Free Republic

Republicans know they can't win the popular vote. You won't believe sick schemes they've launched to get around it. Republicans have only won the popular vote for president once in the last 25 years, a steep decline in their fortunes from the period from 1972 to 1988, when they won the popular vote every time but one–1976, the aftermath of Watergate. Add to that massive policy failures and demographic trends against them, and the motivations to cheat are overwhelming. Voter suppression seemed promising at first—and it’s helpful in many downticket races—but it’s not going to be enough to secure the...

After the GOP’s 2014 midterm election triumph, Republicans are still celebrating that the good guys (and girls) won and our nation has been saved. Finally, the American people wised up and threw the bums out. Six years after the election of Barack Obama, the midterm tsunami over the bluest of blue states filled Republicans with “hope and change,” mixed with heaps of vindication. And after winning control of Capitol Hill, Republicans hope that bold actions and good governance will follow over the next two years and will motivate a majority of 2016 voters to send a Republican candidate to the...

Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Clinton? Gradually it is sinking in to Official Washington that the 2014 election could very well do to Democrats what the 1930 election did to Republicans: make them irrelevant for at least a generation. In 1930, the first election after the Stock Market Crash saw Republicans go from a 270-164 majority in the House to a minority, albeit by one seat. In the next three elections, Republicans would continue to lose until there were only 88 Republicans in the House after the 1936 election. The Depression wiped out two-thirds of the House...

With little fanfare and nearly no national media attention, the National Popular Vote effort is now 61 percent of the way toward its goal of legally bypassing the Electoral College established in the U.S. Constitution. The NPV campaign seeks to obtain the consent of the majority of the 538 votes in the Electoral College to award electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote instead of the winner of the popular vote in each state. The group, the Center for Voting and Democracy, received original seed money in 1997 from the Joyce Foundation, a nonprofit that boasted President...

With little fanfare and nearly no national media attention, the National Popular Vote effort is now 61 percent of the way toward its goal of legally bypassing the Electoral College established in the U.S. Constitution. Last month, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the National Popular Vote, or NPV, bill, making his state the 11th jurisdiction to enact the plan. With the passage of the bill, the interstate compact now has 61 percent of the 270 electoral votes needed to put it into effect.

The fondest dream of the modern Democrat is to neutralize the votes of the yokels in Peoria and put important decisions in the hands of sophisticates in places like San Francisco and Manhattan. The modern Democrats took a step closer to realizing their ambition last week when New York joined nine other liberal states with laws to undermine the Electoral College. Blue states have been rushing to sign up for the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. So far, the list includes — in addition to New York — California, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and...

Conservatives and leading liberals slammed the campaign to effectively end the Electoral College's role in presidential elections, saying that the National Popular Vote Compact Law circumvents the Constitution, saying it resembled President Barack Obama's abuse of the law through his extensive use of executive orders. "It is pretty startling," Bill Kristol, founder and editor of The Weekly Standard, told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV this week. "If they want to make the case for the popular election of presidents and a Constitutional amendment, they should make the case.

Conservatives slammed the campaign to effectively end the Electoral College's role in presidential elections, saying that the National Popular Vote Compact circumvents the Constitution, saying it resembled President Barack Obama's abuse of the law through his extensive use of executive orders. "It is pretty startling," Bill Kristol, founder and editor of The Weekly Standard, told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV this week. "If they want to make the case for the popular election of presidents and a Constitutional amendment, they should make the case.

Governor Cuomo has signed off on the National Popular Vote Compact, giving New York's 29 electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. SILive: Count New York in. The Empire State has joined the National Popular Vote compact with legislation signed Tuesday by Gov. Andrew Cuomo. States that have signed on to the interstate agreement will award electoral votes for president to the candidate who receives the majority of the national popular vote. "With the passage of this legislation, New York is taking a bold step to fundamentally increase the strength and fairness of our nation's presidential elections,"...

This week on Boston's AM680 WKRO's "The Kuhner Report," Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump told host Jeff Kuhner he thought he can win the states of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida and Massachusetts in the general presidential election against the Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. Trump said, "They say that if I run against Hillary it will be the single greatest turnout in our country for voting. A lot of those people are going to vote for me because they are tired of the system. That's why they never voted before. They are tired of the system. And I think that's...

