EDITORIAL THE UNPOPULAR VOTE.IF a goofy bill passed by the California Assembly had been law in 2004, California would have given its 55 Electoral College electoral college, in U.S. government, the body of electors electors, in the history of the Holy Roman Empire, the princes who had the right to elect the German kings or, more exactly, the kings of the Romans (Holy Roman emperors). Until the reign (1493–1519) of Maximilian I, however, an elected king was traditionally crowned by the pope before he was called emperor. Initially the electors merely confirmed hereditary succession. that chooses the president and vice president. The Constitution, in Article 2, Section 1, provides: "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." However, no senator, representative, or officer of the U.S. government may be an elector. votes to George W. Bush. Never mind that the state's voters backed John Kerry, 54 percent to 44 percent. The absurd logic behind AB 2948 is to effectively do away with the Electoral College and elect presidents by popular vote. The bill would bind the state to give its electoral votes to the national popular-vote winner if enough other states agree to do the same. But it's doubtful the scheme would even work. When you vote for a candidate in a presidential election, you're really voting for electors who are chosen by the political parties. And it's doubtful that any law could get these partisans to deliberately hand over an election to the other party's candidate. If state legislators really want to get rid of the Electoral College, then the sensible, decent way to do that is to amend the U.S. Constitution. Meanwhile, if they're serious about making elections more democratic, they can start by getting rid of their own gerrymandered gerrymander (jĕr`ēmăn'dər, gĕr–), in politics, rearrangement of voting districts so as to favor the party in power. The objective is to create as many districts as possible in areas of known support and to concentrate the opposition's strength into as few districts as possible. districts. This is the kind of ploy that makes the state Legislature look like houses of ill repute. |
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