Calif. Senate OKs electoral compact

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Houston Chronicle/Associated Press

May 14, 2007, 9:30PM
Calif. Senate OKs electoral compact


By STEVE LAWRENCE Associated Press Writer
© 2007 The Associated Press

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — For the second time in nine months, the state Senate has approved giving the state's 55 electoral votes for president to the winner of the national popular vote.

But the bill, approved by the Senate on Monday, could be headed for another veto by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. He has said the measure could result in the state's electoral votes going to a candidate opposed by a majority of California voters.

The bill now goes to the Assembly. Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear said the Republican governor had not taken a position on it.

The measure would ratify an interstate compact under which states would agree to award their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, regardless of the preferences of their own voters.



Read more: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/nation/4803739.html

[dsa]

1. i actually have to agree with schwarzo on this one

as i explained in some other post on this subject, i don't think it's right for a state to award its electoral votes even if it's the exact opposite of how its own population voted.

[Crabby Appleton]

2. I agree, nt

[bemildred]

3. Yes! Elect the President by national popular vote! nt

[Peace Patriot]

4. I don't understand the thinking behind this. Anybody have a clue?

I wouldn't mind being rid of the electoral college (one of the Founders' few failures to think ahead--designed for rural society with primitive transportation and communications systems*). But this sounds like a half measure, or maybe just a weird measure. What does it accomplish, except to disenfranchise that state's majority?

The CA Senate is either 2 to 1, or 3 to 2, Democratic (can't remember which is which vs. the CA Assembly, but I think it's 2 to 1). So I have to presume that's it's somehow aimed at being more democratic with a small d, rather than less (although you never know these days--it's the Democrats, really, who gave us electronic voting machines run on "trade secret," proprietary programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite Corporations).

Anyway, I haven't been following this, and don't understand it. Anybody?


------------------------

*(Their other failure was to rely on the states to regulate business corporations in the public interest. Jefferson got overruled on this one as well as on his proposal to outlaw slavery. He was quite concerned that corporations could become too powerful.)

[bemildred]

5. Innovator Devises Way Around Electoral College

It is perfectly legal, requires no amendment to anything, and has the desired effect, that is election of the President by national popular vote.

LOS ALTOS HILLS, Calif., Sept. 21 — In his early 20’s, John R. Koza and fellow graduate students invented a brutally complicated board game based on the Electoral College that became a brief cult hit and recently fetched $100 for an antique version on eBay.

---

Now, a 63-year-old eminence among computer scientists who teaches genetic programming at Stanford, Dr. Koza has decided to top off things with an end run on the Constitution. He has concocted a plan for states to skirt the Electoral College system legally to insure the election of whichever presidential candidate receives the most votes nationwide.

“When people complain that it’s an end run,” Dr. Koza said, “I just tell them, ‘Hey, an end run is a legal play in football.’ ’’

The first fruit of his effort, a bill approved by the California legislature that would allocate the state’s 55 electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, sits on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s desk. The governor has to decide by Sept. 30 whether to sign it, a decision that may well determine whether Dr. Koza’s scheme takes flight or becomes another relic in the history of efforts to kill the Electoral College.

Story from Sept. 2006. If you google "koza election plan" or "koza vote plan" you can get more.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/22/us/politics/22electoral.html?ex=1316577600&en=2568c9756492c285&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

[slackmaster]

10. "perfectly legal" is just an opinion

The Supreme Court might not agree.

[bemildred]

12. Indeed it is.

Since it is a matter of state, not federal, law it would have to go to the state supreme courts.

[hughee99]

6. I don't like it...

I know there's a lot of people who like the idea of the president being decided by popular vote rather than the EC, and I certainly understand the sentiment, but this particular law is not the way to go.

First of all, this isn't national, it's one state deciding to do this, which creates an unfairness (or perhaps disenfranchisement) in the system. If ALL states were to do this, it wouldn't be an issue since all voter would have an equal say in all EV's, but that's not what will result from this law.

