When you leave those damn kids alone in late summer session look at the trouble they can get into.

The Michigan GOP has decided to try and make sure that the winner of the 2016 election in the state, Donald Trump, could never duplicate that feat again by supporting the National Popular Vote Initiative.

What is the National Popular Vote Initiative? Sounds harmless right?

According to the website it simply wants to…

The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Actually, it shreds the United States Consitution. You know the document that all these elected officials swore to uphold at one point.

The framers knew that the original 13 colonies were going to expand at one point. They also wanted to make sure that smaller states like Delaware, Maryland, South Carolina, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island would have a say in the national election for President.

The electoral college helps to make that a possibility.

If we elected people purely on the result of a national vote than New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and California would be the only states you would need to campaign in.

The video listed below from Prager university does an excellent job in under 5 minutes of explaining this.

So how does this effect a state like Michigan?

In the Presidential election of 2016 when Donald Trump faced off against Hillary Clinton, she won the popular vote according to 270 to win

Clinton 65,845,063

Trump 62,980,160

Difference 2,864,903

Yet Trump won the electoral vote 304 to 227.

This meant that Michigan, Iowa, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were in play for the first time in decades. Had we just gone with the popular vote than the vote totals in California would have sealed the deal for Hillary.

Califonia totals were according to politico

Clinton 7,362,490

Trump 3,916,209

Difference 3,446,281

Califonia alone would have decided the election and all those states in the south and midwest would be set aside for the states on the coast with the most population. The electoral college made both candidates focus on the issues that are facing Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa which are much different than California.

So why in the world would the Michigan GOP be lining up for something that would have ensured that Donald Trump would not be President?

Well, a free trip to Hawaii wouldn’t hurt. According to the Detroit Free Press…

A group backing a major change in the way the president is elected took a large group of Michigan Republican lawmakers on a free trip to Hawaii in August. Among those who took the trip was state Rep. Tim Kelly, R-Saginaw Township, the primary sponsor of a “National Popular Vote” bill introduced in the House on Sept. 5. A lobbyist pushing for passage of the bill, under which Michigan would join a compact of states wanting to elect the president based on the national popular vote, while keeping the Electoral College, said Monday the three-day trip after the Aug. 7 primary involved “hard work,” not “wining and dining.” “It is tong and hammer,” Lansing lobbyist Frank Venuto said of the Hawaii trip paid for by the Institute for Research on Presidential Elections — a California-based charity affiliated with the National Popular Vote group, for which Venuto lobbies.

I love this part…

Institute for Research on Presidential Elections — a California-based charity

I’m sure that is just coincidence. California based research center trying to influence the popular vote application by sending legislators to Hawaii. Not a push for votes at all.

Still, why in the world would a bunch of REPUBLICANS be doing this? Under this very proposal, they are preventing Geroge W. Bush from becoming president in 2000. Donald Trump barely won Michigan by 10k votes but we would have been forced by Michigan law aligned with this pact to commit our electoral votes to Hillary so we could appease California or New York.

Nice way to do a end around both the U.S. and Michigan constitutions and to send a screw you to your voters.

Thankfully not everyone in Michigan with an R after their name has lost their minds. State Sen. Patrick Colbeck R-Canton Township in a rebuttal letter to a Detroit News editorial in part wrote this…

In the 2016 presidential election, Michigan turned red for the first time since 1988 and voted to allocate all 16 of our electors to President Trump. Hillary Clinton would have gained these electors if National Popular Vote were the law of the land. In this light, could support for this initiative be a referendum against President Trump? In short, I don’t believe so, but it is likely a referendum against the free-thinking citizens who put Trump into office.

Hopefully, there are more people like State Sen. Patrick Colbeck and less like the Republicans who took a free trip to Hawaii, that will kill this bill, not only in Michigan but across the country. We don’t need our national elections decided by those who are heavily taxed and looking to grab the rest of the countries resources for the masses on the coasts.

Stop trying to shred the Consitution.

And pay for your own trips to Hawaii.