From:
https://spectator.org/the-national-popular-vote-con-job/
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The Right Prescription
The National Popular Vote Con Job
NPVIC is an unconstitutional attempt by the Democrats to game our
electoral system.
by David Catron
September 3, 2019, 12:02 AM
The latest attempt by the Democrats to avoid the exigencies of the
Electoral College is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact
(NPVIC). They have been selling this scheme as a conservative compromise between progressives who would abolish the obsolete institution outright
and reactionaries who wish to preserve an inequitable and racist
provision of the Constitution. In reality, NPVIC is just another effort
to endow the heavily populated, Democrat-dominated regions of the
country with even more political power than they already wield.
Fortunately, it is doomed to failure. If you havent read the official
NPVIC pitch, heres what it would accomplish, according to its official website:
"The National Popular Vote interstate compact would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes across
all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The bill ensures that every
vote, in every state, will matter in every presidential election. The
bill is a constitutionally conservative, state-based approach that
preserves the Electoral College, state control of elections, and the
power of the states to control how the President is elected."
How would NPVIC achieve this miracle? There would be a formal agreement
among various states controlling 270 or more presidential electors who
would be required to cast their ballots for any candidate receiving the
most popular votes across the country even if some other candidate wins
a majority in any of the signatory states. A brief perusal of the
current signatories to this compact will render its true objective all
too clear. Thus far, 15 states and the District of Columbia have joined
the movement, and all are owned and operated by the Democratic Party.
Among them, they control 196 electors, and they boast that NPVIC will
take effect when enacted by states controlling 74 more electoral votes.
Here is the current list of NPVIC signatory states and the number of
electors they control: California (55), New York (29), Illinois (20),
New Jersey (14), Washington (12), Massachusetts (11), Maryland (10),
Colorado (9), Oregon (7), Connecticut (7), New Mexico (5), Rhode Island
(4), Hawaii (4), Delaware (3), Vermont (3), and the District of Columbia
(3). There are seven additional states in which at least one legislative chamber has thus far approved the measure and another in which both
houses of the legislature have approved it. If they pass the measure,
the NPVIC states will claim the right to choose the president. This
claim will conflict with at least two constitutional provisions,
including the 12th Amendment, which states:
"The Electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by
ballot for President and transmit sealed to the seat of the government
of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate The
President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House
of Representatives, open all certificates and the votes shall then be
counted the person having the greatest number of votes for President,
shall be the President if such number be a majority of the whole number
of electors appointed."
The 12th Amendment was adopted for the express purpose of preventing
what NPVIC is designed to accomplish. This is why it begins with the
words, The electors shall meet in their respective states. Its purpose
is to assure that the electors of one state, particularly one with a
large population, cannot influence those of another state. It was
adopted in 1803 pursuant to the chaotic election of 1800 between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, which eventually had to be decided in the
House of Representatives. NPVIC also runs afoul of Article I, Section 10
of the Constitution, which is by no means ambiguous: "No State shall,
without the Consent of Congress ... enter into any Agreement or Compact
with another State ..."
It goes without saying that these violations of the Constitution would inevitably produce an avalanche of lawsuits from the states. The ensuing litigation would certainly result in a Supreme Court battle that would
be far more arcane than Bush v. Gore, and the inevitable ruling against
the signatories to NPVIC would result in a Democratic reaction that
would make their 2016 antics seem rational by comparison. Moreover, even
if the constitutional issues raised by the compact could somehow be
resolved amicably, there is virtually no possibility that the Democratic signatories to NPVIC would honor it if a Republican won the popular vote rather than a Democrat. As Professor Norman R. Williams writes in the
Harvard Law Review:
"[A] withdrawal from the NPVIC would violate the terms but the Constitution trumps interstate compacts and does so whether Congress
ratifies the NPVIC or not. And, sure, other states will undoubtedly sue
to compel the withdrawing state to comply but that lawsuit will likely
fail for the reason just discussed. Even more importantly, the very fact
that the presidential election would again be decided by the U.S.
Supreme Court would again throw the nation into turmoil."
All of this could be avoided if the Democrats were truly interested in
one person, one vote. That goal could be accomplished without the
convoluted process proposed by advocates of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. The states could pursue reform by simply choosing to allocate their electoral votes proportionally. Nebraska and Maine have
already changed their allocation systems to something approximating this method, and it involves no conflict with the Constitution. It would,
however, reduce the electoral power that the big Democratic states
wield. If California went to such a system, for example, at least 20 of
its 55 electoral votes would go to Republicans. New York would face a
similar electoral fate.
This is why no Democrat-controlled state would dream of going to a fully proportional system. It is why they have concocted the unconstitutional
and undemocratic National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. They arent interested in genuine electoral reform, and the claim that NPVIC is a conservative compromise doesnt pass the laugh test. They want to shift
more power to heavily populated, Democrat-dominated regions and keep the electoral advantage they already possess in large states like
California, New York, and Illinois. NPVIC is, in other words, just
another Democratic scam to rig a game they cant win honestly.
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Later,
Sean
... Those who trade liberty for security have neither.
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