The voters of each state get complete influence in how their EV's go, and in addition, they have some say in where California's EV's go. The people of California have NO say in other state's EV, and far less influence in their own state's EV.

Voter fraud (or rigging ballot boxes) will have far more influence than it does now. Right now, if you rig a few polling places and manufacture a few thousand votes here or there, the MOST it can do is influence your states EV's. Now, the repukes will be able to manufacture thousands of votes all across the country for the purpose of stealing California's EV's. They'll also be able to distribute it so that it's far more difficult to detect. In addition, each state has it's own polling procedures and vote tallying standards, some work better than others. California will have no say in these standards but will have to abide the results no matter how screwed up another state's election system is.

In 2004, the repukes were able to manufacture (or suppress) about 100k votes in Ohio to give them the win. If they're able to do this, then in 2000, the repukes certainly would have been able to manufacture the necessary 500k+ votes they needed to make sure that * won the popular vote and they may have even been able to manufacture the approximately 1.7 million votes in 1976 to get Gerald Ford elected. Until we get the issues resolved with voting and counting the votes, this will just make a bad situation worse.

If the Governator vetoes it, it's a "win" for the people of California.

[bemildred]

7. You are wrong, that isn't how it works.

It only takes effect if it is law in enough states to determine the outcome. California will never do this by itself, only if there are enough states doing it to provide a majority of electoral votes, and then it will determine the outcome. Otherwise the old rules apply.

[slackmaster]

9. That's an end-run around the requirement of 3/4 of states to amend the Constitution

n't

[bemildred]

11. Exactly, but perfectly legal.

The states have a constitutional right to dispose of their electoral votes any way they choose.

[slackmaster]

13. California's constitution does not provide for counting votes in other states

I believe this would be legal in California only if introduced as an amendment to the state constitution.

CALIFORNIA CONSTITUTION
ARTICLE 2 VOTING, INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM, AND RECALL

SEC. 2. A United States citizen 18 years of age and resident in
this State may vote.

Non-residents simply do not have the right to vote in California elections. The next section, added recently, says...

SEC. 2.5. A voter who casts a vote in an election in accordance
with the laws of this State shall have that vote counted.

Someone who is not a resident cannot vote in accordance with the laws of the state.

[bemildred]

15. No, it's definitely just about California and elections in California.

And it doesn't provide for any out of staters to vote here either.

But that has nothing to do with this proposal, which is not about who gets to vote in California.

Are you aware that in many states it used to be the case that the state legislature decided how to cast electoral votes, and that state legislatures used to decide who became US Senator from some states too?

The issue is how to choose state presidential electors, which is entirely a state issue. They don't have to vote at all, having people vote for presidential electors was a reform. So if the state wants to decide to cast presidential electors according to the outcome of the national presidential vote, they can, and if they want to do that only when a majority of other state presidential electors will be cast that way too, they can.

[hughee99]

17. How many other states?

In any case, if it isn't ALL the states, then California will be ceding some of it's power to other states where those states NOT participating will have some say in Cal's EV's but will also hold complete control over it's own.

My issue with the election rigging issue may only be exacerbated by this, as there will be even more incentive to manufacture votes in "safe" states. For example, let's say a Cal does this, but a few high population red states like Texas, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia don't participate. Come election time, when these states report "record turnout" in districts where voting is controlled by repukes, creating a few hundred thousand (or possibly 1 million+) votes for the repuke, the decidedly blue California will be stuck giving up their EV's because of fraud, whereas even if everyone in Cal voted 100% for the Dem, it wouldn't affect the EV's of those states one bit. If Cal doesn't like the fact that some state is using electronic voting and has all sorts of other election issues, they have no standing to fight it in court.

As for the state legislatures deciding who became a US senator, that was NOT the case. This was changed by the federal government with the 17th amendment (1913). The states only had say in that they needed to ratify the amendment, and since enough states did ratify it, any state that may have objected would have had it forced upon them anyway.

