MoveOn.org Petition Demands: ‘Abolish the Electoral College’

A petition currently trending on the website of the George Soros-funded MoveOn.org activist group calls for the electoral college to be abolished.

The petition, titled, “Abolish the Electoral College,” has garnered 98,235 signatures as of this writing.  The website says it is seeking 100,000 signatories – this after 131,741,000 voted.

The text states:

“The Electoral College has outlasted its usefulness. It is part of the constitution, written when communication was by pony express.

Voters currently living and voting in a ‘red’ or ‘blue’ state are disenfranchised, because their vote doesn’t matter. Eliminating the electoral college means: no ‘swing’ states getting all the attention and all the campaign stops and all the empty campaign promises. The electoral members are selected by the two main political parties, Republican and Democrat, disenfranchising all other voters, independent, Libertarian, etc. End it now.”

MoveOn.org is being used as the platform for the petition by author Thomas Reich, and the group’s main petition website prominently features the petition.

The petition comes as the latest tallies seem to show Hillary Clinton winning 200,000 more in the national popular vote, while Trump is the clear Electoral College winner.

The move follows another petition launched on MoveOn’s website after Tuesday’s vote, also authored by Reich, that called for the Electoral College to cast their votes for Hillary Clinton despite Trump’s Electoral College majority.

That petition has since been removed from the left-wing group’s website.

PJ Media reported the petition was titled, “Tell the Electoral College to cast their votes for Hillary Clinton.”

Meanwhile, over 2 million people have signed a Change.org petition also demanding that the Electoral College ignore their states’ votes and make Clinton the president.

That petition states:

On December 19, the Electors of the Electoral College will cast their ballots. If they all vote the way their states voted, Donald Trump will win. However, they can vote for Hillary Clinton if they choose. Even in states where that is not allowed, their vote would still be counted, they would simply pay a small fine – which we can be sure Clinton supporters will be glad to pay!

We are calling on the Electors to ignore their states’ votes and cast their ballots for Secretary Clinton.

The petition calling for the Electoral College to be eliminated does not explain how that monumental task is to be achieved. However, there is a separate movement titled the National Popular Vote, or NPV, which would guarantee the presidency to the winner of the popular vote without ratifying the Constitution and without the full agreement of every state.

The movement’s website explains:

The U.S. Constitution (Article II, Section 1) gives the states exclusive control over awarding their electoral votes: “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors….” The winner-take-all rule was used by only three states in 1789.

The National Popular Vote interstate compact would not take effect until enacted by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes—that is, enough to elect a President (270 of 538). Under the compact, the winner would be the candidate who received the most popular votes from all 50 states (and DC) on Election Day. When the Electoral College meets in mid-December, the national popular vote winner would receive all of the electoral votes of the enacting states.

I previously reported on the NPV scheme:

The NPV campaign seeks to obtain the consent of the majority of the 538 votes in the Electoral College to award electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote instead of the winner of the popular vote in each state.

Aside from New York, other states that already signed up are the heavily blue states of Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Washington, Vermont, California and Rhode Island. The District of Columbia also has joined the pact.

The states will not be required to award their electoral votes to the national popular vote winner until the NPV has signed up enough states to garner 270 electoral votes.

…The Founding Fathers firmly rejected a purely popular vote to elect the president, because they wanted to balance the power of the larger and smaller states. The Electoral College was fashioned as a compromise between an election of the president by direct popular vote and election by Congress.

Now the NPV effort could change the way Americans elect the president without amending the U.S. Constitution. The plan simply requires that enough states join through votes in their legislatures along with gubernatorial approval.

It takes two-thirds of both the House and Senate to pass a constitutional amendment to repeal the Electoral College.

To bypass the constitutional amendment process, NPV minimizes the number of states that would need to agree. Instead, once enough states agree to allot its electoral votes to the national popular vote winner, the Electoral College becomes irrelevant.

Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.

With research by Brenda J. Elliott.