In presidential elections, the big state of Alaska is a small state. It has only three electoral votes. In a country of 311 million people, it has a mere 722,000. Worse, it can be hard for presidential candidates to get to Alaska, given its distance from the 48 contiguous states. Alaska needs every advantage it can get during presidential elections, which makes it all the more puzzling that at least some Alaskan legislators are seriously considering National Popular Vote (anti–Electoral College) legislation.

The rest of this post appears at National Review Online.

Alaska’s legislature has been in session for less than two weeks, but apparently some state Senators were already itching to jump into action on the National Popular Vote issue.  The Senate Finance committee heard the matter in a hearing this past Wednesday—about a week after the legislature convened.  The legislation has been held, at least for now. Meanwhile, one Senator on the Finance Committee is losing confidence in the measure. Senator McGuire withdrew her sponsorship of the legislation last Monday.

Those who have been following this issue may recall that the NPV legislation is being carried over from last spring’s session.  Last year, NPV was passed out of two Senate legislative committees. It is making one final stop in the Senate Finance Committee before moving to the Senate floor.

It is a bit amazing that this legislation is being considered in Alaska at all. The Electoral College is an important institution for all of us, but small states should work extra hard to protect it.  Alaska is a big state, but it is a small state in the world of presidential politics.

It is a sure bet that some voters would like to have input into the matter but missed last week’s hearing, due to the short notice. It is not too late to call or write your Senator! Those who live in Alaska should call and register their opinion on this dangerous legislation before it is too late.

Don’t forget to applaud Senator McGuire for withdrawing her sponsorship of the legislation on Monday!

The legislative history for this bill can be found here: http://www.legis.state.ak.us/basis/get_complete_bill.asp?session=27&bill=SB39

Senator’s contact information can be found here: http://senate.legis.state.ak.us/

Senate Finance Committee information can be found here: http://www.legis.state.ak.us/basis/get_com_info.asp?comm=SFIN&session=27

The original post can be found on Tara’s Facebook page here.

Twice recently, The Heritage Foundation hosted events to discuss the National Popular Vote proposal–a plan that would eliminate the effects of the Electoral College while side-stepping the difficult process of constitutional amendment.

I was honored to participate in the first panel, and even more honored that it was hosted by Edwin Meese III, the former Attorney General and Heritage’s Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow. Also on the panel was Heritage Senior Legal Fellow Hans von Spakovsky and Dr. Michael Uhlmann of the Claremont Graduate University. Each of these men has written eloquently on this topic. Von Spakovsky, a national expert on election law and policy, recently authored a Heritage Legal Memo explaining why “NPV would be a disaster.” Uhlmann has written in defense of the Electoral College since the 1970s, including this Claremont Review of Books essay and a contribution to this important book.

While that event is not currently available online, video from the most recent one, featuring Sen. Mitch McConnell, is below and provides several important perspectives of what is at stake in the contention over the process for electing the President of the United States.

Warning: satire ahead! (For the basics on what the National Popular Vote anti-Electoral College scheme is all about, check out this post.)  -TE

A new poll shows that Americans overwhelmingly prefer to scrap the World Series. A shocking 68% of Americans instead believe that Major League Baseball should rely upon “total runs scored” during the regular baseball season when deciding who should be crowned the MLB champion. This number is a sharp rise from polls taken a decade ago, but still falls slightly behind the 72% majority that preferred change in 1960. In that year, the Yankees scored a record 55 runs against the Pittsburgh Pirates, but still lost the Series.

Joe Ball, President of FairBaseball, explained the sentiment driving the call for change: “The World Series is fundamentally unfair! One team can score a majority of runs during the course of seven games, yet still lose the championship. Every run should be equal, whether it was obtained in Game 3 or Game 6 of the series. A team should not be able to win the championship simply because it won 4 out of 7 games.”

Ball concluded, “One time in American history the team scoring the most runs failed to win the championship. Outrageously, the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates won the World Series despite scoring only 27 runs to the Yankees’ 55. Moreover, crisis has been narrowly avoided on several other occasions. We must act now before another baseball team is stripped of victory, despite its demonstrated ability to score more runs than its opponent.”

Supporters of the World Series note that the 7-game series was created decades ago because the founders of MLB knew that important principles would be served by such a structure. They wanted to identify the most well-rounded team: Champions should be able to do well in a variety of circumstances; they should not do well only when a particular hitter is matched against a particular pitcher or only when the team is playing in a certain type of stadium. Sam Homer, president of Save Baseball, explained: “MLB should not crown a team as champion simply because it was able to win a few lopsided victories. If we eliminate the World Series, championships could be won by a team that lost the vast majority of its games but racked up dozens of runs when its best player was able to hit home runs on his own home turf.”

