The reactions to my column last week, titled with the question “Is It Time for Conservatives to Support A National Popular Vote?”, was basically a resounding, “HELL NO! It is NOT time for conservatives to support a national popular vote, there will NEVER BE a time for conservatives to support a national popular vote, and you are an IDIOT for even bringing it up! Now, go back to the Democrat-infested hellhole you crawled out of!” Or something along those lines.
To be fair, it wasn’t unexpected, and I completely understand. When I first encountered a case for the issue coming from a conservative (incidentally, from Townhall Senior Editor Matt Vespa’s neutral analysis of the issue in 2017, well before I started writing for the site), I had a knee-jerk reaction as well, and I would have completely agreed with most of the comments made last week. I too had always firmly believed in the ‘firewall’ theory, that the current system, as the ‘Founders intended,’ kept places like Los Angeles and New York City from running everything. Plus, Donald Trump had just become the second president in less than two decades to win the Electoral College and lose the popular vote. Why on earth would we ditch the narrow path on which we had managed to claim two critical yet razor-thin victories?
Indeed, there are lots of reasons to be skeptical, and I don’t blame anyone for raising an eyebrow or two. But being the fairly open-minded sort who sees value in a good argument and tries to recognize my own knee-jerk impulses, some of the arguments made for a national popular vote did seem logical, at least in the back of my mind. And the more I thought about it and considered the case coming from conservatives who support the concept, the more it made sense to me.
Still, very little is black and white, especially not this, regardless of where you end up landing. But for those who see the idea as purely bad, consider this mental exercise: Would you trade a national popular vote for, say, a ban on unsolicited mail-in voting and ballot harvesting, a Voter ID compact between the states, and a repeal of the 17th Amendment (which would allow state legislators to elect senators, virtually guaranteeing a GOP Senate into perpetuity)? If you would make that trade, and many of you doubtless would, it’s not so much the idea of a national popular vote per se that irks you, but rather the negative political ramifications you fear it could portend. In other words, there is a lot more grey to the issue than you might have thought.
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To respond to some of the more common objections raised in last week’s column, I enlisted the aid of former California state Sen. Ray Haynes, a former national chairman of the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council and a supporter of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
“Many criticisms of this plan, which importantly does not abolish the Electoral College or eliminate state control of elections, are simply based on false information,” Ray told me. “These misconceptions, inaccuracies, or misstatements of fact lead to incorrect conclusions about how to solve the battleground state problem that excludes so much of the country from any meaningful input into who becomes president.”
Here are Ray’s responses to the objections I raised:
Highly-populated cities would determine who is president.
RAY: This comment is based on the false premise that highly populated cities have enough votes to control the outcome of the election. The 100 largest cities in this country have one-sixth of the total population of the country. The rural areas of this country — areas of 50,000 people or less — also have one-sixth of the population of the country. The other two-thirds are in the suburbs. Cities can’t determine who is president — unless you reject basic math like one plus one equals two — because they simply don’t have the votes.
Congress would need to ultimately approve this, and it would never get past a Senate filibuster.
RAY: Folks who suggest that National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is unconstitutional or will fail to get congressional consent are both wrong and naive. First, the U.S. Constitution could not be clearer: States have the power to award electors in any way they believe advances the interest of the state. They also have the power to form interstate compacts. If consent is required, we will get consent.
The current system ‘firewalls’ the fraud in blue states where it can’t spill out nationally. How would a national popular vote system address voter fraud?
RAY: If you think fraud occurred in the 2020 election you must believe the current method used by 48 states did nothing to compartmentalize or protect us from fraud. Is it not true that a few thousand fraudulent votes in cities like Philadelphia or Atlanta or Detroit or Milwaukee could have flipped entire and decisive battleground states? What a popular vote under the compact does is dilute the impact of the fraud in a few blue cities in a few states — perhaps 3 or 4 percent in the last election — by making the votes in the non-battleground states important in the election.
What if a state allows illegal immigrants to vote?
RAY: Federal law prohibits illegal immigrants from voting in a federal election. To vote, illegal immigrants have to declare under penalty of perjury that they are citizens and risk perjury charges, a five-year prison sentence, if they register to vote. The punishment for being in the United States illegally is deportation. The incentives are against these immigrants registering to vote.
The Founders were against a popular vote for a reason.
RAY: This comment assumes that the Founders were against a popular vote. That is simply false. James Madison, the father of the Constitution, supported a popular vote for president. The proposal for a popular vote for president came the closest to passing in the Constitutional Convention. The Electoral College was created because the Founders could not agree on how to elect the president, so they left the decision on the method of electing the president up to the states. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact preserves the Electoral College by utilizing the constitutional framework to persuade the states that a popular vote is good for every voter in every state in every election. That is how the Founders envisioned it would happen when they created the system in the Constitution.
A better solution would be to move to a system like Nebraska and Maine and eliminate winner-take-all.
RAY: In 1823, James Madison considered this idea and said it was not possible without a constitutional amendment. We see why today: Why would California, a state controlled by Democrats, give the Republicans 10 Electoral College votes, or Texas, controlled by Republicans, give 15 electors to Democrats. Neither would. In addition, there are only about 70 competitive congressional districts, so that system would not make every vote in every state important in every election, an important principle in my opinion. The congressional method does not make every voter in every state relevant in every presidential election. Only the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact delivers on that promise and forces the candidates to campaign in all 50 states.
“What we know is that the current system depresses the conservative vote in the non-battleground states by about 10 percent,” Ray concludes. “That means the conservative candidate for president loses about 7.5 to 8 million votes because conservatives think their votes don’t matter. If conservatives compete for the votes, they persuade the voters to vote conservative. If they don’t, the mainstream media convinces the voter to vote for the left. We conservatives should welcome the chance to persuade voters that our vision for America is better for every citizen in every state.”
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