One of the Stupidest Ideas I Have Ever Heard
Oct 6th, 2006 by Brian A. Thomas
There is a campaign called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact that would force states to give all their electoral votes, not to the person who won their state, or who won that elector’s district in that state, but to ignore the will of the people of the state and vote according to the national popular vote.
This has to be the stupidest idea I have ever heard. Why should a state ignore the will of it’s voters? This is undoubtedly fallout from the Gore/Bush election results. However it is idiotic to suggest that a state ignore the will of their voters. Each elector represents a voting district. The only law there should be is that they are required to vote what their district did, not the entire state and certainly not the national popular vote. There is no logic to the idea that if a state votes 90% for candidate A, but candidate B wins the popular vote that the state’s electoral votes have to go to candidate B. Heck the state could have voted 100% for candidate A but still have to give their electoral votes to candidate B.
It is bad enough if a state gives all their electoral votes to the person who one the state, and not to who won each district. A national version of that is just so asinine I can’t even begin to see how even the far left wing papers like the New York Times could have actually endorsed it. What respect I may have had for the NYT just went out the door.
The only reason they are pushing for it is that is the only way they can get the winner of the national popular vote to win the office without having to pass a Constitutional Amendment. Just a bunch of back door cowards who can’t pass the law they want so they are trying to sneak around the back door to force the issue. They lost Florida’s electoral votes in that election before and all these years they are still bitter about it. They know that almost all the studies show that Bush would have still won Florida anyhow, even if the Supreme Court didn’t step in and stop the recounting. (I know, Moore’s Fahrenheit 911 says otherwise, but the study he quoted was a small study, while all the major studies (I believe there were 3, but it may be only 2), including those sponsored by left wing news organizations like the New York Times, showed that under most scenarios, including the ones that Florida was already using during its recounts, that Bush still would have won Florida.)
OHIO IS ONE OF THE STATES CONSIDERING THIS. Write your state senator and representative now and make sure they know if they want your vote this November, they will have to kill this bill when it comes up in 2007.
Once again, the fairest way to represent the will of the people, while maintaining the electoral college (the elimination of which is nearly impossible since the small states would never support it, so learn to live with it) is for each state to pass a law requiring the elector to vote for whomever won the voting district they represent. This means a state can, and likely will have split electoral votes, but it best represents the will of the people of that area of the state.
I would have to guess the Constitution stops a single Elector from having a partial vote. That is say candidate A gets 40% and Candidate B gets 48% and Candidate C gets 1% (with other candidates getting the remaining 1%), the elector could vote .4 votes for A, .48 for B, .01 for C and so on. Of course such a thing basically takes you back to a popular vote anyhow, and the mess that comes with that (I covered that enough back during the whole Gore/Bush thing and won’t cover it at this moment).
