Walz, Kamala, and the Electoral College
Walz said the quiet part out loud:
“I think all of us know, the Electoral College needs to go. We need a national popular vote,” Walz said Tuesday during a campaign fundraiser at the home of Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Walz made similar comments at an earlier fundraiser in Seattle, as well.
While running for president in 2019, Harris said she was “open” to the idea of abolishing the Electoral College.
That seems like it’s on the Democrats’ agenda, although ordinarily it would take a constitutional amendment. There’s also the The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which wouldn’t abolish the Electoral College but would get around it and make the national popular vote supreme, and would have the advantage (if SCOTUS found it be constitutional, which is doubtful in the present court) of not requiring an amendment to be implemented.
However, much as Walz and Harris and their supporters might long for the national popular vote to be ascendant, they seem to have walked back overt statements of that sort:
Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, remained silent Thursday on whether he still supports eliminating the Electoral College, after the Harris campaign insisted his position did not reflect that of the campaign’s. …
… [A]ccording to campaign officials pressed on the issue following Walz’s remarks, eliminating the Electoral College in favor of a national popular vote is not an official position of Harris’ current campaign.
And here’s how they tried to undo what Walz said:
“Governor Walz believes that every vote matters in the Electoral College and he is honored to be traveling the country and battleground states working to earn support for the Harris-Walz ticket,” a Harris campaign spokesperson said in a statement sent to select media outlets like CNN and USA Today. “He was commenting to a crowd of strong supporters about how the campaign is built to win 270 electoral votes. And, he was thanking them for their support that is helping fund those efforts.”
That doesn’t fit what he said.
And let’s hear from demagogue Jamie Raskin:
Just last month, Democratic Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin suggested there could be deadly consequences for Americans if the Electoral College was not done away with. Raskin said a national popular vote was a far better option than the current “convoluted, antique, obsolete system from the 18th century, which these days can get you killed as nearly it did on Jan. 6, 2021.”
The article also mentions that Walz signed a bill that made his state of Minnesota a party to The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. That seems to be another indication of wishing to override the Electoral College, which is seen as an impediment to Democrat power.
I wonder, though, if abolishing the Electoral College outright would be a question of “be careful what you wish for.” In states such as California, where the Electoral College guarantees that all the electors will vote for the Democrat because the Democrat always wins the state, there probably are many people who would otherwise vote for Republicans but who just don’t bother. Those people might be more energized to get to the polls and vote if the Electoral College were to be eliminated and they would be contributing to a national popular vote that would determine the winner.
A national popular vote for president is a stupid, mean, deceitful idea. It would make the 5 largest cities, e.g. L.A. and Chicago, all Democratic swamps, would determine the course of the USA, disenfranchising W. Va.,Kansas, Wyoming, Idaho, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Vermont, New Hampshire, the Dakotas, among others, where the Dem-GOP vote might be split 48-52.
If the Electoral College is gone, then you can really dial up the ballots cast in the names of illegals. Imagine California Democrats trying to bleed the state of every vote they can–we would see 75-25% splits in favor of the Democrats in presidential elections.
The perpetual Democrat lament: “The Constitution gets in our way. We don’t like the EC, we don’t like the Supreme Court, we don’t like it that small states get two senators, we don’t like it that yahoos in rural Idaho get a vote that’s just as equal as a Puerto Rican’s vote in NY.”
So just remember, when they say “our democracy” what they mean is “dictatorship of the proletariat.”
Well, well. Finally, a government college that they don’t want to fling endless buckets of money at.
Now that made me Laugh. A very good one, Marion
They are just living up to their party’s name. They will not be happy until the US is a pure democracy, with all the attendant evils even the Greeks recognized after suffering.
At least, marginally, the Republicans seem to believe in the republic.
If the Electoral College is tossed, it will open the door for several (many?) states to secede from the union.
And this time, they will have a damn good, legitimate reason for doing so.
The 13 original colonies VOLUNTARILY decided to join together and create one nation. There is nothing in the Constitution that speaks to a state wishing to leave the union.
Have any of them heard of “The Connecticut Compromise ?”
I doubt it.
