Much of the country is understandably focused on the revolution in Egypt, but an equally life-changing — if more stealthy — revolution continues here at home in America. Its proponents are attempting to win support by latching on to the highly successful Tea Party movement. But their cause is the precise opposite of what the Founders would have envisioned.
As I’ve previously written on NRO, the National Popular Vote movement is an effort to effectively eliminate the Electoral College without a constitutional amendment. NPV goes into effect when adopted by states holding a majority of electoral votes (270); to date, six states plus D.C. (74 electoral votes) are committed to the plan. Already this spring, NPV’s bill has been introduced in nearly a third of state legislatures and is moving in Alaska, Connecticut, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Vermont. A state-by-state update is here.
NPV’s efforts in South Dakota reflect its new “Tea Party” strategy. It has convinced some Republicans from this red state that NPV is good from a conservative, Tea Party perspective: Allegedly, a national direct election will eliminate the focus on swing states, enabling conservative voices across the country to be heard. The nation leans center-right; thus, a national popular vote for president will reflect this sentiment and allow more center-right candidates to be elected. Or so NPV claims.
There are several problems with this analysis. First, it is wrong to eliminate the Electoral College based purely on temporary, partisan gain. Our Constitution contains safeguards such as the Electoral College so that freedom might be protected over the course of decades. The founding generation would never have understood tampering with fundamental law to protect one person or party at one point in time.
Second, it is a big leap to assume that conservatives will benefit the most from a transition to direct elections. Arguably, the short-term partisan gain will be for the Democratic party. Candidates who are striving for individual votes campaign most efficiently when they focus on big cities and densely populated areas — currently a Democratic strength. At a minimum, Tea Partiers should admit that arguments for conservative electoral strength sound somewhat insincere coming from a California-based organization, funded by liberals.
Finally, Tea Partiers should be wary of the roundabout manner in which NPV is seeking its goal. I have defended the benefits of the Electoral College and believe it should be kept. But if it is to be eliminated, respect for the Constitution requires use of the formal constitutional amendment process. Yes, such a process is difficult, but changes to fundamental law should not be made without great thought and widespread agreement. NPV instead relies on a handful of states to change the presidential election system for the whole country, with minimal debate and even less agreement.
The Tea Party has proven itself to be a powerful political force, so it is not surprising that NPV is adapting its pitch accordingly. But Tea Partiers will serve their country best if they continue to be wary of anti-constitutional ideas such as NPV.
— Tara Ross is the author of Enlightened Democracy: The Case for the Electoral College.
Your argument goes off the rails when you start to claim that this is an "anti-constitutional idea" and that it "requires a formal constitutional amendment." It's obvious you don't actually believe these statements, and that you're throwing them out there as red meat to blind conservatives to the actual arguments -- my God, we must defend the Constitution!
If you believed the pact ran afoul of the Constitution, you wouldn't have to write feverish posts opposing it. But you know it's fully Constitutional.
The legislatures of the States get to decide how the Electors are allocated. There is absolutely NO restriction on how they award them. The Founders would probably be surprised to find that we're letting ordinary men -- and women!! -- in EVERY SINGLE state vote directly for the Electors.
If the legislatures who select a majority of the Electors decide to award them on the basis of the national popular vote, the Founders would tell the little people to listen to their betters and accept the result.
And in fact, the Pact contains a flaw (from its supporters' perspective) that should put your mind at ease. If ANY of the state legislatures involved decides that the Pact isn't worth it anymore, it can easily withdraw. These are not binding treaties. They're legislative acts. Any State can pull out of it, invalidating the pact. But if they don't, then respect for the Constitution's efforts to ENCOURAGE democratic experimentation demands that we let the legislatures do what the Constitution demanded they do, and pick the Electors however they darn well please.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis idea isn't only constitutionally dubious and certainly procedurally odious (why are liberals always the party of amending the Constitution without actually going through the process set forth in the Constitution?) - it's a nightmare waiting to happen from a practical point. You are trying to coordinate dozens of separate elections with separate systems and separate rules - and at the end of the day, you may still wind up with another 2000 election - only with NPV there will be absolutely no mechanism to deal with the situation. Gore won the popular vote by about 550,000 votes out of over 100 MILLION cast - that's less than 0.5%. In most states that would result in an automatic recount. But very few states in 2000 were actually within recount margins, the total just worked out that way. NPV provides virtually no mechanism for recounts in such a situation. And it certainly wouldn't bind the non-signatory states, whose vote totals factor into the final decision.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNPV is the ultimate in short-sighted nonsense. It's a stalking horse for the domination of the urban power centers on a national level. If you think the people of the top 15 most dense urban populations in the nation should decide who runs the entire country, NPV is the way to go.
