The Popular Vote vs. the Electoral College (video)

Right now, there's a well-organized, below-the-radar effort to render the Electoral College effectively useless. It's called the National Popular Vote, and it would turn our presidential elections into a majority-rule affair. Would this be good or bad? Author, lawyer, and Electoral College expert Tara Ross explains.

In every presidential election, only one question matters: which candidate will get the 270 votes needed to win the Electoral College?

Our Founders so deeply feared a tyranny of the majority that they rejected the idea of a direct vote for President. That's why they created the Electoral College. For more than two centuries it has encouraged coalition building, given a voice to both big and small states, and discouraged voter fraud.

Unfortunately, there is now a well-financed, below-the-radar effort to do away with the Electoral College. It is called National Popular Vote or NPV, and it wants to do exactly what the Founders rejected: award the job of President to the person who gets the most votes nationally.

Even if you agree with this goal, it's hard to agree with their method. Rather than amend the Constitution, which they have no chance of doing, NPV plans an end run around it.

Here's what NPV does: it asks states to sign a contract to give their presidential electors to the winner of the national popular vote instead of the winner of the state's popular vote.

What does that mean in practice? It means that if NPV had been in place in 2004, for example, when George W. Bush won the national vote, California's electoral votes would have gone to Bush, even though John Kerry won that state by 1.2 million votes!

Can you imagine strongly Democratic California calmly awarding its electors to a Republican?

Another problem with NPV's plan is that it robs states of their sovereignty. A key benefit of the Electoral College system is that it decentralizes control over the election. Currently, a presidential election is really 51 separate elections: one in each state and one in D.C.

These 51 separate processes exist, side-by-side, in harmony. They do not -- and cannot -- interfere with each other.

California's election code applies only to California and determines that state's electors. So a vote cast in Texas can never change the identity of a California elector.

NPV would disrupt this careful balance. It would force all voters into one national election pool. Thus, a vote cast in Texas will always affect the outcome in California. And the existence of a different election code in Texas always has the potential to unfairly affect a voter in California.

Because state election codes can differ drastically. States have different rules about early voting, registering to vote, and qualifying for the ballot. They have different policies regarding felon voting. They have different triggers for recounts.

Each and every one of these differences is an opportunity for someone, somewhere to file a lawsuit claiming unfair treatment.

Why should a voter in New York get more or less time to early vote than a voter in Florida? Why should a hanging chad count in Florida, but not in Ohio? The list of possible complaints is endless.

And think of the opportunities for voter fraud if NPV is passed! Currently, an attempt to steal a presidential election requires phony ballots to appear or real ballots to disappear in the right state or combination of states, something that is very hard to anticipate. But with NPV, voter fraud anywhere can change the election results -- no need to figure out which states you must swing; just add or subtract the votes you need -- or don't want -- wherever you can most easily get away with it.

And finally, if NPV is adopted, and winning is only about getting the most votes, a candidate might concentrate all of his efforts in the biggest cities, or the biggest states. We could see the end of presidential candidates who care about the needs and concerns of people in smaller states or outside of big cities.

Here's why all of this is of so much concern: NPV is more than halfway to its goal.

NPV's contract will go into effect when states with a combined 270 electoral votes have signed. To date, NPV already has the support of 10 states plus D.C. Together, that's 165 electoral votes, leaving only 105 votes to go.

It is time to stop this attempt to undo the way American presidents are elected, which will in turn undo America. The people behind NPV think they are wiser than every generation of Americans that preceded them.

Tara Ross is the author of Enlightened Democracy: The Case for the Electoral College (2004) and a co-author of Under God: George Washington and the Question of Church and State (2008) (with Joseph C. Smith, Jr.). A second edition of Enlightened Democracy was released in September 2012.

