The Colorado Mesa University Civic Forum will host the Steamboat Institute, a conservative nonprofit organization, for a debate about how we should elect our president.
The debate will discuss whether we should elect through National Popular Vote or through the Electoral College system. This event will serve to educate people on both sides of the issue, and will take place on Oct. 9 at 7 p.m. in the Love Recital Hall inside the Moss Performing Arts Center.
The debate will feature Trent England, Executive Vice President of the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, a conservative think tank based in Oklahoma. It will also feature Ted Trimpa, the Principal and Chief Executive Officer of the Trimpa group which is a democratic consulting firm.
Each of the two men will represent a side of the debate. Jay Seaton, the Publisher of the Daily Sentinel, (the local newspaper here in Grand Junction) will serve as moderator.
The Founders created the Electoral College, but 48 states eventually enacted state winner-take-all laws.
Unable to agree on any particular method for selecting presidential electors, the Founding Fathers left the choice of method exclusively to the states in Article II, Section 1
“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors….”
The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as “plenary” and “exclusive.”
The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the majority of Electoral College votes and the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in the country. It does not abolish the Electoral College.
The National Popular Vote bill is states with 270 electors replacing state winner-take-all laws that award all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who get the most popular votes in each separate state (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), in the enacting states, to guarantee the majority of Electoral College votes for, and the Presidency to, the candidate getting the most popular votes in the entire United States.
The bill retains the constitutionally mandated Electoral College and state control of elections, and uses the built-in method that the Constitution provides for states to make changes. It ensures that every voter is equal, every voter will matter, in every state, in every presidential election, and the candidate with the most votes wins, as in virtually every other election in the country.