for collective tallying on Jan 5 or some thing like that after the new session of Congress starts) by mail. Since various Supreme Court decisions have given each State the power to decide their own process, it has been determined that the State can ENFORCE the requirement to vote for someone by simply removing the offending elector and replacing him/her with someone else BEFORE they send in their votes. It is NOT like all the electors cast “secret” ballots and then they are gathered up and sent to the Congress (although any given State could do THAT if they wanted to again because the process is completely defined by the State). So the penalty thing is an either/or/or both thing with enforcement. A state can simply require someone to meet their pledge and remove them if they don’t, let a faithless elector vote how they want and then fine them (or jail them? who knows) or do both (replace them AND fine them afterwards).
In this particular case that the court ruled on, Colorado Department of State v. Baca, the elector Michael Baca officially pledged was required by state law to vote for the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton. In actuality Mr. Baca voted for John Kasich. Before the electors could vote for the vice president, Governor Wayne Williams declared Mr. Baca’s vote invalid and replaced him with an alternate elector who voted for Hillary Clinton.
~Max