What of the states that passed laws mandating that winners of the National Popular Vote receive the delegates? It undercuts their whole 'will of the people' argument.
Indeed. Those states are basically selling out their statehood. Such states should have their representative and senate seats removed if they don't want to be represented.
This is true. Kentucky elected a dem governor and we now have a non-compliance hotline where I plan to report every abled body not wearing a mask I see. For safety.
Clog up that stupid line! I am not currently in Kentucky, but I think I saw on social media someone in Kentucky at the Clarion hotel in Lexington smoking on the steps and not wearing a mask. Please report them!
Also, there was someone in line at McDonald's drive thru and they were in the car with the window rolled down and no mask! The audacity of these hooligans must be reported! Be vigilant Pede!
That was a declaration of Independence, not sedition. Nothing in the Constitution about secession, therefore under the tenth amendment, it was left to the states or to the people.
IF they did that, it would probably be the best possible thing. Northern California would reincorporate into Jefferson, and we'd never lose a presidential race again.
That would be a State pact which is unconstitutional. States cannot combine efforts with any other state in any way. That is the Federal government role.
It's an agreement for states to vote a certain way if a certain number of states join in. That cannot exist.
Well, they can't engage into a compact with other states in any way that usurps the federal government's power (Article I, Section 10, clause 3 of the Constitution). The Constitution does say that each state can choose how to assign its electors. I think this could be ruled either way in the Supreme Court.
Not that I'm happy about that. I would definitely rule against it if I were on the SC.
At this point I would rather just pick the leader from the Paradox's games leader boards. Have the top players in Stellaris, Hearts of Iron, and Europa face off in a winner take all over a 2 week run. They can pick a cabinet of like 4 people to help play as they sleep but keep 4-5 games running at a time 24 h a day for 2 weeks strait on normal speed.
The electors from states which have no state law banning unfaithful electors will have the right to vote a they see fit. But those with such laws must follow those laws. It will be a split the baby verdict.
The president is the head of the federal government, presidential elections are federal, therefore it's easy to see that it does usurp the federal governments power.
"Presidential elections" are definitely not federal, they are purely the creation of states.
States aren't even required to hold a "presidential election" that the common man can vote in. In the early years of the U.S., it wasn't uncommon for the state legislators to just vote among themselves about who to assign the electoral votes to.
A state could flip a goddamn coin to determine who its electors should vote for in the Electoral College, and that would probably be constitutional.
Can you explain why it would be illegal under Article I Section 10? I do hope you're right and that the Supreme Court would agree if it were brought before them.
Yeah, I do agree. The argument, if ever heard in the supreme court, will probably be a state's rights issue, and I do think the opposition has some legal ground to stand on*.
*Not a lawyer. Nothing in this message is intended as legal advice. :)
They can only form agreements between themselves when Congress allows them to. There's roughly three cases which arise:
The states make an agreement and petition congress to approve it.
Congress allows certain kinds of agreements, and states make an agreement on their own.
Congress writes the agreements between the states.
In all cases, congress must act otherwise the agreement is invalid.
In the case of national popular vote, it would be unconstitutional for congress to do such a thing as it would violate how the president is elected, so the states cannot do it nor can congress approve it.
If one state decides to award its electors based on the national popular vote, then is it making an agreement with other states? If two states both "independently" decide to do this, are they making an agreement with each other? I fear this is what they will argue.
Well I would argue that they’ve already come out and made the laws contingent on the fact they wouldn’t apply unless enough states/electors to decide the election signed up for the plan.
How is that independent if it only applies when there are strings attached relying on other states doing the same?
This is just an attempt to undo the Electoral College. They shouldn't even be hearing arguments because if it passes it will eventually undo the entire union of states.
The left may think they want that, because most of them don't realize or refuse to believe that they rely on taxes of those 'lesser states' in order to survive because their own states are mismanaged and pilfered by crooked democrats that they keep ignorantly voting into power.
The other problem with the compact is voter disenfranchisement. If a state forces electors to cast their vote based on votes from other states, it disenfranchises the voters of that state.
A simple hypothetical demonstrates:
Post-Reconstruction, the southern states all enter into a compact to vote together as a bloc. But by doing so, they dilute the votes of blacks in smaller states where they are a larger percentage of the population, in favor of more populous states that have a higher percentage of white voters.
Do you think that would survive a challenge under the Voting Rights Act? My example probably wouldn't, but members of a political party aren't a protected class. Maybe an enterprising lawyer could figure out how to make it work.
You can't be disenfranchised of a right you never had.
There is no right to a fair and equal vote for president by the common man. You only have a right to fair elections of members of Congress. If you examine the U.S. Constitution, you will see that the selection method of electors in the Electoral College is purely according to the whims of the state legislature.
Some of the founding fathers had faith in the intelligence of the average landowner. Some believed only those who managed to find a marginal amount of success could reasonably be expected to know how to pick the right man to run the country, and not just the man who promised them the most things. The compromise they struck was an attempt at balancing between the two. It's been warped in favor of democracy over the years, and there was some flexibility built into the system, but at this point it's bent to the point of nearly breaking, and it's hard to say at which point the damage occurred.
