Have you heard of the National Popular Vote Compact? It calls for votes from the Electoral College from participating states to pledge their electors to the popular vote winner instead of the winner of their state. As of today, 22 states have signed on, including California and its 54 electoral votes.
At least for now, presidential elections are still decided by the Electoral College as the founders intended back in 1787 when the Constitution was drafted. Their argument was and is a pragmatic one: Without the Electoral College, small states and their needs would be completely ignored. Large cities and their needs would be the focus of every candidate instead. Never again would a presidential candidate talk with farmers in Iowa or South Carolina, opting for rallies in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, among other large cities. Rural voters in general would be forgotten.
Since 2000, Republicans have won the presidency twice without winning the popular vote. George W. Bush famously won the 2000 election over Al Gore after taking Florida by 537 votes and clinching its 25 electoral votes. It happened again in 2016, with Donald Trump capturing the presidency despite losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by nearly 3 million votes.
Since the Trump victory, Democrats have been more vocal about eliminating the Electoral College, and of course have referred to it as a racist relic that must be abolished to save democracy.
“Due to severe racial disparities in certain states, the Electoral College effectively weighs white voters over voters of color, as opposed to a ‘one person, one vote’ system where all our votes are counted equally,” potential Democratic presidential candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez once declared.
“We shouldn’t be hanging on to an anachronism that was designed for slave-owning states, really,” a still-bitter 2016 presidential loser Hillary Clinton also declared recently. “This needs to go because it’s not reflective of one person, one vote.”
After the midterm elections wipeout, Democrats captured full control of six states: Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Those states represent 71 electoral votes combined.
“I think that the national popular vote makes sense. My views on that have not changed,” Gov. Josh Shapiro, another possible 2028 Democratic presidential candidate, said this week. “I’ll work with lawmakers to figure out what the right mechanism is for moving forward on that.”
Wisconsin Gov. David Crowley echoed Shapiro’s sentiment: “We should do away with it.”
If Wisconsin and Pennsylvania were to join the National Popular Vote Compact, only two other Democrat-controlled swing states would be needed to get over the threshold of 270 votes: Michigan, Nevada, or Arizona.
It is not clear how those states would proceed, but given the Democrats’ history of strong-arming their way into getting fellow party members on board, and with 74% of Americans now living under a Democratic governor, there’s a good chance the 270 threshold could be met. This would be excellent news for the Democratic Socialists of America, whose platform calls for the destruction of any and all political norms and institutions, including the elimination of the presidency, Senate, prisons, private health insurance and yes, the Electoral College.
Political commentator Mark Halperin is sounding the alarm on this. He says this longtime goal of the Democratic Party could be achieved in less than two months.
“Literally the next presidential election in America could be decided not by the Electoral College but by the popular vote,” Halperin explained on his recent podcast, 2-Way. “Now there are five additional states that might join the compact, which would put us over the 270 threshold. If this happens, it’ll be an earthquake. You’ll be able to move from the electoral college to the popular vote without Congress or a constitutional amendment.”
For a candidate such as AOC, a popular-vote-only election would also be warmly received. Because let’s face it: This is not a socialist who wants to defend her staunch opposition to fossil fuels and coal in a swing state like Pennsylvania outside of Philadelphia. She certainly doesn’t want to meet with UAW workers in Michigan to tell them why they should learn another occupation with electric vehicle mandates eliminating thousands of jobs in the auto industry. And she definitely doesn’t want to go to Nevada to explain to service workers why she opposes no tax on tips, or to Arizona to justify her open-borders advocacy.
Instead, AOC could hold huge rallies in the comfort zone of blue cities promising the kind of free stuff that socialist mayors Zohran Mamdani, Katie Wilson, and Nithya Raman are promising in New York, Seattle, and Los Angeles, respectively. She can promise to push for the release of everyone on death row, just as Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom did in California. She can also pledge to abolish ICE and offer amnesty to every illegal immigrant in the country, along with “free” healthcare for all. With the strength in numbers in major cities across the land, that would essentially make her the 48th president without having to have one uncomfortable conversation with voters.
Those opposing the elimination of the Electoral College can also expect their voices to be dismissed by many in major media. Take the New York Times editorial board, which freaked out after Trump’s 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton with its call to eliminate the Electoral College.
Their reason? Because it’s racist: “Yes, Mr. Trump won under the rules, but the rules should change so that a presidential election reflects the will of Americans and promotes a more participatory democracy,” the board wrote after the 2016 election. “The Electoral College, which is written into the Constitution, is more than just a vestige of the founding era; it is a living symbol of America’s original sin.”
The board contended this had always been its position going back 80 years.
But here’s what the editorial board wrote after the 2000 election, which also saw a Republican winning the Electoral College but losing the popular vote in a piece titled, “The Case for The Electoral College”:
“The arguments for the Electoral College are also compelling, and in our view, outweigh the majoritarian case put forward by Mrs. Clinton and others. The nation’s founders sought in various creative ways to create checks and balances, both inside and outside government. The Electoral College was first and foremost a compact among states, large and small, designed to ensure that one state or one region did not dominate the others.”
Once Trump won, suddenly the board’s view changed. And for its part, the Washington Post editorial board has also called for the end of the Electoral College.
The Electoral Compact isn’t a slam-dunk, however, even if enough states vote to award their electors to the winner of the popular vote. A constitutional amendment may still be required to abolish it, which calls for a two-thirds majority vote in the House and Senate and 38 out of 50 states to sign off on.
Simply put, the founders never intended for electoral votes to be outsourced to the popular vote winner, and with a 6-3 conservative Supreme Court currently in play, it is likely the high court would rule in favor of requiring a constitutional amendment, which has not been achieved in more than three decades. But the high court has also surprised conservatives recently on voting issues, so it is possible the high court may not save the GOP from a devastating turn of events.
IT’S THE CULTURE WAR STUPID
Regardless, Democrats will undoubtedly attempt to abolish the Electoral College because they see what’s coming: More electoral votes handed to red states after the 2030 census that will show large population increases in states Trump won in 2024, and blue states losing population and therefore electoral votes, including in California, New York, Illinois, and Minnesota.
Mob rule through big cities deciding elections is a Democrat dream. And that dream may become reality sooner than almost anyone thinks.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
