What we can do without an amendment

From my emailbox from Russ Feingold:

Friend,

I want to tell you a little bit more about how we can change the Electoral College without a constitutional amendment.

You see, the constitution specifies that each individual state chooses how to allocate its own delegates to the Electoral College. In practice, most states allocate all their delegates to the candidate that wins the state.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

If enough states to represent an Electoral College majority pledge to allocate their delegates to the winner of the national popular vote, then it doesn’t matter how the rest of the states allocate their delegates — the candidate who wins the most votes nationwide will always become president.

Voters in non-swing states will have a voice again, and our president will be elected by a legitimate national majority every time. This is absolutely worth fighting for.

Sign LegitAction’s petition today to show you support state-by-state efforts to make sure our next president is the candidate who wins the most votes.

It takes 270 Electoral College votes to pick a president; states representing 165 Electoral College votes have already joined the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.

Right now, legislation is pending in Connecticut to join the compact. LegitAction is supporting local activists pushing for passage there and doing everything we can to help.

But the compact doesn’t take effect in each state until enough other states have joined to tip the election. We need to build support and awareness nationwide in order to encourage more states to join.

Our government is only legitimate to the extent it reflects the will of the people, and this is a key way to ensure the voices of people throughout the country matter.

Help make our presidential elections legitimate. Sign on today to show your support for the national popular vote.

This is a real opportunity to not just change the way candidates campaign, but to help ensure our country always elects a president who wins a legitimate majority of the country’s votes. We must work to seize it.

Thank you for signing on to help seize this opportunity,

Russ Feingold

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8 thoughts on “What we can do without an amendment

  1. We should allocate them based on the vote in each district and the the senators on who wins the state. You cannot go against the wishes of the electorate in that state and override them to coincide with a few states. That is dumb.

    1. Maine (since enacting a state law in 1969) and Nebraska (since enacting a state law in 1992) have awarded one electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district, and two electoral votes statewide.

      Nebraska in 2008 was the first time any state in the past century gave one electoral vote to the candidate who did not win the state.

      2016 is the first time an electoral vote in Maine was given to the candidate who did not win the state.

      In Maine, where they award electoral votes by congressional district, the closely divided 2nd congressional district received campaign events in 2008 (whereas Maine’s 1st reliably Democratic district was ignored).
      In 2012, the whole state was ignored.
      77% of Maine voters have supported a national popular vote for President
      In 2008, the Maine Senate passed the National Popular Vote bill

      Republican leaders in Maine proposed and passed a constitutional amendment that, if passed at referendum, would require a 2/3rds vote in all future redistricting decisions. Then they changed their minds and wanted to pass a majority-only plan to make redistricting in their favor even easier.

      In Nebraska, which also uses the district method, the 2008 presidential campaigns did not pay the slightest attention to the people of Nebraska’s reliably Republican 1st and 3rd congressional districts because it was a foregone conclusion that McCain would win the most popular votes in both of those districts. The issues relevant to voters of the 2nd district (the Omaha area) mattered, while the (very different) issues relevant to the remaining (mostly rural) 2/3rds of the state were irrelevant.
      In 2012, the whole state was ignored.
      74% of Nebraska voters have supported a national popular vote for President

      After Obama won 1 congressional district in Nebraska in 2008,Nebraska Republicans moved that district to make it more Republican to avoid another GOP loss there, and the leadership committee of the Nebraska Republican Party promptly adopted a resolution requiring all GOP elected officials to favor overturning their district method for awarding electoral votes or lose the party’s support.
      A GOP push to return Nebraska to a winner-take-all system of awarding its electoral college votes for president only barely failed in March 2015 and April 2016.

      The National Popular Vote bill is the way to make every person’s vote equal and matter to their candidate because it guarantees that the candidate who gets the most votes in all 50 states and DC becomes President.

    2. The National Popular Vote bill is 61% of the way to guaranteeing the majority of Electoral College votes and the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in the country, by changing state winner-take-all laws (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), without changing anything in the Constitution, using the built-in method that the Constitution provides for states to make changes.

      All voters would be valued equally in presidential elections, no matter where they live.
      Candidates, as in other elections, would allocate their time, money, polling, organizing, and ad buys roughly in proportion to the population

      Every vote, everywhere, for every candidate, would be politically relevant and equal in every presidential election.
      No more distorting, crude, and divisive and red and blue state maps of predictable outcomes, that don’t represent any minority party voters within each state.

