By Peter Hannaford on 5.22.09 @ 6:06AM
The left continues its move to abolish the Electoral College and
thus amend the U.S. Constitution by stealth.
If you like the way President Goodwrench is running the
automobile industry and the way Congress gave out millions in
staff bonuses last year while lambasting Wall Street, you'll love
what their supporters are up to right now: ditching the Electoral
College.
That not-large-but-highly-vocal cohort of people who can never
forgive George W. Bush for being president has hatched the idea
of turning the entire nation blue by making the Electoral College
irrelevant -- and they are making headway.
The plan is a model of simplicity: Persuade lobby friendly state
legislatures and governors to pass bills to require that state's
electors every fourth December to cast their electoral votes for
whoever had the most popular votes nationwide. Thus, the electors
in State A would ignore the votes in their state if Candidate B
lost it to Candidate C, and would vote for "B" if "B" had won the
overall national vote at the ballot box .
The effort, dubbed the National Popular Vote initiative, seems to
be funded largely by one John Koza, a Stanford engineering
professor. Four "blue" states have so far adopted the plan:
Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey and Maryland. Currently, the
scheme's supporters are working on Colorado.
Since the beginning of the republic, each state's electors have
cast their votes (with occasional isolated exceptions) for the
candidate who won the majority of votes in the state. This
guaranteed that states with smaller populations would not be
overwhelmed by the big urban votes in a few other states.
The nation was founded as a collection of states united, not a
unitary state with administrative subdivisions. This measure if
adopted by enough states to aggregate 270 (the minimum number of
electoral votes needed to win) would, in effect, amend the U.S.
Constitution by stealth.
Supporters, whose objective seems to be to make the entire nation
"blue," don't much care about the carefully crafted checks and
balances of the Constitution. Nor do they pay much attention to
the practical consequences if their campaign succeeds.
For example, under the present Electoral College system, it
doesn't much matter whether a candidate wins a state by 51
percent or 70 percent. The precise vote count would assume much
greater importance in a system where the national winner would
automatically be the candidate with the most national votes.
Imagine a case where in several states there were very close vote
counts separating "A" from "B." Think Florida in 2000. This could
easily bring on fierce recount fights and lawsuits galore. The
battle might continue for months before a president was
inaugurated.
Even if there weren't razor-close results in some key states, a
major consequence of such a nationalized system could be that a
president would be chosen by the populations of a handful of
states with very large cities. New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles
rather than 50 states could very well determine who will preside
over all.
Will there be a "Stealth Amendment"? There will if the left has
enough persistence to wear down the other side (that is, those
who favor the Constitution). There won't be one if enough
legislatures in enough states think this through and decide that
the present system "ain't broke" and therefore there is nothing
to "fix."
topics:
2000 Election, Electoral College