@neo:if SCOTUS found [the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact] to be constitutional, which is doubtful in the present court
I’m curious to know what would be the basis of ruling it wasn’t Constitutional.
Article II, Section says
and I’m not seeing any language in there about that would forbid the NPVIC. It seems the legislature appoints a slate of Electors in any way they want, including based on the outcome of the national popular vote, and they can change that at any time with or without a compact of other states, from what I can see there or in the amendments.
Currently they choose to do it how they do it now, but they didn’t used to, and nothing in the Constitution appears to require that they tie it to the outcome of any vote at all.
If the Electoral College favored Democrats, the Democrats would be leading the charge to keep it intact.
**AND**
If the Electoral College favored Democrats, the Republicans would be leading the charge to abolish it.
[Wellll, Republicans rarely lead a charge to do anything. Whaddaya say we amend “leading the charge” to wording that is kinder, gentler.]
Mark my words.
The (usual, canonical) pro and con arguments pale in comparison to “whom would it favor these-a-days?” — ignoring just whom might it favor in future days.
MJR
Ridiculous argument. Despite the GOP loosing presidential elections, I doubt any have ever called for abolition of the EC
What is needed are two major reforms.
-1- We need to make voting precincts as nearly equal in population as would be practical. If that results in many more than 438 congresscritters, so be it.
-2- We need for electoral votes to be assigned by each voting precinct voting for one elector from that voting precinct, plus two electors-at-large for the state as a whole.
I have no clue as to how either of these measures might ever pass.
Fire away . . .
@M J R:The (usual, canonical) pro and con arguments pale in comparison to “whom would it favor these-a-days?” — ignoring just whom might it favor in future days.
I’ve seen this expressed as “procedural arguments are always insincere”.
physicsguy (5:51 pm), thank you for your kind words [smile].
Actually, it’s *far* more an observation than an argument. It’s not an argument at all.
Never was.
Niketas Choniates (5:52 pm) has it just about right.
M J R:
Democrats are called Democrats for a reason, and Republicans are called Republicans for a reason.
@M J R:We need to make voting precincts as nearly equal in population as would be practical. If that results in many more than 438 congresscritters, so be it.
They’d all have to be the same size as Wyoming, so we’d need 574 in Congress. I’m not sure that’s obviously so much more unwieldy as the current 435, which was fixed by statute in 1911 and doesn’t require an amendment.
We need for electoral votes to be assigned by each voting precinct voting for one elector from that voting precinct, plus two electors-at-large for the state as a whole.
Forcing every state to be Nebraska and Maine; they can do this voluntarily now if they wish, but an amendment would be needed to force them all to do it this way.
But given that you are already needing to rewrite the Constitution to make this change, what problem are you trying to solve? I can see it making the swing states less important, but other than that it’s not going to do much else. I’m not seeing what a one-party state gets out of it that makes them strongly in favor, and I see what a swing state has to lose that would make them strongly oppose.
Niketas:
Please see this as well as this.
neo (6:20 pm), acknowledged.
I am happy to grant that physicsguy (5:51 pm) has a point, in that Republicans have never shown any interest in messing with the Electoral College, and if the Electoral College favored Democrats in some future year, they’d go along — much like Republicans not pressing for Fox News anchors to moderate a presidential “debate”.
But to return to “Democrats are called Democrats for a reason, and Republicans are called Republicans for a reason,” yes, there are historical reasons for those names, but how relevant are those names today?
I think that for most people, “Democrat” and “Republican” are just names for the two major parties now, with little thought given to meanings attached to those names. They may as well be the Blue Party and the Red Party. (After all, we do have a Green Party!)
Certainly “Democrat” is laughable when considering that Harris never won a presidential primary bla bla bla. But let’s not stray too far afield.
I agree with “for a reason”, and the reason is historically significant, but I question its present-day significance by the time we’ve all arrived in the 21st Century.
The National Vote Compact would last right up until a Republican wins the national vote and the blue states would change their laws the next day back to the old system.
Niketas Choniates (6:27 pm) asks, “given that you are already needing to rewrite the Constitution to make this change, what problem are you trying to solve?”
First, I don’t want to rewrite the Constitution, but on the other hand, I don’t see that what I’d want to see can be done voluntarily state by state. It’s a leading reason that I confessed above, “I have no clue as to how either of these measures might ever pass.”
