1904 A Sense of All the People – Every Vote Counts
The men who negotiated and designed America’s never-before system of federalism with its revolutionary election system, understood the realities of human nature. Most of them understood the potential dangers of a pure democracy. They understood that tyranny from a majority is no more powerful than tyranny from a minority when it is generated from well-intentioned but wrong-headed sympathies.
In the 220 years since the inauguration of our constitutional republic, only four presidents have won election through the Electoral College without a majority of the popular tally. In every one of those elections, the system worked to limit the dominance of geographic sections of the country, preserving the voice of every voter in every state through their individual popular votes in their states, and by forcing candidates to value “fly-by” populations as well as presumed power players.
Paul Godek did a valuable statistical study of the Electoral College in 2018 (“Determining State Preferences for the Electoral College: 1788-2016”). He found that, by being processed through the Electoral College, the value of the individual vote increased for 32 of the less-populated states and decreased for 18 of the more-populated states.
Yet, this is extremely important, because of the College system, the potential power of each voter channeling their influence through their state via the present system, has hovered around a one-to-one average across the nation in every single election. Bottom line? Wyoming has only .56% of the Electoral College vote but its voters have almost the same influence as a voter in California which maintains 10.22 % of the electoral vote.
As Democrats have progressed to the left and radicalization, the party has increasingly and more blatantly moved to undo the past 220 years. Their mantra of “we want every vote to count” insinuates, in total defiance of the facts and principles just summarized, that Americans are being systematically disenfranchised. It is a reliance on misinformation to the public and is shamefully deceptive. But that tactic is just the surface. There are more ingenuitive campaigns afoot.
One attack on voting integrity is Nancy Pelosi’s first House bill for the 116th Congress, HR1, entitled “For the People”. HR1 is a perfect rendition of first steps toward dismantling the electoral mechanisms by which Democrats were constitutionally defeated in 2016.
“For the People” is anything but for the People. It is a massive federal power grab. It would seize control of a state’s authority over its own election processes. Here are just seven of the most egregious provisions for federal control weaponized in the bill:
1. Automatic registration of clients in certain federal programs such as welfare and the Department of Motor Vehicles – regardless of citizenship status or duplicate registrations.
2. Same-day registration without identification other than a signature and no buffer period to verify identities or anticipate election day services.
3. Online registration without any connection to existing records
4. Prohibition of state election officials from voting in federal elections
5. Inclusion of illegal aliens in redistricting counts
6. Inclusion of votes from outside precincts to include “no-fault” absentee ballots
7. Expansion of early voting which would result in the inability of voters to respond to late-breaking changes in circumstances.
Another huge push to defeat the Electoral College is known as the National Public Vote (NPV) plan. Knowing that changing or eliminating the College requires a constitutional amendment, liberal state governments are forming compacts with each other outside of our federal system. States in the NPV compacts agree to automatically give all their Electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote even if the citizens of that state have decisively supported the other candidate. One or more states would override the voice of another state.
NPV is nothing less than an unconstitutional assault against America’s Electoral system. Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution stipulates that “No state shall, without the consent of Congress…enter into any agreement or compact with another state”. NPV is also a huge disenfranchisement of whole populations of Americans. Incredibly, 12 state legislatures have signed onto the plan thus far and Minnesota is well on its way.
It is hard to lose, but the signs of a mature politic is the ability to learn from it and make constructive next steps. The marks of an immature politic is an obsession with the loss and concerted efforts at destructive next steps. Life works this way but governance under an adversarial system like ours can dangerously amplify obsession and destructiveness a thousand-fold. Unfortunately, that is exactly the direction the Democratic party chose after 2016.