Posted on 04/26/2021 3:54:12 AM PDT by Kaslin
The reactions to last week, titled with the question “Is It Time for Conservatives to Support A National Popular Vote?”, was basically a resounding, “HELL NO! It is NOT time for conservatives to support a national popular vote, there will NEVER BE a time for conservatives to support a national popular vote, and you are an IDIOT for even bringing it up! Now, go back to the Democrat-infested hellhole you crawled out of!” Or something along those lines.
To be fair, it wasn’t unexpected, and I completely understand. When I first encountered a case for the issue coming from a conservative (incidentally, from Townhall Senior Editor Matt Vespa’s neutral analysis of the issue in 2017, well before I started writing for the site), I had a knee-jerk reaction as well, and I would have completely agreed with most of the comments made last week. I too had always firmly believed in the ‘firewall’ theory, that the current system, as the ‘Founders intended,’ kept places like Los Angeles and New York City from running everything. Plus, Donald Trump had just become the second president in less than two decades to win the Electoral College and lose the popular vote. Why on earth would we ditch the narrow path on which we had managed to claim two critical yet razor-thin victories?
Indeed, there are lots of reasons to be skeptical, and I don’t blame anyone for raising an eyebrow or two. But being the fairly open-minded sort who sees value in a good argument and tries to recognize my own knee-jerk impulses, some of the arguments made for a national popular vote did seem logical, at least in the back of my mind. And the more I thought about it and considered the case coming from conservatives who support the concept, the more it made sense to me.
Still, very little is black and white, especially not this, regardless of where you end up landing. But for those who see the idea as purely bad, consider this mental exercise: Would you trade a national popular vote for, say, a ban on unsolicited mail-in voting and ballot harvesting, a Voter ID compact between the states, and a repeal of the 17th Amendment (which would allow state legislators to elect senators, virtually guaranteeing a GOP Senate into perpetuity)? If you would make that trade, and many of you doubtless would, it’s not so much the idea of a national popular vote per se that irks you, but rather the negative political ramifications you fear it could portend. In other words, there is a lot more grey to the issue than you might have thought.
To respond to some of the more common objections raised in last week’s column, I enlisted the aid of former California state Sen. Ray Haynes, a former national chairman of the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council and a supporter of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
“Many criticisms of this plan, which importantly does not abolish the Electoral College or eliminate state control of elections, are simply based on false information,” Ray told me. “These misconceptions, inaccuracies, or misstatements of fact lead to incorrect conclusions about how to solve the battleground state problem that excludes so much of the country from any meaningful input into who becomes president.”
Here are Ray’s responses to the objections I raised:
Highly-populated cities would determine who is president.
RAY: This comment is based on the false premise that highly populated cities have enough votes to control the outcome of the election. The 100 largest cities in this country have one-sixth of the total population of the country. The rural areas of this country — areas of 50,000 people or less — also have one-sixth of the population of the country. The other two-thirds are in the suburbs. Cities can’t determine who is president — unless you reject basic math like one plus one equals two — because they simply don’t have the votes.
Congress would need to ultimately approve this, and it would never get past a Senate filibuster.
RAY: Folks who suggest that National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is unconstitutional or will fail to get congressional consent are both wrong and naive. First, the U.S. Constitution could not be clearer: States have the power to award electors in any way they believe advances the interest of the state. They also have the power to form interstate compacts. If consent is required, we will get consent.
The current system ‘firewalls’ the fraud in blue states where it can’t spill out nationally. How would a national popular vote system address voter fraud?
RAY: If you think fraud occurred in the 2020 election you must believe the current method used by 48 states did nothing to compartmentalize or protect us from fraud. Is it not true that a few thousand fraudulent votes in cities like Philadelphia or Atlanta or Detroit or Milwaukee could have flipped entire and decisive battleground states? What a popular vote under the compact does is dilute the impact of the fraud in a few blue cities in a few states — perhaps 3 or 4 percent in the last election — by making the votes in the non-battleground states important in the election.
What if a state allows illegal immigrants to vote?
RAY: Federal law prohibits illegal immigrants from voting in a federal election. To vote, illegal immigrants have to declare under penalty of perjury that they are citizens and risk perjury charges, a five-year prison sentence, if they register to vote. The punishment for being in the United States illegally is deportation. The incentives are against these immigrants registering to vote.
The Founders were against a popular vote for a reason.
RAY: This comment assumes that the Founders were against a popular vote. That is simply false. James Madison, the father of the Constitution, supported a popular vote for president. The proposal for a popular vote for president came the closest to passing in the Constitutional Convention. The Electoral College was created because the Founders could not agree on how to elect the president, so they left the decision on the method of electing the president up to the states. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact preserves the Electoral College by utilizing the constitutional framework to persuade the states that a popular vote is good for every voter in every state in every election. That is how the Founders envisioned it would happen when they created the system in the Constitution.