There were a bunch of different camps of delegates all disagreeing on how they want to pick the president. The system of letting states individually decide how they want to do it is the compromise they came up with. Maybe nobody thought it was a great idea, but it at least wasn't an idea they hated.
They also had the system weighted by population (influenced by the Three-Fifths Compromise) in the same way Congress was, because that was the only way to get the South to agree to it. The South refused to accept the North having more control than them over any part of the federal government, for fear that they would use it to abolish slavery.
From my copy of A March of Liberty: A Constitutional History of the United States, Volume I, From the Founding to 1900:
The method of choosing a chief executive was equally troubling. On July 17, for example, the Convention considered, and rejected by large margins, election of the president by the Congress, direct election by the people, and election by the state legislatures. Ultimately, the delegates chose an odd system of election. Each state would get a number of presidential electors equal to its seats in the House of Representatives plus its two senators. The states could decide for themselves how to choose these electors. The electors would make up something called the electoral college, which would then elect the president.
The system was highly undemocratic, since the people were removed from the election of the president. Some delegates pushed for the direct election of the president, but this was voted down, with overwhelming opposition from the South. The reason was clear. If the people directly elected the president, then those states with the most voters would have the most influence over the election. Some Southern states, like South Carolina, had severely restrictive rules concerning who could vote. Thus, in a popular election those states would have less of a voice. More important, the issue of slavery doomed the direct election of the president.
Having already given the South extra representation for its slaves in the Congress, the South now saw that it needed the same sort of extra power in the election of the president. James Madison instinctively favored election of the president by the people. He told the Convention that "the people at large" were "the fittest" to choose the president. But "one difficulty ... of a serious nature" made election by the people impossible. Madison noted that in a direct election of the president, the South "could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes." In order to guarantee that the non-voting slaves could nevertheless influence the presidential election, Madison favored the creation of the electoral college. Under this system, each state was given a number of electors equal to its total congressional and senatorial representation. This meant that the three-fifths clause would help determine the outcome of presidential elections. Thus, the fundamentally undemocratic electoral college developed, at least in part, to protect the interests of slavery.
Luckily that contract doesn't take affect when they sign it. It waits until a certain percentage of the country is on board, then goes into affect. It is likely to be challenged when that happens.
The constitution states that contracts formed in one state are valid in all states. That was the whole debate about gay marriage in the beginning -- once Massachusetts started marrying people, other states were forced to recognize them.
A good example of nonpolitical compacts is the Interstate Driver's License Compact which is used to suspend DL's when someone gets a DUI out-of-state. I would say the Interstate Detainer Act appears to be similar but unfortunately it's a federal law called an interstate company.
This has already been done. Nebraska and Maine split their electoral votes.
First, a state can't have two electoral votes. The minimum is three. (If you took the time to read the Constitution, you would learn that the number of electoral votes is just a state's two Senators plus the number of representatives it has.)
The way to do it is to reserve two of the electoral votes for the statewide popular vote winner, and then there is one electoral vote for each of the state's House districts to be awarded to the popular vote winner in that district.
So if we look at Maine's four electoral votes (2 Senators + 2 Representatives) in 2016, Clinton won the statewide popular vote 48% to 45%, so she gets those two electoral votes. Then we examine the results in the 1st District and the 2nd District, and we see that Clinton won in the 1st while Trump won in the 2nd. So they each get one additional electoral vote. The result is Maine splitting its electoral vote, 3 for Clinton and 1 for Trump.
In Nebraska, Trump won the statewide vote 59% to 34%, and he also was the leader in each of Nebraska's three House districts, so he took all five of Nebraska's electoral votes.
So yes, the 34% of Nebraskans who voted Democrat were left "unrepresented", but I haven't heard of a better way to do it in the bounds of the Electoral College. It's still way better than all the votes going to the statewide winner.
Maybe Nebraska should reorganize its districts to let Democrats actually control one of them, but I doubt the Republicans who control everything in the state would be interested in doing that.
Yes, so don't let this virus panic bullshit keep you from exercising and getting into shape. 6 months until we see if the other side is really going to finally force us or not.
Do you have ANY idea how physically exerting marching to war is/will be? You better start wearing weighted shit around the house as you do your daily activities to get into shape and prepare. Your chest plate alone weighs at least 10lbs, and you've got a 2nd one on your back. And thats without tools, food, ammo, sidearm, medkit, mask, raingear, rifle, rifle accessories, and all the other random shit you'll have in your pack.
The next war will not be fought with frontline soldiers... and with the kind of rifles and tech we have today wearing that armor is going to hurt you more than help.
Modern warfare if we go into a civil war will do 2 things which are some of the biggest factors in war.
It will force the smartest people in America to pick a side regardless.
Those people whether its molecular engineering. Engineering in general. Bio-weapons etc
We already have "smart bullets" which are expensive as all hell but they can literally home in on a person's frequency or body temp.
We have drones that can emit frequencies that render the victim def and possibly blind if the soundwave is strong enough to shatter your eardrums and eyes.
Cutting off all food and power to leftist run cities will probably be enough to kill millions (as long as we enforce a perimiter bartier).
The days of soldiers marching toward war and rushing beaches is over.