      The bill would take effect when enacted by states with a majority of the electoral votes—270 of 538.
      All of the presidential electors from the enacting states will be supporters of the presidential candidate receiving the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC)—thereby guaranteeing that candidate with an Electoral College majority.

      In 2017, the bill has passed the New Mexico Senate.
      The bill was approved in 2016 by a unanimous bipartisan House committee vote in both Georgia (16 electoral votes) and Missouri (10).
      The bill has passed 35 state legislative chambers in 23 rural, small, medium, large, red, blue, and purple states with 261 electoral votes.
      The bill has been enacted by 11 small, medium, and large jurisdictions with 165 electoral votes – 61% of the way to guaranteeing the presidency to the candidate with the most popular votes in the country

      NationalPopularVote

    3. Because of state-by-state winner-take-all laws, not mentioned, much less endorsed, in the Constitution. . .

      Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker in 2015 was correct when he said
      “The nation as a whole is not going to elect the next president,”
      “The presidential election will not be decided by all states, but rather just 12 of them.

      Candidates have no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, campaign, or care about the voter concerns in the dozens of states where they are safely ahead or hopelessly behind.

      With the end of the primaries, without the National Popular Vote bill in effect, the political relevance of 70% of all Americans was finished for the presidential election.

      In the 2016 general election campaign

      Over half (57%) of the campaign events were held in just 4 states (Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Ohio).

      Virtually all (94%) of the campaign events were in just 12 states (containing only 30% of the country’s population).

    4. Because of state-by-state winner-take-all laws, not mentioned, much less endorsed, in the Constitution. . .

      In 2000, 537 popular votes in Florida determined that the candidate who had 537,179 less national popular votes would win.

      Less than 80,000 votes in 3 states determined the 2016 election, where there was a lead of over 2,8oo,ooo popular votes nationwide.

      Since World War II, a shift of a few thousand votes in 1, 2, or 3 states would have elected a 2nd-place candidate in 6 of the 18 presidential elections

    5. A survey of Wisconsin voters in 2008 showed 71% overall support for a national popular vote for President.

      “The bottom line is that the electors from those states who cast their ballot for the nationwide vote winner are completely accountable (to the extent that independent agents are ever accountable to anyone) to the people of those states. The National Popular Vote states aren’t delegating their Electoral College votes to voters outside the state; they have made a policy choice about the substantive intelligible criteria (i.e., national popularity) that they want to use to make their selection of electors. There is nothing in Article II (or elsewhere in the Constitution) that prevents them from making the decision that, in the Twenty-First Century, national voter popularity is a (or perhaps the) crucial factor in worthiness for the office of the President.”
      – Vikram David Amar – professor and the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the UC Davis School of Law. Before becoming a professor, he clerked for Judge William A. Norris of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and for Justice Harry Blackmun at the Supreme Court of the United States.

      In Gallup polls since 1944 until before this election, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided).

      Support for a national popular vote has been strong among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in every state surveyed. In the 41 now shown on divisive maps as red, blue, and purple states surveyed, overall support has been in the 67-81% range – in rural states, in small states, in Southern and border states, in big states, and in other states polled.

      In state polls of voters each with a second question that specifically emphasized that their state’s electoral votes would be awarded to the winner of the national popular vote in all 50 states, not necessarily their state’s winner, there was only a 4-8% decrease of support.

      Question 1: “How do you think we should elect the President: Should it be the candidate who gets the most votes in all 50 states, or the current Electoral College system?”

      Question 2: “Do you think it more important that a state’s electoral votes be cast for the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in that state, or is it more important to guarantee that the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states becomes president?”

      Support for a National Popular Vote
      South Dakota — 75% for Question 1, 67% for Question 2.
      Connecticut — 74% for Question 1, 68% for Question 2,
      Utah — 70% for Question 1, 66% for Question 2

      NationalPopularVote

  2. “Sign on today so I have another valid email address, to which I (and anyone else I sell the lists to) can send multiple fundraising emails every day until the Earth ceases its rotation!”

    1. Washcorepub
      That’s a great response especially given the fact that Guv Dopey sold all his suckeres emails to pay his debt for his carnival tour

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