Hey. First we have to stop the evil ones. Then we can worry about this prissy voting shit. I mean, where the hell are their priorities.
Consider, it's such a close election and we need Bush anyway, so as long as Bush wins, lets not worry about the voting. On the other hand, if Bush looses, why, we could just stop this government right in its tracks.
Then we're ALL gonna be NRA members ;-)
Monday, October 18, 2004
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
9 comments:
Maybe Clinton will have been our last elected president. It seems quite possible that while the country remains equally divided, the results of our elections will be determined by lawyers, courts, and those who pay for them. Chalk another one up for the power of money.
What kind of a Democratic nation are we if we can launch spacecraft to explore distant planets, but can't tally a simple show of hands? The bottom line is that both parties have an interest in skewing and clouding the election process and outcomes in any way that works to their advantage. So sad. Maybe after Bush brings democracy to a few more countries around the world he could try to get it working again right here at home.
This from today's http://www.electoral-vote.com/
If you love horror stories, Slate has a good one for you by Richard L. Hasen. In it, he describes five ways the presidential election could end up in the Supreme Court. Briefly summarized, they are:
- Voting glitches involving electronic or other voting machines
- Litigation over which provisional ballots are valid
- A fight over the Colorado amendment to split the electoral vote
- A tie in the electoral college or a faithless elector
- A terrorist attack that disrupts voting in a swing state
We have been cheated. I have been cheated.
Americans will freely choose this infliction, and we shall be responsible
But this might not be a failure of a democratic nation, but the failure of a species: the old expression, putting spats on a pig comes to mind.
The fate is not in our stars.
"As our challenge is new, we must think anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall preserve us a nation" abe L.
I don't think Amendment 36 would stand up to court review.
From article II of the US constitution:
Each State shall appoint, in such 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: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
Two states already have the system proposed in this amendment to the state constitution. I believe the US constitution passage you posted refers to how many electors each state gets, not how those electoral votes are allocated for a particular candidate during an election.
I believe that state law currently governs this allocation process, and therefore this would be an amendment to the process already defined by state law. The lawsuit filed against the amendment charges that only the state government should be allowed to determine how the allocation process works, not the voters - a truly revolting notion.
What if so many Democrats turn out in Colorado on election day that the Dems actually would have won Colorado? Then the amendment actually works in Bush's favor. Unlikely, but possible.
I enjoyed this article from the Denver Post
"Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct..."
This states that it is the responsibility of the legislature, not the electorate, to apportion the electors. Now one could argue fine points like the legislature approved giving the electorate this power but I believe that the Supreme Court has ruled against such arguments in the past. I'm not sure how we in Colorado would change our electors selection process since I don't think the Colorado constitution allows the legislature to amend the constitution.
Yes, now I see that you're saying the same thing that the lawsuit against the amendment is saying. Because of the word "legislature", the people should be powerless to change the system. I think the spirit, not the letter, of the US Constitution would be to allow this to happen. How did these other states manage to do this?
The sprit of the constitution is to prevent democracy (i.e. protect minority rights). Some whould argue that in diqualifying Colorado Amendment 36 the constitution would be doing precicely what it was designed to do.
I think other states did it via their legislatures rather than by plebicite.
Here is something I found today while looking at the opinions of Bush vs. Gore in 2000
The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States unless and until the state legislature chooses a statewide election as the means to implement its power to appoint members of the Electoral College. U. S. Const., Art. II, §1. This is the source for the statement in McPherson v. Blacker, 146 U. S. 1, 35 (1892), that the State legislature’s power to select the manner for appointing electors is plenary; it may, if it so chooses, select the electors itself, which indeed was the manner used by State legislatures in several States for many years after the Framing of our Constitution. Id., at 28–33.
What's important here is that I think this says that voters can indeed selct how the electors are selected. Here's the phrase again:
unless and until the state legislature chooses a statewide election as the means to implement its power to appoint members of the Electoral College
The legislature CAN give the power of selection to the general public according to this finding of the court.
But it's also ture in that case that the Republican controlled legislature could select the electors as they see fit no matter the outcome of the vote.
Post a Comment