A threat to the Electoral College

The 2016 election has given the left – that is, liberals, progressives, the Democrats, and all their fellow travelers in the media – a collective conniption fit, and this is fueling their call to do away with the Electoral College. That would be a serious blow to the federal nature of America. After all, the formal name of our country is the United States of America, not the United State of America. We are set up to be a nation that is a partnership between 50 states and a federal government. Fortunately, replacing the Electoral College with a popular vote for the presidency is a tough row to hoe. It would require a constitutional amendment, making it unlikely to succeed. Not to be deterred, the left is looking for easier ways to skin this cat.

On December 6, radical Congressman John Conyers (D-Mich.), who brays that the Electoral College is "rooted in slavery," convened a panel on Capitol Hill on how to dispense with this fundamental aspect of America's federal nature. The left's hottest idea is to latch onto something called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Never heard of it? Neither had I until just recently. It is one of those things that is incubating beneath the surface. Basically, this compact is an agreement among states. Those states within the compact would award their electoral votes, regardless of who won their respective states, to the candidate who had the most popular votes nationwide. So if enough states representing 270 electoral votes pledged to give their votes to the winner of the popular vote, we would have a de facto popular vote system without the need for the rigorous process of a constitutional amendment. Starting in 2007 and to date, ten states and the District of Columbia have legislatively signed onto the compact. All together, this group has 165 electoral votes, about 31% of the total. Not surprisingly, these ten states are liberal and reliably Democrat. They are Maryland, New Jersey, Illinois, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Vermont, California, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and New York. The compact may seem toothless as long it remains an agreement between such states. However, if a major swing state or two gets roped into into this scheme, the picture quickly changes. Aside from that, the legality of the compact is hazy. If it ever acted to determine an election, there would be a legal mess the likes of which have never been seen before. Of course, leftists thinks this compact of theirs is like a river that can flow in only one direction. Imagine the media outrage if someone like Trump won the "official" popular vote, and the liberal states in the compact had to cast their electoral votes for him. Give the devil his due. The Democrats' cleverness is impressive regarding how they hope to engineer an end-run around the Constitution. But liberal ingenuity aside, Republican-leaning states would have to be beyond stupid to sign on to it.