Perhaps you wouldn’t expect Texas to join an effort to eliminate the Electoral College.  In fact, you may find such an idea to be ludicrous and a bit far-fetched. Unfortunately, a California-based group is working hard to prove you wrong. Indeed, its proponents are in the state today, making a pitch to the legislature’s House Committee on Elections. They want Texas to join an anti-Electoral College effort that has already been approved by six states and the District of Columbia.

National Popular Vote is practically guaranteed to tell Texas’s largely conservative, Republican legislature that its end-run around the Constitution is good for the Republican Party. Unfortunately, some Republicans in other states have fallen for it, hook, line and sinker. Others fell for the line at first, but then learned more and began to see that the Emperor has no clothes. Here’s hoping that Texas legislators will see through the ruse right from the beginning.

NPV asks state legislators to change the way that their states allocate presidential electors. Instead of giving them to the winner of a state’s popular vote, electors would be awarded to the winner of the national popular vote. So, for instance, Texas’s thirty-four electors would have gone to Barack Obama in 2008, despite the fact that John McCain won by a landslide within our own borders. If enough states were to agree to such a method of elector allocation, the Electoral College would be effectively eliminated, all without the bother of a constitutional amendment.

This probably sounds like a crazy liberal idea that could only succeed in places like Massachusetts and California. It probably should be, but NPV has more political savvy than that. It saw the writing on the wall last November: The emergence of the Tea Party as a political force convinced NPV to reconstitute itself. It now claims to be good for conservatives and good for Republicans. NPV describes its plan as pro-states’ rights, pro-federalism, and consistent with an originalist reading of the Constitution. Why, to listen to them describe it, you’d think the Founding Fathers practically expected states to do something like this eventually.

Yes, these would be the same Founders who explicitly rejected the idea of a direct national election for President, as proposed by NPV. Obviously, something doesn’t quite add up.

But NPV is hoping no one digs too deep or researches the issue too thoroughly. Otherwise, Republicans might start to wonder how NPV’s bill jibes with respect for the Constitution. Democrats might start to wonder why NPV is talking out of both sides of its mouth: It tells Democrats that NPV is a progressive measure that will update the Constitution, democratize American presidential elections, and consolidate political power in Democratic-leaning urban areas. But it tells Republicans that NPV is good for a center-right country that values the Founders’ wisdom; it will help the GOP to recapture the White House.

More research would show members of both political parties that the Electoral College serves everyone. It has a long and successful history of serving Americans in a non-partisan fashion. It ensures that the most successful presidential candidates are those who, in the spirit of FDR and Ronald Reagan, reach out to a wide variety of voters. It brings Americans together, encouraging us to focus on moderation and compromise—many other systems would instead drive us apart. It provides stability and certainty in presidential elections: It is harder to steal elections when you must predict in advance which state will be close and where stolen votes will matter. Finally, more research would show legislators the many dangerous legal and logistical problems created by NPV’s plan.

NPV has been introduced in the Texas legislature before. It was not taken seriously then, and it should not be taken seriously now simply because NPV has changed its tune and will be trying to sell the measure as a conservative, Tea Party measure.

States Representatives on the House Committee on Elections would act wisely if they treat the plan for what it is: An idea that is at odds with the lessons of history and inconsistent with the U.S. Constitution.

This article originally ran on TexasInsider.org on April 18, 2011.

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.