Prager University – The Popular Vote vs. the Electoral College
There is a quiet effort taking place in America today to scrap the electoral college in favor of the popular vote.
This would have far reaching, negative consequences for all Americans. In a new video from Prager University, author and electoral college expert Tara Ross explains the issue.
Here’s more information.
Course Description
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.
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U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 10, Paragraph 3:
“No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.”
How is this not a violation of this part of the Constitution?
Article I-Section 10, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution specifically permits states to enter interstate compacts. In fact, there are hundreds of major compacts currently in force (and thousands of minor ones).
I think the concern may be that the States have entered into agreements with each other without the required “consent of Congress.” However, NPV’s method does not require any States to enter into agreements with any other States – NPV is garnering support on a state-by-state basis, in which each State pledges to abide by NPV’s plan. It’s actually quite ingenious, as far as under-handed Leftist/Progressive schemes go.
The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the majority of Electoral College votes and the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in the country. It does not abolish the Electoral College.
The National Popular Vote bill would replace state winner-take-all laws that award all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who get the most popular votes in each separate state (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), in the enacting states, to a system guaranteeing the majority of Electoral College votes for, and the Presidency to, the candidate getting the most popular votes in the entire United States.
The bill preserves the constitutionally mandated Electoral College and state control of elections. It ensures that every voter is equal, every voter will matter, in every state, in every presidential election, and the candidate with the most votes wins, as in virtually every other election in the country.
Under National Popular Vote, every voter, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in every presidential election. Every vote would matter in the state counts and national count.
When states with a combined total of at least 270 electoral votes enact the bill, the candidate with the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC would get the needed majority of 270+ electoral votes from the enacting states. The bill would thus guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes and the majority of Electoral College votes.
National Popular Vote would give a voice to the minority party voters in each state. Now their votes are counted only for the candidate they did not vote for. Now they don’t matter to their candidate. In 2012, 56,256,178 (44%) of the 128,954,498 voters had their vote diverted by the winner-take-all rule to a candidate they opposed (namely, their state’s first-place candidate).
And now votes, beyond the one needed to get the most votes in the state, for winning in a state are wasted and don’t matter to candidates.
Utah (5 electoral votes) alone generated a margin of 385,000 “wasted” votes for Bush in 2004.
Oklahoma (7 electoral votes) alone generated a margin of 455,000 “wasted” votes for Bush in 2004 — larger than the margin generated by the 9th and 10th largest states, namely New Jersey and North Carolina (each with 15 electoral votes).
8 small western states, with less than a third of California’s population, provided Bush with a bigger margin (1,283,076) than California provided Kerry (1,235,659).
It does effectively abolish the Electoral College, by corrupting its implementation in such a manner that it becomes irrelevant. There is no substantial difference between the desired outcome of the plan and the abolition of the College. Therefore it’s disingenuous to claim that the plan “does not abolish the Electoral College.”
In no way does National Popular Vote effectively abolish the Electoral College.
Unable to agree on any particular method, the Founding Fathers left the choice of method for selecting presidential electors exclusively to the states by adopting the language contained in section 1 of Article II of the U.S. Constitution–
“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors . . .”
The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as “plenary” and “exclusive.”
In 1789, in the nation’s first election, the people had no vote for President in most states, only men who owned a substantial amount of property could vote, and only three states used the state-by-state winner-take-all method to award electoral votes.
The current winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes is not in the U.S. Constitution. It was not debated at the Constitutional Convention. It is not mentioned in the Federalist Papers. It was not the Founders’ choice. It was used by only three states in 1789, and all three of them repealed it by 1800. It is not entitled to any special deference based on history or the historical meaning of the words in the U.S. Constitution. The actions taken by the Founding Fathers make it clear that they never gave their imprimatur to the winner-take-all method. The winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes became dominant only in the 1830s, when most of the Founders had been dead for decades, after the states adopted it, one-by-one, in order to maximize the power of the party in power in each state.
