It seems that more and more we're seeing states work hard to give up their rights, and the rights of their citizens to mob rule. Not content with having the federal government be a binding and cohesive force to hold the states together and having the states govern the people within their borders, the Democratic party marches on down the path toward direct democracy and the inevitable socialism that it brings. Here's the latest from KOMO TV and the Washington State Senate.
OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) - State senators have approved a bill that would deliver the state's electoral votes to the U.S. presidential candidate who wins the national popular vote.
The bill, which passed 30-18 Monday, now heads to the House.
The bill would change Washington's current system of typically giving all of the state's electoral votes to the candidate who wins the statewide election to awarding all of the state's delegates to the national popular vote winner.
So, the State of Washington, with eleven electoral votes will throw away the influence of it's population. Imagine the scenario where a Republican candidate wins the popular vote, but the election results in Washington would normally throw the state's electoral votes to a Democratic candidate. Washington's electoral votes would then go to the Republican candidate.
This isn't really that far-fetched a scenario. In 2004, the Republican candidate won the majority of the popular vote (the first time any presidential candidate had done so in a long time), while in Washington State, the Democratic candidate won the majority of the statewide vote. Under the scheme proposed by the state senate, if it had been in place in 2004, the 11 electoral votes that the State's electors cast for John Kerry would have gone to George W. Bush. That can't really be what the Democratic members of Washington State's Senate want can it?
The proposal is aimed at preventing a repeat of the 2000 election, when Al Gore got the most votes nationwide but George W. Bush put together enough victories in key states to win a majority in the Electoral College and capture the White House.
The Washington state bill was sponsored by Sen. Eric Oemig, D-Kirkland.
The sheer brilliance of Washington's Democratic party eludes me. This wonderful proposal is aimed at preventing just exactly what happened in 2000? If I remember correctly, in 2000, Al Gore did indeed win a plurality of the nationwide popular vote. It seems to me that he also won Washington State's electoral votes. So if this proposal had been in effect in 2000, nothing would have been different with regard to Washington State's electoral votes.
When you consider how blue Washington is, this proposal can only hurt the Democratic party… Not that that's a bad thing in my mind. Maybe that's why it's designed to not go into effect unless a majority of electoral votes go that way too.
This is nothing less than an attempt to do an end-run around the Constitutionally prescribed method of selecting the President though. Electoral votes were apportioned to states the way they were for a reason. Changing that ought to require a Constitutional Amendment.
The U.S. Constitution does allow state legislators to choose the manner in which the state's electors are selected. While this is a perfectly Constitutional way to move toward a direct democracy, it seems to me that the Democratic party can't have really thought it through.
Originally published at Perri Nelson's Website. Cross posted at NW Bloggers.
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