NPV wants the President to be elected by a simple majority of all American voters. The National Popular Vote movement is a radically dangerous ploy to side-step an Amendment process that would most definitely fail in favor of individual state battles with simple majority votes. It is much easier for NPV to convince a handful of states to combine or block together their electoral votes then it would be to get the nation as a whole to sign on to the idea that the President should be elected by popular vote.
How it would work.
NPV wants to get the President elected by a simple majority of all American voters by convincing enough states to agree to cast their electoral votes for the winner of the popular vote regardless of the will of the people within their state. In other words, they don’t mind if you cast a vote, they just want to be able to ignore it. Now, every state that signs onto this agreement is upsetting the influence of some of the lesser states with regard to the presidential election. There are 539 total electoral votes. The winner requires a majority or 270 votes. If they can obtain enough states to block 270 votes, they defacto determine that the winner of the popular vote will win the election. Even if they fall short of their goal of at least 270 votes. Each state that jumps on board increases the likely hood that their influence will be sufficient to guarantee the popular vote winner gets the presidency.
Sports as an analogy
Suppose The Phillies and the Yankees play in the World Series. Now the Yankees open the series with a 10-2 whooping over the Phillies. The Phillies in turn win 3 straight 1 run games and clinch the series 2-0 in game 5. In this scenario, the Yankees will have outscored the Phils by 3 runs over 5 games. They will have won the popular vote. However, the Phillies will have outright won 4 games. This is the scenario that NPV does not like. They don’t want the president to have to be elected by enough states. They want the president to be elected if every Californian and every Texan votes for him. It should not matter how big you win a particular state, not if you are interested in a presidency that represents the will of the entire country. Let’s not forget the additional impact that the illegal alien vote will have on elections. (Don’t get me started on how and why non-citizens can vote.)
So, what is so bad about electing the president by popular vote?
Like it or not, our nation is comprised of 50 separate sovereign entities called states. They created the Federal government for the purpose of maintaining peace among the states and providing a unified diplomacy abroad. The presidential position is, foremost, a diplomatic one. Its role is mainly in representing the interests of the several states. The same is true of the Senate, where they were to represent the State interests with regard to legislation and treaties. In 1913, the election of the Senate was stripped of state influence and converted to popular vote. This alienated the states from the federal government. Now in 2011, we are seeing the NPV pushing hard to remove the States’ influence on the office of the President. Remember… The title is President of “The United States”. It is not Czar. It is not Premiere. It is not Emperor. It is not Dictator. It is not Prime Minister. All of these titles indicate a man representing the nation as a whole or a national governing body. Our presidency was designed to represent the states unified when dealing with foreign powers.
What’s this College of Electors all about anyway?
The Electoral College is foremost the embodiment of ”The Great Compromise” which broke the impasse of our original Constitutional Convention. There was much jealousy among the states at that time. The larger states wanted representation based on population. The smaller states wanted equal representation. They both got their way. Then again, they both gave up something. The House was organized along population. The Senate was organized on equal representation. The primary duties of each were divided. Domestic issues involving expenditures were to be mainly handled in the House with concurrency of the Senate. The foreign policy issues were handled mainly in the Senate with the President leading the negotiations with foreign powers. This why we have 539 Electoral votes. 1 vote for each house member, one vote for each Senator. The election of the president has as much or more to do with the will of the individual States as it does with the will of the People.
Why do States Matter?
The states are to act as another layer of checks and balances in a federal system. The people should be able to rely upon the states to remedy abuses of federal power. Many programs that are run from Washington, DC are unconstitutional and should be handled at the state level or abolished entirely. This is important because competition among the 50 states should act as a barometer to determine which programs are effective and how they are best implemented. Competition for citizens and businesses should be the determining factor. It is the best way to evaluate how well states are run. This migration of people also affects the national influence a given state would have upon the general government. NPV threatens to alienate states completely from the federal system and it leads the United Sates further towards pure democracy and dictatorship. In conjunction with the new War Powers being offered to the President it is a dangerous step toward the conversion of our Republic into an Empire.
Above is a quick look at what the NPV program would do to the election of the president. The 11 states in the yellow box below hold enough votes to determine the presidency. If NPV has its way, as few as 11 states out of 50 would determine the presidency.
~Federal Expression
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