Electoral College Under Fire Again

The left just can't stand they cannot win the Presidency as the Constitution prescribes and as the intent of the founding fathers. We are NOT a democracy and the only way the States ever ratified the Constitution was because Constitution guarantees we will never BE a democracy. We are a federal republic made up of a union of states. The States elect the President not the People. Your state is not even required to allow the people to vote on the electors the state legislature could select them all. And since the left cannot get that changed through the proper and constitutional manner now they look for activist judges to overrule the Constitution.

Electoral College Under Fire Again

Having failed to generate enough support to abolish the Electoral College through a constitutional amendment, the institution’s detractors are now looking to the courts to upend it.

A new lawsuit, spearheaded by Harvard University law professor Lawrence Lessig and filed in four states, charges that the “winner-take-all” element of how states divvy up their Electoral College votes is unconstitutional.

The District of Columbia and 48 states use this winner-take-all system.

The only exceptions are Maine and Nebraska, which use a proportional allocation of votes.

“Under the winner-take-all system, U.S. citizens have been denied their constitutional right to an equal vote in presidential elections,” said David Boies, an attorney who represented former Vice President Al Gore in the contested 2000 election and is leading the current litigation against the Electoral College. “This is a clear violation of the principle of one person, one vote.”

A number of similar lawsuits have been filed in the past, but all have failed.

According to Ballot Access News, the biggest impediment to overturning the winner-take-all system is Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, which says, “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.”

This gives states a great deal of leeway in how they choose their Electoral College process.

It is unfortunate to see yet another attempt to end a presidential election system that has been a model of stability and success for hundreds of years.

In the wake of the 2016 presidential election, in which President Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the Electoral College while losing the national popular vote, there were widespread calls to upend America’s 2-century-old electoral system.

Former Attorney General Eric Holder said “we have to just abolish the Electoral College” in an interview with “Real Time” host Bill Maher.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg also took aim at the Electoral College, telling a group of students in an interview that it is the one thing she’d change about the Constitution while admitting that it would be hard to do.

National Popular Vote, an organization dedicated to moving America away from the current Electoral College process, has worked toward eliminating the Electoral College through an amendment to the Constitution or a state compact.

But these calls for what would be a radical change are misguided.

The Founders designed the Electoral College to give Americans a stable presidential succession process as well as preserve the principle of federalism.

It ensures that the diverse perspectives of people in states across the nation, not just those living in the most populous ones like California and Texas, have a voice in determining who will be the president.

Though many Americans see pure democracy as an unqualified blessing, the Founding Fathers had reservations. They created our republican system of government with a certain amount of democratic control, but with checks on pure majoritarianism.

As Heritage Foundation legal expert Hans von Spakovsky wrote in a paper on the Electoral College: “In creating the basic architecture of the American government, the Founders struggled to satisfy each state’s demand for greater representation while attempting to balance popular sovereignty against the risk posed to the minority from majoritarian rule.”

Our Electoral College system has become more democratic over time, with all states relying on a popular vote to select electors rather than state legislatures. Yet, we have kept the vital elements of federalism intact.

Despite the constant calls to give the Electoral College the boot, it continues to be a highly successful and useful means of choosing presidents.

Jarrett Stepman is an editor for The Daily Signal.
https://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/jarrett-stepman/electoral-college-under-fire-again

 

Governors, Mayors, Sheriffs, DAs, Senators, Congressmen, are elected by Democratic vote.

why not President?

 

How could it be unconstitutional when the constitution leaves it up to the states to decide how electoral votes are counted?

 

That is not the United States, the federal government. Our federal republic. And I support a repeal of the 17th Amendment.

Read the OP. The States elect the President, IF your state allows you to vote for the electors in your state that is the vote you cast.

 

Yep plenary power. But these leftist attorney's and groups hope to get a court to overrule the Constitution, what's the judge going to do stay a Presidential election until the electoral college is abolished?

 

Because of the constitution. Don't like it try to change it. You know why quit complaining and do something about it if you do not like it.

 

Regarding the United STATES of America, Mr. Harvard University Law Professor doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground.

pitiful.

 

The EC failed to perform it's most critical function - to act as a safety mechanism to keep someone like trump out of office. This is now a democracy run amok with a madman at the helm. And the worst of it is that the voters knowingly elected a con man and a thug.

This democracy has failed.

The office of president should be eliminated entirely and the union as it stands disbanded; with limited exceptions, such as defense.

Let the deep red States have their KKK bathed, authoritarian, theocratic paradise. I really don't care as long as they're not a part of my home and my country anymore.

 

Back to 1776?

 

The better case could be made it kept a currupt person who as a government official endangered our national security feom becoming presisent. But the primary function of the EC was fulfilled as designed. Tne union od STATES, tne Republic choose a new president in an orderly manner.

What democracy?

Anarchy you say?

 

"The electoral college is a
disaster for a democracy!"

https://www.snopes.com/trump-described-the-electoral-college-as-a-disaster/​

 

I know this, the United States can no longer lecture the world about the benefits of democracy. We are anything but a democracy, more like a confederacy of dunces.

 

So you support Trump?

 

Did you not learn in history that the Constitutional Convention had to guaranty to the individual states that the United States would not be a democracy in order to get the Constitution ratified?

 

I am a lifelong student of history so the answer to your question is yes. They had to count slaves to make it work.

 

Which was a separate issue to guaranteeing to the States that we would NOT be a Democracy.

 

I wish those who talk about leftist actually knew something about leftist. It is obvious from their comments they do not.

The electoral college is always under fire. It is not going to change.

 

It kept Hillary out. Shows the wisdom of The Founders.

Don't like it? Get an amendment passed, or go pound sand.

 

The purpose of the electoral college is to give small states more influence and it does that. The founders did not foresee the modern state.

Actually what they created, it does not function like this, was a group of elites (the electors) who were supposed to meet and decide who would be president. Like most elites of their era they had limited faith in the public which is why they created this type of system. It just does not function the way they intended.

 

"In creating the basic architecture of the American government, the Founders struggled to satisfy each state’s demand for greater representation while attempting to balance popular sovereignty against the risk posed to the minority from majoritarian rule."

The part of the post that answers your question. It is still true today that the larger states would elect the president without even having to ask the people from the smaller. As a citizen of a smaller state this protects why voice in the Republic.

 

The electoral college was actually intended to have a small group of elected elites chose the president, not for the public to do so. It never quite worked that way.

 

The reason is because Russia has always interfered with US elections and without a doubt the Russians! Russians! Russians! created the electoral calculating that over 2 centuries later this was how they would destroy the United States. Damn those sneaky Russians.

The Russian Empire's role in the American Revolutionary War was part of a global conflict of colonial supremacy between the Thirteen Colonies and the Kingdom of Great Britain. Prior to the onset of the war, the Russian Empire had already begun exploration along North America's west coast; and, the year following the combat's conclusion, the Eurasian empire established its first colony in Alaska. Although the Russian Empire did not directly send troops or supplies to the colonies or British Empire during the war, it responded to the Declaration of Independence, played a role in international diplomacy, and contributed to the lasting legacy of the American Revolution abroad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_and_the_American_Revolution

 

Nor did they want US Senators democratically elected. They did NOT want the uneducated masses ruling government. They wanted the public to select from successful men to represent them and, in a sense, think for them.

 

US Senators were elected by the legislatures until the late 19th or early 20th century.

 

And we should repeal the 17th amendment and go back to the state legislature elect the Senators as they are supposed to represent the STATES not the People.