{"id":8143,"date":"2018-03-09T18:36:18","date_gmt":"2018-03-09T18:36:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=8143"},"modified":"2018-03-09T18:36:18","modified_gmt":"2018-03-09T18:36:18","slug":"lulac-sues-texas-others-over-electoral-college-vote-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=8143","title":{"rendered":"LULAC Sues Texas, Others Over Electoral College Vote System"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>

A coalition of advocates and attorneys has sued four states, including Texas, hoping the U.S. Supreme Court will eventually mandate a change to \u201cwinner-take-all\u201d voting in the Electoral College. Photo: GettyImages<\/p><\/div>\n

by Mark Richardson<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

SAN ANTONIO, Texas \u2013<\/strong>\u00a0A coalition of activists and attorneys is suing Texas and three other states over their \u201cwinner-take-all\u201d system of allocating Electoral College votes. The goal is to overturn a practice that they claim disenfranchises any voter who does not cast his or her ballot for the winning party.<\/p>\n

Luis Vera, general counsel for the\u00a0League of United Latin American Citizens<\/a>, said the winner-take-all system allows a candidate to gain the presidency despite losing the nationwide popular vote.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, in Texas, which we sued, Donald Trump received 52 percent of the popular vote, just a little over half. Yet he took all 38 electoral votes \u2013 100 percent \u2013 because we\u2019re winner-take-all,\u201d Vera said. \u201cHow is that, anywhere, even fair?\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2016, Trump, a Republican, won the presidency in the Electoral College even though Democrat Hillary Clinton received 3 million more votes. Vera said the coalition also sued traditionally \u201cblue\u201d states California and Massachusetts, along with \u201cred\u201d state South Carolina.<\/p>\n

By late last week, none of the states had issued a public response to the lawsuits.<\/p>\n

Only two states, Maine and Nebraska, apportion electors based on the popular vote. Vera said the system violates the rights of Latino, black and other minority voters under the U.S. Voting Rights Act.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt dilutes our voting power because it lessens the vote much more than the white Anglo,\u201d he said; \u201cbecause we\u2019re always going to be the minority and we\u2019re never going to be able to take the vote as we choose \u2013 that is, to elect our chosen candidate by ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

A constitutional amendment is the only way to substantially change the Electoral College, which Vera said, given the country\u2019s political divide, might be impossible.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis case will ultimately be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd we want the Supreme Court to declare that the states need to come up with a system that more reflects the popular vote and not violate \u2018one person one vote,\u2019 right of association and the Voting Rights Act.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vera said whatever the outcome in the lower courts, the cases should make their way through appeals to the Supreme Court, a process that could take many years to play out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Mark Richardson SAN ANTONIO, Texas \u2013\u00a0A coalition of activists and attorneys is suing Texas and three other states over their \u201cwinner-take-all\u201d system of allocating Electoral College votes. The goal is to overturn a practice that they claim disenfranchises any voter who does not cast his or her ballot for the winning party. Luis Vera, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8140,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8143"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8144,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8143\/revisions\/8144"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}