According to National Popular Vote, it don’t mean a thing if you ain’t got that swing. Voters outside of “swing states,” NPV’s materials claim, are “spectators to the presidential election” and are “effectively disenfranchised.”

A closer look reveals that NPV’s claims come from a superficial understanding of political campaigns that does not survive under the scrutiny of common sense. The suggestion that certain votes or voters matter more than others is not unique to the Electoral College. In fact, not all voters are equal even in single-member districts.

A look at some of the actual data is appropriate. Listed below are the states where the margin between the top two candidates was less than five percent in the last dozen presidential elections. The color of the state name indicates the winner of that state (red for Republicans, blue for Democrats); bold indicates the state was not within 5% in the previous election. (I am using close election results to define “swing states.” There are other plausible definitions.)

2008: Florida, Indiana, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, Ohio

2004: Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin

2000: Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Wisconsin

1996: Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Kentucky, Montana, Nevada, North Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia

1992: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin

1988: California, Illinois, Maryland, Missouri, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin

1984: Massachusetts, Minnesota, Rhode Island

1980: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia, Wisconsin

1976: California, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin

1972: none (the closes state was Minnesota, which Nixon won by 5.51%)

1968: Alaska, California, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Missouri, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, Wisconsin

1964: Arizona, Florida, Idaho

First, these groups of the closest states in presidential elections are far from static. Of the above elections, only 1996 is a subset of states from the preceding election. With Bill Clinton running for reelection, Ross Perot running again, and Bob Dole representing no significant departure from George H.W. Bush, 1996 turned out to be something like a repeat of 1992. The “swing states” group changes over time–sometimes slowly and other times dramatically–and typically becomes clear only in the closing months or even weeks of a campaign. Moreover, it changes as political parties work to expand their appeal and broaden their coalitions.

Second, contrary to a recent SOS blog commenter, the number of swing states is not in obvious decline. While this last election featured a smaller number of battleground states than usual, one data point is not a trend. (And even if there were a trend, the Electoral College has remained the same, so it could not be the cause.) Over the period of time used above, the average number of close states was between 10 and 11.

But what about the allegation that no matter how many or which states are swing states, the system is unfair? After all, some voters receive more attention from candidates and campaigns. And do votes in “safe states” even matter?

In fact, the Electoral College simply makes more obvious the realities of political campaigns and democratic processes. Most campaigns are fought out in single-member districts, where whoever gets the most votes wins. That’s what National Popular Vote would turn presidential elections into, making the nation one of the biggest and most complex single-member districts in the world. Yet in political campaigns in single-member districts, candidates focus on certain voters and ignore others. Campaigns often spend a great deal of money on data and consultants to slice and dice up the potential electorate. They do whatever they can to identify those voters most likely to change their vote in favor of their candidate. And they ignore everyone else as much as possible. Any city council or state legislative candidate who has sat down with a political consultant has had this conversation. This is the reality of politics, a reality ignored by NPV. They fancifully suggest that under their plan, candidates would campaign for every single vote from every single voter. In fact, NPV would only shift somewhat which voters receive the attention of presidential campaigns.

Do votes in safe states matter? In truth, the vote that matters is the one that puts a candidate beyond their opponent. Every vote after that might be said not to matter. The same might be said of all the votes for a losing candidate. Statistically speaking, voting is irrational. It isn’t something we do because we really expect any of the races on our ballot to come down to our single vote determining which candidate takes office, though the possibility (usually more remote than winning the lottery) is there. Voters understand this, even if subconsciously. Millions of “safe state” voters turnout to vote for president every four years. Even in elections destined to be blowouts (i.e. 1964 and 1972), millions of Americans turned out to vote for the looser.

The United States is a vast geographical territory with a large and remarkably diverse population. Each of those facts creates significant challenges to maintaining a stable political system, the kind of system that can maintain justice and allow for freedom and prosperity. The Electoral College system helps provide stability in our national elections through a democratic process filtered through the states. It creates incentives to building national coalitions and decentralizes election administration.

National Popular Vote fails to recognize the benefits of our current Electoral College system. Worse, it misunderstands the effects its own plan would have on the reality of political campaigns and voting.

