If this seems a little odd to you, it definitely did not pass my smell test. Doing a little further research, it seems my home state has also passed similar legislation. From a 2007 WaPo article, it would appear that Maryland's legislation does not take affect until a majority of states pass and enact similar laws.
Illinois, New Jersey, Hawaii, aforementioned Maryland, Washington and now Massachusetts are the states that have enacted this law. These states total 61 votes of the electoral college, where there are a total of 538 possible votes. Investigating further, I turned up a link from the CBS article to an organization that is pushing for legislation in every state in the union. In addition to the six states with laws enacted we can follow this breakdown:
- 4 States have passed legislation by both houses
- 10 states have passed by one house
- 9 states have passed 1 committee
- 11 states have held hearings
- and 11 other states have had bills introduced
- 50 states and DC with bills
Continuing to dig around on this website (which I refuse to give publication for), yields a free book published by a who's who of those who have taught at Standford, run law firms, are for Obamacare, have run financial institutions, as well as others who are "independents" and malcontents that do not understand the inner workings of our Constitution.
They claim that "one man" should have "one vote," which is how the current electoral college system works. If it isn't known to the American populace, our Republic's charter is meant to provide a balance of power. It is meant to prevent any one group from wielding too much power against those who do not possess power. In other words, the Constitution is meant to prevent tyranny and hence the reason why the founders conceived the electoral college system. The electoral college system is also meant to preserve power across the several states, and ensure each state has an equal ear of the Presidential Candidates and the POTUS himself. Our founders wanted to make sure that Presidential candidates didn't migrate to every major metropolis, ignoring the rural parts of the country in an effort to garnish the majority of the popular vote.
If every state were to have this popular vote legislation, all that would be nessecary to win is to campaign in every major city and win solid majorities from those cities. I've seen this before where in theory, 49 states can elect one president, yet if one state has the right turnout in a popular vote situation, the one state can overrule 49 of their peers. For instance, without the protections of the electoral college, every state in the nation can vote for candidate A who wins by 500 votes giving him a 24,500 vote lead going into the final state. Let us assume the final state is California where candidate B wins in a state landslide by 24,501 votes. In that instance, Candidate B would win the plurality of votes for the entire nation in the popular election by one. Candidate B would have only won, one state's support. Doesn't seem how our Federal Republic is supposed to be run, at least to this individual.
Those in this group clam to be creating more "individual freedom" which usually would be an admirable campaign. Don't be fooled, it is simply a ruse! Presidential popular vote agendas are nothing more than an effort to undermine the Constitution and it's safeguards. This group willingly wishes to destroy the inherent protections afford to the people that our founders created. Instead of attempting to amend the Constitution where they know they would never succeed, this group instead attacks the states whom have sympathetic ears. Obviously, this is one blogger that is onto their shenanigans and doesn't appreciate their plot to tear apart the parchment paper we hold so dear.
I am going to fully admit to my audience in this post (and to the person that posted) I just deleted 4 posts that each hit the character limit. They were nothing more than an almost verbatim copy / paste from "the effort's" website. Sorry, but I'm not going to be the next blogger to be sued by Righthaven, LLC. Further, if you want to debate on your own merits, fine, but I will not tolerate mindless trolling, especially when your profile had no way to contact you nor any info of any kind. If you want to be taken seriously as a poster of this blog, I expect you to act like a serious poster with a profile and a unique identity even if it is behind an internet handle. Take some more time to create a better profile than just a name like "toto" without ANY info.
ReplyDeleteWhile I admire the tenacity of those who are determined to get the popular vote election into being, I don't need four posts to explain an opposing view point when people could have been directed to the appropriate website. Instead, you failed to realize that my opinion is based on a founding, EVEN if the founders did not specify the how and left that up to the individual states as to how to select their electors.
Changing every state to select electors based on the national popular vote disenfranchises voters within a singular state. Learn it, live it, love it. Period. You can't argue against that and the example I showed you as to how Candidate B can win one state and only win the national popular vote by one vote. Now, compound the problem with potential voter fraud, and we could be worse than the Florida 2000 debacle.
I do have a policy here of trying not to delete reasonable discourse, but all out copied propaganda is not acceptable. I would not have removed a link to the website you copied from simply because readers here have enough Google-fu to take the topic discussed and either find the link in the original CBS article (eluded to), or Google to find it.
I do however, invite you back to discuss, not diatribe in political discourse.