At Least It's Not Your State Senator Proposing The End of Democracy

7 thoughts on “At Least It’s Not Your State Senator Proposing The End of Democracy”

1. Scary looking mofo.

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2. This is a completely reprehensible resolution to propose, in my opinion, but I've gotta believe it's perfectly cool and legal under the antiquated and anachronistic U.S. Constitution and the Electoral College. It's up to state governments to decide the process for becoming electors, and if electors aren't legally bound to the popular vote or something, they can basically vote for anyone, even people who aren't on the Presidential ballot. This could be the great Ron Paul for President resurgence we've all been waiting for!

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   1. deleted … rewritten below

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3. I recall in high school civics class learning about tyrannical dictatorships run by religious nut cases, and how much we should aspire to achieve that perfect style of government!  Oh wait, it was English Lit, reading George Orwell's 1984!

   But I suspect Red state schools might have that mixed up as well.

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4. This is certainly not an endorsement of this crackpot idea, but …..

   Does everyone recall their early US history, and how members of the Electoral College were selected prior to 1828?

   In the early days, the electoral literally were selected by the state legislatures. It was considered to be representative goverment on the assumption – a very faulty assumption prior to the reapportionment cases in the 1960's – that the legislatures were directly elected by the voters and therefore they represented the will of the voters. 

    

   And let’s not forget that these people have made a fetish of the “intent of the framers” non-sense when it comes to constitutional law.

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5. In the odd "can't use this as a precedent" decision,

   the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore (2000) appeared to endorse their power to do so by denying that citizens have a constitutional right to vote in presidential elections. As the majority put it, “The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for Electors for the President of the United States. . .”  When it comes to presidential elections, the voters are at the mercy of the state legislatures.

   However, those state legislature also have constraints when it comes to selecting Presidential electors.

   In Chiafalo [Chiafalo v. Washington , 2020], however, the Supreme Court unanimously resolved that history had overtaken the Framers’ design. Nine justices agreed that even if the Framers had assumed that “electors” would be free to cast a vote however they chose, an emerging presumption of democratic control had displaced that original design. Whatever they originally expected, the court held, there was nothing in their words that constrained the power of the state to ensure that it was the choice of the people that would ultimately decide how the electors would vote. Elector discretion had been displaced by democracy. “Here,” as Justice Elena Kagan wrote in the closing line of her opinion, “[w]e the people rule.”…

   If the electors have lost their superpowers to an emerging democratic consensus, then legislatures must have lost them as well. It would be a complete perversion of the Framers’ design to remove the constitutional discretion of electors but accept a constitutionally unconstrained power in the state legislatures.

   Allowing the legislature to choose electors without a popular vote falls for the same reason as the National Popular Vote Compact fails — in both, the decision denies the notion of a popular vote.

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   1. Maybe this is just meant as clarification…

      Chiafalo, and a fairly similar case in Colorado, were "faithless elector" challenges. Both states have laws instructing electors how to vote, based on the popular vote. In Colorado, an elector wanted to vote for John Kasich, but the courts disallowed this vote and Colorado replaced the elector. The state laws were upheld as legitimate.

      The Arizona guy wants to change state law, and as much as I hate what he's trying to do, I don't believe the U.S. Constitution has any say that would prevent it. Hopefully other legislators or public pressure will put the kibosh on his resolution, because it's really nothing but an extremely serious power grab.

      Today, there are still several states that let electors vote for, let's say Taylor Swift, if that's what they want to do. If there's no state law about the popular vote, electors don't have to vote based on the popular vote, at least per the Constitution.

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