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.

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.

The balance of power between state and national governments was one of the most contentious issues for the American Founders.

The states were important historically, but also as a way to keep government close to the people and to divide government power into as many hands as practical in order to preserve liberty.

At the Constitutional Convention small states wanted every state to have an equal voice in the national government. Large states desired just the opposite—representation based on population would give them more power.

It was a compromise that created the U.S. Congress, where states are represented equally in the Senate but according to population in the House. That compromise not only broke the deadlock that threatened to derail the Constitution—it became the foundation for the unique American system of Federalism.

The national government was set up to provide national defense, manage foreign trade, and referee disputes between the states—in short, to provide the states with safety and commerce similar to the way the British Empire did for the 13 original colonies. The states were left to manage their internal affairs and to compete with one another; thus the states are sometimes referred to as our “fifty laboratories of democracy.”

Federalism fosters diversity by allowing groups of people in different states to manage their affairs differently, to innovate or remain the same, to address local needs. And by keeping government local, dividing it up, and making it compete, Federalism protects freedom.

The American system of states is not just unique—it has been uniquely successful. Federalism is an American invention worth preserving.