As desperate Democrats seek a redo of the 2016 election, they are dedicating time, energy, and electioneering in key states across the Nation. From adding unverified names through Mandatory Voter Registration to undermining confirmed identification at the polls, Liberal activists are doing everything to ensure any upcoming red-wave doesn’t match the success of 2016. Most recently, a new proposal has been gaining traction and seeks to undermine the American voter: The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC).
Under the NPVIC, when “[a state] passes legislation to join the National Popular Vote Compact, it pledges that all of that state’s electoral votes will be given to whichever presidential candidate wins the popular vote nationwide, rather than the candidate who won the vote in just that state. These bills will take effect only when states with a majority of the electoral votes have passed similar legislation and joined the compact.” Currently, 15 states and DC have signed on, with Oregon becoming the most recent. A threshold of 270 electoral votes from member-states is required for the compact to go into effect.
In the history of the United States, there have been five elections where the winner of the Presidency did not win the popular vote, most recently being Donald Trump’s 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton. As a result, undoing the Electoral College has become a hot topic once again- mostly with Clinton supporters. The purpose of the Electoral College was to guarantee the rights of citizens of smaller states, ensuring that candidates would seek support from those smaller constituencies. If the compact were to become law, smaller states would be ignored in lieu of larger states like New York and California.
While the compact, funded mostly by liberal groups, has become a standard talking point among 2020 Democrat Presidential hopefuls, some are questioning the merits of such a shift. Proponents of the compact state “Because of the winner-take-all system of allocating Electoral College votes, the only votes that count are those for the person who wins the state in which they were cast. In 2016, this resulted in over 52 million votes being ignored in the presidential election – that is hardly being counted equally.” but in reality, the Electoral College is what guarantees equality- given that larger states do not disproportionately determine elections.
As Gettysburg College Professor Allen Guelzo wrote following the 2016 election:
“The Electoral College is at the core of our system of federalism….The Founders who sat in the 1787 Constitutional Convention lavished an extraordinary amount of argument on the Electoral College and it was by no means one-sided….The Founders … designed the operation of the Electoral College with unusual care.
The electoral college was an integral part of that federal plan. It made a place for the states as well as the people in electing the president by giving them a say at different points in a federal process and preventing big-city populations from dominating the election of a president.
Abolishing the electoral college now might satisfy an irritated yearning for direct democracy, but it would also mean dismantling federalism. After that, there would be no sense in having a Senate (which, after all, represents the interests of the states), and further along, no sense even in having states, except as administrative departments of the central government. Those who wish to abolish the electoral college ought to go the distance, and do away with the entire federal system and perhaps even retire the Constitution, since the federalism it was designed to embody would have disappeared.”
Fortunately for our Democracy, there are level-headed voices who recognize the overhaul of the Electoral College would not yield greater representation, but would ensure the minority is subjected to the rule of the majority. RNLA will provide updates as more states adopt the NPVIC.