As if Illinois' array of "moderate" Republicans wasn't embarrassing enough, the state's conservatives may not be aware, or have maybe forgotten that Illinois Republicans were some of the first to support ending the nation's Electoral College. (Left to Right: 2010 gubernatorial candidates Bill Brady, Dan Rutherford, Kirk Dillard and Bruce Rauner)
By Nancy Thorner -
With House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at the helm of the 116th Congress, Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) on January 3rd, 2018, a vocal critic of President Trump, introduced two constitutional amendment bills. One of them was aimed at eliminating the Electoral College to replace it with a popular vote for electing a president and vice president. The amendment is unlikely to pass since it would require a two-thirds vote in both chambers of Congress and then must be ratified by three-fourths of the states. However, the recent Cohn amendment is just another away to achieve the same goal of eliminating the Electoral College, as does the National Popular Vote bill, which has already been introduced in most every state.
Illinois at the forefront
Illinois has already jumped on board the band wagon to eliminate the Electoral College, as the state where the National Popular Vote bill was first introduced (on January 19, 2006). In the Illinois Senate, the bill (SB 2724) was sponsored in 2006 by Senators Jacqueline Collins (D), Kirk W. Dillard (Du Page County Republican Party Chair), and James T. Meeks (I). In the Illinois House, the bill (HB 5777) was sponsored by Representatives Robert S. Molaro (D) and Jim Durkin (R). By the end of 2006, the Illinois bills had a total of 48 sponsors. (At the time there were 118 House members and 59 Senators in Illinois). On April 7, 2008, Illinois became the third state to enact the National Popular Vote bill.
How stupid or corrupt it was for Illinois State Senator Kirk W. Dillard (then Du Page County Republican Party Chair), to have enthusiastically supported the bill and to say in 2006:
“This isn't a Democratic or Republican issue to me. It's important that people have faith that in the election of the most important office in the world that their vote will count. I'm proud to sponsor legislation that will hopefully result in presidential candidates showing up and working to meet voters in my state.”
Consider also that the late former US Senator from TN, Fred Thompson, was national spokesman for the NPV.
Effort to evade 12th Amendment to Constitution
The scheme for a National Popular Vote (NPV) is a destructive scheme. The proposal seeks to evade the 12th Amendment to our Constitution, where the States elect the President, and substitutes a national popular vote where inhabitants of major metropolitan areas would end up electing the President.
The federal government created by our Constitution is a Federation of Sovereign States united under a federal government for those limited purposes itemized in the Constitution. All other powers are reserved by the States or the People.
To ensure that the states, as Members of the Federation, could maintain their independence and sovereignty, our Framers wrote the following provisions into our Constitution:
- State Legislatures were to choose the U.S. Senators for their State and
- The States, as separate political entities, were to elect the President.
This resulted in State Legislatures choosing the U.S. Senators and controlling the election of the President through the selection of Electors, thus enabling States to be able to able to control the federal government.
Safeguard removed through 17th and 12th Amendments
One of these safeguards was thrown away when we foolishly ratified the 17th Amendment, which called for the popular election of U.S. Senators.
The other safeguard was discarded when we foolishly ignored the procedures in the 12th Amendment by allowing Electors to become rubber stamps for the popular vote in their State for candidates most favored by powerful groups. Additionally, per the 12th Amendment, the electoral votes of each State were to be split according to how the Electors voted, thus making the “winner takes all” practice followed in most States unconstitutional!
Our Framers purposely didn’t want popular election of the President, because they recognized that people are easily manipulated by those who take advantage of their “hopes and fears” to steer them towards candidates favored by powerful groups.
How the National Popular Vote Scheme would work?
The National Popular Vote (NPV) plan guarantees election of the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The NPV plan is a state statute in the form of an interstate compact. It creates an agreement among states to award all their electoral votes collectively to the presidential candidate who wins the national popular vote. This agreement takes effect only once the participating states together hold a majority of electoral votes (270 of 538), guaranteeing that the winner of the national popular vote will win an Electoral College majority.
The bill has so far been enacted in 12 states with a total of 172 electoral votes (CA, CT, DC, HI, IL, MA, MD, NJ, NY, RI, VT, WA). An additional 98 electoral votes are yet needed for the bill to take effect. So, if the popular vote in Illinois were for Mickey Mouse, but the total national popular vote favored Adolf Hitler, then all of Illinois' Electoral votes would be awarded to Adolf Hitler, as would the Electoral votes in every other state. Do not think the winner will fail to claim a “Mandate” for whatever he wants to do.
Passing NPV would guarantee election of the national popular vote winner once the compact has been joined by enough states to make it decisive for determining the outcome of future elections. As much of the population of the United States lives in a few major metropolitan areas, under the NPV scheme these areas would decide the elections for President. The NPV is not about “making every vote count”. The NPV is about guaranteeing that every future presidential election is decided by inhabitants of major metropolitan areas, blue areas.
Lame arguments by the NPV lobby
What are some of the arguments used by NPV lobby?
- It complains that State winner-take-all statutes award all of a State’s electoral votes to the candidate who gets the most popular votes in the State, but their schemesubstitutes a national winner-take-all system! Is that any better?
- It complains that four times in our history, candidates have been elected who didn’t win the most votes nationwide. Well, boo hoo! The purpose of the Electoral College is so smaller States will have a voice – our Framers rejected the idea of a national popular vote.
- They complain that presidential candidates spend money and have campaign events only in battleground States, but with a national popular vote there won’t be any battleground States, because it will be a foregone conclusion that every election will be won by the candidate who appeals to those in the large urban areas.
NPV opens up election stealing
As Joseph Stalin said, "The people who cast the votes don’t decide an election, the people who count the votes do."
We are told that Clinton got 2.8 million more votes nationwide than did Trump. Whether she really did or didn’t isn’t the point because that’s what the vote counters said.
With the NPV scheme in place, the vote counters can fabricate enough votes to steal every presidential election. Even if an election were honest in most States – a few large States where cheats control the machines – can throw a national election.
As the number of Electoral Votes is fixed at 538, cheaters can’t pick Electoral Votes out of thin air, but the number of popular votes said to have been cast in a presidential election is limited ONLY by the depth of the depravity of corrupt party officials, corrupt campaigns, and corrupt election officials.
In California, Clinton supposedly got 4.3 million more votes than Trump, but how many of these votes were cast by illegal aliens? We'll never know how many illegals made up the 8,753,788 votes Clinton supposedly received in California. During 2015, California passed a Motor Voter Law, AB 1461. Illegal aliens who have driver’s licenses can vote in California, having been automatically registered to vote when they got their drivers’ licenses, as is the practice here in Illinois. If they’re caught, all they have to say is, “I thought I was entitled to vote since the State DMV registered me to vote.” With NPV, this kind of shenanigans in just one large State can determine the outcome of an election.
Opposing the National Popular Vote scheme
Although it would be best to return to the 12th Amendment where we elect the President and the Vice President as originally established in our Constitution, even in its present perverted form, the “Electoral College” serves two important purposes: (1) It balances the influence of the heavily populated urban areas with the more sparsely populated rural areas; and (2) gives the smaller States a voice in the election of President.
In a September 22, 2018 commentary by Tara Ross, author of The Indispensable Electoral College: How the Founders’ Plan Saves Our Country from Mob Rule, Ross had this to say:
“NPV is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. NPV pretends to be bipartisan, committed to serving the needs of the nation. In reality, NPV’s plan is funded by liberals and designed to strike at the heart of America’s unique presidential election process.”
