(In Part IV of this series we examine the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact now under consideration in legislatures across the country and the unintended consequences that proponents of the Compact have failed to take into consideration)<\/p>\n
Unintended Consequences of the National Popular Vote\u00a0 <\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n In the November 2000 General Election, Al Gore and Joe Lieberman won the national popular vote by 50,999,897 to 50,456,002 over George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.\u00a0 A switch of just 271,948 votes (0.27%), or one vote out of every 373 votes cast, would have given Bush-Cheney a slim popular vote victory, along with a narrow 271 to 266 vote victory where it really counted\u2026 in the Electoral College.<\/p>\n Then, in the 2016 General Election, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Tim Kaine won the national popular vote by 65,853,516 to 62,984,825 over Donald Trump and Mike Pence.\u00a0 A switch of just 1,434,346 of the total 128,838,341 votes cast, or one vote out of every 90 votes cast (1.1%) would have given Trump and Pence a narrow popular vote victory, along with a comfortable 306 to 232 vote victory in the Electoral College.<\/p>\n Needless to say, Gore-Lieberman partisans in 2000 were outraged to learn that their candidates had won the national popular vote by nearly 544,000 votes, nationwide, but lost the election in the Electoral College by just five votes, 271 to 266 (one Gore-Lieberman elector in DC failed to vote).\u00a0 After all, they argued, isn\u2019t it a core principle of democracy that the majority rules?\u00a0 Within a matter of months, an organization called The Committee for the National Popular Vote (CNPV) was launched.<\/p>\n In his introduction to the book, Every Vote Counts: A State-Based Plan for Electing the President by National Popular Vote<\/em>, the \u201cBible\u201d of the national popular vote movement, former Republican congressman and 1980 independent presidential candidate John B. Anderson had this to say: \u201cI believe the occupant of the nation\u2019s highest office should be determined by a nation-wide popular vote by legally registered voters.\u00a0 The current system\u2026 can trump the national popular vote.\u00a0 The system is not based on majority rule, and it fails to provide political equality.\u201d<\/p>\n What Anderson suggests would horrify baseball fans.\u00a0 What he is suggesting, in baseball terms, is that if the Yankees and the Phillies were to meet in a seven-game World Series, in which the Yankees won three games, 5-3, 6-1, and 3-2, while the Phillies won four games, 5-2, 6-5, 5-4, and 2-1, the Yankees should be declared World Champions because they scored 26 runs in the seven-game series while the Phillies scored only 24.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t work that way in major league baseball and it certainly doesn\u2019t work that way when fifty sovereign states vote to select a president and vice president.\u00a0 Any scheme for selecting a president and vice president by national popular vote would violate the original intent of the Framers and would be unconstitutional.<\/p>\n The National Popular Vote Committee proposes to create an interstate compact, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) subtitled, \u201cThe Agreement Among the States to Elect the President by National Popular Vote.”\u00a0 As CNPV explains, \u201cUnder the National Popular Vote bill, all of the (member) states\u2019 electoral votes would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.\u00a0 The bill would take effect only when enacted, in identical form, by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes\u2026 that is, enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of the total 538 electoral votes).\u201d<\/p>\n Clearly, the NPVIC was conceived as a means of circumventing Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution without having to resort to the amending process outlined in Article V of the Constitution.\u00a0 But, is the national popular vote a good idea or a very bad idea?<\/p>\n The primary concern of the Framers was that a foreign power might one day attempt to achieve through corruption and political intrigue, that which they could not achieve on the battlefield.<\/p>\n With that thought in mind, is it even remotely conceivable that, just five years and eleven months after the British surrendered at Yorktown, the Founders would have presented to the states for ratification a Constitution that would allow an individual with potentially divided loyalties\u2026 i.e. a person with dual US-British citizenship\u2026 to serve as President of the United States and Commander in Chief of the Army and the Navy?\u00a0 To think that they would have done so requires a willing suspension of reason.<\/p>\n Instead, the Framers insisted that \u201cNo Person except a natural born<\/em> Citizen\u201d should ever serve as president or vice president of the United States.\u00a0 The Electoral College was created to insure the continuation of that restriction for all time.\u00a0 But now the Electoral College system is under sustained attack by those who fail to fully appreciate the wisdom of the Framers.