A better solution would be to move to a system like Nebraska and Maine and eliminate winner-take-all.
RAY: In 1823, James Madison considered this idea and said it was not possible without a constitutional amendment. We see why today: Why would California, a state controlled by Democrats, give the Republicans 10 Electoral College votes, or Texas, controlled by Republicans, give 15 electors to Democrats. Neither would. In addition, there are only about 70 competitive congressional districts, so that system would not make every vote in every state important in every election, an important principle in my opinion. The congressional method does not make every voter in every state relevant in every presidential election. Only the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact delivers on that promise and forces the candidates to campaign in all 50 states.
“What we know is that the current system depresses the conservative vote in the non-battleground states by about 10 percent,” Ray concludes. “That means the conservative candidate for president loses about 7.5 to 8 million votes because conservatives think their votes don’t matter. If conservatives compete for the votes, they persuade the voters to vote conservative. If they don’t, the mainstream media convinces the voter to vote for the left. We conservatives should welcome the chance to persuade voters that our vision for America is better for every citizen in every state.”
Mob rule inevitably devolves into a lynch mob.
I feel less sharp for reading comments by this twisted dope called RAY. Convoluted doesn’t begin to describe his twisted manner of concatenating observations of fraud into a getaway vehicle for future elections. The guy’s too smart by half.
While we’re on the subject of twisting facts, let’s slap some sense into Morefield as he pushes 2016 election fraud (albeit unwittingly):
Morefield writes,
“Plus, Donald Trump had just become the second president in less than two decades to win the Electoral College and lose the popular vote.”
No, Donald Trump’s popular vote outcne in 2016 is not a ‘loss’ given that Dominion and its cousins were on the scene in 2016 just as in 2020.
The coming national investigation will uncover election crime going back beyond 2016. We are in the midst of historical change to reform the entire voting system that will lead to a Constitutional Amendment as it winds through history to set election security standards for every state and territory. This can take as long as a decade.
Dimbulbs Scott Morefield and Ray Haynes miss the bigger picture while they dabble in election sophistry.
The problem with a national popular vote interstate compact is that it would be founded on a false premise - the false premise that there is a national popular vote upon which to base any compact.
It is very easy to shatter the myth that there is some national popular vote that is being ignored. All we would need is for one red state legislature to exercise its constitutional authority to choose presidential electors themselves, with no help from their state’s voters.
So when all the residents of one state are not participating in a “national popular vote” then what happens when suddenly there is no complete national vote upon which to base their compact?
Of course that never existed anyway, because we do not vote nationally for any president. We vote as state residents to guide our legislators in how to exercise their electoral authority. The national accumulation of those votes is as meaningless as any national accumulation of votes for state governors by political party.
The fact that only Rats'n'RINOs are pushing this makes it perfectly clear that it's a bad idea.
Going to a popular vote method will force the fraudsters to extend their fraud strategy beyond the swing states and dark blue cities. They are more than capable of doing this, and certainly willing.
Federal law prohibits illegal immigrants from voting in a federal election. To vote, illegal immigrants have to declare under penalty of perjury that they are citizens and risk perjury charges, a five-year prison sentence, if they register to vote. The punishment for being in the United States illegally is deportation. The incentives are against these immigrants registering to vote.
Hahahahahaha! Who's going to enforce this? The federal government under the total control of the Commucrat party?
What made you think otherwise? Nothing I wrote suggests it was viewed as anything other than an expose of two mediocre minds.
The author asks this question:
“Would you trade a national popular vote for, say, a ban on unsolicited mail-in voting and ballot harvesting, a Voter ID compact between the states, and a repeal of the 17th Amendment (which would allow state legislators to elect senators, virtually guaranteeing a GOP Senate into perpetuity)? If you would make that trade, and many of you doubtless would, it’s not so much the idea of a national popular vote per se that irks you, but rather the negative political ramifications you fear it could portend. In other words, there is a lot more grey to the issue than you might have thought.”
No, I would not accept that “trade”. I would not trade a bunch of good ideas for a single bad idea.
Again, no. It is not the “result” it is the concept, the concept of what kind of Republic we are. We do not have a unitary state. We are nation of states.
Again no. As a Federal republic, the good idea of the original selection of U.S. Senators was that THE STATES - their legislators selected their senators as representatives of the state, not as “popularly elected” representatives of “people” - that role was reserved for the House of Representatives.
Likewise, the Electoral College is about THE STATES electing the President - the states as entities, the states as the entities represented in and by the vote.
