Circumventing the U.S. Constitution to further political agenda is normally the Left’s schtick, which makes it surprising to see Republicans rallying to the National Popular Vote (NPV), the latest liberal attempt to end-run the Constitution.
NPV would replace the state-by-state electoral system with the direct election of the president by guaranteeing an Electoral College majority to the popular vote winner. This would be accomplished by convincing states to enact legislation binding them to award their electoral votes to the national popular vote winner – even if that candidate fails to carry the state.
Once the number of states enacting NPV laws have at least 270 electoral votes among them, they will have imposed de facto direct presidential election on the rest of the country. So far, eight states, representing 77 electoral votes, have enacted NPV laws.
This maneuver cunningly side-steps the Constitution’s cumbersome amendment process and allows NPV proponents to do away with our centuries-old electoral system on the say-so of fewer than half the states in the Union (doubtless causing Madison to spin in his grave).
NPV was birthed from the womb of the Left and is being financed by Tom Golisano, a billionaire who supported John Kerry for president and previously spent $93 million on three campaigns for New York Governor as the nominee of the Independence Party (which he created).
Golisano is using his vast wealth to employ GOP lobbyists and politicians to sell this liberal brainchild to Republicans (he doesn’t need to convince liberals). Some simple online research of the issue makes clear that Golisano is bankrolling on extensive PR campaign targeting Republicans.
Unfortunately, a dismaying number of Republicans are buying into it. In states like Missouri, Oklahoma and South Dakota, Republican legislators are carrying the NPV ball. In the GOP-controlled Minnesota legislature, the Republican-sponsored NPV bill has passed the state House and recently cleared a key state Senate committee. In my home state of California, NPV is being carried by the Assembly Republican Caucus chairman.
What would possess any Republican leader to propound a scheme so clearly contrary to the Founding Fathers’ constitutional design?
In my state of California, is justified to Republicans with complaints that we are “taken for granted” by presidential campaigns that in 2008 raised $150 million here but spent a scant $28,000, and promised National Popular Vote will magically make us relevant again.
What we aren’t told is how NPV will restore a state GOP that is shut out of every statewide office, or why future presidential campaigns will spend more of their finite funds on California’s very expensive media markets, rather than push for a popular vote majority in less expensive states – and still get California’s 55 electoral votes under NPV rules.
NPV proponents cite the four times in our 235-year history in which the presidential winner lost the popular vote – but their solution will create the quadrennial spectacle of watching a number of states vote for the Republican nominee only to have their electoral votes go to the Democrat, and vice versa.
Take, for example, the states that have enacted NPV: Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Washington, Vermont (and DC). All went for John Kerry in 2004, but under NPV their electoral votes would have gone to George W. Bush.
NPV has other problems: for example, Article 1, Section 10 of the Constitution prohibits states from entering into agreements or compacts with each other without Congress’ permission, casting doubt on the constitutionality of NPV, which is essentially a compact among the enacting states.
Republicans should be incensed at the National Popular Vote campaign’s cavalier attitude toward the Constitution. Our electoral system was conceived by the greatest political minds America has ever produced. The Founders thought it the best possible system for electing the chief executive of the Union. It manifests that we are a republic, rather than a democracy. It reflects that we are a federal union of sovereign states, rather than a unitary central government with 50 administrative units.
Presidential electors represent the voters of their states, but NPV would frequently force electors to act in opposition to the expressed will of the citizens they represent. That is the fundamental contradiction at the heart of this dishonest initiative.
Republicans flirting with this constitutional end-run should also remember a major priority of the Tea Party movement – which re-energized the GOP as the party of limited government and fueled its 2010 election triumph -- is returning the Constitution to the center of our national political life.
Given these realities, it makes little sense for Republicans to support an extra-constitutional attempt by the Left to gut the Electoral College in the vain hope it might provide some political advantage for the GOP. In 2010, Republicans gained a record 680 state legislative seats and took control of 26 state legislatures, and now have 29 governorships.
It’s in the GOP’s power to stop this liberal end-run around the Constitution. For my part, I plan to ask the Republican National Committee to oppose NPV at our spring meeting, because it will be to our eternal regret if Republicans serve as its mid-wives.
Shawn Steel is the Republican National Committeeman from California and a former chairman of the California Republican Party.