I'm not arguing that the plan is illegal, I'm not sure whether it is or not. I think it's a bad deal for Californians, and I do not see how they benefit from giving up their power unless all the states participate.

[bemildred]

18. Paragraphs in order:

1.) You do not cede power by exercising it.

2.) It does not take effect until enough states pass equivalent laws so as to determine the outcome. Once that is true, it does not matter what the other states do, the outcome is determined by the states that follow this procedure, they have enough electoral votes between them to control the outcome. It is true that election fraud will not be eliminated by this, but there is no reason to think it will make it worse than it is now either. Manipulating the national vote count is NOT going to be easier than manipulating a few particular states. Gore won the national vote count, he lost Florida, or so the USSC said. This would make that irrelevant. Whether you "give up" your electoral votes or not means doodle unless it affects the outcome. In 2000 and 2004 California went 100% Democratic and the result was Bush X 2. Under this plan the result in 2000 would have been Gore. How is that bad for Californians? The real effect of this is that you are not voting for electors at all anymore, you are voting for President, one person, one vote.

3.) Prior to the amendment, state legislatures did decide who got to be Senator, which is what I said.

4.) The present "plan", the electoral college, is a rotten deal for Californians. This is not perfect, but it's better, and it will force other changes that will be even better. Most importantly, it will force Presidential candidates to court a national audience, not selected factions or party oligarchies. If you piss off half the electorate, you are gone at the next election.

[hughee99]

19. I think maybe you're misunderstanding me...

and perhaps I misunderstood you as well. I wasn't aware that by "enough states" you meant that more than 1/2 the EV's would need to pass similar legislation for this to be enacted. My objections were much more significant when we weren't talking about more than 1/2 the EV's, but since we are... California voted for * in the last two elections. In 2000, Gore won the popular vote and under this system, he would have been president. In 2004, with 100K more votes in Ohio, Kerry would have become president, but ONLY under the old system. Under this proposal, * still won the popular vote by 3 million, so this wouldn't have fixed that issue at all. Over the last 200 years, this system would have only changed the outcome of 4 elections:

1824 John Quincy Adams
1876 Rutherford B. Hayes
1888 Benjamin Harrison
2000 George W. Bush

It does address 1 election issue that we have, that voters in different states are not equally represented in the EC. Yes, the current system is a rotten deal for Californians, and (given that 1/2 the EV's have to participate) a national popular vote would be much better for them, but I don't think that it will force Presidential candidates to court a national audience, just a different audience. If this is all based on the popular vote, why the hell would any candidate spend their limited time and resources going to lightly populated states when they could go to LA, SF, Houston, NY, Chicago, or Miami where they can meet with more voters in a day than they can in a week in most states. The party will still have factions and oligarchies, they'll just be made up of different people.

As far as election fraud goes, the repukes were able to manufacture about 100k votes through vote counting or suppression in Ohio, or about 2% of Ohio's votes. Not a very red state, and one that everyone was watching. I don't imagine they did much of this in places like Texas, Utah, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, or much of the midwest because there was no point. Gore won the popular vote by about 500k. If they can crank out 100k in Ohio, why do you think they would have had MORE difficulty producing 500k nationally, when they could do most the manipulation in their own back yard? They only need 10k per state, or in the case of my own home state of Massachusetts, about 28 extra repuke votes per town or city. Based on the last election, a 2% voter swing is almost 2 1/2 million votes nationally. If this were the system in 2000, I have no doubt they would have found an extra 500k-1 million votes across the country to make sure that * got elected anyway.

I completely misunderstood what you were saying about directly voting for Senators, and though you were trying to make the point that the states decided to directly elect their Senators.

[bemildred]

20. OK.

Half the EVs is what Koza's plan says.

Thanks for correcting my error about how California voted.

You are right that it would not directly affect the outcome of many past elections.

It seems obvious to me that stealing 500K votes would be more work than stealing 100K.

