Vermont is one gubernatorial signature away from joining an effort to ditch the Electoral College. The Vermont legislature gave final approval to the National Popular Vote plan last week. (More details regarding the mechanics of the legislation can be found here.)
As a legislator, Governor Shumlin once sponsored the bill, so he is expected to sign it now. His signature will make Vermont the seventh state to join NPV’s compact. The District of Columbia has also approved the measure. These eight entities have a combined total of 77 electoral votes. Unfortunately, the bill also appears to be on a fast track toward approval in California. Those 55 electoral votes would bring the total number of participating electoral votes to 132. NPV needs 270 electoral votes to go into effect. Implementation of the compact will effectively eliminate the Electoral College.
NPV disputes such a characterization, of course. Tom Golisano of NPV celebrated the decision in Vermont, declaring that NPV will allow all votes to count “while preserving the Electoral College and the intent of the Founding Fathers.”
What an odd thing to say. NPV preserves the intent of the Founding Fathers? Would these be the same Founders who explicitly rejected a national direct-election system for the American presidency? NPV conveniently forgets that the original small states — states just like Vermont — would not have ratified the Constitution if a direct-election system had been included. NPV also ignores the fact that its plan sidesteps a constitutional-amendment process that would require ratification by 38 states before such radical change to presidential elections can be implemented.
NPV has been working hard to pretend that its plan is a federalist, pro–Electoral College measure. This is a political calculation that makes sense in the wake of Tea Party and Republican victories last November, but it is inconsistent with an honest reading of the Constitution and American history.
It’s too bad that Vermont legislators fell for the superficial sound bites touted by NPV. They should have spent more time studying the important reasons that small states in 1787 rejected a national direct election system. Their failure to do so will end up hurting their own small state.
— Tara Ross is the author of Enlightened Democracy: The Case for the Electoral College.
Doesn't the compact clause of the constitution prohibit exactly this?
"No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay."
Has Congress granted consent?
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Would these be the same Founders who explicitly rejected a national direct-election system for the American presidency?"
Come on, you wouldn't expect the legislators of Vermont to *actually read*, say, Federalist 68, would you?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDoes anyone think that this scheme will survive a single election? Really, what happens if the popular vote goes against the votes of a particular State in this group? How fast will that State pull out? They might even pull out before the Electors are officially sent to Washington!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe states will start rapidly repealing their NPV laws the first time states like Maryland, Vermont, and California have to give their EV to the Republican winner of the popular vote.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseEvery time I see something on the NPV, I ask the same question: What national popular vote? There is no such thing, and the states signing this compact have no ability to create one. There are a number of unofficial counts of what the popular vote might have been, but these counts are unofficial for a reason. There numbers are incomplete, and in any election close enough that this compact might matter, they could very well differ. At the very least, it is likely to be close enough that a recount would be required, and the NPV states have no authority to force a recount in other states.
I still think this plan makes only slightly more sense than allocating votes based on whether or not the groundhog sees his shadow.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThere's no reason to worry until it starts picking up swing or red states, since the whole thing is based on Dems upset with the 2000 election.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe biggest problem to me is that you can be disenfranchising your own state's voters through this cockeyed scheme. If they want to do something creative, switch to the system Maine and Nebraska already use.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseA more intelligent way to roughly the same goal would be for the states to allocate their EV's in proportion to the share of the vote each candidate receives, or based on the number of congressional districts each party wins. That information is at least tabulated by every state, while the "national popular vote" has no legal existence whatsoever.
What are they going to do, take the New York Times word for what the national popular vote is?
And Colin Fraizer is right, this proposal almost certainly requires Congressional approval under the Compact Clause.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbusePerhaps this is too cynical, but I am very concerned that the impact of this would be to give liberal justices the ability to ensure that the Democrat wins the next electoral college/popular vote split, regardless of which one he leads. I suspect that conservative justices with their concern for the Constitution's original intent would do their best to render an unbiased opinion, meaning that they would make the same ruling on the validity of the compact regardless of which party was favored by it. But the liberals' "living constitution" jurisprudence would give them the flexibility to vote for whichever constitutional result favored their candidate.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseVermont was the 14th state. It was not one of the original 13 that voted to ratify the constitution. In fact, Vermont was "independant" for a few years. Though small states like Delaware and Rhode Island did insist on the Electoral College. Losing liberals will try anything when thier message fails without realizing the law if unintended consequences, i.e. 'The Rowe effect'.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhile I think this is a very bad idea, I don't see how it is unconstitutional. IIRC the Constitution pretty much gives a state carte blanche on how to select its electors.
The real travesty in this system is that it will make close elections a hell. Bush v. Gore will become the good old days of a recount in one closely contested state. Imagine a recount in selected democrat strongholds in all 50 states. In addition, the electoral college serves as a natural limitation on voter fraud. When the dead vote in Chicago, they can only throw Illinois.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis is much ado about nothing. It will never work even if they reach the 270 vote number. The states that are not in the compact are free to not release unofficial tallies or forbid the county courthouses from releasing numbers to the press. States not in the compact can release a set of delegates and official numbers seconds before they are due in Washington.
This ruins the whole plan, because members of the compact must agree with each other on who won the popular vote 6 days before the certificates are due in Washington. If they can't agree, they are free to allocate delegates as they wish. The NPV plan does not contemplate this scenario. There is no reliable mechanism to resolve a disagreement.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJust out of curiosity, was the decision to support NPV based on a statewide referendum where every vote could be counted? Or did the elected officials impose their political will on their state?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseVT legislators did not "fall" for anything. They know exactly what they are doing. They want a USA where vote fraud, illegal immigration/amnesty and the NPV ensure Democrat presidents in perpetuity.
And based on NPV's steady progress to date, I think they might get it.
This is the most underreported, sinister thing going on in American politics today.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt's equally ironic that this post cites the Founding Fathers, as they were the ones who originally put in the language which allows the NPV to happen: "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors..."
The NPV is perfectly legal and it is within a state's rights to determine how to appoint its electors. If the state wants to do so in a manner that avoids handing the presidency to a person other than the one supported by the majority of people in this country, that's the state's business.
Additionally, while there are definitely some issues here (what if a state pulls out of the compact, will this make elections more complicated, etc.) removing attention from Vermont during the presidential race is clearly not one of them. Many small states are hardly visited by candidates because their electoral votes are already foregone conclusions. In fact, I can see how the NPV could finally bring candidates to rural areas of states like Maryland (which outside of Montgomery co., PG co., and Baltimore, is quite conservative), California (which is conservative outside of the coast), and Illinois (which is conservative outside of the Chicago area).
More importantly, candidates might visit Texas and California, where a sizeable portion of our country lives, but which are mainly on the sidelines during the presidential campaigns. Anyone who believes that a person's presidential vote in Oklahoma currently matters just as much as a person's presidential vote in Missouri is simply not being honest about our current system.
Would splitting the electoral votes by proportion of the popular vote won be a great idea? Of course. Problem is, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans will move on this first, out of fear of shooting themselves in the foot in the next election if the other party's states didn't go through with this plan.
The electoral college has served us well, but it does tend to focus the race around a couple of key states, and exacerbate the divide between so-called red and blue states. One thing is clear: the NPV compact is well-within the state powers outlined in our Constitution.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI don't understand the arguments in other comments that the compact is clearly constitutional.
What is the point of the Compact clause?
Yes, the Constitution states that states can select electors however they like, but then it *forbids* compacts between states without approval of Congress.
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