Homer concluded that baseball fans should keep the World Series for the same reason that Americans rely upon the Electoral College during presidential elections. Both were created with the same goal in mind: Just as MLB seeks the most well-rounded team for its champion, so the Electoral College awards the presidency to the most well-rounded candidate. The nation’s Founders wanted to ensure that the President would not simply represent big states and urban areas. Instead, a winning candidate should appeal to a variety of states, cities and regions. Our uniquely big and diverse country deserves its unique presidential election system. After all, this system must identify the candidate best suited to represent a cross-section of Americans.

Original post appears on Tara Ross’s Facebook page: http://on.fb.me/rVfxst

PoliticsPA.com reports that National Popular Vote has launched a new advertising campaign in Pennsylvania. NPV hopes to dampen enthusiasm for a proposal to award Pennsylvania’s electors by congressional district. Simultaneously, it hopes to draw attention to its own plan to award states’ electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote.

A voice in the ad pretends to be an announcer at a baseball game:

“It’s all tied up folks, bottom of the 9th, the bases loaded, here comes the pitch – Golly did he get a hold of that one! It’s going, it’s going, it’s gone! A home run! But stand by folks, the baseball Electoral College is chewing this one over. Philly loses; they lose!  Sorry folks, under electoral college rules, the team with the most runs doesn’t always win.”

At first glance, NPV’s argument sounds irrefutable. None of us have ever been to a baseball game in which a team scores the most runs, but still loses. NPV hopes to stoke our sense of unfairness. That Electoral College!  It is just wrong that the team scoring the most runs loses!

But NPV relied on the wrong analogy. The Electoral College is not like a single baseball game, but like the World Series.  In the World Series, the team winning the most games wins.  This may or may not be the same as the team that scored the most runs throughout the course of those seven games.  We don’t find this unfair.  Instead, we understand that the rules of baseball rely upon “number of games won” instead of “number of runs scored” for a reason.  The champion of baseball should be the most well-rounded team, as demonstrated by an ability to win games in a variety of circumstances.  The champion of baseball should not be a team that wins lopsided victories, perhaps when a particular hitter is matched against a particular pitcher.

NPV is correct that baseball will show us how the presidential election game should work. But the correct analogy is the World Series, not a single baseball game. America’s presidential election system seeks a well-rounded candidate who can win electoral victories in many circumstances. It is not looking for a candidate who can rack up a lot votes in one region, state or with the voters of one special interest group.

This post originally appeared on Tara’s Facebook page, here: http://on.fb.me/ruhQpy

Readers of this blog will remember that the National Popular Vote campaign is striving to effectively eliminate the Electoral College by asking states to allocate their electors to the winner of the national popular vote, rather than the winner of state popular votes. Now, it looks like NPV’s long road to changing the Electoral College might encounter a sudden detour.

Some Pennsylvania Republicans have proposed an alternative: a congressional district system. One elector would be given to the winner of each district; the two remaining Pennsylvania electors would go to the winner of the state’s popular vote. Republicans would likely gain 11 or 12 electors in 2012. Needless to say, many Democrats are protesting the effort (see: here, here, and here).

Ultimately, Pennsylvania must decide for itself what to do. But there are several pros and cons to consider.

This piece was originally posted on National Review Online. Please click here for the rest of the post.

Pennsylvania Republicans want to change the state’s method of awarding presidential electors: Instead of a winner-take-all system, they propose to award electors based on congressional district.  http://bit.ly/qp1z6S

One of the great strengths of the current system is the great discretion given to state legislatures in picking a manner of elector allocation. If Pennsylvania legislators deem this method to be in their interest, then they should go for it. The rest of the states retain their ability to choose a different method, as dictated by the needs of their states.

Importantly, this proposal differs from the NPV plan recently adopted by California and other states (http://bit.ly/oMZLCb). NPV purports to rely on the states’ discretion to choose electors; in reality, it would rob most states of their ability to have any voice in choosing a presidential election system for this country.

More about Pennsylvania’s effort appears here: http://on.fb.me/pfsTL7

Originally posted on Tara’s Facebook page at http://on.fb.me/nemfNs

A common argument made in favor of NPV (or any national direct election plan) is that it keeps votes from being “wasted.” Editorialists such as this one argue, for example, “Did you know that the 1.2 million votes John McCain received in our state in 2008 did not matter? Those 1.2 million voters might just as well have stayed home because all 11 of Washington’s electoral votes went to Barack Obama.”

Such arguments sound appealing at first glance, but they fall apart upon closer inspection.

In our federalist presidential election system, we conduct 51 purely democratic elections: one in each state, plus one in the District of Columbia. These state-level results are combined during a second, national election among the states. Thus, 1.2 million votes for McCain were not wasted in Washington. They were simply cast on the losing side of a popular vote within that state. Similarly, 1.4 million voters in Washington cast votes for Dino Rossi in a gubernatorial election that year. Were these votes “wasted” because Christine Gregoire won? Obviously not. Rossi supporters simply failed to achive a winning plurality.