It seems obvious to me that in that case the theft would be more obvious. It was clear enough to those paying attention in the last two elections, and even the USSC had the good grace to be embarassed by its actions in 2000. The resolution of the crimes committed in Ohio in 2004 remains to be seen.

I agree with the other fellow that doesn't like this that reforming away the EC is a better solution, but it is also more difficult to carry out, and there is no guarantee that Congress won't muck it up. This is clean, clear, requires nothing of Congress, and doable.

The point is that if you rely on the national popular vote, you have to address the national electorate, in some form. You can't just address particular states and ignore the rest. Small states won't like it. Big states will. Under-attended segments of the electorate will have to be attended to. The rules will be changed. Old methods of manipulating the outcome will have to be reconsidered.

You are right that it is no panacea.

[hughee99]

21. With 1/2 the EV's necessary to implement this

it throws out my "losing it's power" argument since they have more influence over the national vote total than they do over the EC. However, I think it would be far easier to steal 500k votes out of 100 million (less than .5%) than it would be to steal 100k out of 6 million (or about 2%). In Ohio they're still investigating, I think, but they only need to look at a handful of counties. Imagine if, in order to determine a stolen election, you needed to look at 10 counties in Texas, 6 in Florida, 4 in Ohio, 5 in Georgia, 3 in Alabama, 3 in North Carolina... with different election methods, counting standards, and people in charge, to figure out what happened in each instance before determining if the national result was affected. That is the sort of "nightmare" scenario I'm really looking to avoid.

I'd like to see the EC reformed such that the EV/voter is much the same in all states. Frankly, I think if they increased the number of EV's and redistributed them more equitably, that would resolve some of these issues, but yes, it is more difficult to do. I don't know that you're right about them not being able to ignore states any longer, though. Some states will get more attention. California and Texas will see both candidates a lot more often since there's a lot of value there even if you don't win the state. New Mexico, Montana, Vermont and North Dakota will probably see both candidates far less, since there's less to be gained there even if you win the state. I think some under-attended segments of the electorate will get more attention, though.

You're 100% right that this will change the old methods of manipulating the outcome, but IMHO, this will make it easier to manipulate, not harder.

[slackmaster]

8. The only proper fix is a Constitutional amendment eliminating the EC

I've read dozens of thoughtful, well-written opposing opinions from other people on this and my mine is completely unmoved.

This is a jury-rig, band-aid fix that amounts to potential state-sponsored disenfranchisement. As long as there is an electoral college, my state's electoral votes must not be determined by events that occur outside of my state.

[bemildred]

14. That's just an opinion. nt

[LiberalFighter]

16. If Electoral College is required my suggestion...

Definition:

Congressional District Electoral Vote = Vote alloted to a state for each of their Congressional Districts.

Senate Electoral Vote = Vote alloted to a state for each of their US Senators.

A Presidential candidate receives an Electoral Vote based on the popular vote for each Congressional District won.

A Presidential candidate receives 2 Electoral Votes based on the popular vote in each state won.

OR OR OR OR OR OR OR OR OR OR OR OR OR OR OR OR OR OR

A Presidential candidate receives all of the Congressional Electoral Votes in each state they receive the majority vote of the popular vote. Senate Electoral Votes are not included - not counted. Instead Senate Electoral Votes are shoved into bushwads nether regions.

[Mr. Brown of MD]

22. U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section I

Each State shall appoint, in such a 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 ...

I don't know that you could say the framers of the Constitution would approve of the Koza plan, but I really doubt they'd like the situation where any given election only comes down to "battleground" states like Ohio and Florida every time.

At any rate, the Constitution clearly gives states the authority to make this choice for themselves. If 50%+1 worth of EV states want to enter into a compact to give their EVs to the nationwide popular vote winner - there is no question, they have the right to do that. As far as the EC goes, I'd say good riddance to bad rubbish. It may have been a good idea once, a long long time ago, but it has no place in the electoral system in the 21st century.

[bemildred]

23. Precisely, thank you. nt