[EL] Two thoughts on the Electoral College and National Popular Vote

Thu Nov 29 09:29:55 PST 2012

The 12th Amendment states: "The person having the greatest number of votes
for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the
whole number of Electors APPOINTED."   Thus, in 1864, when the southern
states did not appoint their presidential electors, the requirement for
election was an absolute majority of the electoral votes cast by the
non-Confederate states.  Lincoln achieved that threshold.

There is no quorum requirement in the Electoral College - just the absolute
majority requirement. The two-thirds quorum applies to a contingent election
in the U.S. House of Representatives if no candidate achieves the absolute
majority.

Dr. John R. Koza, Chair

National Popular Vote

Box 1441

Los Altos Hills, California 94023 USA

Phone: 650-941-0336

Fax: 650-941-9430

Email: john at johnkoza.com

URL: www.johnkoza.com 

URL: www.NationalPopularVote.com

From: Lillie Coney [mailto:coney at lillieconey.net] 
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2012 2:38 PM
To: law-election at uci.edu (law-election at uci.edu)
Subject: Re: [EL] Two thoughts on the Electoral College and National Popular
Vote

Some states will allow military and overseas ballots that are APO post
marked by the day of the election to

have an additional 2 weeks to arrive.  Some states are still dealing with
Provisional ballots. Some are dealing

with down ballot races with much closer margins that have to be reconciled
prior to certification of election 

results.  The certification is about who won which requires for transparency
a report on the number of ballots

cast for each candidate.

The Twelfth Amendment states that the Electors are to meet in each state and
cast their votes.  Then a list of

all persons voted for for the position of President and Vice President are
to be placed on a list that is then the

list must be signed, certified and transmitted sealed to the seat of the
government of the United States--directed

to the President of the Senate (Joe Biden).  When Gore served in this
capacity in 2001 he accepted and 

certified the results from Florida.  I think he did the right
thing--anything else would have been placing the personal

about the welfare of the nation.

During the Civil War I do not believe that the Southern states were
participating in this process so the 

quorum issue if it existed would have had to be addressed. So the best
answer on this issue would likely to

the Senate Rules Committee expert on the matter.  I would like to know if
the Senate is the entity that 

decides whether it will accept the Electors from a state to be included in
the final tally.  The rule of 270 is 

based on a "majority of the total electors" but I do not see anything about
them all having to show up so if we

do entertain the idea of a quorum (theory) should it require a quorum of
states representing some percentage

of the popular vote, a quorum of the 50 states or a quorum of electors.
Quorums are self defined so if there is a 

quorum requirement it would have to be determined by rules--bringing us back
to the Senate Committee on

Rules. 

On Nov 27, 2012, at 2:23 PM, Jack Cushman wrote:

On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 11:51 AM, Sean Parnell
<sean at impactpolicymanagement.com> wrote:

1.       Apparently only 17 states have completed their count of all
ballots, per this USA Today editorial (as a rule, I abhor citing editorials,
but I'm going to trust they got this fact right):
http://usatoday.com/story/opinion/2012/11/26/counting-votes-voting-system/17
28529/ I think the implications for National Popular Vote are pretty obvious
- had this been a closer election (say, Bush-Gore or Kennedy-Nixon close)
we'd still not know who the president was, and there would be horrific legal
battles being waged right now all across the country over which ballots
should or should not be counted. The Electoral College seems to have
provided conclusive clarity rather quickly.

But the states this year have no particular reason to hurry in certifying
their results. And in 2000 the election wasn't decided until December 12,
over two weeks from now. I don't see why we couldn't resolve the legal
challenges, run the recounts, and certify an official national popular vote
in a close election at least as quickly as the Electoral College was decided
in 2000. These are problems that are resolved in parallel, not consecutively
-- why should other states take longer than Florida did?

The certified totals might ultimately prove to be incorrect, as they were in
Florida in 2000. But as 2000 shows
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2000#Post
_recount> , the Electoral College can't save us from simply certifying the
wrong winner. If we don't like slow, uncertain, inaccurate elections, the
solution is to adopt national standards for modern, reliable voting
processes. We're a wealthy technological nation, and it's an eminently
solvable problem.

But set that aside for a minute. The more important point is that it's
better to have horrific legal battles and democracy than no horrific legal
battles and no democracy. Because you know what's easier to run than a
democracy? Any other system of government. "Easy" isn't what democracy is
about.

Counting every vote is a difficult logistical problem. The Electoral College
eases the vote counting process by ensuring that 3/4 of states -- and their
voters -- are essentially irrelevant to the election; care and attention can
then be focused on the minority of voters with the lion's share of voting
power. That's the core of this kind of practical objection to the National
Popular Vote: it's too much of a hassle to accurately count my vote in
Massachusetts or Tara's vote in Texas, so we should avoid that necessity by
giving Sean 44 times <http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/>  as
important a vote in Virginia, and focus on counting his.

But that's not who we are, and it's not what the Electoral College is for.
It began as a means for state legislatures to select representatives to
debate and choose a President -- a republican strand of our democratic
republic. It lingers, zombie-like, to capriciously reallocate voting power
from some voters to others in a popular election. It's not a structural
choice; there is no rhyme or reason to the states it chooses to favor. It
gives us the questionable benefit of ignoring the shoddiness of the voting
systems in many parts of our country, but it cuts against a principle we
have consistently sacrificed for: when a group of citizens select one among
us to be our leader, each of us is entitled to an equal vote.

It would be great (for so many reasons) if we could first build an
effective, reliable voting system, and then adopt an equal vote. But that's
never been how things go. First you win the right to vote, and only then --
if then -- do they build the voting booths. Better long lines than no lines
at all.

Best,

Jack

_______________________________________________
Law-election mailing list
Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20121129/22223a07/attachment.html>