Steve Fair: ‘Clueless’ Republicans Leading Effort Against Electoral College
Oklahoma National Republican Committeeman: ‘Clueless’ Republicans leading state effort against electoral college
By STEVE FAIR
Once again the National Popular Vote Compact has reared its ugly head in Oklahoma. State Rep. Lee Denney (R-Cushing) has filed a bill to have Oklahoma join ten states and the District of Columbia in an agreement to cast our presidential electoral votes for the candidate who wins the majority of the popular vote. Former legislators Rob Johnson and Don Armes, both Republicans, are promoting it. During their tenure in the legislature, Armes and Johnson filed several bills promoting the compact.
This week, Johnson released the results of a poll where he claims 79 percent of Oklahomans favor National Popular Vote. The poll was supposedly taken Jan. 19 and 20 by Public Policy Polling interviewing 893 people statewide across all party affiliation voters. Johnson believes Oklahoma’s participation in the compact will result in the Sooner state getting more attention in the presidential race and that the Electoral College hurts turnout and is unfair. But there are more than just a few fishhooks in the compact.
First and foremost, if Johnson’s proposal would have been in place in 2008 and 2012, Oklahoma’s electoral votes would have been counted for President Obama. That’s right, the reddest state in the country would have cast 7 electoral votes for Obama even though the state voted overwhelmingly Republican. How is that right? It isn’t right, and it doesn’t make any sense.
You can see the detailed report of the poll results from January 19-20 by Public Policy Polling interviewing 893 people statewide across all party affiliation voters.
http://www.theokie.com/poll-claims-npvs-popularity-in-ok/#comment-1022229
A Fordham University report ranked the firm first among 28 organizations for the accuracy of its final, 2012 national preelection estimates.
In state polls of voters each with a second question that specifically emphasized that their state’s electoral votes would be awarded to the winner of the national popular vote in all 50 states, not necessarily their state’s winner, there was only a 4-8% decrease of support.
Question 1: “How do you think we should elect the President: Should it be the candidate who gets the most votes in all 50 states, or the current Electoral College system?”
Question 2: “Do you think it more important that a state’s electoral votes be cast for the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in that state, or is it more important to guarantee that the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states becomes president?”
Support for a National Popular Vote
South Dakota — 75% for Question 1, 67% for Question 2.
Connecticut — 74% for Question 1, 68% for Question 2,
Utah — 70% for Question 1, 66% for Question 2, — NationalPopularVote
In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided).
Most Americans don’t ultimately care whether their presidential candidate wins or loses in their state . . . they care whether he/she wins the White House. Voters want to know, that even if they were on the losing side, their vote actually was equally counted and mattered to their candidate. Most Americans think it would be wrong for the candidate with the most popular votes to lose. We don’t allow this in any other election in our representative republic.
“The bottom line is that the electors from those states who cast their ballot for the nationwide vote winner are completely accountable (to the extent that independent agents are ever accountable to anyone) to the people of those states. The National Popular Vote states aren’t delegating their Electoral College votes to voters outside the state; they have made a policy choice about the substantive intelligible criteria (i.e., national popularity) that they want to use to make their selection of electors. There is nothing in Article II (or elsewhere in the Constitution) that prevents them from making the decision that, in the Twenty-First Century, national voter popularity is a (or perhaps the) crucial factor in worthiness for the office of the President.”
– Vikram David Amar – professor and the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the UC Davis School of Law. Before becoming a professor, he clerked for Judge William A. Norris of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and for Justice Harry Blackmun at the Supreme Court of the United States.
Over 90% of the contributions supporting the National Popular Vote effort have come—in about equal total amounts—from
● Tom Golisano, who has funded about 45% of National Popular Vote, is a pro-life, registered Republican businessman , living in Florida, and a founding member of the Independence Party of New York who ran on its ticket for governor of New York in 1994, 1998 and 2002 and
● John R. Koza who is a pro-choice, registered Democratic businessman residing in California. He is the originator of the National Popular Vote plan.
“kohler” does a great job cutting and pasting from NPV’s website….
Tom Golisano gave the DNC $1 million in 2008 to help get Obama elected, so whatever he says today, he’s not what most Oklahomans would regard, I think, as a Republican. John Koza is a donor to socialist Bernie Sanders and was one of California’s Electors for Al Gore in 2000. Some of the missing 10% comes from Jonathan Soros, son of George Soros.
Only far-left states have adopted NPV. In fact, the last time a state that has adopted NPV went for a Republican was, I believe, 1988.
NPV violates the clear and well-known intention of the Framers, which was to empower state legislators to figure out how best to represent their own state in presidential elections. The electoral votes belong to the state, which is really to say, to the people of each state. Never before has a state given away its electoral votes based on some extrinsic factor. Whatever the federal courts might eventually say, NPV ought to be regarded, at least by those who care about constitutional fidelity, as at least a stretch and most likely unconstitutional.
One last note–if you want to see what NPV says to the political left, they use the group called FairVote. Visit that group’s website to see how they convince Democrats that NPV will help Democrats and cast NPV (in its proper light, I think) as an important agenda item for the Progressive movement.