Small, rural Republican-leaning states are not going to cede to the rest of the country the disproportionate power of their voters. If nothing else, the National Popular Vote approach is bargaining leverage.
This process-based opposition to NPV needs a couple of notes:
[T]he electoral voters of a state that did not join the compact would be rendered irrelevant. That would be a violation of natural justice. (emphasis added)A clearer way to put this would render 'electoral voters' as 'electors', as the Constitution does, and then it's hard to see what "natural justice" an elector should expect, since there's nothing natural about the position. NPV would not render the vote of any voter irrelevant. Quite the contrary - Democrats would still want to seek votes in Utah, Republicans in D.C.
[I]t is not hard to envisage an interstate compact with less attractive outcomes: a compact between the 11 largest states to vote for a president who would commit all federal funds just to those 11 states.I find it hard to imagine anything resembling this passing the Senate.
Some of Evans's Constitutional objections make more sense. Of course, we all know how the Bushist Supreme Court would rule on those.
1 comment:
This guy talks about how the electoral college provides checks and balances. Sic!
That was perhaps an intention of the founders (a charitable reading), but from the Jefferson/Burr debacle, the electoral college has been merely a device to screw up the result. At least three times, it has produced a distinctly illegitimate outcome: JQAdams vs. Jackson, Hayes v. Tilden, and of course, my favorite Bush v. Gore.
The use of the inappropriate, but nice American-sounding phrase "checks and balances" is a priori proof of bad faith imho.
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