National Popular Vote Compact

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) is an agreement among some states to award all their Electoral College votes to the winner of the national popular vote.  The Compact is only triggered when states equaling at least 270 Electoral College votes enact the legislation.

This year the left-wing controlled Virginia State legislature had it on the menu but according to Steve Haner at Bacon’s Rebellion, the initiative failed.   Early last week the patron of the Senate bill asked that it be stricken from the committee and on Friday, three Democrats joined nine Republicans to kill the bill in the House Privileges and Elections Committee.  Of course, nothing is totally dead until the Assembly adjourns in March but we can hope. As Democrats have proved over and over again, bad ideas only go into hibernation but they rarely ever die.

In reality, it doesn’t matter how many states pass the National Popular Vote initiative.  Interstate compacts not approved by Congress are unenforceable as law.  So while it is easy to believe those crazies in the House would be more than happy to approve it, especially since their impeachment ruse died, it would never pass the Senate nor would it survive the Supreme Court. 

As SCOTUS pointedly reminded us in Bush v. Gore, the President is not elected by the people but rather by the “Electoral College.”  So, while  Article II, Section I of the Constitution gives power to state legislatures to determine the manner in which presidential electors are selected, that power is limited. 

At no point in our nation’s history has any state sought to appoint its electors on the basis of voter sentiment outside their state, let alone the national popular vote.  So the delegation of power to the states must be read in light of this uniform, uncontested understanding that states are required to select electors in accordance with popular sentiment of voters within their own state.  While the Electoral College’s vote may be a formality, it is a formality that is and must be performed.

The Electoral College, designed by the Founders, reflects the fundamental character of America’s republican form of government, in which the vast majority of decisions are not made directly by the people but rather by the people we have chosen to make these decisions for us.

Trump is president because he won the Electoral College 304 to 227 over Hillary Clinton, even though he lost the popular vote by 2.8 million, give or take considering the number of illegals and dead people that voted.    This, of course, has led to screeching from the left that Hillary was robbed and that any system which would deprive the winner of the popular vote of an election victory must be a fundamentally unfair system.  What they refuse to admit is that the National Popular Vote would give an unfair advantage to those few larger states while nullifying voters in smaller states.

Donald Trump won an overwhelming majority of the votes that actually mattered. He won a decisive majority of the votes cast by the only people who had the constitutional authority to vote for a president, the electors.

If the Founders had not had the foresight to empower states rather than the public to pick a president, we would have just finished our third year with a president who would have spent her time in office covering up her own scandals, pushing abortion on demand up until the moment of birth, expanding the radical and sexually deviant agenda of regressives, increasing regulations that would continue to gum up our economy, and projecting American weakness rather than strength around the world.

Perhaps somewhere in our election reflections, we might want to take a moment to thank the Founders for their political wisdom.  I certainly will.

The National Popular vote Interstate Compact would throw the door open to massive voter fraud and litigation.  Since registration and voter ID requirements differ from state to state, a popular vote system would dramatically shift power from the states to the federal government.

Source:  How the Electoral College is supposed to work  by Bryan Fischer, One News Now;  Why the National Popular Vote Compact is Unconstitutional, BYU Law Review; Combination Among the States: Why the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is an Unconstitutional Attempt to Reform the Electoral College, Harvard;  Interstate Compacts, the Library of Congress

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2 comments for “National Popular Vote Compact

  1. Susan Anthony
    February 5, 2020 at 11:34 am

    Being a constitutional republic does not mean we should not and cannot guarantee the election of the presidential candidate with the most popular votes. The candidate with the most votes wins in every other election in the country.

    We would not be doing away with the Electoral College, U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, state legislatures, etc. etc. etc.

    The presidential election system, using the 48 state winner-take-all method or district winner method of awarding electoral votes used by 2 states, that we have today was not designed, anticipated, or favored by the Founding Fathers. It is the product of decades of change precipitated by the emergence of political parties and enactment by states of winner-take-all or district winner laws, not mentioned, much less endorsed, in the Constitution.

    The National Popular Vote bill is 73% of the way to guaranteeing the majority of Electoral College votes and the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in the country, by changing state winner-take-all laws (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), without changing anything in the Constitution, using the built-in method that the Constitution provides for states to make changes.

    Every voter, everywhere, for every candidate, would be politically relevant and equal in every presidential election. Every vote would matter equally in the state counts and national count.

  2. Rretta
    February 5, 2020 at 2:59 pm

    The Electoral College forces political candidates to campaign in all states, in cities and counties, large and small rather than concentrating their time in the larger states with the majority of the population. Without the Elector College the majority of the country would effectively have no say in who was elected. Virginia is a perfect example. If you look at the Map of the State you will note that the majority of the state voted Republican but because the larger northern and costal counties with the largest population centers vote democrat, the democrats won. In essence, because of popular vote, the majority of Virginians had no say in who won. Is this really what you want for the nation?

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