Join the Unprecedented Federal Appeal Challenges Winner-Take-All System
The Issue
Fellow Americans,
For the first time in over 50 years — after several similar challenges since 1969 all failed to clear this hurdle — a federal court has recognized Article III standing and redressability in a constitutional case against the Winner-Take-All (WTA) system. Achieving this historic threshold presents an unprecedented opportunity — with strong public support — to convince the Court to declare WTA unconstitutional.
Petition:
A federal appeal filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (Liu v. Hochul, Case No. 25-1031) is challenging New York State’s use of the “Winner-Take-All” (WTA) method to allocate presidential electors — a system used by 48 states and the District of Columbia.
Under WTA, the candidate who wins a statewide plurality of the popular vote receives 100% of the state’s electoral votes even if the winning margin is one single vote, effectively nullifying all ballots cast for other candidates. In the 2024 presidential election alone, more than 67 million votes nationwide — 43.5% of the total — were rendered meaningless by WTA.
This case is not against the Electoral College, nor is it driven by partisan motives. It fights for the constitutional promise of equal vote for all Americans — in every state and the District of Columbia — regardless of political affiliation, ensuring every ballot carries equal weight and equal impact, as guaranteed by multiple constitutional provisions and affirmed by a long line of Supreme Court precedents: Baker v. Carr, Gray v. Sanders, Reynolds v. Sims, Wesberry v. Sanders, and Bush v. Gore.
How WTA violates the Constitution’s four core guarantees:
- Equal Protection Clause (14th Amendment): By giving decisive electoral impact only to voters in the political plurality, WTA systematically denies equal weight and effect to the votes of those in the minority.
- First Amendment: WTA penalizes voters for their political expression by ensuring their votes have no electoral impact if cast for a non-winning candidate.
- Due Process Clause (14th Amendment): WTA imposes arbitrary and discriminatory vote nullifications without any constitutional or statutory authorization, depriving tens of millions of Americans of the meaningful value of their votes.
- Guarantee Clause (Article IV, Section 4): By silencing nearly half of the electorate, WTA undermines the Constitution’s guarantee of a republican form of government where all citizens must be represented.
Notably, our Founding Fathers opposed WTA. They envisioned an inclusive, representative Electoral College designed to guard against majority tyranny —such as WTA system that erases nearly half the electorate in each state.
Furthermore, our Founding Fathers declared independence in part to reject the injustice of taxation without representation, a denial of meaningful political voice. WTA resurrects that injustice in modern form by structurally denying political minorities equal representation in the only nationally elected office which is supposed to represent all Americans. Just as the colonies rose up 250 years ago to demand representation, today’s citizens must rise up against this modern-day taxation without representation.
Any person who claims to be an originalist must reject WTA, because it has no textual basis in the Constitution, contradicts the intent of our Founding Fathers, and betrays the very spirit of the American Revolution. To defend WTA is to engage in intellectual dishonesty, self-serving selectivity, and constitutional hypocrisy.
In those one-party dictatorship regimes, elections were staged, outcomes predetermined, dissent silenced, and ballots rendered meaningless. While the mechanics differ, WTA produces a disturbingly similar effect: institutionalized disenfranchisement and political exclusion.
No other developed democracy uses WTA to elect its national executive. Small wonder authoritarian regimes around the world have mocked American democracy as fake, hollow, and hypocritical.
In Dred Scott v. Sandford, the Court denied Black Americans recognition as human beings and as citizens. In Plessy v. Ferguson, the Court upheld Jim Crow state laws enforcing racial segregation. In Korematsu v. United States, the Court sanctioned the mass imprisonment of Japanese Americans solely on the basis of ancestry. Each remains a permanent stain on the Court’s legacy — moments when it failed to protect, and instead betrayed, the very rights the Constitution was meant to guarantee.
In a landmark development, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) became the first federal court since 1969 to explicitly recognize that plaintiffs in a WTA challenge have both Article III standing and that their injury is judicially redressable. Although SDNY dismissed the case based on an outdated summary affirmance with limited precedential value, its recognition allows this constitutional case to move forward on appeal — an opportunity no prior WTA challenge in over half a century has achieved.
