The American Left is charging up the hill against the Electoral College again and it is going to have the same result as every other time:  none.  Perhaps its the approaching Spring air and this is sort of the Lefty political equivalent of mating season where all the political animals sort of get wild eyed and crazy and run around butting heads for no particular reason but to look impressive.  Oh wait that’s right… its an election year.  Same thing really.

At any rate the Lefty’s really don’t like the Electoral College.  In fact they never have because it is by nature anti-democratic and frustrates direct majority rule in the election of the President.  They just don’t like that on principle, you have to give them that, and they also object because in practice it is most likely to harm their political interests because it gives more weight to small rural states where they just don’t do so well anymore.  So they’ve got two reasons not to like it and that’s more than enough isn’t it?  They want it gone.

Of course they’ve wanted it gone for quite some time indeed, decades in fact.  There have been many attempts to ammend the Constitution to change to a direct popular majority election of the President and they have all failed miserably.  And they always will.  Always.

Why?  Because the Electoral College is one of the absolutely fundemental political compromises between the small and large states that allowed our nation to be formed in the first place.  The fundamental political dynamics between the large and small states have not changed since the nation was formed.  The small states quite justly worry that the large population states would run the nation for their own selfish needs and either neglect or actively prey upon the smaller states.  So they demanded disproportional representation and they got it in the form of the equal representation in the Senate and from that in the Electoral College.  The small states have never allowed an Ammendment to change this ancient compromise and they never will.  Because if they did the large states actually would run rough shod all over them, and the legislators of those states have enough trouble as it is fighting for their piece of the Federal pie.  The Lefty dream of abolishing the Electoral College will remain exactly that.  And they know it, but that isn’t acceptable so they came up with another plan!

The New York Times and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune with all the other Lefty groups and leaders are getting worked up right now to try a new scheme they’ve cooked up to get around that anoying Constitution to nullify the Electoral College.  They want to pass laws in the major states where they will agree to order their Electors to vote for whoever the Popular Vote winner for President is, thus ensuring that whoever that is gets elected President.  Neat huh?  Screw all those other states and the Constitution, they will just settle the matter themselves they say.  To hear them talk about it there’s nothing really standing in their way but the decision to do it.

Except the Constitution and the full force of the law and the Federal Government.  I could list a few more but I am going to stick to just the two main items that show they are all talking hot air and nothing else.  The ignorance of their stance is breathtaking and this is like shooting fish in a barrel but I’ll exercise some restraint.

Its unconstitutional, flatly and egregiously.  They can’t legally change the constitution so they want to make changes to lesser laws that would render the Constitution invalid, and that dog just won’t hunt.  This is a distinction without a difference.  The absolutely fundamental principle of Constitutional legal supremacy will smack this maneuver down with authority.  Would the Lefty’s accept a bunch of states passing laws that voided the Right to Free Speech or Assembly by some little legal sleight of hand?  Never, nor should they.

Second, this scheme would necessarily require MASSIVE violations of voter rights.  With this deal they are saying that if New York voters voted for the candidate who did not get the popular vote that the State of New York would then ignore many millions of their citizens votes and change their decision to vote for the opposition candidate?  Can they possibly be serious?  The people who claim with a straight face that a requirement to show an ID to vote in an effort to ensure the integrity of the voting system is ‘voter intimidation’ are now saying that it is perfectly acceptable to collect all those votes and then ignore them completely and order the Electors to vote opposite to the wishes of the voters of their State?  This would be massive institutionalized voter fraud.  Voter fraud on a scale previously unimaginable and breathtaking in its arrogance.  Also completely illegal and unconstitutional with zero chance of surviving a legal challenge.

Why are they talking about something so patently illegal and impossible as if it were possible?  Captain’s Quarters has an answer (emphasis added):

This Strib idiocy shows that three recounts and six years later, the editorial board still hasn’t recovered from seeing its endorsed candidate lose the election. Now, instead of using the system that has guaranteed all states a voice in selecting the president, it wants to dump it. And does it advocate doing so through the channels established in the Constitution itself? No indeed. They endorse an end-around by states to undermine the Constitution and the creation of a compact that puts the most populous states at odds with the rest, committing a conspiracy to strip them of their ability to affect presidential elections.

Bush Derangement Syndrome in another form is at work here along with the Left’s decades old disdain for the Constitution having any meaning they choose not to see. What this all shows most clearly is the need to pick judges who honorably enforce the Constitution and the laws as written and leave the lawmaking to the legislators.  Because with judges sympathetic to the idea of ‘evolving standards’ and a ‘living Constitution’ it is quite possible that an attempt like this would be allowed in recognition of the ‘changing needs’ of our democracy that they always draw from their fellow Lefty colleagues.  We dodged that bullet recently, and so the Electoral College will remain bulletproof.