If you believe their interests might not always align with the rest of the country, you should oppose this idea at every turn.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI remember reading about this some time ago at NRO and I think it's very scary. Please write more about this so that people are more aware of the danger. Even the issue of debt is smaller than this one, which cuts at the very foundation of the country.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJust out of curiosity, do any of these NPV laws say what "National Popular Vote" they will be using. Because there is no national popular vote--not an official one at any rate. So are we using the totals reported by CNN, Fox, MSNBC? One of the polling organizations, perhaps?
Maybe we just take the totals reported by the states? But of course many states won't count absentee ballots if they wouldn't make any difference. And is there any mechanism that forces the states to honestly report their totals? Any reason that, say Texas, couldn't say that 100% of their population voted for the Republican candidate? If they did try to screw with it somehow, I don't think that Rhode Island would have the standing to sue and force Texas to recount.
Would we force the Federal government to get involved and do a national official count? What a mess that would be! Put a federal official in every precinct, see how much faster we go bankrupt.
There are plenty of ideological reasons to oppose this, but I can't see how to make it work on a practical level either.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseReidim hits the nail on the head. What was the popular vote in 2000? NO ONE KNOWS. States stop counting when the electoral vote is clear. When there is a single popular vote, a vote anywhere can and should be disputed. It would be Florida in 50 states. It is bad enough when big city shenanigans turn around a single state's electoral vote; how can a state commit its electoral votes based on a 'landslide' in a city 2000 miles away?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'm fine with Electoral College reform, but it should look like this:
Each House district gets one Electoral vote determined by the results of the popular vote in that district alone.
The winner of the popular vote in each state is then awarded the two unallocated electors.
I think this is great, and would love to see how previous elections might have looked under such a system (which would more closely mirror the popular vote, while maintaining the federalism of the electoral college), but I can see objections coming from certain large, winner-take-all states. It might be worth trying out if just to see Jerry Brown make arguments in favor of federalism.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuseds, your constitutional argument is sound in which case I'd extend it to all sorts of 10A issues.
Among the copious reasons for conservatives to oppose NPV I would say from a practical electoral standpoint the leading reason would be vote fraud. If the popular vote determined the winner, places like Chicago, Detroit, Philly and LA would take illegal vote manufacturing to new heights, and fraud would become nationally organized to a degree way past what ACORN was up to.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuseds - you're right, the states can do whatever they want to select electors. They could abolish voting altogether and run a lottery to pick their electors and leave them totally unbound and free to pick anybody they wished (in the first several elections most states didn't bind their electors to the result of any vote).
It just seems rather foolish. It is designed to "solve" the problem of 2000. But a popular vote loser has only won the presidency 3 times in the history of the country - 1824, 1876, and 2000. In 1824, nobody received a majority of the popular vote of the EC and the House picked the president. In 1876, the EVs of 3 states were disputed and a special commission awarded them to Hayes over popular vote winning Tilden. And in 2000 the popular vote margin was barely 1/2 of 1 percent (550,000 votes out 101 MILLION cast). So you're solving a "problem" that is unlikely to occur again in the foreseeable future and instituting a system that is almost certain to create some other problem (potentially even a "crisis level" problem) that could be worse than the disease.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBreaker of Horses - That is the system used in Maine and Nebraska. 2008 was the first time it ever resulted in a split vote (Obama won NE-2 while McCain won the other two districts and the state). I think 2000 would have been just as close as it was in reality - based on some numbers I've seen Bush would have won 269-270 EVs (there's one district that was 50-50 but I only have percentages and it's not clear who had more votes) - a number of districts were very close and probably would have had outcome determinative recounts.