The move to elect the U.S. President by “national popular vote” is a move down a slippery DEMOCRACY slope that forgets we are a Republic, not a Democracy. It would not be a far stretch down the Democracy slope if following the change to electing the U.S. President by national popular vote the next move would be to elect all the senators nationally - the winners would be merely which ones got the most, the next most, and next most votes down to the 50th one on the list of candidates, no matter what state they were from - they could all be from the same state even, but what would it matter, they got the most votes in the country did they not? Maybe the top two would automatically become the organizing heads of the Senate - the Senate leaders. Yes, in electing them all at once I eliminated the “messy business” of only electing one third of the Senate every two years; cause that too is just a relic of trying to avoid a “truly popularly elected Senate” /sarc.
Ray Haynes. 1. I do not consider him a true Conservative.
2. Ray Haynes false straw man arguments:
(a) such as that some Conservatives speak of the President getting elected by the most populous cities.
I know no one who makes that argument. Instead there is arguments that the president would be elected by a handful of the most populous states. So, that has nothing today with what portion of the total population lives in rural areas, suburbs or cities. Haynes straw man argument fails.
(b) Interstate Compacts:
Yes, states can make Interstate compacts. No they cannot make Interstate compacts to go around (avoid) the Constitution. (Shows how “Conservative” Haynes is NOT.)
(c) Haynes whole “battleground states” theory shows how he is a product of the media. Now state starts out as any kind of “battle ground” state. They are created by the polling of the campaigns, judging where in the country the candidate has already convinced enough voters to vote their way, and where they have not, or where the voters in a state seem to have not yet decided which way they will go. Campaigns then do concentrate some attention NOT where they feel confident already but where they don’t. The “national popular vote” is not going to change that. The states that will be most in play will be the states the Presidential contenders think they have the most work to do, and states that polls show have pretty much decided will not see the candidates as much, or at all. Haynes is an idiot to think that is going to change merely due to a “national popular vote”.
(d) In Re:
“This comment assumes that the Founders were against a popular vote. That is simply false. James Madison, the father of the Constitution, supported a popular vote for president.” [It does not matter, it did not get accepted and did not get put in the Constitution.]
“The proposal for a popular vote for president came the closest to passing in the Constitutional Convention.” [Does not matter, it did not happen]
“The Electoral College was created because the Founders could not agree on how to elect the president, so they left the decision on the method of electing the president up to the states.” [No they did not. The Constitution said the Electors would be determined by the Legislators of the states. They did not leave it to the states that the state legislators could pass the buck to the state Governor, or someone else.]
“The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact preserves the Electoral College by utilizing the constitutional framework to persuade the states that a popular vote is good for every voter in every state in every election.” [A barefaced lie. Claiming what condition they believe the compact creates (falsely) is not an argument that it “utilizes the Constitutional framework” - just ‘cause Haynes thinks so.]
“That is how the Founders envisioned it would happen when they created the system in the Constitution.”[No they did not.]
The “national popular vote” makes a mockery of voting and a mockery of what the Constitution intended and said, that the President is elected by the states.
The states agreeing to the compact turn that on its head, and agree to take their state’s voters - in affect their states intentions - off the table and, even if it denies what their own voters said, award the electors to merely whomever wins the “national” popular vote.
So in a particular state, the voters overwhelmingly chose candidate X, but candidate X loses the “national popular vote”, so in accord with the statute where that particular state joined the nutty “compact”, that state will instead install the electors representing candidate Y - the winner, not in their state, but the “national popular vote” winner.
How these nuts think that merely because states can make compacts that they can create such a false system of voting and false system against the Constitution’s intentions. Your state is empowering the apparatus of the state to deny a choice voted by their own people, because their own people did not chose in accord with the “national popular vote”.
Haynes and his folks are not Conservatives and are just nuts.
Yes, I am O.K. with the President being chosen as the one who wins in the most counties.
Images do more justice demonstrating the true meaning of “a nation”, which is more than a mere summing of numbers of people.
The people come from villages, towns, cities, counties, regions and in the aggregate from the states, and all of it, the people, the villages, towns, cities and counties ARE collectively “the nation”.
Disregard too many places in “a nation” merely to satisfy a “national popular vote” and you have a growing belief it is not “one nation” any longer. Yes. Look at the map. There are now two nations within the territory of the United States and they keep growing more and more incompatible with each other.
To reiterate to Mr. Morefield: “HELL NO! Now, go back to the Democrat-infested hellhole you crawled out of!”
...just someone wanting attention. I’ll trust the care put into the Constitution, since we’ve already seen the damage to the country when more recent clowns modify (or ignore) it.
Democrats would just create more counties.
There is an assumption here that conservatives can communicate with each other easily. Conservatives are rapidly losing access to communication. Within a year we will be reduced to old time mass mailings which is much more expensive and thus quite limited and is slower. In a National Vote almost all the information will be left propaganda. The article also talks about a few thousand fraudulent votes in some places when the reality of the recent election is millions of votes invented and switched and voting machines being subject to easy fraud. It was done in “battleground” states but the lessons learned apply to every machine with an attachment to the internet or a USB port. That has proved to be almost all of them.
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