Posted on 05/30/2019 11:33:59 AM PDT by yesthatjallen
Last week, 12 members of the Nevada state Senate voted to commit political suicide for their state and step the nation closer to an electoral transformation. They did it along partisan lines and with almost no one watching. If Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) signs the legislation, making Nevada a signatory to the National Popular Vote compact, the state will have resigned itself into presidential oblivion.
Just a few years ago, not many would have thought that a scheme to amend the Constitution without actually amending the Constitution, cooked up by the inventor of rub-off instant lottery ticket technology, would be taken seriously. Now it has passed into law in 14 states and the District of Columbia.
Here’s how the National Popular Vote plan is designed to work: Rather than go through Article V of the Constitution to amend the document itself, it would use an agreement between the states to give their electoral vote to the national popular vote winner, no matter how their own citizens vote. The compact is set to become operable when states accounting for a majority of the Electoral College votes (270 of 538) pass the compact. When Nevada enters the compact, supporters will be within 75 electoral votes of fundamentally transforming the American political order.
The plan will profoundly change our electoral system, by changing the incentives of our candidates. Those changes demand a serious national debate — but for now, let’s focus on what the Nevada Senate has just done to its own state and the people the Senate represents.
Nevada has been a fairly reliably competitive state in the 20th and 21st centuries. It has voted with the winner of the presidency more than 85 percent of the time since 1900. Since FDR’s first election, Democrats have won Nevada in 12 presidential elections and Republican candidates won it in 10. President Bush won it twice, but so did Barak Obama. Though the state has been moving more reliably Democratic, it has been a state that can often command the attention of candidates.
Never again. If the Democratic state leaders in Nevada get their way and the National Popular Vote compact becomes operable, the state will never again be important to a presidential candidate.
Let’s look at the numbers.
With the current Electoral College system, a close presidential election could hinge on Nevada’s six electoral votes. This gives the state some clout, which means its interests can gain some attention. If the state just gives away its six electors to whomever wins the national popular vote, Nevada will no longer have enough marginal votes to make it worth a candidates’ attention.
In competitive elections like 2016 and 2004, for instance, the candidates in Nevada were separated by less than 30,000 votes. Even in the blowout year of 2008 Obama only received roughly 120,000 votes more than John McCain — a margin few candidates will actually be able to hope to improve upon.
Compare those numbers with the margin Hillary Clinton racked up over Donald Trump in just one county in California; in Los Angeles County alone she received more than 1.6 million more votes than Donald Trump, and that was without even trying! All incentives for candidates to seek votes in Nevada will be eliminated if the Electoral College system is changed through the NPV plan.
The election in Nevada in 2016, in fact, is a good microcosm of what will happen to Nevada and other small and rural states if he NPV compact succeeds. Clinton did not win Nevada by traveling the state and appealing to a wide swath of the population. She won Nevada by winning a massive majority in just one county (and a slight plurality in one other). Where Clinton won the whole state by just 27,000 votes, she won more than 82,000 votes more than Trump simply in the county containing Los Vegas, and thereby won the state.
If those supporting the National Popular Vote initiative succeed, they will make all small and rural states like Nevada irrelevant in our national presidential conversation. In making these voters irrelevant, they also will be radicalizing our politics by centering ever more power in major urban centers, which already contribute most of the money fueling our campaigns and the media reporting on them.
And all this is happening within state legislatures without a serious national conversation that an actual amendment to the Constitution would demand — one that which our republic deserves.
Gary L. Gregg is editor of “Securing Democracy—Why We have an Electoral College” and holds the Mitch McConnell Chair in Leadership at the University of Louisville.
Are the votes there to overturn the Gov veto?
Vetoed; however, any state that did this is disenfranchising their citizens votes. To that end, SCOTUS would easily overturned this travisty.
Irony, along with noting that the two posts have the same time stamp.
a scheme to amend the Constitution without actually amending the Constitution
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kind of like they did with the Kenyanesian Usurpation.
A parallel to this, the individual States had a similar policy with respect to counties versus big cities. Not certain how it worked, but it must have been a good plan.
The idea was, to balance the power between less populated rural areas/counties and large population cities.
SCOTUS said that was unconstitutuonal. Because naturally.
It was obvious. Trump was up by 2 million votes and he lost California by 5 million votes.
So, Trump + 2million ahead of Clinton
Then he loses Ca by 5 million
Result Trump goes from up 2m to down 3m
This is a terrible idea, but it actually motivates republicans in blue states to vote, because while they can’t win their state, they can increase the popular vote. President Trump should spen a lot of time in blue states.
Problem is they are not following Constitutional guidelines for amending the constitution. Their decision will only effect Nevada and their ability to influence Presidential elections. They just gave it all away to California.
Democrats are stupid (see AOC’s most recent comment on Chinese missiles) and just like to commit political suicide.
State politicians and citizens, even those believing in a strong Federal union, used to jealously guard their own power, independence and advantage.
Now, we can say that the vast majority of both politicians and citizens have willingly given up their own sovereignty and rights to a vast, centralized and distant government.
Why is that?
Power & $$$
Keep in mind, the spoilers hold the United States Senate itself in equal disdain as the Electoral College. Maybe more.
They have to do things in a certain order, practically speaking.
Not without a civil war.
How many illegal votes were cast? Democrat voting fraud is legendary, the rule as far back as the 1960s was something like, any Republican needs to make up a million votes just to break even.
Obviously this risks an absolute disaster if/when the popular vote is too close to call. Since the US Code (Title 3 Chapter 1 Section 7) mandate is for the Electors to be determined by "§ 7. The electors of President and Vice President of each State shall meet and give their votes on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December next following their appointment at such place in each State as the legislature of such State shall direct.", what happens if the count is too close, if there is a judicial delay (Bush v Gore 2000) or something else?
The Progressive LEFT thinks that this would be a win for them with their putative lock on vote-rich LEFTist California. Me, I see the potential for a massive self-inflicted FUBAR that could easily lead to CW2!
Nope. Wont happen. All the slimeocrat has to do is take Ill, NY and CA and they win the popular vote.
The next slimeocrat will win those and Ore, Washington, HI, RI, MASS, NJ, Maryland, VT, NM and maybe VA as well. So we got some 12 state or so that would rule the country through a popular vote.
I am not so sure about MN, NV and Maine or NH this time around. They might go to the Donald.
Unconstitutional.
Doesn’t withstand the first minutes in court.
This so-called compact doesn’t kick in until states with a total of 270 Electoral Votes sign on to it.
Right now, they’re at about 180+.
They won’t reach 270 by November 2020.
“could easily lead to CW2!”
Could? It will lead to another civil war and I will be among those to fire the first shot! Gettin to GD old to put up with this crap anymore.
Good point. I wonder how many California Republicans don’t vote because it’s pointless for them.
They have the authority if they unilaterally do it on a state by state basis.
Where they run into Constitutional trouble is when they link it to a compact of other states doing the same, and not making it effective until enough states join. By doing this, it is no longer one state choosing its own method of allocating Electoral College votes. It becomes the last state to join's choice, because that state chooses when to "turn it on," not the other states.
If a state can't decide for itself when to start allocating their Electoral College votes, then it's really not "choosing" per the Constitutional power, it's deferring. I don't think that deferring to choose is a choice in and of itself, as is expected per the Constitutional power delegated to the states.
-PJ
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