The Court now faces another historic moment: to remedy a constitutional injury that has persisted since 1824, disenfranchising hundreds of millions of Americans across all political affiliations.
Chief Justice John Marshall declared in Marbury v. Madison (1803): “The very essence of civil liberty certainly consists in the right of every individual to claim the protection of the laws, whenever he receives an injury.”
Justice Anthony Kennedy affirmed in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015): “When the rights of persons are violated, the Constitution requires redress by the courts … even if the legislature refuses to act.”
Chief Justice Roberts wrote in Trump v. Hawaii (2018), that a policy “has no place in law under the Constitution” when it violates our fundamental constitutional principles.
The Court’s duty is clear: to uphold the Constitution even against entrenched political practices that deny fundamental rights.
The appeal urges the Second Circuit to declare WTA unconstitutional, leaving state legislatures free to adopt fairer allocation models — such as the district-based systems in Maine (since 1972) and Nebraska (since 1991) — approaches consistent with the Constitution’s text and the Framers’ vision.
On George Orwell’s Animal Farm: “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.” WTA mirrors this injustice — creating two classes of votes: some count fully, others not at all.
The question before the Court — and the Nation — is this: Will we uphold the Constitution’s promise of equal vote for every American, or continue discarding tens of millions of lawful votes, election after election?
In other words, does America really want to be a true constitutional democratic republic — or will it remain an Orwell’s Animal Farm under the WTA for 201 years and counting?
Call to Action:
- Sign this petition to demand equal representation, fair elections, and the end of systematic vote nullification in our presidential elections.
- Share this petition widely with friends, family, colleagues, and organizations.
- All concerned citizens, constitutional scholars, and voting rights organizations are invited to submit amicus briefs or letters of support to:
Clerk of Court
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
Thurgood Marshall U.S. Courthouse
40 Foley Square
New York, NY 10007
- Case Name: Liu v. Hochul
Case No.: 25-1031
Read the Filings:
Both the Appellant Brief and Appendix contain extensive legal analyses grounded in historical facts, constitutional principles, Supreme Court precedents, and detailed electoral data — providing a comprehensive case for why WTA is unconstitutional and must be struck down.
12
The Issue
Fellow Americans,
For the first time in over 50 years — after several similar challenges since 1969 all failed to clear this hurdle — a federal court has recognized Article III standing and redressability in a constitutional case against the Winner-Take-All (WTA) system. Achieving this historic threshold presents an unprecedented opportunity — with strong public support — to convince the Court to declare WTA unconstitutional.
Petition:
A federal appeal filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (Liu v. Hochul, Case No. 25-1031) is challenging New York State’s use of the “Winner-Take-All” (WTA) method to allocate presidential electors — a system used by 48 states and the District of Columbia.
Under WTA, the candidate who wins a statewide plurality of the popular vote receives 100% of the state’s electoral votes even if the winning margin is one single vote, effectively nullifying all ballots cast for other candidates. In the 2024 presidential election alone, more than 67 million votes nationwide — 43.5% of the total — were rendered meaningless by WTA.
This case is not against the Electoral College, nor is it driven by partisan motives. It fights for the constitutional promise of equal vote for all Americans — in every state and the District of Columbia — regardless of political affiliation, ensuring every ballot carries equal weight and equal impact, as guaranteed by multiple constitutional provisions and affirmed by a long line of Supreme Court precedents: Baker v. Carr, Gray v. Sanders, Reynolds v. Sims, Wesberry v. Sanders, and Bush v. Gore.
How WTA violates the Constitution’s four core guarantees:
- Equal Protection Clause (14th Amendment): By giving decisive electoral impact only to voters in the political plurality, WTA systematically denies equal weight and effect to the votes of those in the minority.
- First Amendment: WTA penalizes voters for their political expression by ensuring their votes have no electoral impact if cast for a non-winning candidate.
- Due Process Clause (14th Amendment): WTA imposes arbitrary and discriminatory vote nullifications without any constitutional or statutory authorization, depriving tens of millions of Americans of the meaningful value of their votes.
- Guarantee Clause (Article IV, Section 4): By silencing nearly half of the electorate, WTA undermines the Constitution’s guarantee of a republican form of government where all citizens must be represented.
