National Popular Vote Nonsense
April 24, 2014 in Economics
By Gary Galles
New York has just joined the national popular vote (NPV) compact. In the name of democracy, it would pledge each adopting state’s electoral votes to whoever received the largest national vote, if enough other states do the same. It brings adopters to 165 out of 270 state electoral votes necessary to impose their agreement.
Unfortunately, NPV fails to achieve its core rationale–fixing supposed disenfranchisement of voters in “safe” states. And beyond sidestepping the Constitution, it would undermine, rather than enhance, the perceived legitimacy of a close election victor. There would always be plausible claims that close races were stolen, since fraud or cheating or other forms of running up the vote anywhere could swing such an election. It could create the Florida Bush-Gore controversy nationwide.
If the real issue was disenfranchisement, states have an alternative, clearly constitutional, approach available–assigning electoral votes to each district’s winner (plus two to the state vote winner) rather than a state winner-take-all system. Every district could affect Electoral College totals. Yet only two states have adopted it. Most legislatures have strenuously fought the idea.
Unfortunately, district representation is compromised by gerrymandering, designed to create as many “safe” districts as possible. But gerrymandering, not the Electoral College, is the cause, by which politicians supposedly against disenfranchising Presidential voters disenfranchise voters in House and state legislature elections.
NPV will not make individual votes any more influential. Your vote only matters now if it is the decisive vote in your state and your state changes the Electoral College result; under NPV, it would only matter if it determined the national popular vote winner. In other words, it will remain insignificant.
The claim that safe states are ignored is also misguided. Their influence has already been exercised. Safe states are that way because the dominant party supports policies representing the majority view of their voters–the platform already represents them. Successfully raising money in a state forces candidates to be responsive to those donors’ interests, as well.
In fact, NPV is about increasing the political leverage of safe states, because running up the vote count in “friendly” territory could now swing a national election. And the possibilities go way beyond “get out the vote” drives, to include fraud, as with absentee ballots forged for voters who have died or moved but not been purged from voter rolls, or who are unlikely or unable to vote, such as public housing or nursing home residents, or for non-existent …read more
Source: MISES INSTITUTE
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