The move toward a “National Popular Vote,” under which all Electoral College votes from states participating in an interstate compact would go to the candidate with the most popular votes, is moving forward again this year.
Colorado’s new governor, Jared Polis, recently signed a bill adding Colorado to the minority of states pursuing the agenda. Two other states reportedly are considering such a move.
The late Phyllis Schlafly wrote several years ago about the plan.
“The NPV slogan ‘Every Vote Equal’ is dishonest because the NPV proposal is based on legalizing vote-stealing. For example, Texas or Louisiana could be forced to cast … votes for a candidate who won more votes in other states, such as New York,” she explained.
But there’s not likely to be a court challenge at the moment to the plan that would give the largest population centers control over presidential elections.
The Washington Free Beacon explains the plan cannot activated until states with a total of at least 270 Electoral College votes – enough to elect a president – are committed.
Constitutional and legal experts say that if the plan ever is implemented, a legal challenge could create uncertainty.
“Constitutional legal challenges often take years, leading forward-thinking opponents of the effort to ponder the earliest-possible moment to launch a legal challenge in order to avoid a Bush v. Gore-style emergency legal proceeding deciding the presidency,” the report said.
“If a legal challenge were begun after a November presidential vote, it could undermine the legitimacy of the winner, circumstances all-but-guaranteed to produce immense political uncertainty.”
George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin told the Free Beacon, “It would be very unpleasant and dangerous for the country if the lawsuit were to happen under those circumstances.”
“It is possible that a lawsuit could be launched earlier than that, at the point where they have 270 electoral votes worth of states but there isn’t any election or crisis going on.”
John Samples of the CATO Institute agreed.
“I think the reason you’ve seen nothing so far is it’s not actionable yet,” he told the Free Beacon.
The plan is only “an agreement” at this point.
“The compact is designed in such a way that it doesn’t come into existence until you get that state that provides the [270 vote] majority. So you have to have states with a majority of Electoral College votes before the compact exists. So it doesn’t now, and presumably anyone that sued to stop this would lack standing,” he said.
The report explained the law requires standing for a lawsuit: A plaintiff must have proof he or she was harmed or could be harmed.
The report points out the Constitution forbids states from entering into compacts with other states without congressional approval.
Schlafly said the NPV campaign “lets people believe that NPV will elect presidents who win the majority of popular votes, but that is false.”
“Because of third parties, we’ve had many elections … when no presidential candidate received a popular-vote majority,” she wrote.
“If the NPV lobbyists can get enough states whose votes in the Electoral College total at least 270, they will be able to steal votes away from some candidates, transfer those votes to another candidate and thereby construct a fake majority in the Electoral College,” she said.
“People who pretend that the Electoral College system is undemocratic are not only ignorant of the history and purposes of the U.S. Constitution, but they probably don’t even understand baseball. Basing the election on a plurality of the popular vote while ignoring the states would be like the New York Yankees claiming they won the 1960 World Series because they outscored the Pirates in runs 55-27 and in hits 91-60. Yet, the Pirates fairly won that World Series, 4 games to 3, and no one challenges their victory.”
The absence of understanding of the Electoral College was illustrated during the 2018 election.
Liberal blogger Amanda Marcotte fretted that while the Republicans “lost the popular vote in Senate races,” they still picked up seats.
Republicans lost the popular vote in Senate races by over 15 percentage points, but still gained two seats. https://t.co/TFVdDGIiat
Our country is not a democracy.
— Amanda Marcotte (@AmandaMarcotte) November 7, 2018
She wrote: “Republicans lost the popular vote in the Senate races by over 15 percentage points, but still gained two seats. … Our country is not a democracy.”
A post on the Twitter news aggregating site Twitchy said she got the fact that the U.S. is not a democracy “accidentally” right.
“Oh good, another raging leftist pretending that the popular vote matters in the Senate … good ol’ Amanda Marcotte decided to throw her ‘popular vote’ opinion into the fray.”
It’s an issue because Democrat Hillary Clinton during the 2016 president election made a point of the fact that she collected more votes nationally than presidential election winner Donald Trump.
But Trump ended up with a huge margin of victory in the Electoral College, the constitutionally mandated process in which presidential elections are decided state by state.
Twitchy explained to Democrats that the Senate represents the states “not the people.”
Twitchy posted a tweet by Rachel Bovard saying “everyone understand how dumb of an argument this is, right? Democrats had 26 seats up. GOP has 6. Of course there were more votes for Dems because MORE OF THEM WERE UP FOR RE-ELECTION.”
