Comments on: About that Massachusetts law re the electoral college

By: anna

anna — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 21:37:33 +0000

James Taranto is all over it:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703578104575397100729241576.html

His last line is priceless:
“Let’s put the question in starkly partisan terms: If you’re a Republican, do you trust Massachusetts lawmakers to keep their word, and to defy the will of the voters who elected them, if by doing so they would make Sarah Palin president?”

By: IgotBupkis

IgotBupkis — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:52:21 +0000

> …Rules are made to be bent if the goal is pure horseshit

Seems ya was missin’ a word there at the end, now added above.

Glad to fix it fer ya….

:oP

By: Minh

Minh — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:51:03 +0000

So what do the elected/appointed electors have to say about this. Do anyone know if a state can lawfully compell an Elector to vote the way he pledge? Constitutionally the state can; by law determine the method and means of choosing the electors, not the power to decide how they should vote.

On a practical issue, since the date can’t force elector to vote a certain way and don’t know how the election in the other 50 states would go, do the state that is part of the compact wait till after everyone vote so they know who would win the popular vote?

By: The Mega Independent

The Mega Independent — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 13:52:08 +0000

This appears to go very well with the Amnesty plan.

By: bob sykes

bob sykes — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 13:09:07 +0000

Even with the requirement that states comprising a majority of the Electoral College pass similar legislation, this law effectively disenfranchises MA voters. MA voters will always vote Democratic, but half the time a majority of Americans will vote Republican. So, half the time MA’s electoral votes will go to the Republican candidate against their wishes.

Socialists are idiots, violent idiots at that.

By: turfmann

turfmann — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 10:10:32 +0000

Fiendishly clever is an apt way of describing our legislature in Massachusetts, and not just this bill either.

It’s patently designed to circumvent the plain language of the Constitution.

But note well that this is the same bunch of knuckleheads that changed the law regarding appointment of a replacement senator to ensure that a democrat would succeed a President Kerry, changed it back to ensure that a democrat would succeed the late Senator Kennedy and wound up with Scott Brown (R, Massachusetts) instead.

I will have a big decision to make come inauguration day 2013. Should I attend the inauguration of Sarah Palin on the mall in DC or in Boston, where she won the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Think it can’t happen? How many times did the Amiable Dunce win here?

By: John

John — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 05:49:52 +0000

I wonder if Mr. Obama will instruct his DOJ to sue Massachusetts?

By: Elise

Elise — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 02:58:34 +0000

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact has been around since 2001, almost certainly triggered by Gore’s loss to Bush. At this point, States representing 61 of the 270 electoral votes needed to make the Compact work have signed on. If Massachusetts signs on, that total will rise to 73.

It will get interesting if enough States adopt the Compact to make it work and then a Republican wins the popular vote. (So far, the States adopting the Compact look pretty blue.) My guess is that if any of the States adopting the Compact are still blue when that happens, they will repeal their participation in the Compact before the Electoral College meets. In other words, the Compact will stand only if a Democrat wins the popular vote.

As for Constitutionality, that’s unclear. States are allowed to decide how to apportion their own electoral vote. However, the Compact Clause (Article One, Section 10, Clause 3) prohibits States from entering into compacts with each other without Congressional approval. The extent of the Compact Clause’s prohibition does not seem to be entirely clear.

Even if technically Constitutional, however, this is clearly an attempt to circumvent the Amendment process. When I wrote about this, I filed it under the category “Hubris”.

By: rickl

rickl — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 01:20:35 +0000

jms Says: July 28th, 2010 at 8:00 pm

It would be a complete disaster.

Cloward and Piven would love it, though.

By: jms

jms — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:00:49 +0000

It’s a terrible idea, for a very practical reason. Remember Bush vs Gore? All the chaos in Florida? Well imagine that under this system, we have an election, and the national popular vote is a virtual tie — say a difference of a few hundred votes. There is no reason why that couldn’t happen.

Under the electoral college system. the vast majority of states election results do not need to be revisited. Only the one or two states with close results need to be recounted. Under a popular vote system, every vote in the entire country would need to be recounted. There would be continual changes coming in from all parts of the country — a bag of “found” ballots in Wisconsin. Hanging chads in Georgia. Voting machine malfunctions in North Dakota. Complete chaos. It would be Bush vs Gore * 50. Every hour there would be new numbers, and cries of vote fraud from all 50 states.

It would be a complete disaster.