Spanberger Joins Attack On Electoral College

 Agreat deal of national news coverage concerning Virginia has focused on the attempt by its new Democratic governor, Abigail Spanberger, and her confederates in the General Assembly to circumvent the commonwealth’s constitution in order to radically gerrymander the state’s congressional district map. This maneuver has, however, overshadowed another of their equally dubious legislative actions. A bill proposing that Virginia join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) passed both houses of the General Assembly in February, and Gov. Spanberger signed it into law on April 13.

The NPVIC is a scheme cooked up by the Democrats to avoid the inconvenience of winning presidential elections by garnering a majority of Electoral College votes. They have been selling this boondoggle as a way of neutralizing an “obsolete” institution that allegedly preserves an inequitable provision of the Constitution. In reality, NPVIC is just another effort to endow the heavily populated, Democrat-dominated regions of the country with even more political power than they already wield. Fortunately, it will fail. If you haven’t read the official NPVIC pitch, here’s what it would accomplish, according to its website:

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes across all 50 states and the District of Columbia … Under the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, no voter will have their vote cancelled out at the state-level because their choice differed from plurality sentiment in their state. Instead, every voter’s vote will be added directly, without distortion, into the national count for the candidate of their choice. This will ensure that every voter, in every state, will be politically relevant in every presidential election.

How would NPVIC achieve this miracle? There would be a formal agreement among various states controlling 270 or more presidential electors who would be required to cast their ballots for any candidate receiving the most popular votes across the country — even if some other candidate wins a majority in one or more of the member states. Thus far, 18 states and the District of Columbia have joined the movement, and a brief perusal of the current signatories to this compact will render its true objective all too clear. The National Conference of State Legislatures lists the states that have joined the NPVIC and the electoral votes they now control:

California (54), Colorado (10), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), Hawaii (4), Illinois (19), Maine (4), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (11), Minnesota (10), New Jersey (14), New Mexico (5), New York (28), Oregon (8), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), Virginia (13), Washington (12), and the District of Columbia (3). With the addition of Virginia the member states collectively control 222 electors, 44 electoral votes short of 270 needed for NPVIC to “take effect.” Even if they eventually convince enough states to provide those final 44 electoral votes, the NPVIC will nevertheless run afoul of the U.S. Constitution. As Alexandra Orbuch explains in the Princeton Legal Journal,

By giving its member states powers that they otherwise would not have had, the NPV Interstate Compact meets the standard of unconstitutionality. It allocates electoral votes to the winner of the overall popular vote rather than just to the winner of the vote in their respective states and gives the signatory states more power than those who refuse to sign the bill. As discussed earlier, the states involved would effectively be silencing the rest of the country. And as we have seen, that means that the right wing of the country would lose its voice in elections and thereby in policy making.

This is precisely why the Constitution’s Compact Clause (Article I, Section 10, Clause 3) prohibits states from entering into any agreement or compact with another state without the consent of Congress. It is no coincidence that all of the states that have joined NPVIC are controlled by the Democrats. If the upcoming midterms go badly for the Republicans, some “purple states” could very well bestow governing trifectas to the Democratic Party. As Jason Willick points out in the Washington Post, “In Michigan [15 electoral votes] and Pennsylvania [19 electoral votes], just one house of the legislature would need to flip for Democrats to have a trifecta.”

There can be little doubt that they will follow Virginia’s example and join NPVIC. This would put them within 10 electoral votes of 270. In Nevada, Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo is up for reelection in November and the Silver State’s legislature is firmly in the grip of the Democrats. Nevada controls six electoral votes, so if Lombardo is unseated the Democrat trifecta would put NPVIC within four votes of the magic number. Then there are “unpredictable” states like Arizona and Wisconsin. If the Democrats gain Trifectas in either of these states, the proponents of NPVIC will have created a constitutional crisis that will have a profound effect on 2028.

It goes without saying that this would produce an avalanche of lawsuits from the states. The ensuing litigation would certainly result in a Supreme Court battle that would be far more explosive than Bush v. Gore, and the inevitable ruling against the signatories to NPVIC would result in a Democratic reaction that would make their 2016 and 2024 antics seem rational by comparison. All of this could be avoided if the Democrats were truly interested in popular sovereignty. NPVIC is about nothing more than shifting power to heavily populated, Democrat-controlled regions and the end goal is a one-party state over which they hold sway.

David Catron is a recovering health care consultant and frequent contributor to The American Spectator. 

https://spectator.org/spanberger-joins-attack-on-electoral-college/