Federal Court Deals Major Blow To Democrat Efforts To Abolish Electoral College

Fox News has more to say about the ruling and its implications for Dems:

Appeals court rules on 'faithless' Electoral College voter case

A federal appeals court says Colorado was wrong to nullify the ballot of a so-called 'faithless elector' who refused to endorse Hillary Clinton; Shannon Bream reports on the ruling that could have potential 2020 implications.

In a major blow to state-by-state progressive efforts to effectively replace the Electoral College with a nationwide popular vote, a federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday that presidential electors in the Electoral College have the absolute right to vote for presidential candidates of their choice.

Democrats have increasingly sought to erase the Electoral College's influence by promoting state laws that would force electors to vote for the national popular vote leader  -- and those laws were now in jeopardy as a result of the court's ruling, legal experts said.

The decision, however, also raised the prospect that electors could legally defect at the last minute, and decide the occupant of the White House on their own in dramatic fashion, weeks after Election Day.

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that the Colorado secretary of state violated the Constitution in 2016 when he removed an elector and nullified his vote because the elector refused to cast his ballot for Democrat Hillary Clinton, who received a plurality of the popular vote both nationally and in Colorado.

The rogue elector was part of an unsuccessful scheme to convince enough members of the Electoral College to unite behind an alternative candidate and deny Donald Trump the presidency.

The split decision by a three-judge panel on the Denver appeals court asserted: "Article II and the Twelfth Amendment provide presidential electors the right to cast a vote for President and Vice President with discretion. And the state does not possess countervailing authority to remove an elector and to cancel his vote in response to the exercise of that Constitutional right."

The panel continued, "The electoral college did not exist before ratification of the federal Constitution, and thus the states could reserve no rights related to it under the Tenth Amendment. Rather, the states possess only the rights expressly delegated to them in Article II and the Twelfth Amendment."

The appeals court reasoned that once electors show up at the Electoral College, they essentially become federal actors performing a "federal function," independent of state control.

Prominent Democrats, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, have slammed the Electoral College in recent weeks, calling it a racist "scam."

"The Electoral College has a racial injustice breakdown," Ocasio-Cortez said on Instagram Monday. "Due to severe racial disparities in certain states, the Electoral College effectively weighs white voters over voters of color, as opposed to a 'one person, one vote' system where all our votes are counted equally."

Organized efforts to undermine the Electoral College have picked up steam this year. The so-called National Popular Vote interstate compact, which would commit states' electors to the winner of the national vote, has been adopted by 16 jurisdictions, accounting for 196 electoral votes, including 15 states and the District of Columbia.

However, the compact, by its terms, will only take effect if jurisdictions accounting for at least 270 of the 538 total votes available in the Electoral College also sign on.

More than two dozen states also have laws binding electors to the results of the popular vote in those states. But the actual penalties for so-called "faithless electors" are minimal and in many cases non-existent.

The Tuesday ruling could spell doom for a new Colorado law that effectively signed the state onto the national compact, by prohibiting states from forcing their electors to vote for either the national or state popular vote winner or leader. Other states that have signed onto the compact include Rhode Island, Vermont, Hawaii, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Washington, Connecticut, New Jersey, Illinois, California, and New York.

At the same time, Frank McNulty, an adviser to Protect Colorado's Vote, which wants voters to overturn the law, cautioned that the ruling could also free electors to decide on their own to support the candidate with the most votes nationally -- or any candidate, for that matter.

"It is a double-edge decision," he said.

The Blaze also noted:

  

What did the appeals court decide?

On Tuesday, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a 2-1 decision that electors could vote for any candidate they chose, regardless of how citizens of that state voted.

  

This rule is limited and applies only to six states under the 10th Circuit's jurisdiction: Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wyoming. Every one of these states went for Trump with the exception of Colorado. 

Washington's state Supreme Court has ruled against this freedom for electors, so this case could be headed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

What does this mean?

So far 15 states and the District of Columbia have signed a pact promising to give their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, regardless of whether or not that person won their state. Supporters hope that if enough states join the movement, it would make the Electoral College irrelevant.  

However, Clinton won every one of the states in the pact so far, making it unlikely that this agreement could actually hurt Trump in 2020.

The Electoral College has historically been good to Republicans. Of the five presidents to lose the popular vote but win the Electoral College (John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B. Hayes, Benjamin Harrison, George W. Bush, and Trump), four have been Republicans (Adams predated the Republican Party but was opposed to Andrew Jackson's Democratic Party). Jackson was one of the earliest supporters of getting rid of the Electoral College altogether.