In 2004, Bush would have won bigger - around 315 EVs as opposed to the 286 he won with the current system. In 2008, McCain would also have increase his total to around 237 (as opposed to 173) EVs. So generally the district system would work to the advantage of the GOP - there are more Republican districts in generally blue states (like CA, NY, IL) than there are Democratic districts in generally red states. And in a year like 2008 most of the big states were blue (CA, NY, IL, FL, OH, PA).
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abusereldim -- you have a good point. I wasn't saying this is a great idea (it's not) or that it's necessary (ditto), but that it's fully Constitutional.
Your post makes good arguments for why we should all take a deep breath and just TOTALLY IGNORE this effort. It's not worth getting upset over. It would be a MINOR change, it's very unlikely to happen, and if it did happen, it would be VERY easy to undo it.
Frankly, a national campaign to get people to thing about their State's rights, to think about how elections work, and to participate in the process strikes me as a largely positive thing. I don't know what all the hyperventilation is about. A lot of conservatives are calling for an Article 5 Convention, an effort I strongly support. That's an even more extreme example of the States trying to get involved in the Constitutional process. And that's just great! Can't we be HAPPY about States participating in the Constitution more? Everyone just relax.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuseds - the only quibble I have is that inertia is a powerful thing. It's hard to get people to change already existing laws unless something exposes them as totally off the wall. While NPV could be repealed by statute in any state that passes it, such a campaign requires a lot of effort, and may not be successful until we run into some electoral disaster as a result of the system.
Better to fight it now and prevent it from ever coming into existence than trying to fight to remove it later. That said, we do not need to overhype the arguments - NPV would not be the end of the Republic as we know it, nor would it destroy the Constitution. It is unwise, ill-considered, and insufficiently studied to determine what problems it might cause. And those are all perfectly good reasons to put the brakes on - especially in conservative states like Nebraska and South Dakota.
Perhaps we should be arguing for more states to move to the Nebraska/Maine system of using CD results in addition to statewide results. That moves us pretty close to a NPV like system without creating the kind of chaos that will inevitably stem from a multi-state system that has no enforcement mechanisms to insure accuracy and stability. Such a system would also be a media bonanza - imagine if the networks had over 450 different calls to make and talk about and analyze and discuss. While we waited for the results in a close state like Ohio or Florida, we could be hearing about the results in various congressional districts in those states. The all-star panels would go wild.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe plan under discussion, if implemented, would mean that ballot box stuffing in one state could overcome the will of people in another state. No! No! No!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI agree that constitutionality isn't an issue. If states want to act foolishly, they have the right under the constitution.
Why any state (especially swing states) would want to do this is beyond me. As it is, swing states get tons of attention every 4 years. If they accepted this proposal, anyone outside bigger cities would melt away, and states that have moderate to large populations but relatively small cities (e.g., my own Ohio) would become totally irrelevant.
On the "how would prior elections have turned out" issue, it's fun to talk about but it's all academic. Those campaigns were run under the current EC system, with all campaigns running a state-level strategy. We have no idea how a campaign under totally different rules would've turned out, and we can't make any meaningful comparisons.
We don't even know who the candidates would've been. How would primaries work under this system, and would the same candidates have emerged? Would parties still count state-level primary winners? I doubt it.
It'd be like saying, well, if a field goal were worth 4 points and a touchdown only 5, who would've won a given Super Bowl? No idea, because the teams would've played the game differently.
Anyway, it's a rotten idea no matter how you slice it. It's just a transfer of power from rural folk to city-dwellers. (Or, to repeat myself, from reg'lar folk to those favored by rich lefties.)
