Hal Nickle has filed a proposed statewide initative measure. If it got on the ballot and passed, California would apportion electoral votes according to the share of the popular vote within California. If this measure had been in force in 2012, the California electoral vote would have been: Obama 34, Romney 20, Gary Johnson 1. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link. UPDATE: as Jim Riley points out in his comment, the proposal does not round to the nearest whole integer. It rounds down. Thus if the proposal would have been in effect in 2012 in California, Gary Johnson would not have received any electoral votes.
Ballot Access News
Edited By Richard Winger
How soon before H.N. has an Obama drone missile wipe him out ???
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Const Amdt
Abolish the E.C.
Uniform definition of Elector
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
I strongly doubt this passes. California is a blue state, the Democrats will make sure they get all the electoral votes from Cali. Nice thought though.
It would’ve been helpful if this proposal had stated how a party, winning enough popular votes to earn 1 or more Electoral votes, would choose which of its Electors would be entitled to vote in December for their Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates.
It specifies that party rule would determine the electors. In the absence of party rules, or an independent candidacy, the candidate would choose the electors.
You may have misread the allocation of electors. Electors are allocated pro rata basis, with fractions truncated.
This results in Obama 53, Romney 20, Johnson 0. Any extra electors are allocated to the leading candidate (Obama).
So the final result would be Obama 55, Romney 20, Johnson 0.
If D’Hondt were used it would be Obama 54, Romney 21.
If modified St.Lague were used it would be Obama 54, Romney 21.
If St.Lague were used it would be Obama 53, Romney 21, Johnson 1.
If I am reading it correctly one does not have
to be a United States Citizen to be a Presidential Elector, if the Political Party
or independent candidate picks a non-United
States Citizen.
Mark Seidenberg,
Vice Chairman,
American Independent Party of California
Which method was used in 1896 election in California, Because there was a split in the
California Electors College that year. There
were two Democratic Parties, one was the Gold
Democratic (National)?
That’s right, Mark. This is an insidious plot by us wetbacks to take over the Electoral College.
Can’t get anything by you, can we?
When there was a split in the electoral college vote of any state during the period 1868 through 1916, it was almost always because back then, in all states, voters chose individual candidates for presidential elector. Voters were free to choose one presidential elector from one party’s slate, and another presidential elector from another party’s slate. So in extremely close races, it was common for some electors from each slate to win. That is what happened in California in 1896. Starting in 1920, states started removing the ability of voters to vote for individual electors. The last state that let voters choose individual electors was Vermont, and the last election in Vermont that permitted that was 1976.
California and other states would let voters vote for individual electors. So a voter would have been permitted to vote for up to 9 elector candidates.
Before adoption of the Australian ballot, each party would print its own ballots, or a voter might create his own from newspapers, or even handwritten.
A voter could take a printed ballot and cross out names of candidates he was opposed to, and write-in his choices. Remember that before the government-printed ballots, all elections were write-in, with political parties and others providing ballots with “suggestions” written in.
When the Australian ballot was adopted around 1890, many states simply organized the ballot by essentially merging party ballots together. This is where the practice of party columns came from (when voting machines were introduced the columns were converted to rows).
But initially, a voter would vote by crossing out the names of candidates he didn’t like. As late as post-WWII in Texas, the way to vote a straight ticket was to draw a vertical line through all the candidates of the party you didn’t want, or if you didn’t vote straight ticket, cross-out individual candidates. Or you could combine the two.
Most voters would vote for all candidates of a party. But a few might not, which could result in a split in the vote. In 1896 in California, Bryan was the candidate of both the Democratic and Peoples parties who had the same presidential electors, but I seem to recall that the reason for the split was that one of the Republican elector candidates had some personal issues that caused a couple of thousand persons to cross him off so that he was not in the Top 9.
I did find the name of the 1896 Bryan elector, but not the failed Republican elector candidate.
You might try to locate the Statement of Vote for 1896 (maybe the SOS office, or a library: UC-Berkeley, Hastings Law School, or SF Public might be possibilities.
A similar situation happened in 1912. The primary (for Congress and legislature) was in September, and the party candidates formed a state convention that chose the presidential electors.
Supporters of Governor Hiram Johnson won most of the Republican nominations, and they chose electors who supported the Roosevelt-Johnson ticket. Taft supporters didn’t qualify a new party (see October 1912 issue of Ballot Access News), and so Taft supporters had to write in the names of each of 13 elector candidates.
The November election was very close and required a recount. There were some cases where an election judge had simply entered the votes for one of the 13 candidates, which had been misinterpreted by county officials, so it is conceivable that the split elector result was caused by careless counting.
Why don’t the Republicans (the minority party) stop nit picking with this and voter repression stuff and just pass a Constitutional Amendment to only allow Republicans (but not RINOs) to vote? A modest proposal.
Thanks for that information.
It would far better for the California Electors
that are citizen to pick who they want to be the
presidential electors from the list of party
endorsed candidates. In this age of the internet
the Secretary of State could provide the ten year registration history and the political parties could give endorsements. Each candidate for the Electoral College in California could publish on
line a CV, showing his/her qualifications to be
a member of the Electoral College. With a Statement that they will only vote for a natural
born citizen, viz., having both citizen parents
at their birth in one of the 46 states or 4 commonwealth in the union, plus the District of
Columbia and the organized incorporated territories.
This would exclude places like American Samoa
and the Republic of Panama (which certain class
of persons become citizens of the United State
because of a collective naturalization act of
Congress in 1937 and the remainder of the un-organized Territory of Michigan and Territory
of Hawai’i
I note that it is a little known fact that a
part of the Territory of Michigan did not
become part of any other State and was not
ceded to the British by treaty. This remained
consists of some islands in the Pacific Ocean
that were part of the 1609 grant to Virginia.
Palmyra Island and Johnson Island of the Territory of Hawai’i was excluded from the
State of Hawai’i. Midway Island, should
also be excluded from the list of accepted
persons born there. I have a friend that was
from Midway, which had a pool of 54 live births.
All of them received an Hawaiian Birth Certificate, Yet they were not born in either the State or Territory of Hawai’i.
As to the remainder of the Territory of Michigan, Congress did grant a class citizenship
that was included in the Garfield Act if born in
Oregon Country.
Sincerely, mark Seidenberg
Vice Chairman
American Independent Party of California
Electors are full people, therefore rounding up isn’t feasible. Additionally, with third party participation, there is a high mathematical probability that rounding up would result in an Electoral College tally greater than CA’s 55 EC votes.
This is the only opportunity third parties have of gaining Electoral College votes. Moreover, if this happens in California, it is sure to happen nationwide- this will boost third party relevance across the country.
If my vote never counts, why vote at all. Only southern Calif’s votes matter. We are not equally represented.