The constitutional wording does not encourage, discourage, require, or prohibit the use of any particular method for awarding a state’s electoral votes.
The National Popular Vote bill preserves the Electoral College and state control of elections. It again changes the way electoral votes are awarded in the Electoral College.
When states with a combined total of at least 270 Electoral College votes enact the bill, the candidate with the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC would get the needed majority of 270+ Electoral College votes from the enacting states. The bill would thus guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes and the majority of Electoral College votes.
With National Popular Vote, we will continue to elect the President by a majority of Electoral College votes by states.
Most Americans don’t ultimately care whether their presidential candidate wins or loses in their state or district . . . they care whether he/she wins the White House. Voters want to know, that even if they were on the losing side, their vote actually was equally counted and mattered to their candidate. Most Americans think it would be wrong for the candidate with the most popular votes to lose. We don’t allow this in any other election in our representative republic.
The presidential election system, using the 48 state winner-take-all method or district winner method of awarding electoral votes, 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 48 states of winner-take-all laws, not mentioned, much less endorsed, in the Constitution.
Unable to agree on any particular method for selecting presidential electors, the Founding Fathers left the choice of method exclusively to the states in Article II, Section 1:
“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors….”
The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as “plenary” and “exclusive.”
States have the responsibility and power to make their voters relevant in every presidential election. The bill uses the power given to each state by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution to decide how they award their electoral votes for president. It does not abolish the Electoral College, which would need a constitutional amendment, and could be stopped by states with as little as 3% of the U.S. population. Historically, major changes in the method of electing the President, including ending the requirement that only men who owned substantial property could vote and 48 current state-by-state winner-take-all laws, have come about by state legislative action, without federal constitutional amendments.
More than 2,110 state legislators (in 50 states) have sponsored and/or cast recorded votes in favor of the National Popular Vote bill.
In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided).
Support for a national popular vote is strong among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in every state surveyed recently. In the 39 red, blue, and purple states surveyed, overall support has been in the 67-83% range – in rural states, in small states, in Southern and border states, in big states, and in other states polled.
The bill has passed 33 state legislative chambers in 22 rural, small, medium, large, Democratic, Republican and purple states with 250 electoral votes, including one house in Arkansas (6), Maine (4), Michigan (16), Nevada (6), New Mexico (5), North Carolina (15), and Oklahoma (7), and both houses in Colorado (9). The bill has been enacted by 11 jurisdictions, including California, with 165 electoral votes – 61% of the 270 necessary to go into effect.
NationalPopularVote.com
Anyone interested in the purpose of the Electoral College and why it’s critical to a republican system of government should search the interwebs for “Math Against Tyranny.”
In a nutshell, the author likens a national election to the World Series. In the Series, the winner is not the team that scores the most total runs, but the team that wins the most games. Every baseball fan understands and appreciates this system – it’s about regularity and consistency, not temporary or local dominance. The author also discusses why the system actually enhances the power of the individual voter.
Popular election of the chief executive does not determine whether a government is a republic or democracy. At the time of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island conducted popular elections for Governor. If popular election of a state’s chief executive meant that these four states were not a “republic,” then all four would have been in immediate violation of the Constitution’s Guarantee Clause (“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government”). If the states were not “republics,” the delegates from these four states would not have voted for the Constitution at the Convention and these four states would never have ratified the Constitution.
Madison’s definition of a “republic” in Federalist No. 14: “in a democracy, the people meet and exercise the government in person; in a republic, they assemble and administer it by their representatives and agents.” Also Federalist No. 10.
The United States would be neither more nor less a “republic” if its chief executive is elected under the current state-by-state winner-take-all method (i.e., awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in each separate state), under a district system (such as used by Maine and Nebraska), or under the proposed national popular vote system (in which the winner would be the candidate receiving the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia).
With the current state-by-state winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), it could only take winning a bare plurality of popular votes in only the 11 most populous states, containing 56% of the population of the United States, for a candidate to win the Presidency with a mere 23% of the nation’s votes!