The Electoral College was one of the least controversial provisions of the original Constitution. The state-by-state way we elect the President of the United States gives each state a number of Electoral Votes equal to the sum of their U.S. Representatives and Senators (and Washington, D.C., gets three). Nearly all states award all of their electoral votes to the candidate who receives the most votes in their state (Nebraska and Maine apportion some by congressional district). To win, a candidate must collect the majority of electoral votes (270 of 538), or else the election goes to the House of Representatives (which also has a majority requirement). The Electoral College makes presidential campaigns and elections primarily a state responsibility, part of the American constitutional system called federalism.

Electoral College Map

Federalism, and the Electoral College in particular, reflect the belief that stable institutions are essential for maintaining a political regime and preserving a free society. They are products of the understanding that freedom is never the result of simple legal or even constitutional commands. Freedom requires institutions that channel potentially dangerous political passions into constructive compromise and coalition building. The Electoral College system does this; the proposed “National Popular Vote” interstate compact does not.

National Popular Vote is a San Fransisco-based organization founded and funded by Dr. John Koza. It is also the name of Dr. Koza’s proposal to use state legislation to create an agreement among states that would change how the Electoral College works. In short, states would agree to ignore the result within their state and instead give all of their electoral votes to the candidate winning the most votes nationwide. There is no majority requirement or provision for a runoff. The agreement takes effect when passed by enough states to control an electoral vote majority, and therefore to control the presidential election.

While Dr. Koza’s proposal has been stymied now for over a year, it was previously enacted in five states: Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, and Washington. Within the last month, it has made some progress in Delaware, Massachusetts, and New York. It is now dead for the year in Delaware, but it remains possible that either or both of the other two states could enact it.

National Popular Vote cleverly takes advantage of the Constitution’s grant of authority to state legislatures to determine how to allocate their electoral votes. For over a century, Electoral College opponents focused on amending the Constitution. National Popular Vote is a clever strategy and, at least on its surface, elegantly simple.

Yet the benefits of the current Electoral College system have nothing to do with surface appeal. In fact, the debate over National Popular Vote exposes just how little most Americans (and many law professors and even politicians) understand the incentives created by the Electoral College that moderate and strengthen our political system.

The Electoral College forces presidential campaign strategists and national political parties to construct broad coalitions across much of the nation. The phenomena of “swing states” makes this clear: the candidates and their parties are currently so evenly matched that recent elections have worked their way down to a small number of states. Thankfully, and in part because of the workings of the Electoral College, neither the safe states nor the swing states represent anything like particular geographic regions or political interests. The states that make up each group (“safe” and “swing”) have been continually shifting as the political parties strive to achieve the constitutional majority defined by the Electoral College.

The greatest historical example of the importance of the Electoral College is the election of 1888. National Popular Vote claims that Grover Cleveland’s loss was a great injustice, yet it was a turning point–for the better–in American politics. Read more in our earlier post: What Grover Learned at (the) Electoral College.

Next week, the Cato Institute will host two leading legal scholars in a debate about the merits of the Electoral College. Tara Ross, author of Enlightened Democracy: The Case for the Electoral College (it’s in our bookstore), will face off against Maryland State Senator Jamie Raskin, who is also a professor of constitutional law at American University’s Washington School of Law. Tara has also written a forthcoming article for the Federalist Society’s journal, Engage, on the “Legal and Logistical Ramifications of the National Popular Vote Plan.”

Save Our States is excited about any and all opportunities to discuss and debate the Electoral College, especially against Dr. John Koza’s proposed “National Popular Vote” plan. The supposed reform proposal is an end-run around the constitutional amendment process by way of an interstate compact. That’s clever, no doubt about it. It may even be constitutional, though legal questions remain. But as one former NPV cosponsor-turned-opponent says, “An interstate compact is just not a robust way to build a system as important as the presidential election system.” It leads to a variety of potential absurdities, including a total inability to deal with recounts and the potential for state-versus-state shenanigans in close elections.

Claremont Graduate University Professor Michael Uhlmann outlined some of the disconcerting possibilities in the New York Post: “Rx for national vote-count chaos.”

The Delaware Senate spent portions of this week considering HB 198, which would commit the state to NPV’s anti-Electoral College scheme. The House already approved the legislation last year, so senate approval would send the bill to the Governor’s desk. The Senate has three legislative days left in which it could still approve the bill.