Confession: I have wandered into pie-in-the-sky theorizing (apologies), but it’s how I’d like to see things work. If only I were in the room with the Founders [laughs at self].
“What problem are you trying to solve?” I see a problem in all of a state’s umpteen-and-then-some electors all going to one candidate when the vote within the state is almost evenly split — or even if it is split unevenly. I see a problem when a state has to go all-in this way or that way, when a state’s preference, doing as I theoretically propose, may better reflect proportionally the will of its voters.
Conclusion: I think my pie-in-the-sky way is a better way than doing what we have now. Your mileage may vary (and probably does).
Yancey Ward (6:53 pm), yep. My point (in)exactly.
Maybe not back to the “old system”, but they’ll scurry to find a way to adjust the system so that it more reliably reflects Democrat interests.
M J R:
It is still the case that Republicans tend to favor state-by-state solutions and federalism, and Democrats tend to favor a powerful central government with majority control over the whole, even if the majority control is very narrow (as long as the Democrats are the ones in control). That’s the reason Democrats have less respect for the filibuster, too – they want to muscle through radical statutes with a bare majority and have no interest in protecting minority rights. There is a tendency (not always honored, of course) among Republicans to have more respect for minority rights and for the right of states to go their own way (abortion is one example of this).
That is why the names of the parties still have some meaning, whether most people are aware of that meaning or not.
@neo: I took a look at your articles. Both are written by the same guy, and have extensive citations to articles arguing that the compact WOULD be constitutional, of course, so I’m not sure it’s a slam dunk that the Supreme Court would just reject those in favor of this one guy, but let’s see what he says…
The first one is long, but if I’m summarizing fairly, it says the compact should be understood to be unconstitutional, while conceding that the text of the Constitution does not forbid it.
In order to make the case, the author says that states never did it that way, and that the Framers did not want to choose the President by national popular vote. Consequently, of all the possible ways a state legislature COULD and HAS chosen its electors, national popular vote has been implicitly but not explicitly singled out as not a valid way. He says that the Framers intended that states select Electors according to “in-state sentiment” either directly through the state’s voters or indirectly as expressed by the elected legislature’s selection of a slate.
My reaction is:
1.) Nobody disputes that states never selected Electors based on national popular vote; the dispute is whether the Constitution actually forbids it.
2) Allowing for the sake of argument that “in-state sentiment” is the only valid method to choose Electors, what if the people in that state express the sentiment that the Electors should be chosen by national popular vote? If their state has joined that pact, those voters HAVE expressed that sentiment in an “indirect” way that he acknowledges was valid when state legislatures made the decision without the state’s voters. They voted for that law that instructs the legislature how to select Electors, or they voted for the legislature that put that law in place, and they didn’t repeal it or make their legislature repeal it.
3) He spends a lot of time on the discussions of the Framers, but where they ended up, our current system, was a compromise between those who DID want popular election of the President and the various factions who wanted it done some other way. And what they agreed to as a compromise simply does not rule out the states deciding that they will use the national popular vote to choose Electors. The states do not all have to do it the same way and the way they do it is deliberately not specified. The Framers could have specified it and chose not to. (They don’t seem have put nearly as much importance on the issue as we do today.)
The second article does not explain why the compact would be unconstitutional, just that it’s a bad idea: it wouldn’t be honored, and couldn’t be enforced. I agree it wouldn’t be honored or enforced, but that wasn’t my question. The only thing said about it actually being unconstitutional there is “In my view, it is unconstitutional for states to appoint electors against the wishes of their own state electorate but in accordance with the will of voters outside the state,” referring back to the first source. But state legislatures used to choose the slates of electors without the input of their states’ voters at all, they don’t have to have a reason for why they choose the Electors they do, and they never did. If there was a compact, the voters of that state already DID express their sentiment that the national popular vote winner should be President, in an indirect way that he says is okay if the legislature just picks a slate with no vote at all.
neo (6:56 pm), point well-taken. I get you. Thanks for engaging me.
First they pushed and still going to wipe out the Electoral College with this popular voting.
They would love for the big cities to pick the President