 Justice Antonin Scalia gives brilliant remarks to Senate Judiciary Committee, Oct 5, 2011. (See link to the short video below.) In the Spring of 1787, there was no peace. No effective government outside each State. Something had to be done. The U.S. Constitution is the world's longest surviving written charter of government.
To help the Senate keep things in their proper perspective, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was invited to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee in October 2011, four and a half years before he passed away. Scalia gave a brilliant recap of what sets the American form of government apart. The very structure of our government is provided by the Constitution - that's what a "constitution" actually is - Structure. It is why the U.S. has been so successful at protecting Individual Liberties, and makes the U.S. unique from every other government. It is SEPARATION of POWERS! That includes placing people in the various offices they hold from different and sometimes opposing places, using different means to put them there! That patchwork of putting people into positions of Governing over us is an ESSENTIAL part of the protections that our Founders so wisely designed in to our government! In his brief opening remarks, Scalia talked about the gridlock that is designed IN to our government on purpose. He said, "In fact, this GRIDLOCK is the MAIN apparatus that is the protection of minorities in this country against the majority!" One example of an element of that, Scalia continued, is in having a bicameral legislature (Congress) where identical language must pass both chambers - comprised of members who ARE ELECTED IN A DIFFERENT FASHION! National Popular Vote sales pitch says, "We must elect everyone the SAME way!" The NPV Sales pitch repeatedly says the main "problem" they are solving for is that, "The President is the only position that we vote for where the winner does not have to get the most votes!” (This selling point of theirs contains TWO lies, er, ‘misrepresentations’ - #1) The population has never voted for the President. We vote for our State Electors, if our States have asked us to. #2) The President is elected by the Electoral College with a MAJORITY of Votes! That is always ‘the MOST votes’! A majority is a much higher thing to achieve than simply "the MOST" votes! The National Popular Vote scheme CHANGES the deal by electing Presidents with a PLURALITY. A Plurality is simply "the MOST votes". A candidate with 31% of the popular vote will easily be elected in a field of just 5 candidates - an election where 69% of the people - the new election basis - voting AGAINST the winner! On just TWO occasions, 1824 and 1876, did no candidate receive a Majority of the State's Electoral Votes. The 12th Amendment of 1803, however, provided the Contingent Election, where the States still elect the President (John Quincy Adams in 1825, and Rutherford B Hayes in 1876) but by using their House of Representatives delegations in Congress to cast their LONE Vote The entire design of the Federal government is a patchwork of government officials getting named to their jobs by different means and each job having other jobs that they are to check against and also having other offices check them! Our STATES, too, serve a major check against the Federal government itself by choosing its CEO. The NPV seeks to end that check against Federal power. Critics of the Constitution often call it "gridlock", and again Justice Scalia accurately points out that this structure of our government creates the gridlock, with the gridlock being the PRIMARY protection for most minorities in the country!! There is No Such Thing as a “National Popular Vote” in the United States. By Design. The population, by DESIGN, has never been assigned the authority nor the role to cast votes for the Office of US President. That is the CEO of the US Federation of STATES and it is the STATES that cast their Electoral Votes to name their Federation’s Chief Executive and Vice President! There has never ever been such a thing as a “national popular vote” in the United States! Our STATES have asked their voters to elect the State presidential Electors – there is a HUGE difference! The NPV sales folks are trying to create an entirely new form of government without going through ANY of the steps needed to do so! The National Popular Vote people seek to destroy a major part of that design with their scheme. Link to Video: Justice Antonin Scalia - Opening Remarks to US Senate Judiciary Committee, Oct 5, 2011.
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AuthorJohn Crawford has been a lifelong Constitutional Conservative. He graduated from Michigan State University in Business Administration and worked on his MBA at Western Michigan University. He has been very active in grassroots politics and in volunteer community service organizations his entire career. Archives
July 2023
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