Save Our States director Trent England was in Dover earlier this week. He and Shaun Fink of the Caesar Rodney Institute visited with legislators and helped to educate them on the logistical and legal aspects of the bill. A few talk radio hosts in Delaware and a timely National Review Online blog post have all helped to get the word out. The grassroots response was overwhelming: Delaware citizens flooded state senate offices with phone calls. They want their senators to vote “NO” on NPV’s scheme, which would badly hurt a small state such as Delaware. Good news: Senators appear to be listening to their constituents (keep calling!). The Senate has considered, but then postponed, a vote on the measure twice.

An interesting tidbit: Saul Anuzis, former Chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, has taken an interest in the issue and went to Delaware to lobby senators. For someone who claims to be an “unabashed Reagan-conservative,” his position is pretty surprising. He is urging Republican Senators to vote for the NPV plan. He claims that the Electoral College hurts the Republican Party; he says that getting rid of it would benefit Republicans in upcoming elections.

There are three big problems with Anuzis’s analysis.

First, even assuming that Anuzis is correct about the immediate political benefits, he is absolutely wrong to campaign against the Electoral College based on purely partisan concerns. Constitutional provisions are meant to serve the entire country on a permanent basis. It is destructive to change them simply to serve one person or party at one moment in time. The Electoral College serves all of us by ensuring that presidential candidates must always take into account the needs of a wide variety of Americans. They can’t cater to one region, state, or special interest group. Small states such as Delaware have a particular interest in preserving the Electoral College, which prevents them from being tyrannized by the majority in large cities and states.

Second, no one can know which political party will benefit the most if the Electoral College is abolished. As this author has explained elsewhere, eliminating the Electoral College would probably mean at least two things: Elections will become easier to steal and the two-party system will be undermined. So it follows that two types of political parties would benefit the most: Those that don’t mind stealing elections and third parties. Unfortunately, extremist third parties and special interest groups are most likely to benefit from the eradication of the two-party system. Surely none of this is what Anuzis really wants.

Finally, even assuming that the two-party system remains relatively stable after the Electoral College is gone, Anuzis has jumped to some questionable conclusions. He seems to think that the Republican Party will benefit from NPV because it will make candidates more likely to campaign outside of the big cities. (One vote in Delaware has the same weight as a vote in Los Angeles, but the media market is less expensive in Delaware so candidates would be motivated to buy air time where it is cheaper.) But the Los Angeles media market is more expensive because advertisers have the opportunity to reach so many people with their message simultaneously. It’s the simple rules of supply and demand, and candidates will know this as well as anyone else. Since their goal is to amass large numbers of individual votes, they will spend their money where they can reach the most people at once: the big cities.

In a 1977 radio broadcast, Ronald Reagan described the security that the Electoral College affords to all states, but especially to small states: “The very basis for our freedom is that we are a Federation of Sovereign States. Our Constitution recognizes that certain rights belong to the state and cannot be infringed upon by the National government. This is the guaranty that small states or rural, sparsely populated areas will have a proportionate voice in national affairs. Those who want to do away with the electoral college really mean they want the President elected in a national referendum with no reference as to how each state votes. Thus a half dozen rural states could show a majority for one candidate and be outvoted by one big industrial state opting for his opponent.”

Anuzis, the “unabashed Reagan-conservative,” should pay more attention to Reagan’s wisdom on this matter. He should not be trying to sway legislators in Delaware (or anywhere else!) to support NPV’s anti-Electoral College legislation. The Electoral College is healthy for our country. States such as Delaware will act not only in its own interest, but also for the benefit of the country, if it does its part to preserve the system.

Tonight Save Our States is hosting a Citizens’ Briefing to explain the importance of the Electoral College and the threat of the National Popular Vote plan.

A lot of people don’t like the Electoral College. Even more people don’t understand it. There are plenty of arguments for the institution’s irreplaceable contribution to American liberty and prosperity—like how it protects representation and minority rights, preserves national stability, gives every voter a say in presidential elections, etc.

But you don’t have to be a fan of the Electoral College to recognize the National Popular Vote plan for what it is—bad public policy. Even if the United States did choose to ‘reform’ the way we elect our president, the NPV plan’s striking resemblance to Swiss cheese should be enough to deter legislators from going this route.

Right now NPV legislation is poised to pass in Massachusetts, New York, and Delaware.

Join us this evening from 7:00-7:30 p.m. EST for a briefing on the National Popular Vote and what citizens in NY, Mass, and DE can do about it.