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI stopped reading after the first sentence. Most of the country is not focused on Eqypt - or the Electoral College. Most of the country doesn't know where Eqypt is on a map, or that an Electoral College determines the winner of a Presidential election. Most of the country cares more about whatever is currently popular on reality television, getting six-pack abs, cures for ED and male-pattern baldness, and what shoes to wear than anything of actual consequence to our nation or the world.
Until conservative movement leaders realize this and find a way to break through the wall of willful ignorance, we are doomed.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFor the record, there is indeed an official count, required by federal law, from each state.
I disagree that major urban areas would receive the lion's share of the attention under this bill. Do you really think Republicans are going to ignore the suburbs, for example?
It is possible that some constituencies will be ignored, but as it stands, roughly 35 states are ignored. Within the states that are considered battleground states, Democrats push turnout in urban areas, while Republicans focus on the suburbs. At best, you have the same outcome.
I'm not sure what it means to amend the Constitution without amending the Constitution. That sounds like a begrudging concession that this bill is, in fact, Constitutional.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe constitutionality of NPV is most certainly in question. NPV is, on its face, a conspiracy of like-minded states to overthrow in practical effect the constitutionally-mandated Electoral College without actually amending the Constitution, thereby depriving non-signatory states of the protections of the 2/3 & 3/4 ratification requirements to which they are entitled to. It's an egregious attempt at an end run around both Articles II and V.
What's more, the gentleman who suggested "the Founders" would find NPV constitutionally permissible could not be more wrong. The Founders crafted the Connecticut Compromise and the Electoral College precisely to prevent simple-majority rule and dominance by larger states over their less populous sister states. States like Delaware and Rhode Island never would have ratified had it been understood that an ad hoc coalition of states could decide outside the amendment process to nullify the Electoral College and de facto alter the manner in which the nation elects its chief executive. The fact that something like this has never been attempted before, even during the fractious years leading up to the Civil War when the more populous North could have used it to its great advantage, is telling.
As such, NPV fails miserably under principles of textualism, federalism, and originalism, and would be a very strong bet to be found unconstitutional if it ever actually goes into effect.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseTexas better remember to report 8 billion votes for Rick Perry for president.
Incidentally, if tea party types with brains want the tea party to work, they need to shut up the idiots in their number that go off and campaign for this kind of thing under the auspices of the tea party.
Tea Party= Too much spending is bad + Average Citizens getting into politics to replace career politicos.
That's it. Anything beyond that and you should not use the tea party banner or tea party money to push it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI filed on Dec 7, 2010, with the California Attorney General Jerry Brown a statewide initiative titled “Electoral College Reform Act: It was approved by the AG on Feb.2, 2011 and we are now collecting signatures for the Feb 2012 ballot. Contact us if you like the idea.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseCurrently, California has a “winner take all” system that selects delegates to the Electoral College.
Under the proposed change voters each of the 53 Congressional Districts will elect a local elector.
Two electors will be selected at-large in California.
Why the Electoral College Reform is a really good idea!
1 $100,000,000 will be spent in California in media purchases in the Presidential campaigns. It will create many jobs.
2 Presidential candidates will be forced to come to California. California is largely taken for granted by Presidential candidates because of the “winner take all” system of awarding electoral votes. In recent elections, Presidential candidates have ignored voters in California and have spent more time and money trying to win votes in smaller states with a few electoral votes.
3 Independent votes will matter. Further, a “winner take all” system impedes credible third party or independent candidacies for President.
4 Rural voters will have a voice
5 Mega urban areas will not dominate the process. Los Angeles County voters determines whom California votes for President.
6 California will reflect its political demography. Our Congressional District Electors system of awarding electoral votes will reflect the vast diversity of our state, the regional differences of our citizenry, and the unique problems face by Californians.
7 Returns the power of the vote back to the people and not the special interest ruling elite.
8 Returns back to the 1788 system of selecting electors.
9 George Washington was elected by Congressional District Electors,1789.
10 Maine and Nebraska has Congressional District Electors system awarding electoral votes.
11 It reinforces our founding fathers concept of representative government.
12 Grass roots involvement in the Presidential election.