(Janine Hansen) – In 2008 Nevada was favored by great attention from Presidential candidates. Candidates Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, and Ron Paul even graced rural Elko. We might ask the question, why was Nevada, with only 5 Electoral Collage Votes, important enough for such lavish attention?
In the “Great Compromise” of 1787 which brought small and large states together to form our Constitution and Union, small states received equal representation in the Senate—2 Senators each. While, large states received, proportional representation based on population in the U.S. House of Representatives. The genius of this Great Compromise, which brought large and small states together and made us a nation, was extended to the process for electing our president known as the Electoral College, where the electors from states small and large cast votes for president based on this Great Compromise formula.
In the Electoral College all states and all regions of the country are important because the final tally for presidential votes is based on the Electoral College. No president can win by only receiving the popular vote in the large population states. All the people in every state small and large are important participants in presidential politics and the presidential election.
Now there is a scheme to strip the genius of our Electoral College out of our U.S. Constitution, not by the time honored process of amending the Constitution, but by circumventing the Constitution through an agreement between the states called “National Popular Vote.” The Constitution requires that three-fourths of the states, that’s 38 states, agree to amend the Constitution. National Popular Vote would change that by allowing as few as 18 to 21 states to make an agreement, thereby skirting around the Constitution and implementing this NPV agreement.
National Popular Vote would require that all states who sign on to their NPV agreement must forfeit their states electoral college votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes. However, there is no lower threshold that a presidential candidate must achieve. No president has been elected in recent years with over 50% of the popular vote, because of third party candidates. Every president is elected by a ”plurality” not a majority.
Under the NPV scheme, a president could win with as little as 30 percent or even 15 percent of the popular vote, depending upon how many candidates were running. When a presidential candidate is “declared” to be the National Popular Vote winner, all states that have signed onto the NPV agreement must forfeit their electoral votes to the “designated” winner. In other words, if Nevadans voted for candidate A and candidate B was designated as the NPV winner, Nevada’s votes would go to candidate B regardless of how Nevadans voted!
This is a grand vote stealing scheme to amass power in the hands of the big population states like New York, California, Florida, Texas, and Illinois, while abandoning the protections for small states secured by our Founding Fathers in the Constitution through the Electoral College.
The Nevada State Senate Committee on Legislative Operations and Elections will be considering SB344 “National Popular Vote” on Thursday April 7th. If the Nevada Legislature votes for SB344 National Popular Vote, it would be like Esau the son of Abraham selling his birthright to Jacob his brother for a mess of pottage.
This may be the most important and potentially dangerous vote our Legislature casts this session. The future of the nation and our Constitution is at stake.
(Janine Hansen is State President of the Nevada Eagle Forum)
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