What: Urgent Citizen Briefing: The Electoral College under attack in NY, MASS, & DE

When: 7:00-7:30 p.m. EST, TODAY

Where: Simply click here to enter the Dimdim virtual meeting.

Last week, the Massachusetts House of Representatives passed National Popular Vote (NPV) legislation, part of the attempt to unravel the Electoral College without amending the Constitution. Yesterday, the New York State Senate passed the same bill. In each state, the measure moves to the other legislative chamber for consideration.

So far this year NPV has failed to be enacted in any state. The legislation seeks to create an interstate compact–an agreement among the states–that would take effect if passed by states representing a majority of votes in the Electoral College (270 out of 538). It would direct states to ignore the will of their own voters and instead cast all of the states electoral votes for the presidential candidate who gets the most votes nationwide. This would leave the Electoral College process in place, but manipulate it to ‘rubber stamp’ the raw national vote winner.

NPV’s last success came over a year ago when Washington became the fifth state to enact NPV legislation. However, some constitutional scholars are concerned that NPV might argue that governor’s vetoes do not matter, because the Constitution gives state legislatures power over state electoral votes. Governors in California, Rhode Island, and Vermont have vetoed the bill. Including those states, if NPV passes in Massachusetts and New York it would have gained 166 electoral votes worth of states.

I have talked with several legislative staff in both New York and Massachusetts this year, and NPV”s success in those states is perhaps not surprising. In both states, legislative staff (who reflect their bosses) were disinterested, seemingly unwilling or perhaps unable to understand the scope and importance of the question: how should we elect the President of the United States. State politics is less thoughtful, more a party- and lobbyist-driven machine. The San Francisco-based National Popular Vote organization spends vast sums on lobbying. The most recent records from New York show that NPV spent $67,500 on paid lobbyists there during 2009.

Yesterday I posted the information for our “Protect Michigan Votes” briefing in Redford, MI.  After cross-posting on www.LibertyLive.org, one commenter asked why Save Our States—a group based in Olympia, WA—cares what happens to Michigan’s electoral votes? There are three reasons (in addition to my being a native Michigander, of course).

First, Michigan citizens and policymakers deserve the facts before they make their decision. NPV wants states to sidestep the Constitution and reconfigure a system that has its origins in the first Constitutional Convention. More than bills dealing with transportation, waste, or the state bird, this is a matter of historic magnitude.

Our goal is to offer reliable, educational resources that detail how and why the Electoral College works and what citizens could expect under a national popular vote for president. The short answers: the Electoral College works to the benefit of American stability, prosperity, representation, and freedom; NPV would likely produce instability, radical geographic imbalance, massive litigation, and decreased representation in presidential elections.

Whether it’s Maine, Wisconsin, Nevada, or Michigan, citizens deserve the facts.

NPV operates under the radar. This is unfair to the citizens. Their strategy usually involves targeting specific legislators and not raising public attention. Why? Take Wisconsin, for example. Once the public became aware that their legislators were considering passing legislation that could potentially force Wisconsin’s electors to ignore the way Wisconsin voters voted—well, they weren’t didn’t sit still for long. Citizens, bloggers, and private organizations were buzzing with opposition.

Washington is an example of NPV’s success in flying under the radar. Here they focused exclusively on legislators. Those legislators pointedly ignored the testimony of the concerned citizens who did find out and understand the implications of NPV. Shortly after the governor signed the NPV legislation, the Seattle Times, Washington’s biggest newspaper, came down on state policymakers for sliding this through “with little public notice.” It concluded, “There is time for other states to consider this proposal more deeply than we have — and for people here to make up that lack by signing a petition for referendum so that the question can be referred to the people. It is, after all, their business.” Save Our States agrees.

Ultimately, what happens in Michigan affects the whole country. Manipulating the Electoral College (to essentially eliminate its very function) is an issue that residents of each individual state will experience. If NPV’s lobbyists win over states amounting to 270 electoral votes (the minimum to win the presidency), it won’t matter if other states refrain.

Michigan deserves the facts, and all Americans may be affected by what they do with them.

On a somewhat related note, those in Michigan might be interested in the podcast of my interview on the Paul Edwards Show yesterday. The interview begins at 28 min.

As we’ve pointed out before, Michigan has made it onto the NPV radar. Legislators are being lobbied to ignore the will of Michigan voters and cast all 17 of Michigan’s electoral votes for the national popular vote winner—regardless of who wins in Michigan.

