[EM] Electoral College

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 10:24 AM 5/4/2006, Steve Eppley wrote:
>Could Article I. Section 10 of the US Constitution interfere with that scheme?
>
>     "No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any duty
>     of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace,
>     enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State,
>     or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually
>     invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay."
>
>I'm referring to the ban against entering into any agreement or 
>compact with another state
>without the consent of Congress.

This clause seems to be dealing with the war-making powers. I'd want 
to know more about it and how it has been interpreted.

However, the so-called Compact is in some ways not a compact. Rather, 
it sets up a method of selecting state electors and instructing them 
that is conditional on other states doing the same. That is, if 
enough other states pass the same law, the law becomes effective. 
This is not an ordinary contract or compact. The state actions are 
actually independent, in that one state could not sue another that it 
did not follow the alleged agreement. Rather, each state simply looks 
at the laws of the other states, and if they match the criteria in 
the law that the state itself passed, it becomes effective *in that state.*

Each state is effectively making a legal judgement about the laws of 
the other states. If the legislation is identically worded in all the 
states, and it is clear and deals properly with the various 
contingencies, each state would be able to know what rules the other 
states would follow in an election. So it would work, and it does not 
even violate this suggested interpretation of Article I, Section 10.

(Which I did not look up in writing this, I just accepted at face 
value from Steve's post.)

So I don't think that this requires Congressional approval. If it 
did, however, that would not be impossible. Remember, a majority of 
electoral votes make this Compact come into effect. I think that 
voting against it would be political suicide. Telling an electoral 
college majority that they can't use their power to elect the President....