To look at it another way, if the 2008 election had been conducted based on nationwide popular vote totals only, would people claim that any vote for McCain – anywhere in the nation! – was “wasted” because Obama won the national popular vote? Of course not. The votes for McCain were cast in an effort to win. In the event of a loss, they would simply have been votes for the losing candidate—just like any other election.

Originally posted on Tara’s Facebook page at: http://on.fb.me/pOTXZj

Or So National Popular Vote Wants You to Believe
By: Tara Ross & Trent England

Even as the rest of the country focuses on the economy, the inventor of the scratch-off lottery ticket continues his push to all but eliminate the Electoral College. John Koza’s National Popular Vote effort is making unfortunate progress. Just last week, Governor Jerry Brown’s signature ensured that the elector-rich state of California will participate in NPV.

NPV’s plan is disarmingly simple: States join an interstate compact that allegedly binds them to allocate their presidential electors to the winner of the national popular vote. Supporters claim NPV is just a unique way of using the Constitution’s presidential election provisions. In reality, questions remain about the constitutionality and enforceability of the compact. Worse, if it did survive legal challenges, NPV would effectively eliminate an institution that contributes to the political stability of the United States.

Koza and NPV are wrong about the Electoral College, but they’re no dummies, either. They learned much from last November’s elections and this year’s congressional fights over spending. They have apparently concluded that their best chance of success comes with the cooperation of conservatives. Thus, they are working diligently to reconstitute themselves as a Tea Party-friendly organization.

The rest of this article appears at The Weekly Standard.

In the last two days, I’ve debated four National Popular Vote advocates in two cities and spoken about the issue as part of a panel presentation on federalism. Here are a few things I noted from the debates.

• NPV advocates–in this case, Tom Golisano–continue to make the claim that the election outcomes in 1876 and 1888 were “debacles” because the popular vote winner lost the Electoral College and thus the presidency. This claim falls flat and worse. In 1876, the Electoral College system allowed Congress to sort out several serious election disputes–isolated within individual states by the Electoral College system–and to resolve the election in a way that prevented racist voter suppression from effecting the outcome. On the 1888 election, read “What Grover learned at (the) Electoral College.”

• Saul Anuzis, a lobbyist for NPV, stated that two donors–John Koza and Tom Golisano–have committed over $40 million to lobby for the NPV interstate compact. I guess that’s money that won’t be going to the Nancy Pelosi Victory Fund.

• Golisano and Anuzis both insist that NPV is not anti-Electoral College, even though John Koza originally admitted that the plan was an “end run” way to eliminate the effects of the Electoral College system. This is an interesting claim, at least a challenging one in a debate, where the last thing worth talking about is someone’s subjective intent. Frankly, this is why I prefer to debate this topic with academics or anyone who’s not on NPV’s payroll or otherwise a part of their lobbying effort–my experience is that most of these ‘outsiders’ readily acknowledge that NPV is just a tactic to work toward eliminating the Electoral College in full. Regardless of what Koza believes, his plan is inherently opposed to the original design and the established function of the Electoral College system.

Following four failures in Rhode Island and two in New York, National Popular Vote may have sealed up a California victory with recent legislative approval of their interstate compact legislation. (For a description, see “What is ‘National Popular Vote’?“)

Dr. John Koza and Tom Golisano (the campaign’s founder and their new billionaire supporter, respectively) have shifted focus to Virginia their attempt to gain the 270 electoral votes needed to bring their plan into effect.

The Washington Post recently announced that NPV heavy-hitters Golisano and Fred Thompson, the lackluster 2008 Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. Senator from Tennessee, were venturing to Richmond along with former Iowa Gov. Chet Culver in an attempt to pump life into their thrice-failed Virginia campaign.

Unlike NPV’s previous successes–all Democratic “blue” states–Virginia is “purple”, with Republicans holding a majority in the House of Delegates. Why would the campaign pour time and resources into this state when they’ve historically only had successes with Democrat majorities? Five years of campaigning from their California headquarters failed to sway any California Senate Republicans.

Perhaps Virginia is seen as their best opportunity to get a foothold among Republicans, as well as in the South—and the 13 electoral votes wouldn’t hurt any, either.

Ultimately, John Koza and NPV have their work cut out for them if they believe that “four” is the lucky number for winning Virginia.

This morning the California Senate passed AB 459 (the Electoral College Compact Bill) 23-15 in third reading, sending it back to the Assembly and then on to Governor Brown.

The margin was narrower than many expected. NPV founder and scratch ticket inventor John Koza has spent millions lobbying for the measure across the country. In California, he hired former Republican Sen. Ray Haynes (who opposed NPV while in office) to woo current Republican legislators. NPV hoped for uniform Democratic support along with several Republican coauthors, giving them at least a 28 votes in favor. Instead the Republican coauthors deserted the bill and Democratic Sen. Rod Wright voted no. The measure passed with only Democratic support and with bipartisan opposition.

Should Governor Brown sign the bill, NPV will near the “halfway” point toward their trigger (an electoral vote majority, at least 270), jumping from 77 to 132 electoral votes.