The left knows it will never win a war. Which Is why they are socially engineering people to hate America and be betas.
Don't worry if Trump loses it won't only be because of that. It'll also be because of election and voter fraud, more illegal spying on his campaign, and other shenanigans.
To be fair, I don't see our side 'accepting the results' any better than the other side, if Trump loses as badly to Biden (somehow, with sheer desperate cheating) as HRC lost to Trump.
If Trump loses, it will be because we literally were not allowed to go to the polls to vote for him. And that appears to be the direction in which we are heading.
Why wouldn't the Democrats force that? They've already succeeded in destroying the American economy by making it illegal for us to work.
News Flash: The Country has been in a perpetual State of War since 9/11.
The WAR on Terrorism, The WAR on Drugs...
Not to mention the entire country is currently in a lockdown, a declared State of Emergency, which effectively renders a Wartime authority to the oval office.
Trump has publicly stated he is a War Time president, and we are fighting an invisible enemy.
His detractors tried to overthrow a duly elected president, by conspiring with foreign nations and secret networks of criminals.
Nice try, but sedition and treason are only a hop-skip away from each other and both aren't good. The main difference between the two is Treason is for government officials/employees, and sometimes civilians who conspire with a foreign nation/adversary, whereas sedition is for normies who try to conspire to overthrow the government.
It's ridiculous that something like this is even a thing. Might as well have the court hear arguments over whether Count Chocula is better than Frankenberry, or if BooBerry beats them both.
SCOTUS was originally intended to be the weakest of the 3 branches. Before Marbury v. Madison, they were simply paper-pushers who read what Congress wrote, looked at the constitution, and applied it as fairly as they could.
SCOTUS was never given the power to determine which laws were constitutional or not, nor could they write new laws as they did for Obergefell. The people were not supposed to rely on SCOTUS to keep the government in check. They were supposed to rely on the president and congress enacting their vision of what the constitution was, and then civilly disobeying that which the people disagreed with.
There are some people really upset with how we vote for president. States elect electors, who each vote, and then states send in their results to congress, which reads the votes, and if someone gets a majority of the electors, they become president.
This means that it is quite possible, and has happened repeatedly, that the losers of the popular vote end up becoming president. After all, each state gets 2 electors plus the number of representatives they have (DC gets 3 for free because we're stupid.)
Some people want to undermine this by having states form an agreement that they will elect electors not based on how their state votes, but on what the majority of the country votes. That is, count up the total votes for electors in each of the states, and elect electors based on who got the majority.
This is a blatant violation of the constitution which says states cannot form agreements without permission of congress. And congress can't give permission for this because it is strictly unconstitutional and violates how the president is elected.
So now that we are close to having enough states agreeing to it, the Supreme Court is going to hear the case, laugh at them, and tell the states that if they decide to do this they are violating the constitution.
So now that we are close to having enough states agreeing to it, the Supreme Court is going to hear the case, laugh at them, and tell the states that if they decide to do this they are violating the constitution.
Colorado had been a red state up until 2008. The first thing that socialist faggot Jared Polis did when he took office was to sell our electoral votes to California. Boom, 6 million people in Colorado have been disenfranchised. The dumbfucks that will actually vote along with the national popular vote don't realize that they have actually lost their voice too.
All the people who claimed that Trump colluded with Russia, will cancel the election, or that he otherwise cheats and is a dictator, are the ones defending these guys who tried to overturn the election to deny Trump the victory through elector manipulation.
The one in Texas voted for a third party and not for Trump. Thank goodness it made no difference, but it could have. TX changed the law to stop that from happening again.
I wish I was paying attention in 2016. I didn't start paying attention and getting irate until mid 2018. All the pepperidge farms references before that escape me.
Its going to be fucking Salt City when Trump wins the popular vote this year. They'll turn that shit over the next day. And if you don't think Trump is going to win the popular vote, don't waste your time telling me to be circumspect. We are going to fucking ruin that party in November.
I think everyone needs to start reminding centrist types that a vote for the Dems is a direct vote to give back their thousands of dollars of tax breaks every year.
If people vote for their wallets, they're voting for Trump.
The electors were and are representatives for the final vote of the electoral college. Traditionally these electors were appointed by the winning political party but over time some states actually elect the electors.
AFAIK there’s nothing preventing them from voting their conscience but almost always they’ve voted as the state went.
What’s being argued is whether or not they’re “representatives” or just proxies (and if they’re proxies - what’s the point of having them? The state can just wire the results to the fed.)
I believe the intent of the EC was always to have one last pow-wow where final negotiations could take place if the president was an actual tyrant and shift their votes.
You don’t take the power lightly - but the power exists nonetheless.
What you said helped me clear things up in my own mind.
"Faithless" electors should be allowed to vote however as long as it falls within the laws of the state that voted for them.
There's not much you can do about what I'm about to say, but people need to be educated to realize they're voting for electors and not the candidate directly.
the FEC has the authority to disqualify and invalidate any votes they deem to be illegitimate or fraudulent.
A simple regulation requiring that all mail in ballots are notarized, would in fact force Voter ID on absentee ballots, and create a paper trail that could be used to ferret out and prosecute people who vote illegally.