Notably, our Founding Fathers opposed WTA. They envisioned an inclusive, representative Electoral College designed to guard against majority tyranny —such as WTA system that erases nearly half the electorate in each state.
Furthermore, our Founding Fathers declared independence in part to reject the injustice of taxation without representation, a denial of meaningful political voice. WTA resurrects that injustice in modern form by structurally denying political minorities equal representation in the only nationally elected office which is supposed to represent all Americans. Just as the colonies rose up 250 years ago to demand representation, today’s citizens must rise up against this modern-day taxation without representation.
Any person who claims to be an originalist must reject WTA, because it has no textual basis in the Constitution, contradicts the intent of our Founding Fathers, and betrays the very spirit of the American Revolution. To defend WTA is to engage in intellectual dishonesty, self-serving selectivity, and constitutional hypocrisy.
In those one-party dictatorship regimes, elections were staged, outcomes predetermined, dissent silenced, and ballots rendered meaningless. While the mechanics differ, WTA produces a disturbingly similar effect: institutionalized disenfranchisement and political exclusion.
No other developed democracy uses WTA to elect its national executive. Small wonder authoritarian regimes around the world have mocked American democracy as fake, hollow, and hypocritical.
In Dred Scott v. Sandford, the Court denied Black Americans recognition as human beings and as citizens. In Plessy v. Ferguson, the Court upheld Jim Crow state laws enforcing racial segregation. In Korematsu v. United States, the Court sanctioned the mass imprisonment of Japanese Americans solely on the basis of ancestry. Each remains a permanent stain on the Court’s legacy — moments when it failed to protect, and instead betrayed, the very rights the Constitution was meant to guarantee.
In a landmark development, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) became the first federal court since 1969 to explicitly recognize that plaintiffs in a WTA challenge have both Article III standing and that their injury is judicially redressable. Although SDNY dismissed the case based on an outdated summary affirmance with limited precedential value, its recognition allows this constitutional case to move forward on appeal — an opportunity no prior WTA challenge in over half a century has achieved.
The Court now faces another historic moment: to remedy a constitutional injury that has persisted since 1824, disenfranchising hundreds of millions of Americans across all political affiliations.
Chief Justice John Marshall declared in Marbury v. Madison (1803): “The very essence of civil liberty certainly consists in the right of every individual to claim the protection of the laws, whenever he receives an injury.”
Justice Anthony Kennedy affirmed in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015): “When the rights of persons are violated, the Constitution requires redress by the courts … even if the legislature refuses to act.”
Chief Justice Roberts wrote in Trump v. Hawaii (2018), that a policy “has no place in law under the Constitution” when it violates our fundamental constitutional principles.
The Court’s duty is clear: to uphold the Constitution even against entrenched political practices that deny fundamental rights.
The appeal urges the Second Circuit to declare WTA unconstitutional, leaving state legislatures free to adopt fairer allocation models — such as the district-based systems in Maine (since 1972) and Nebraska (since 1991) — approaches consistent with the Constitution’s text and the Framers’ vision.
On George Orwell’s Animal Farm: “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.” WTA mirrors this injustice — creating two classes of votes: some count fully, others not at all.
The question before the Court — and the Nation — is this: Will we uphold the Constitution’s promise of equal vote for every American, or continue discarding tens of millions of lawful votes, election after election?
In other words, does America really want to be a true constitutional democratic republic — or will it remain an Orwell’s Animal Farm under the WTA for 201 years and counting?
Call to Action:
- Sign this petition to demand equal representation, fair elections, and the end of systematic vote nullification in our presidential elections.
- Share this petition widely with friends, family, colleagues, and organizations.
- All concerned citizens, constitutional scholars, and voting rights organizations are invited to submit amicus briefs or letters of support to:
Clerk of Court
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
Thurgood Marshall U.S. Courthouse
40 Foley Square
New York, NY 10007
- Case Name: Liu v. Hochul
Case No.: 25-1031
Read the Filings:
Both the Appellant Brief and Appendix contain extensive legal analyses grounded in historical facts, constitutional principles, Supreme Court precedents, and detailed electoral data — providing a comprehensive case for why WTA is unconstitutional and must be struck down.
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Petition created on August 8, 2025