Next week, Save Our States is presenting a citizens’ briefing in Redford, Michigan. For any readers with connections in Michigan, please pass this info along. More details are available at: http://savemichigan.eventbrite.com.

Democracy, it’s been said, can be two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for dinner. Unfortunately, a desire for this kind of democracy seems to motivate supporters of NPV like George Soros’s Demos Foundation.

Mel Gibson in The Patriot summed up a real concern of many Americans during our Revolution: why exchange one tyrant 3,000 miles away for 3,000 tyrants one mile away? That is, democracy can be just as destructive of minority rights as a king.

That’s why the Constitution of the United States and every state constitution is chock full of anti-democratic provisions. Think about it: every structure and process is a potential check against the desires of a majority. Representation itself exists to create responsible government, which means more than simply responsiveness to public moods.

The Bill of Rights is a series of anti-democratic restrictions. Constitutional protections exist to restrain majorities from using government to abuse minorities. Of course, the Constitution can be amended, but only by a supermajority—another check against the power of 50% plus 1 to do whatever they please.

On their ideas action blog, Demos lawyer Allegra Chapman asks, “what if the executive sworn into office doesn’t represent the popular vote?”

First, elected officials don’t represent votes. They represent people. And their job is to represent all the people, whether they voted for them, against them, or not at all.

Second, what Allegra seems to be struggling to say is “what if the candidate with the most votes doesn’t win?” She goes on to complain that the Electoral College makes this possible and she claims that it’s happened four times in American history (we know it has happened twice, in 2000 and 1888 , but 1876 and 1824 are dubious examples). Of course, we can’t answer Allegra’s question without knowing why the Electoral College allows that to happen and whether it’s a better system than using the raw national vote total.

Unfortunately, Allegra plunges on, advocating NPV as a “remedy” without ever explaining her bias for raw democracy or why she believes it’s better than the geographical balance and political stability provided by the Electoral College system.

She reproduces two standard NPV arguments: NPV will establish perfect voter equality by making the nation a single electoral jurisdiction (newsflash: even candidates in single-member districts slice and dice the electorate according to every demographic data point available, making all kinds of distinctions among voters and geographic regions) and NPV-sponsored opinion polls support—surprise—NPV. Once again, simply because a majority says something doesn’t tell us whether it’s the right answer–especially if we want to protect minority rights.

Even in states where Democrats control the legislature and governor’s office, National Popular Vote often spends a great deal of money to win one or two Republican supporters. This is smart politics for two reasons. First, it’s hard for anyone to believe that changes to the “rules of the game” are fair if only one team supports them. Many Democrats are wary of the appearance of impropriety if they back NPV without at least a few Republicans signing on as well. Second, for NPV to succeed it must become law in states representing a majority of Electoral College votes (270). Even if it could sail through the states farthest to the political Left, doing so with only support from the far Left will make the effort more likely to hit a brick wall in the more moderate states that it must win to reach 270.

A part of this strategy came to light yesterday when Saul Anuzis, former Michigan Republican Party Chairman, endorsed National Popular Vote on his blog. Anuzis closely parrots NPV’s talking points, but does try to spin the Progressive project as “bipartisan” and good for Republicans.

NPV’s claim of bipartisan support must be getting more difficult to repeat with a straight face. In my own home state of Washington, NPV started out with a few Republican supporters in the legislature. However, by the time it came to final passage, the only thing bipartisan about the bill was opposition to it. No Republican voted for it, several Democrats voted against it. The same thing in the Maine House of Representatives, where the bill was defeated by an overwhelming Left-Right coalition. Again, by the time of the vote, every Republican and nearly half the Democratic Caucus voted against NPV. In Wisconsin, where the bill was introduced this year in both chambers, it started with three Republican cosponsors. Within days of hearing from their constituents (and this writer), all three took their names off the bill and became some of it’s most vocal critics.

Anuzis’s claim that NPV would benefit Republicans is dangerous political discourse. Changing the very structure of our national politics is not something to be done for partisan gain. And even where that might be the motive, it’s not likely to succeed. This change–replacing a geographically balanced, two-tiered system with a majority requirement (of electoral votes), with a direct system based on the raw national total with no majority requirement–would surely come with a barrage of unintended and unanticipated consequences. (Though it’s important to note that we can think about these consequences and attempt to unravel them as best we can, rather than adopting the NPV approach of simply averting our minds from reality.) Of course, odds makers would tell us that one indicator of the likely political effects of NPV is who is putting in the money to support it. In that case, all the money comes from the Left, even as some of it is spent buying off figures on the Right.

