It is time to scrap the Electoral College; it no longer resent the will of the people.
Published by A. B. Man III in Opinion · Thursday 22 Aug 2019 · 3:30
Tags: electoral, college, vote, presidential, president
Tags: electoral, college, vote, presidential, president
It is time to scrap the Electoral College; it no longer resent the will of the people.
A.B. Man
08/22/2019
The Electoral College does not resent the will of the people; its usage deprives the people of their vote. If they electors are free to vote as they choose then they do not represent the will of the people. A federal appeals court ruled that presidential electors who cast the actual ballots for president and vice president are free to vote as they wish and cannot be required to follow the results of the popular vote in their states. What is the point of voting when the presidential electors can arbitrarily overrule your vote and vote for the person they want? State can put people in place that can and will override the will of the people. How many times has a president won the Electoral College to win the presidency without winning the popular vote? It is time to scrap the Electoral College.
The decision could give a single elector the power to decide the outcome of a presidential election — if the popular vote results in an apparent Electoral College tie.
By Pete Williams
A federal appeals court ruled late Tuesday that presidential electors who cast the actual ballots for president and vice president are free to vote as they wish and cannot be required to follow the results of the popular vote in their states. The decision could give a single elector the power to decide the outcome of a presidential election — if the popular vote results in an apparent Electoral College tie. "This issue could be a ticking time bomb in our divided politics. It's not hard to imagine how a single faithless elector, voting differently than his or her state did, could swing a close presidential election," said Mark Murray, NBC News senior political editor. It hasn't been much of an issue in American political history because when an elector refuses to follow the results of a state's popular vote, the state simply throws the ballot away. But Tuesday's ruling says states cannot do that. The decision, from a three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, is a victory for Micheal Baca, a Colorado Democratic elector in 2016. Under state law, he was required to cast his ballot for Hillary Clinton, who won the state's popular vote. Instead, he crossed out her name and wrote in John Kasich, a Republican and then the governor of Ohio. The secretary of state removed Baca as an elector, discarded his vote and brought in another elector who voted for Clinton. In a 2-1 decision, the appeals court said the nullification of Baca's vote was unconstitutional. When voters go to the polls in presidential races, they actually cast their votes for a slate of electors chosen by the political parties of the nominees. States are free to choose their electors however they want, Tuesday's ruling said, and can even require electors to pledge their loyalty to their political parties. But once the electors are chosen and report in December to cast their votes as members of the Electoral College, they are fulfilling a federal function, and a state's authority has ended. "The states' power to appoint electors does not include the power to remove them or nullify their votes," the court said. Because the Constitution contains no requirement for electors to follow the wishes of a political party, "the electors, once appointed, are free to vote as they choose," assuming that they cast their vote for a legally qualified candidate. - It is time to scrap the Electoral College; it no longer resent the will of the people.
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