Another simple regulation from the FEC could state that unless a state can prove that its votes were collected legally, one per verified citizen, that they are invalid.
As for Faithless electors are violating the "will of the people"
You are fake news. Stop pulling bullshit out your ass.
A five-second Google search would have told you that the FEC only has power to regulate campaign finances. They have zero power to do anything about "voting, voter fraud and intimidation, election results or the Electoral College."
Sorry, you just don't seem to understand what "Certify" means, nor have you in your 5 second "education" on the subject developed even a surface level understanding of the guidelines for certification.
crawl back into your self aggrandizing hole and do some REAL research. you know, the kind that goes beyond looking at the pictures, or parroting Wikipedia.
"The FEC OIG is committed to detect and prevent fraud, waste, and abuse, violations of law, and to promote economy, efficiency and effectiveness in the operations of the FEC. The OIG strives, as an agent of positive change, to promote improvements in the management of FEC programs and operations by independently conducting audits, reviews, and investigations. Our overriding objective is excellence and continuous improvement."
Please don't reply to me in separate comments over and over. Just edit your comment to add new information.
The OIG, of course, is just finding fraud and waste and abuse within the organization itself. You clearly don't understand what inspector general means.
I'm not going to read a 134 page document of code statutes. You could just cite the specific statute where the FEC has the power to "disqualify and invalidate any votes they deem to be illegitimate or fraudulent" but you won't, because it doesn't exist.
I'm also not sure why you're linking stuff that's not germane (note correct spelling) to the discussion at hand. You just admitted it's not relevant; are you just dazzling me with your ability to link a document that includes the words "Federal Electoral Commission"?
As to your first comment, you don't link any evidence of the FEC "certifying" votes.
And I haven't been "parroting" Wikipedia, the only text I quoted was from the organization itself with a link directly to the FEC website. You think the FEC doesn't know what its own powers are?
It should not be based on popular vote but instead based on the number of counties that voted 1 way or the other. If 11 out of 12 state counties vote red, the 1 County with a higher population should not get to decide the rest of the states fate.
They should. Because the founders thought something like the Democrats might one day rear it's head and as such an elector can vote to save the nation from itself if enough dumb fucks vote for free money for example.
Voting for president would be moot if you can simply buy/threaten electors. Also there would be no need for Democrats to attempt an amendment to end the Electoral college.
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor called out Washington State Solicitor General Noah Purcell during a back-and-forth about specific language related to electoral college laws and the system originally devised by the nation’s founders.
Her point (I think) is that if the state appoints an elector who publicly/privately states that they won’t follow whatever the state orders to vote - doesn’t the state have a right to replace that elector before the vote or is the elector locked into that position once chosen?
I cannot see how the Supreme Court would agree with those arguments; you'd effectively be disenfranchising your voters - don't care who a state votes for, if they vote one way, then you as an elector carry out their wishes, period.
I'm surprised this is even up for discussion, let alone being heard by the Supreme Court. A matter of common sense, one would think.
The states choose the electors. The electors make the votes. The states can't control the votes of the electors after they go to vote. That would be unconstitutional. Open and shut case. I'm always surprised and how the Dems can't understand plain English in the Constitution.
What of the states that passed laws mandating that winners of the National Popular Vote receive the delegates? It undercuts their whole 'will of the people' argument.
Indeed. Those states are basically selling out their statehood. Such states should have their representative and senate seats removed if they don't want to be represented.
Wouldn't they not be a state then?
Great, like we need more shitholes in this country.
This comment implies that blue states aren't already shitholes.
This is true. Kentucky elected a dem governor and we now have a non-compliance hotline where I plan to report every abled body not wearing a mask I see. For safety.
perfect! make sure to report the Governor
What's this number so I can spend my free time telling them bs
Clog up that stupid line! I am not currently in Kentucky, but I think I saw on social media someone in Kentucky at the Clarion hotel in Lexington smoking on the steps and not wearing a mask. Please report them!
Also, there was someone in line at McDonald's drive thru and they were in the car with the window rolled down and no mask! The audacity of these hooligans must be reported! Be vigilant Pede!
Can you report me? I'm curious to see what they do about it. I don't wear masks and they can't make me.
Doing the Lord’s work, Pede.
That was a declaration of Independence, not sedition. Nothing in the Constitution about secession, therefore under the tenth amendment, it was left to the states or to the people.
IF they did that, it would probably be the best possible thing. Northern California would reincorporate into Jefferson, and we'd never lose a presidential race again.
California is already a shit hole. at least if it was only a territory it couldn't vote and participate in national elections.
MAKE CALIFORNIA A TERRITORY AGAIN
Colorado Territory .... of California
North Carolina Territory ... of California
Washington Territory .... of California
Etc
Awesome username
That would be a State pact which is unconstitutional. States cannot combine efforts with any other state in any way. That is the Federal government role.
It's an agreement for states to vote a certain way if a certain number of states join in. That cannot exist.
Well, they can't engage into a compact with other states in any way that usurps the federal government's power (Article I, Section 10, clause 3 of the Constitution). The Constitution does say that each state can choose how to assign its electors. I think this could be ruled either way in the Supreme Court.
