Green Party Challenges Apportionment of Electoral College

The Green Party filed a lawsuit on July 28, 2008, seeking to democratize the Electoral College by enforcing 14th Amendment voter protections. The action seeks relief against the defendant, Vice President Cheney, who will preside over the tabulation of "unbound electoral states" on January 6, 2009, and challenges the recognition of Electoral College votes that are apportioned by states on a winner-take-all basis.

The civil action seeks enforcement of the 'Mal-Apportionment Penalty' provided in Section 2 of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, which mandates a reduction of a state's presidential electors and congressional representatives if "the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States... is denied... or in any way abridged." The action also seeks the issuance of a court order providing proportional apportionment of presidential electors.

"[Our challenge] exposes the hypocrisy and fraud behind charges that the McKinney campaign might 'spoil' the Democratic presidential ticket's chances of winning," said Asa Gordon, chair of the DC Statehood Green Party's Electoral College Task Force and executive director of the Douglass Institute of Government. Mr. Gordon filed the action in the US District Court for the District of Columbia (1:08-cv-01294). Cynthia McKinney was nominated as the Green Party's presidential candidate during the 2008 Green National Convention in Chicago, July 10-13.

"Democratic leaders should have to explain why they choose to ignore 13 additional electors from southern states that they'd gain through the Green Party's presidential electors project. Why is the Green Party fighting to give voice to Democratic voters that the Democratic Party will not fight for? Let me be clear -- we're not doing this to assist Barack Obama, but to foster real democracy and voter participation, and to offer Cynthia McKinney as the truly democratic choice for all the people," said Mr. Gordon.

"By refusing to challenge Electoral College malapportionment in 2000 and 2004, which blocked Democratic electors from voting in those elections, the Democratic Party's leaders abandoned tens of thousands of their own voters, just as they failed to challenge the election irregularities in Florida and Ohio in 2000 and 2004. Will they fail to challenge malapportionment again in 2008, and hand the Republicans another victory? Barack Obama would not be the Democratic nominee if not for the Democratic Party's proportional assignment of primary delegates. The winner-take-all provisions in the general election present the distinct possibility that Mr. Obama in 2008 will win the popular vote by a considerably larger margin than did Gore in 2000, but will repeat the Democratic loss in the Electoral College."

Mr. Gordon said that African American voters in several southern states that were represented by proportional assignment of delegates in the Democratic primary, and who were critical to Barack Obama's success, will be lost to Mr. Obama under the winner-take-all rules of the general election. "If proportional assignment is considered by Democrats to be vital to democracy in their primary elections, why won't they fight for it in the general election?" asked Mr. Gordon, who led workshops for Green presidential electors during the 2008 Green National Convention.

If the relief sought is not granted, "We're in danger of seeing the 2008 election stolen again, as in 2000 and 2004," said Clyde Shabazz, Green candidate for the US House in Michigan (13th District). "In Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004, we witnessed the obstruction and manipulation of votes by election officials and possible tampering with computer voting machines. But equally insidious is the malapportionment of Electoral College votes, which disenfranchises whole sections of the voting public."

Mr. Gordon noted that the lawsuit has the potential to "alter the fate of the 2008 presidential election in a manner different from any presidential election in the nation's history."

Read Green Party Press Release: Greens launch effort against Electoral College manipulation of presidential elections