Long-time Reagan staffer Peter Hannaford has a new article up at American Spectator discussing the Left's quiet attempt to short-circuit the Constitution by rendering the Electoral College irrelevant. The effect would be to surreptitiously change the Constitution without having to take the trouble to pass a Constitutional Amendment.
Their idea is to talk the State Legislatures of some of the most populous states into passing legislation requiring their electors to vote for the candidate receiving the highest number of popular votes nationwide in each presidential election, regardless of the outcome of the vote in their own states. Their idea is that if they can succeed in building a 270-vote Electoral College majority, they could control the outcome of all future presidential elections through a handful of states with a high number of electoral votes. Thus, they would effectively nullify the presidential ballots of all of the citizens of the less-populous states.
It would seem that the proponents of this scheme are not considering the influence of the Law of Unintended Consequences. For instance, if they were to fall short of their 270-vote goal, they might well be irrevocably committing their states' electoral votes in some future election to a very popular conservative candidate who wins a large enough proportion of the national popular vote to achieve an overall majority while still losing in their states. However, in the manner of Leftists, they intend to keep up the pressure regardless of any temporary reverses. Thus, in the long term, they believe they can prevail.
To get the whole story, read Electoral Blues – and keep a close eye on your state legislatures to be sure they don't pass this extremely ill-advised proposal.
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