Not that I'm happy about that. I would definitely rule against it if I were on the SC.
And with the traitorous Chief Justice we have, that's not looking good for the Good Guys (aka, actual Americans).
Yup. I haven't forgotten Obamacare.
And the census citizenship question.
You guys still think there is any way out of this but secession and civil war?
eventually it will happen.
No. Not unless the rapture happens.
Balkanization. But that eventually still leads to war between the states.
At this point I would rather just pick the leader from the Paradox's games leader boards. Have the top players in Stellaris, Hearts of Iron, and Europa face off in a winner take all over a 2 week run. They can pick a cabinet of like 4 people to help play as they sleep but keep 4-5 games running at a time 24 h a day for 2 weeks strait on normal speed.
I think you're onto something. A massive game of Civ V where the winner gets elected.
wut? lol
The electors from states which have no state law banning unfaithful electors will have the right to vote a they see fit. But those with such laws must follow those laws. It will be a split the baby verdict.
The president is the head of the federal government, presidential elections are federal, therefore it's easy to see that it does usurp the federal governments power.
"Presidential elections" are definitely not federal, they are purely the creation of states.
States aren't even required to hold a "presidential election" that the common man can vote in. In the early years of the U.S., it wasn't uncommon for the state legislators to just vote among themselves about who to assign the electoral votes to.
A state could flip a goddamn coin to determine who its electors should vote for in the Electoral College, and that would probably be constitutional.
Oh damn
In a Constitutional argument though, you would be asked to point to the specific power listed in the Constitution that is being usurped.
Can you explain why it would be illegal under Article I Section 10? I do hope you're right and that the Supreme Court would agree if it were brought before them.
Yeah, I do agree. The argument, if ever heard in the supreme court, will probably be a state's rights issue, and I do think the opposition has some legal ground to stand on*.
*Not a lawyer. Nothing in this message is intended as legal advice. :)
They can only form agreements between themselves when Congress allows them to. There's roughly three cases which arise:
In all cases, congress must act otherwise the agreement is invalid.
In the case of national popular vote, it would be unconstitutional for congress to do such a thing as it would violate how the president is elected, so the states cannot do it nor can congress approve it.
If one state decides to award its electors based on the national popular vote, then is it making an agreement with other states? If two states both "independently" decide to do this, are they making an agreement with each other? I fear this is what they will argue.
Well I would argue that they’ve already come out and made the laws contingent on the fact they wouldn’t apply unless enough states/electors to decide the election signed up for the plan.
How is that independent if it only applies when there are strings attached relying on other states doing the same?
If they agree to do so, then yes, it's an agreement. They all agreed to do so if a certain number of states signed on.
Fine, we'll just have all our electors be "faithless" then.
This is just an attempt to undo the Electoral College. They shouldn't even be hearing arguments because if it passes it will eventually undo the entire union of states.
The left may think they want that, because most of them don't realize or refuse to believe that they rely on taxes of those 'lesser states' in order to survive because their own states are mismanaged and pilfered by crooked democrats that they keep ignorantly voting into power.
They are going to be relying on the taxes of red States now, since the economies of their shitholes will remain shut down.
Inflation: The hidden tax.
Thank you Dr. Ron Paul for opening my eyes to that fact.
Basically: that legislation is not law as it is in violation of the Constitution.
Juxtapose these truths against the arguments referenced in the article and the scam becomes clear.
The other problem with the compact is voter disenfranchisement. If a state forces electors to cast their vote based on votes from other states, it disenfranchises the voters of that state.
A simple hypothetical demonstrates:
Post-Reconstruction, the southern states all enter into a compact to vote together as a bloc. But by doing so, they dilute the votes of blacks in smaller states where they are a larger percentage of the population, in favor of more populous states that have a higher percentage of white voters.
Do you think that would survive a challenge under the Voting Rights Act? My example probably wouldn't, but members of a political party aren't a protected class. Maybe an enterprising lawyer could figure out how to make it work.
You can't be disenfranchised of a right you never had.
There is no right to a fair and equal vote for president by the common man. You only have a right to fair elections of members of Congress. If you examine the U.S. Constitution, you will see that the selection method of electors in the Electoral College is purely according to the whims of the state legislature.
What was the reasoning for that?
Some of the founding fathers had faith in the intelligence of the average landowner. Some believed only those who managed to find a marginal amount of success could reasonably be expected to know how to pick the right man to run the country, and not just the man who promised them the most things. The compromise they struck was an attempt at balancing between the two. It's been warped in favor of democracy over the years, and there was some flexibility built into the system, but at this point it's bent to the point of nearly breaking, and it's hard to say at which point the damage occurred.
There were a bunch of different camps of delegates all disagreeing on how they want to pick the president. The system of letting states individually decide how they want to do it is the compromise they came up with. Maybe nobody thought it was a great idea, but it at least wasn't an idea they hated.
They also had the system weighted by population (influenced by the Three-Fifths Compromise) in the same way Congress was, because that was the only way to get the South to agree to it. The South refused to accept the North having more control than them over any part of the federal government, for fear that they would use it to abolish slavery.
From my copy of A March of Liberty: A Constitutional History of the United States, Volume I, From the Founding to 1900:
Interesting. Thank you!