New York has joined the campaign to effectively end the Electoral College’s role in determining winners of presidential elections. Under the National Popular Vote Compact, which Gov. Cuomo signed off on Tuesday, the state has agreed to award its electoral college votes to whichever presidential candidate wins the national popular vote. Currently New York’s electoral colleges votes go to the winner of the state’s popular vote. …

A plan, now stealthily making its way through state legislatures with astonishing speed, would junk the Electoral College and award the presidency to the winner of the popular vote. The plan involves an Interstate Compact where states would commit to select electors pledged to vote for the national popular vote winner regardless of how their own state voted. When enough states pass this law -- sufficient to cast the Electoral College's majority 270 votes -- it will take effect. The Electoral College will become a vestigial anachronism. So far, nine states and the District of Columbia -- casting 136 electoral...

A plan, now stealthily making its way through state legislatures with astonishing speed, would junk the Electoral College and award the presidency to the winner of the popular vote. The plan involves an Interstate Compact where states would commit to select electors pledged to vote for the national popular vote winner regardless of how their own state voted. When enough states pass this law, sufficient to cast 270 votes which is the majority of the Electoral College, it will take effect. So far, nine states and the District of Columbia, casting 136 electoral votes, have joined. This is halfway to...

In 2012 Mark Levin took the time to explain the Electoral College to his audience. But in doing so, he omitted a vital piece of information that ties the size of each State’s number of Electoral College votes to taxation, which is no longer enforced and actually encouraged California to elect a socialist/progressive president! CLICK HERE to listen to Mark explain the Electoral College, omitting how taxation is tied to the size of each State’s Electoral College vote, which in turn omits the importance of why our founders tied taxation and representation by the rule of apportionment. Just for...

There has been a fair amount of commentary on my Facebook page in the past week or so about this very question. I started to put much of this in a comment to someone, but then decided to post it for everyone instead. Since several of you keep asking! Perhaps the most important thing to understand about the Electoral College—and the Constitution in general—is that the Founders were not trying to create a PURE democracy. They wanted to be self-governing, of course. They had just fought an entire Revolution in part because they had no representation in Parliament. The principles...

Gallup has released President Obama's approval numbers for 2013 for the 50 states and the District of Columbia. I thought it would be interesting to compare those percentages with Obama's percentage of the 2012 popular vote in each state and D.C. His approval numbers seem to track closely with his percentage of the vote: his job approval nationally was 50 percent in the first week of November 2012, and he received 51 percent of the popular vote. Gallup conducts many interviews over the course of a year, and so its figures for each state are statistically meaningful, although I think...

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. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXnjGD7j2B0TranscriptIn 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...

Here in Oklahoma, we like to call ourselves the reddest of red states. But even here, the insanity is encroaching and hard to keep at bay. That is why it is ever so important to keep a watchful eye over those who represent us, both on the national and state level.The President and Vice President of the United States are elected by a process known as the Electoral College. I'm not going to bore you with a long and complicated explanation of why that is the case, so here is my simple and condensed version. The United States is made...

I wrote last Saturday about the insanity displayed by some Oklahoma Senators, Republicans no less, by passing a bill that would tie Oklahoma's Electoral College votes to the national popular vote. In case you missed that discussion, you can find it here. For further analysis that goes beyond what I provided, The McCarville Report has a post that is a must read about the National Popular Vote Fallacy. In regards to the bill that was passed by the Oklahoma Senate, I have been concerned about how it would fare in the House. I can now report that the bill will...

Election Night 2012. President Barack Obama has easily won the backing of Massachusetts’ voters for a second term in office, but Republican Sarah Palin, riding a national wave of anti-incumbent sentiment, captures a narrow lead in the popular vote. As a result, Massachusetts’ 12 electoral votes go to … Sarah Palin, and with those 12 votes, Palin is elected president. Sound impossible? Not under a National Popular Vote system, which Massachusetts is one step closer to implementing now that Gov. Patrick has signed legislation authorizing the commonwealth to join a multi-state compact to change the way we elect the president....