Electoral College ensures all states have a voice, Oregon writer says

OREGON

(Appeared in the Hickory (NC) Record, Sep 9, 2023)  - 

I'd like to respond to letter writer Kevin Gaylord of Hickory. He believes the Electoral College is outdated and supports passage of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPV).

The Electoral College is an Integral Part of the Constitution

The Electoral College is detailed in the Constitution itself, Article II, Section 1, and later in the 12th Amendment. It addresses only presidential elections because the president is our only elected officer to represent the country as a whole. We don’t have a ‘peoples’ president.’ POTUS stands for President of the United States. The Electoral College is part of an elegant election infrastructure intended to secure every state’s place at the table, and to erect barriers to collusion by a majority, or undue influence from a single region of the country.

Every State Has a Right to Exist - and the Responsibility to Elect the President

Makeup of the U.S. Senate is equal for all states, to make clear that every state has an equal right to exist. This principle carries over to the rare occasion of a "Contingent Election", where the STATES elect the President using their House of Representatives delegations in the case of there being no majority winner of Electoral Votes.  In that event, each state congressional delegation gets one vote only, further affirming that the STATES elect the President of the United STATES.

The Constitution requires state electors to meet in their own state and on the same day, by design. That’s because the Founders did not want the electors colluding with each other. They wanted each state’s votes to be cast as independently as possible.

National Popular Vote runs contrary to our Constitutional model. The NPV Compact would be activated if enough state legislatures sign on to equal 270 electoral votes, the number required to elect the president. In that case, signatories would turn over their own state electors to the winner of a national vote, regardless of who wins the popular vote in their own state.

NPV is a Contract of Collusion in Conflict with the State Constitution

NPVIC also runs afoul of the North Carolina state constitution, Article VI, Sections 2(1) and 2(2). For state elections, Sec. 2(1), the residence requirement is one year.  Section 2(2) states that the General Assembly may reduce the residency requirement for presidential elections only. However, “A person made eligible by reason of a reduction in time of residence ... shall only be entitled to vote for president and vice president of the United States, or for electors for president and vice president...” Since NPVIC hands control of state electors to the candidate with votes from outside North Carolina, this would directly violate your state constitution.

NPV is an End-Run Around the Constitution

In the same vein, North Carolina’s “Faithless Elector” law imposes a $500 fine on any designated presidential elector who fails to vote for the winner of your state’s general election. In addition to the fine, the law calls for the vote to be canceled and the elector replaced.

The process for amending the Constitution is detailed in Section V. Per the National Archives: “The Constitution provides that an amendment may be proposed either by the Congress with a two-thirds majority vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate or by a constitutional convention called for by two-thirds of the State legislatures.”

Needless to say, that’s really hard to achieve. So, in 2007 National Popular Vote was introduced for the specific purpose of circumventing the Constitution. Since then, NPVIC legislation has been defeated at least once in 35 different states, including North Carolina.

A standard NPVIC claim is that under the Compact “every vote is of equal value in our process.” The question is, equal to What? In 2020, a North Carolina citizen’s vote for president was 1 in 5.5 million. Under NPVIC, it would have been 1 in 158 million.

So how exactly is it that NPVIC would make the citizens of North Carolina “more equal” in any way that matters?

Roberta Schlechter
​Portland, OR

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