Luckily that contract doesn't take affect when they sign it. It waits until a certain percentage of the country is on board, then goes into affect. It is likely to be challenged when that happens.
Doesn't that kind of faithless elector action violate clauses against interstate compacts and the Bill of Rights?
States are not allowed to make non-political compacts with each other.
Two states cannot form any kind of agreement without the approval of congress.
This is written explicitly in the constitution.
Is the reciprocity of professional licenses expressly approved by Congress?
The constitution states that contracts formed in one state are valid in all states. That was the whole debate about gay marriage in the beginning -- once Massachusetts started marrying people, other states were forced to recognize them.
I wonder if anyone has ever thought of a clever way to use this to expand gun rights into blue states.
I don't think that faithless electors actually come about very often, so I would be interested to see what other causes might be behind this.
A good example of nonpolitical compacts is the Interstate Driver's License Compact which is used to suspend DL's when someone gets a DUI out-of-state. I would say the Interstate Detainer Act appears to be similar but unfortunately it's a federal law called an interstate company.
I can't think of any others without searching.
Then what do you do with a state that has two EC votes and a result of 60-40?
You can’t give a partial vote - what’s the amount where the losing party gets the vote 1%? 5%, 25%?
Winner takes the state.
This has already been done. Nebraska and Maine split their electoral votes.
First, a state can't have two electoral votes. The minimum is three. (If you took the time to read the Constitution, you would learn that the number of electoral votes is just a state's two Senators plus the number of representatives it has.)
The way to do it is to reserve two of the electoral votes for the statewide popular vote winner, and then there is one electoral vote for each of the state's House districts to be awarded to the popular vote winner in that district.
So if we look at Maine's four electoral votes (2 Senators + 2 Representatives) in 2016, Clinton won the statewide popular vote 48% to 45%, so she gets those two electoral votes. Then we examine the results in the 1st District and the 2nd District, and we see that Clinton won in the 1st while Trump won in the 2nd. So they each get one additional electoral vote. The result is Maine splitting its electoral vote, 3 for Clinton and 1 for Trump.
In Nebraska, Trump won the statewide vote 59% to 34%, and he also was the leader in each of Nebraska's three House districts, so he took all five of Nebraska's electoral votes.
So yes, the 34% of Nebraskans who voted Democrat were left "unrepresented", but I haven't heard of a better way to do it in the bounds of the Electoral College. It's still way better than all the votes going to the statewide winner.
Maybe Nebraska should reorganize its districts to let Democrats actually control one of them, but I doubt the Republicans who control everything in the state would be interested in doing that.
The left wants a popular vote until they need a tiny number of people to undermine an entire state's popular vote. Lmfao.
...because they're so popular😆
See, peasants don't know what's good for them. We the experts know what's better for we the people.
If trump loses the election ONLY because faithless electoral push the dems into victory, that’ll be the domino.
For the boog?
Yes, so don't let this virus panic bullshit keep you from exercising and getting into shape. 6 months until we see if the other side is really going to finally force us or not.
What do you mean exercising? Like home workouts? whats that have to do with a boogaloo unless u mean conditioning
Civil war you thick mofo lmao
Lmao
Yeah man. You think you're gonna be able to boog effectively if you're an out of shape fatty?
Do you have ANY idea how physically exerting marching to war is/will be? You better start wearing weighted shit around the house as you do your daily activities to get into shape and prepare. Your chest plate alone weighs at least 10lbs, and you've got a 2nd one on your back. And thats without tools, food, ammo, sidearm, medkit, mask, raingear, rifle, rifle accessories, and all the other random shit you'll have in your pack.
The next war will not be fought with frontline soldiers... and with the kind of rifles and tech we have today wearing that armor is going to hurt you more than help.
Modern warfare if we go into a civil war will do 2 things which are some of the biggest factors in war.
We already have "smart bullets" which are expensive as all hell but they can literally home in on a person's frequency or body temp.
We have drones that can emit frequencies that render the victim def and possibly blind if the soundwave is strong enough to shatter your eardrums and eyes.
Cutting off all food and power to leftist run cities will probably be enough to kill millions (as long as we enforce a perimiter bartier).
The days of soldiers marching toward war and rushing beaches is over.
The left knows it will never win a war. Which Is why they are socially engineering people to hate America and be betas.
Don't worry if Trump loses it won't only be because of that. It'll also be because of election and voter fraud, more illegal spying on his campaign, and other shenanigans.
To be fair, I don't see our side 'accepting the results' any better than the other side, if Trump loses as badly to Biden (somehow, with sheer desperate cheating) as HRC lost to Trump.
The difference is that dems are KNOWN cheaters and JW has pretty much proven it.
That's kinda what I'm getting at.
Trump is going to win in November..
If he doesn't, THAT will trigger a Boog... far more Boog than arresting Obama today.
If Trump loses, it will be because we literally were not allowed to go to the polls to vote for him. And that appears to be the direction in which we are heading.
Why wouldn't the Democrats force that? They've already succeeded in destroying the American economy by making it illegal for us to work.
Isn’t that ironic? They’ve made it illegal for us to go to work. Work is how we pay them... with our taxes. They are taking their own money away.
