The passage by the Mass. Legislature of the National Popular Vote compact and the expectation that Gov. Patrick will sign it has brought this project to major public attention.
This is an intro to a topic about which more will come later. The EC (= Electoral College) is the constitutionally specified method we use to elect the president of the United States. The essence of it is that each state is given a number of "electors" = electoral votes that is equal to the number of members of congress that that state is entitled to. Each state (and later the DC) then elects its set of "electors" who actually vote for president. In the beginning the people did not even cast votes for president but for electors who would cast the votes of their state (technically it is still that way). Originally it was intended that those electors would exercise their own discretion about who to vote for. The motivation for creating this structure varied from straight forward to subtle. I think that the main reason was the power of the presidency. They were concerned about a “man on horseback” – a man hugely popular with the “mob” - who would, like Julius Caesar in ancient Rome, sweep away the Republic and establish a dictatorship. Many attempts have been made to replace the electoral college with some variation of direct popular vote.
But the actual wording of the Constitution is very interesting and provides the opportunity for some very high stakes shenanigans. Article I section 10 “ … No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, … enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, … . Article II, section 1. “… 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 …”.
In combination the two appear to open the door to an agreement among the states which would effectively do away with the Electoral College without a constitutional amendment. Mass. is about to join such a movement. To find out more about it go to http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/ . For a critique stay tuned.
Monday, August 2, 2010
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If there is enough support for the NPV proposal to be put into effect through” individual States working toward the same goal” (which could be interpreted as collusion) isn’t there enough support to simply amend the constitution? What am I missing?
ReplyDeleteActually, the NPV proposal is not bad with the following caveats: It would still have a statistical anomaly due to the fact that Senators (and therefore state Electoral College members) are not in proportion to state population. It also assumes that the voter turnout in a state will be proportional to its population. If we are going to change let’s do better that that.
I vote thumbs down on a straight national vote for president (no electoral college) because it leaves the door open for a national recount of under votes (Think Florida 2000 on a National scale).
Amending the Constitution takes 2/3 of Congress and 3/4 of the states.
ReplyDeleteThis little jewel could be done by 10 or 11 of the largest states(any collection that had 270 electoral votes).
There are several legal questions that will arise if they get close. They claim, for example, that the requirement of congressional approval of the compact is not a problem. Congress may see it differently.
also I would think that the Court might see it as an illegitimate Const. amendment.