Timothy Birdnow

HEAVY SIGH! A writer at American Thinker this morning called for "proportional voting" in the Electoral College.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/11/a_possible_electoral_college_for_the_future.html

This is a foolish proposition. As I pointed out in a previous blogpost, the Electoral College is not just a mechanism for voting nor is it a vehicle for "democracy", something the Founding Fathers' rightly abhorred. No it is a tool to promote Federalism, the division of power between state and central governments. In short, how a state chooses and distributes it's electoral votes is entirely up to the citizens of that particular state, and is no business whatsoever of the country as a whole.

But let us first see what J.S. Anderson said in his essay this morning at American Thinker:

"Setting aside the deliberately intended difficulty of amending the Constitution, here is a suggestion for the Electoral College of the future. Let stand the requirement of 270 out of the total 538 electoral votes, or 50.19%, to be elected president. In partial deference to the "one man one vote -- total votes” argument, instead of allotting electoral votes by a winner take all requirement, allot each state’s electoral votes proportionally based mathematically upon the popular votes the candidates receive in the state, while eliminating individual electors.

For example, look at Florida with its 29 electoral votes. Based upon currently available data, Ms. Clinton received 47.8% of the popular vote, with 49.1% going to Mr. Trump. Based on these popular vote results, Ms. Clinton would receive 13.86 electoral votes, with 14.24 going to Mr. Trump. Completing the math for the 50 states plus the District of Columbia, the results tally 257.01 electoral votes for Ms. Clinton, with 253.37 for Mr. Trump, both short of the 270 needed to claim victory. With neither candidate above the necessary threshold, the modification would require a runoff election."

End excerpt.

In point of fact this scheme has been promoted by liberals for some time now as a way around the will of the individual states. It is called the National Popular Vote, and it is intended to circumvent the current system by apportioning votes based on the popular vote.

And they even have a way to do it Constitutionally; create an entente' between the indivudual states where the states agree to assign the EC votes proportionally. This is called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, and a few states have already adoopted it. But there is going to be a problem, because many states will not accept it voluntarily, and they have no reason to do so.

Which means you had better watch your pocket books! What the Left will no doubt do is try to force it via boycotts and, when next a Democrat is President, a cutting off of Federal funding. Oh, and expect George Soros' gang to mosey into town with signs and placards and molotov cocktails.

But in the end, it will have to be pushed through as a Constitutional Amendment. I doubt even the Warren Court would have been able to push it through the gates of constitutionality without one.

The Founding Fathers sought to create a system where the states were the coequals of the central government, not vassals. A national vote puts them into a permanent state of subjugation. If the central government can tell the states how to hold elections then they own the states. It really is that simple. People have forgotten, but the states were never intended to be provinces. Of course, we upset the balance of power in innumerable ways with the Civil War and Reconstruction, then with the adoption of the 17th Amendment which forced the Senate to be elected by a vote of the People and not by their state reps. Now we face a final curtain on American federalism with schemes to eliminate or fundamentally alter the Electoral College. It is quite foolish.

It is a liberal scheme. According to wikipedia it is endorsed by:

"the New York Times,[9] the Chicago Sun-Times, the Los Angeles Times,[14] the Boston Globe,[15] and the Minneapolis Star Tribune"

All notoriously left-wing newspapers. And Pete Duponte, former Delaware Governor, rightly observed it was an urban power-grab.

This will end with continual litigation and runoffs as attempts by the Democrats to steal the elections in their urban machine will proliferate. There will be lawsuits to disqualify electors, lawsuits to recount, lawsuits to decertify. If anyone thinks this will solve any problems they are sadly mistaken.

It should be pointed out that every effort taken to impose a national popular vote has occured in the last forty years; this was never considered while states had even the illusion of autonomy. It is a child of the flower children's cultural revolution, not a long standing issue for reasonable men.

There are currently 11 states that have adopted the compact. They are:

1 Maryland 10 000000002007-04-10-0000April 10, 2007
2 New Jersey 14 000000002008-01-13-0000January 13, 2008
3 Illinois 20 000000002008-04-07-0000April 7, 2008
4 Hawaii 4 000000002008-05-01-0000May 1, 2008
5 Washington 12 000000002009-04-28-0000April 28, 2009
6 Massachusetts 11 000000002010-08-04-0000August 4, 2010
7 District of Columbia 3 000000002010-12-07-0000December 7, 2010
8 Vermont 3 000000002011-04-22-0000April 22, 2011
9 California 55 000000002011-08-08-0000August 8, 2011
10 Rhode Island 4 000000002013-07-12-0000July 12, 2013
11 New York 29 000000002014-04-15-0000April 15, 2014

Which totals 165 electoral votes.

If that is how these states want to use their votes they have every right, but this will not stop here. For such a scheme to work everybody ahs to play along, and that isn't going to happen. Eventually coersion is going to come into play.

[link-http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/10/destroying-the-electoral-college-the-anti-federalist-national-popular-vote-scheme]The Heritage Foundation had this to say about NPV:

"Aside from shaping the electoral system, this fear of marginalizing large portions of the population is also the reason that the Constitution calls for a representative republic and not a direct democracy. Under the NPV, this electoral benefit to states would disappear, and presidential candidates could win elections by catering to high-density population centers and ignoring the rest of the country. As John Samples argues, the NPV would "encourage presidential campaigns to focus their efforts in dense media markets where costs per vote are lowest,” and states that are sometimes ignored now will "continue to be ignored under NPV.”[14] There is no question that smaller states receive less attention than larger states, but any national direct election system "would magnify, not improve, this problem.

Despite these facts, both large and small states have joined the National Popular Vote movement. The NPV, at face value, may appeal to traditionally democratic notions of "every vote being equal.” Yet its supporters seemingly have no concern for the many other non-majoritarian aspects of the governmental structure established by the Constitution, such as:

* Every state having two Senators regardless of its size or population;
* A President’s ability to veto legislation passed by a majority of the people’s popularly elected representatives;
* The lifetime appointment of federal judges whose power is inherently undemocratic;
* The unequal representation in the U.S. House of Representatives due to widely varying populations in congressional districts between different states, such as Delaware (with a population of almost 900,000) and Wyoming (with a population of only 600,000); and
* The unequal apportionment among the states of House districts caused by the inclusion of large numbers of ineligible voters (such as non-citizens) in the census count.

As former Federal Election Commission (FEC) Chairman Bradley Smith says, "If such direct checks on popular majorities can be reasonable and acceptable in a democracy, then it is difficult to argue that indirect checks on popular majority such as the Electoral College, are inherently illegitimate.”[16]”"

End excerpt.

America was set up this way for a reason. Monkeying with something that has served us well in the interest of "fairness" is juvenile and Progressive (but I repeat myself.) We don't want this.

By the way, here is a fascinating article from The Federalist which predicted a Republican victory in this election back in 2014. http://thefederalist.com/2014/09/04/history-is-not-on-the-democrats-side-in-2016/

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:48 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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