(Rush explained why)
They know we can't pay taxes if we're not working. They're evil, not stupid. If we can't pay our taxes, then they put us to work. See where I'm going?
Get on the train, for your safety.
Work will set you free
Treason.
Sedition
Treason can only be charged in a time of declared war. This is seditious.
News Flash: The Country has been in a perpetual State of War since 9/11.
The WAR on Terrorism, The WAR on Drugs...
Not to mention the entire country is currently in a lockdown, a declared State of Emergency, which effectively renders a Wartime authority to the oval office.
Trump has publicly stated he is a War Time president, and we are fighting an invisible enemy.
His detractors tried to overthrow a duly elected president, by conspiring with foreign nations and secret networks of criminals.
Nice try, but sedition and treason are only a hop-skip away from each other and both aren't good. The main difference between the two is Treason is for government officials/employees, and sometimes civilians who conspire with a foreign nation/adversary, whereas sedition is for normies who try to conspire to overthrow the government.
Feels like war has been declared on us for years my dude.
I miss Jordan Peterson. Hope he's better and comes back.
It's ridiculous that something like this is even a thing. Might as well have the court hear arguments over whether Count Chocula is better than Frankenberry, or if BooBerry beats them both.
This is how the left gets their way, through the courts. We don't need SCOTUS IMO.
SCOTUS was originally intended to be the weakest of the 3 branches. Before Marbury v. Madison, they were simply paper-pushers who read what Congress wrote, looked at the constitution, and applied it as fairly as they could.
SCOTUS was never given the power to determine which laws were constitutional or not, nor could they write new laws as they did for Obergefell. The people were not supposed to rely on SCOTUS to keep the government in check. They were supposed to rely on the president and congress enacting their vision of what the constitution was, and then civilly disobeying that which the people disagreed with.
Wait, what?
reads again
Wait.... what?
For those who missed it...
There are some people really upset with how we vote for president. States elect electors, who each vote, and then states send in their results to congress, which reads the votes, and if someone gets a majority of the electors, they become president.
This means that it is quite possible, and has happened repeatedly, that the losers of the popular vote end up becoming president. After all, each state gets 2 electors plus the number of representatives they have (DC gets 3 for free because we're stupid.)
Some people want to undermine this by having states form an agreement that they will elect electors not based on how their state votes, but on what the majority of the country votes. That is, count up the total votes for electors in each of the states, and elect electors based on who got the majority.
This is a blatant violation of the constitution which says states cannot form agreements without permission of congress. And congress can't give permission for this because it is strictly unconstitutional and violates how the president is elected.
So now that we are close to having enough states agreeing to it, the Supreme Court is going to hear the case, laugh at them, and tell the states that if they decide to do this they are violating the constitution.
Let's fucking hope so...
This is so retarded. Why even hold an election? Let's have a politburo that decides who becomes the president.
There is a cabal, they are still pissed from 2016. The msm mislead them so they didnt go all in like they did with obama in '12.
I do not want New York City to decide my red state's President.
The gonad of NY State.
Why not just let each political party hand pick the nominee by fiat. If your gonna subvert the will of the people go all the way
That's how Canada does it!
Of course they do
Colorado had been a red state up until 2008. The first thing that socialist faggot Jared Polis did when he took office was to sell our electoral votes to California. Boom, 6 million people in Colorado have been disenfranchised. The dumbfucks that will actually vote along with the national popular vote don't realize that they have actually lost their voice too.
Colorado is lost. Split California in two so we don't have to change the flag.
All the people who claimed that Trump colluded with Russia, will cancel the election, or that he otherwise cheats and is a dictator, are the ones defending these guys who tried to overturn the election to deny Trump the victory through elector manipulation.
They never cared about any of those things, they only care about getting Trump out of power.
The one in Texas voted for a third party and not for Trump. Thank goodness it made no difference, but it could have. TX changed the law to stop that from happening again.
I wish I was paying attention in 2016. I didn't start paying attention and getting irate until mid 2018. All the pepperidge farms references before that escape me.
Its going to be fucking Salt City when Trump wins the popular vote this year. They'll turn that shit over the next day. And if you don't think Trump is going to win the popular vote, don't waste your time telling me to be circumspect. We are going to fucking ruin that party in November.
I think everyone needs to start reminding centrist types that a vote for the Dems is a direct vote to give back their thousands of dollars of tax breaks every year.
If people vote for their wallets, they're voting for Trump.
The electors were and are representatives for the final vote of the electoral college. Traditionally these electors were appointed by the winning political party but over time some states actually elect the electors. AFAIK there’s nothing preventing them from voting their conscience but almost always they’ve voted as the state went. What’s being argued is whether or not they’re “representatives” or just proxies (and if they’re proxies - what’s the point of having them? The state can just wire the results to the fed.) I believe the intent of the EC was always to have one last pow-wow where final negotiations could take place if the president was an actual tyrant and shift their votes. You don’t take the power lightly - but the power exists nonetheless.
What you said helped me clear things up in my own mind.
"Faithless" electors should be allowed to vote however as long as it falls within the laws of the state that voted for them.
There's not much you can do about what I'm about to say, but people need to be educated to realize they're voting for electors and not the candidate directly.
