A buddy of mine sent me this story:
Colorado National Popular Vote Interstate Compact bill passes Senate in party-line vote
Interstate Compact Bill? What the fuck is that and why do I not like the sound of it?
Colorado’s Senate has passed a bill to have the state award its presidential electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote.
Excuse me?
So if the majority vote in Colorado is for the Republican but we have a repeat of 2016 and California endes up delivering the popular vote to the Democrat, the electoral college of Colorado will switch from voting according to the whim of the people of Colorado and will vote according to the whim of the people from California?
And yes, the math is possible here.
Hillary took the popular vote by just about 3 million more than Trump. If the margin of the Republican victory in Colorado is less than the surplus of California votes, Colorado could switch from Red to Blue.
Democratic Sen. Mike Foote’s bill would have Colorado join 11 states and the District of Columbia in what’s called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
I had to look this up. There is a Wikipedia page on it.
The 11 states are Maryland, New Jersey, Illinois, Hawaii, Washington, Massachusetts, Vermont, California, Rhode Island, New York, and Connecticut.
All of those states went for Clinton in 2016, so this compact would not have changed anything.
What is horrifying is the number of Red states that this bill has been presented in.
Compare that to the 2016 election map.
I have never heard of this bill before.
I don’t know how many Americans have.
Imagine the shock of turning on the news on election night 2020, seeing that your state voted one way but the electoral college votes went the other way, and because of that, the national election results were changed.
Sure, you could figure out why that happened and then vote out your state representatives and senators come the next election, but does that really deal with the situation at hand?
I know I would be inclined to torch it off if Alabama went Blue because our electoral college representatives were more concerned about the votes from California and New York than from Alabamians.
People need to find out if this is happening in their state and they need to raise Cain about it.
This is down right dastardly and must be stopped.
When I first heard about this it made me furious. Mrs B was positively incandescent. (When she smiles, she lights up … This wasn’t that. It did reaffirm that I never want to get her that angry with me, ever … But I digress.)
I wonder if going after the pols who pass this can be done under the heading of deprivation of rights under color of law. After all, this basically ignores one’s vote … no matter who you vote for, actually.
Of course what we really need is a *slight* Repub popular vote majority … CA then flips, screaming commences and it all gets backed out. 🙂
I heard about this a couple of months ago. And it was clear that this was being pushed by left wing states. Still, it’s a worry.
I don’t think you’ll get anywhere trying to challenge this. Article 2 section 2 says “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors…” so while this bill is crazy, the Constitution allows it.
For that matter, it seems to allow far crazier things. If CA decided to permit illegal aliens to vote in presidential elections, it looks like that would be permitted as well under this same article.
It’s really going to be fun when a Republican wins the majority of the popular vote, and all these states will be forced by law to give him electoral votes.
What do you want to bet that the law will be ignored if/when that happens.
[…] Just about a year ago I wrote about the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. […]