<\/p>\n On August 8, 2011, California joined Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Vermont, and Washington, plus the District of Columbia (all blue states which normally vote Democratic), bringing 132 of the needed 270 electoral votes under the NPVIC rule.\u00a0 If, and when, states representing at least 270 electoral votes have joined the NPVIC, then and only then will those states be able to control a simple majority in the Electoral College.\u00a0 But is it possible that the eight blue states that joined the National Popular Vote movement in August 2011 are merely shooting themselves in the foot?\u00a0 Let\u2019s play a little \u201cwhat if,\u201d<\/em> using the results from the 2000 General Election.<\/p>\n Under the best-case scenario for Gore-Lieberman, let us assume that the U.S. Supreme Court failed to intervene in the Florida recount and that Florida\u2019s 25 electoral votes were ultimately captured by Gore-Lieberman.\u00a0 Had that been the case, the final Electoral College vote would have been 292 to 246 in favor of Gore-Lieberman.\u00a0 Al Gore would have been the 43rd<\/sup> President of the United States.<\/p>\n However, the United States Supreme Court did intervene in the recount dispute under the \u201cequal protection\u201d clause of the U.S. Constitution and Bush-Cheney were declared the winners of Florida\u2019s 25 electoral votes.\u00a0 But what if<\/em> Bush-Cheney had also been able to attract just one additional vote out of every 373 votes cast to win a slim national popular vote victory, along with a narrow 271 to 266 vote victory in the Electoral College?\u00a0 What would have been the impact on the final Electoral College vote?<\/p>\n Looking at the electoral votes state-by-state (2000 electoral votes in parentheses), if the thirteen blue states of Connecticut (8), Delaware (3), Iowa (7), Maine (4), Michigan (18), Minnesota (10), Nevada (4), New Mexico (5), New York (33), Oregon (7), Pennsylvania (23), Rhode Island (4), and Wisconsin (11), with a total of 137 electoral votes, had joined with\u00a0 the states that joined the Compact in August 2011: California (54), Hawaii (4), Illinois (22), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (12), New Jersey (15), Vermont (3), Washington (11), and the District of Columbia (3), with a combined total of 134 electoral votes, they would have controlled a total of 271 electoral votes\u2026 one vote more than a simple electoral majority.<\/p>\n However, with Bush-Cheney having eked out a razor-thin majority in the national popular vote, the twenty-one NPVIC states, plus the District of Columbia, would have been required to cast all 271 of their electoral votes for George Bush and Dick Cheney… in spite of the fact that 21 of the 22 member states in the Compact had cast a majority of their popular votes for Al Gore and Joe Lieberman.<\/p>\n Combined with the 242 electoral votes that Bush-Cheney won on their own in 28 of the 29 non-NPVIC states, and the 25 disputed Florida electoral votes, the 271 NPVIC votes would have created a unanimous 538-0 victory for Bush-Cheney in the Electoral College, the exact opposite of what the proponents of the NPVIC intended, and certainly not an outcome that the Framers would ever have envisioned.<\/p>\n Most Americans will agree with former presidential candidate John Anderson that the occupant of the nation\u2019s highest office should be determined by legally registered voters.\u00a0 For many years, but particularly in the years since the advent of \u201cmotor voter,\u201d \u201cpostcard,\u201d \u201croving registrar,\u201d and \u201csame day\u201d voter registration, unscrupulous political operatives have used those systems to register hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of deceased people, illegal aliens, household pets, cartoon characters, and other ineligible entities as registered voters.<\/p>\n Anderson tells us that, \u201cThe Framers distrusted democracy.\u201d\u00a0 Yes, they did, and for good reason.\u00a0 Their objective was to give us a republic, not a democracy, because they knew that the history of pure democracies was not a good one.\u00a0 Nevertheless, those in the National Popular Vote movement would have us believe that pure democracy in the selection of a president and vice president is somehow a good idea, but the exact opposite is true.<\/p>\n If Mr. Anderson is serious about having elections determined only by legally registered voters, he should demand that the Congress and the state legislatures impose heavy fines and mandatory prison sentences on those who would vote illegally, and on those who would abet and\/or facilitate fraud, violence, or intimidation in the electoral process.<\/p>\n (Next week:\u00a0 In the fifth and final installment of this series, we will examine the presidential elector selection process currently used by the states of Maine and Nebraska, a system that would represent true Electoral College reform)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (In Part IV of this series we examine the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact now under consideration in legislatures across the country and the unintended consequences that proponents of the Compact have failed to take into consideration) Unintended Consequences of … Continue reading