Last week AB 751’s express trip from introduction on February 15 to a hearing on February 17 caused a stir in the Wisconsin papers and blogosphere. While Save Our States Director Trent England was on the ground there, I jumped into the cyber world to see how Wisconsin voters were responding to the bill.

Almost immediately an alert went out from Wisconsin Family Action who had only just heard of the issue. Within less than 24 hours, they were circulating an online petition, blogs were firing right and left, and talk radio stations had picked up the tune.

Here are some of the articles from the Wisconsin NPV debate.

• “Proposed Legislation Can Circumvent Vote of Wisconsin Residents”
• “State Lawmakers Push Bill Eliminating Electoral College”
• “Call today about AB 751: Elimination of Electoral College Bill”
• “Will They Take Away Your Vote?”
• “Disenfranchising Wisconsin”
• “Editorial: State should go slow on National Popular Vote bill”
• “Why the Electoral College is necessary”
• “They want to CANCEL your VOTES in Wisconsin”

(Read the comments for some stimulating and well populated debate.)

This is the fastest and most vehement citizen response to the NPV bill we’ve seen. In my home state of Washington, newspapers didn’t even know about HB 5599 until after it had passed.

In most states, citizens, media, and particularly legislators have little to no understanding of the practical, political, and historical impact of the bill. Legislators sometimes approach it like a resolution about how elections should work. But this is a radical reversal of American principles and election practices that would underhandedly change our Constitution.

Last year in his testimony before the State Government and Tribal Affairs Committee, Save Our States Director Trent England urged legislators to consider the importance of the issue.

When James Madison was thinking about creating a new constitution he wrote to Thomas Jefferson and asked for some literature to study. He was already one of the most educated people in the young states. Jefferson sent him a trunk-load of books—a few of which were even in English—that Madison felt he had to read, he was compelled to read, before he would tinker with the fundamental structures of our government. I just hope that the members of this committee and the members of our legislature are dedicating the same time and the same study when they consider something this important.

Fortunately for Wisconsin, voters understand. They question the motives of a group that would sneak through a bill that would make such a dramatic change to our most important election.

Earlier this month, the National Popular Vote bill was overwhelmingly defeated in Maine. Save Our State ally Rep. Herb Adams closed his testimony by reminding legislators,

This is not just any compact between states—like lumber lengths, river basins, or mosquito control. This is about electing the leader of the free world and the commander in chief of the mightiest arsenal in the history of the earth.

Wisconsin voters are weighing in on this monumental debate, and as a result, three cosponsors have removed their names from the bill. What happens in Wisconsin—and West Virginia, Alaska, Vermont, Michigan, and every other state in the union—will affect every American voter.

A big thanks to host Jim Schneider and the crew at Crosstalk radio for today’s discussion of the Electoral College versus National Popular Vote. It was my pleasure to be on the program and to talk with so many listeners from around the country.

You can visit the Crosstalk website for a description of the issue and links to listen in several formats or even buy a CD.

One thing we touched on is whether the Electoral College is “anti-democratic.” It’s important to remember, the very idea of a constitution is, in a sense, anti-democratic. We hold the laws passed today up to the Constitution, we test them against it and not the other way around. Why? Because American government isn’t just about doing what 50% +1 want, it’s about protecting individual rights. As the history of the 20th Century shows (and every other century, for that matter), sometimes big groups of people–even majorities–are willing to violate those rights.

The First Amendment, to take just one example, is anti-democratic. It restrains majorities from violating the rights of others to freedom of conscience, speech, press, assembly, and petitioning government. Should we throw out the First Amendment because it sometimes restrains the will of the majority?

The same thing is true of the Electoral College, which usually just influences majorities to be more national and centrist than might otherwise be the case. In pursuit of unity, moderation, and stability–all of which work to protect individual rights–the Electoral College will sometimes (only twice for sure) elect a President who received less popular votes than another candidate.

If all you want is raw majority rule, which is really just another way of saying “might makes right,” then the Electoral College isn’t for you. If, on the other hand, you believe that government exists to protect individual rights–if you think the First Amendment is a good idea–then the Electoral College is just another very good, very American invention.

Note: post updated with links to Crosstalk show archive.