As a lawyer and writer, Tara focuses on the intersection among law, public policy, and constitutional history. She often appears as a guest on a variety of talk shows nationwide to discuss these matters and regularly addresses civic, university, and legal audiences. Her work has been published in several law reviews and newspapers, including the National Law Journal, USA Today, the American Enterprise Online, National Review Online, WeeklyStandard.com, FoxNews.com, HumanEvents.com, The Washington Times, and the Texas Review of Law & Politics.

Tara is a retired lawyer and a former Editor-in-Chief of the Texas Review of Law & Politics. She obtained her B.A. from Rice University and her J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law. Tara and her husband Adam reside in Dallas with their children Emma and Grant. As a lawyer and writer, Tara focuses on the intersection among law, public policy, and constitutional history. She often appears as a guest on a variety of talk shows nationwide to discuss these matters and regularly addresses civic, university, and legal audiences. Her work has been published in several law reviews and newspapers, including the National Law Journal, USA Today, the American Enterprise Online, National Review Online, WeeklyStandard.com, FoxNews.com, HumanEvents.com, The Washington Times, and the Texas Review of Law & Politics.

Tara is a retired lawyer and a former Editor-in-Chief of the Texas Review of Law & Politics. She obtained her B.A. from Rice University and her J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law. Tara and her husband Adam reside in Dallas with their children Emma and Grant.

A problem few seem to grasp was addressed by one of (I haven’t read the oft repeated citation so can’t confirm the author, but the principle is correct) Trotsky, Stalin, or Lenin, “It only matters who counts the votes.” Votes in the U.S. today are counted, if they are counted, by SEIU employees. Without paper ballots there is absolutely no way to verify how anyone, or if anyone voted. The difficulty is in creating a mechanism that guarantees anonymity while creating and preserving and audit trail.

Lack of audit trail, no signatures on samples from one of two criminalists who testified that she signed half the samples is why the OJ jury asked only for timeline evidence, and could not convict. Our intelligent media were guided more by prejudice than evidence.

Originally, local precincts counted paper ballots on precinct premises, never leaving ballots unattended and with monitors from every party present. It had the advantages of a jury. Yes, there was the possibility that a box could be absconded, but the local precinct workers counted boxes creating a list of boxes and counts kept separate from the boxes. Boxes were guarded, stored in vaults until the election was certified.

Once a voter walks out of a precinct, having entered invisible data into a computer, the data have no auditable trail. That is how leaders apparently want it, depending upon the naïve voters, and the ability to silence the few who understand the finality of audit trails in getting legal cases dismissed for lack of evidence. Not only can data be corrupted by penetrating the simple computer tabulation machines, and or communication between voting machines and state officers, but once numbers are presumably generated, counts are certified by state attorneys general. George Soros recognized the significance of our flawed representation mechanisms about nine years ago by creating and funding an Acorn-related “Attorneys General Project”. George appreciated Stalin along side Alinsky.

No SEIU employee who thinks feeding his/her family is more important than exposing government corruption would dare expose the broken chain of voting evidence, if indeed there is any chain at all. Those reporting numbers from each state could more easily decide upon a number that no one has any means to confirm, a number confirmed by the perceptions controlled by a corrupt media. Why would they expose corruption?

The enforcers are former colleagues of Lois Lerner, used so effectively to silence the only Congressman, Nathan Deal, who dared to ask, in writing, for evidence of Barrack’s eligibility to the presidency in 2009. His letter to the White House resulted in an IRS examination of a decade of tax returns, charges brought by the Democrat-controlled House Ethics committee related to tax deductions on a family-owned auto salvage yard. The IRS has unlimited funds and can bankrupt anyone. Deal resigned and become governor of Georgia - twice.

Tara Ross’s suggestion would probably change little since we have now only the perception of representation. Votes also determine our representatives. That is why Congressmen and judges don’t need to care about the wishes of people who think they are voting. Elections are mechanism for those in the governing business to assess what they can get away with short of revolution, which most, perhaps before the current anchor person, don’t want. Families remain the most important social organization.

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