We need better civics education in general.
the FEC has the authority to disqualify and invalidate any votes they deem to be illegitimate or fraudulent.
A simple regulation requiring that all mail in ballots are notarized, would in fact force Voter ID on absentee ballots, and create a paper trail that could be used to ferret out and prosecute people who vote illegally.
Another simple regulation from the FEC could state that unless a state can prove that its votes were collected legally, one per verified citizen, that they are invalid.
As for Faithless electors are violating the "will of the people"
You are fake news. Stop pulling bullshit out your ass.
A five-second Google search would have told you that the FEC only has power to regulate campaign finances. They have zero power to do anything about "voting, voter fraud and intimidation, election results or the Electoral College."
https://www.fec.gov/introduction-campaign-finance/election-and-voting-information/
Sorry, you just don't seem to understand what "Certify" means, nor have you in your 5 second "education" on the subject developed even a surface level understanding of the guidelines for certification.
crawl back into your self aggrandizing hole and do some REAL research. you know, the kind that goes beyond looking at the pictures, or parroting Wikipedia.
The FEC OIG description of office.
"The FEC OIG is committed to detect and prevent fraud, waste, and abuse, violations of law, and to promote economy, efficiency and effectiveness in the operations of the FEC. The OIG strives, as an agent of positive change, to promote improvements in the management of FEC programs and operations by independently conducting audits, reviews, and investigations. Our overriding objective is excellence and continuous improvement."
Looks like YOU are the fake news here.
Here is the actual Law. I would have used lubricant, but I wanted it to hurt as I rammed it up your sanctimonious ass. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2018-title52/pdf/USCODE-2018-title52.pdf
the FEC also works through IRS Title 26. not especially Germaine here, but it is also something that grants them criminal prosecution authority, subpoena power, etc. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2018-title26/pdf/USCODE-2018-title26-subtitleH.pdf
Please don't reply to me in separate comments over and over. Just edit your comment to add new information.
The OIG, of course, is just finding fraud and waste and abuse within the organization itself. You clearly don't understand what inspector general means.
I'm not going to read a 134 page document of code statutes. You could just cite the specific statute where the FEC has the power to "disqualify and invalidate any votes they deem to be illegitimate or fraudulent" but you won't, because it doesn't exist.
I'm also not sure why you're linking stuff that's not germane (note correct spelling) to the discussion at hand. You just admitted it's not relevant; are you just dazzling me with your ability to link a document that includes the words "Federal Electoral Commission"?
As to your first comment, you don't link any evidence of the FEC "certifying" votes.
And I haven't been "parroting" Wikipedia, the only text I quoted was from the organization itself with a link directly to the FEC website. You think the FEC doesn't know what its own powers are?
Fixed that title for you.
Oh here we go lol...
Spoiler alert...no they can't.
It should not be based on popular vote but instead based on the number of counties that voted 1 way or the other. If 11 out of 12 state counties vote red, the 1 County with a higher population should not get to decide the rest of the states fate.
Micro electoral college. Seems good to me. Same principle as states
They should. Because the founders thought something like the Democrats might one day rear it's head and as such an elector can vote to save the nation from itself if enough dumb fucks vote for free money for example.
And their personal choice should be only one vote, not a representative vote, which is worth many.
Voting for president would be moot if you can simply buy/threaten electors. Also there would be no need for Democrats to attempt an amendment to end the Electoral college.
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor called out Washington State Solicitor General Noah Purcell during a back-and-forth about specific language related to electoral college laws and the system originally devised by the nation’s founders.
“You rely on a default rule in your brief” Sotomayor began. “Which is the power to appoint [which] includes power to remove. But all of the examples that you rely on are vertical appointments when an official within one branch of government appoints a subordinate in the same branch for an indefinite period. Now, the idea is that if I appoint you, I should be able to get rid of you if in your service to me you are doing something wrong.”
Not a lawyer, so maybe someone can comment on the veracity and impact of this "Justice"'s opinion, but it sounds like word salad to me.
The abstracted, twist word games is how the Left advances its agenda.
Lawfare
Her point (I think) is that if the state appoints an elector who publicly/privately states that they won’t follow whatever the state orders to vote - doesn’t the state have a right to replace that elector before the vote or is the elector locked into that position once chosen?
They have placed themselves in the position of representing the D or R voters in their state, so a false representation would be fraud.
Yes. We had an elector do that in Texas in 2016. It caused a change in the law forcing them to vote for the nominee.
The majority votes get the electoral votes period. You don't even need an elector just to stand there and tell us how they voted.
I cannot see how the Supreme Court would agree with those arguments; you'd effectively be disenfranchising your voters - don't care who a state votes for, if they vote one way, then you as an elector carry out their wishes, period.
I'm surprised this is even up for discussion, let alone being heard by the Supreme Court. A matter of common sense, one would think.
The states choose the electors. The electors make the votes. The states can't control the votes of the electors after they go to vote. That would be unconstitutional. Open and shut case. I'm always surprised and how the Dems can't understand plain English in the Constitution.
"This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we'll be lucky to live through it."
We would be a lot better off if we directly voted for the electors, instead of the candidates.