Dick Morris: Democrats Conspiring To Rig Electoral College

by JASmius

Think of it as a backup plan in case Barack Obama's coup attempt is unsuccessful:

A plan, now stealthily making its way through state legislatures with astonishing speed, would junk the Electoral College and award the presidency to the winner of the popular vote.

The plan involves an Interstate Compact where states would commit to select electors pledged to vote for the national popular vote winner regardless of how their own state voted. When enough states pass this law -- sufficient to cast the Electoral College's majority 270 votes --  it will take effect.

The Electoral College will become a vestigial anachronism.

Remarkable, isn't it?  Kind of an Article V convention in reverse without the need for three-quarters State ratification.  Or the states effectively committing suicide.

Which states?  C'mon, do you really have to ask?

So far, nine states and the District of Columbia - casting 136 electoral votes - have joined moving half way to the 270 needed to put the compact into effect. The ratifying states are: Maryland, New Jersey, Illinois, Hawaii, Washington, Massachusetts, DC, Vermont, California, and Rhode Island.

Both houses in New York have passed it and its on Governor Cuomo’s desk.

And, it has already passed one house in: Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Oregon. These states, plus New York represent 107 votes. Combined with the others they are up to 242 votes . They need 270.

Who is pushing this?

All of those ratifying voted for Obama as did eight of the ten one-house states.

The Left quite obviously still has a bee up its collective butt about the 2000 election, even though there's nothing inherent in the Electoral College system that favors one party over the other if the popular vote goes the other way.  By pursuing this gambit, they could very easily be setting themselves up for a scenario in which they lose the popular vote but would have won the Electoral College, after which they will back-flip to aggrieved champions of the Electoral College overnight.  As I always say, it's any port in a storm with these people.

The puppet master behind this scheme will also come as no shock:

The Movement is funded, in part, by the Center for Voting and Democracy, a George Soros-funded election group.

Just so.  But let's remember the system the Founding Fathers bequeathed us, and why the Electoral College is such an important part of it.

Recall first that the federal government was created by the States.  That's what the Constitutional Convention was: a gathering of delegates from the Sovereign States which had agreed that the Articles of Confederation weren't working as the central government they created was too weak to carry out the functions the States needed at the national level, such as national defense, domestic tranquility, the ability to referee inter-state disputes, etc.  A stronger central government was needed to which all the Sovereign States would concede sufficient strictly enumerated powers for the necessary national functions, but no more than that.  And thus, the United States Constitution was born.

Remember as well that what the Founders created was a federal republic, not a democracy.  They understood that pure democracy - the "will of the people" - was every bit as potentially tyrannical as runaway Big Government, and that the former usually leads to the latter.  Consequently they checked and balanced Da Peepul as much as any other "special interest".

Accordingly, in setting up the tripartite structure of the federal government, the Founders ensured that the states would be represented equally with the people at large.  This is why Congress is bicameral, with a Senate (Article I, Section III) representing the states, with big states and small states getting equal representation, and a House of Representatives (Article I, Section II) to proportionately and directly reflect the voice of Da Peepul.  States check the public, the public checks the States.

In the same way, the Constitution sets forth that the President is to be elected not by direct popular vote but by an Electoral College in which each State's electors cast their ballots (Article II, Section I).  There are no constitutional requirements for how Electors are to vote, but traditionally they have voted the way their State's popular vote went, allowing the people's will to be reflected, while still also affording the States a say in the electoral process.

Check and balance.

The "war on the States" began in earnest a century ago with the Seventeenth Amendment stripping States of the right to representation in the Senate and giving that to the public at large, transforming Congress into, in essence, two Houses of Representatives.  It's unsurprising that "Progressivism" really picked up steam only twenty years later with FDR's "New Deal," establishing a dynamic of federal supremacy and State irrelevance and vassalism.  Or, to get all zen-like, that is when our constitutional system fell out of balance, and hasn't regained it since.  With the other Big Picture objective of the Left being to moronize the public at large so as to make them easy to manipulate, the wonder is that it took as long for a dictator like Barack Obama to arise as it did.

The last vestige of federalism left is the Electoral College.  And this "Interstate Compact," is in essence an end-run around Article II, Section I as well as Article V by subverting the Electoral College by enumerating a specific duty for Electors to vote according to the national popular vote result regardless of how their respective States voted.

For those in non-swing states who have grown tired of deferring to Ohio, Florida, Nevada, Virginia, et al the power to choose the president and want to see national candidates come to their neck of the woods, I simply ask you: In what would amount to a direct democracy, in which the presidency would be determined in a handful not of states, but of Democrat-dominated big cities (e.g. Washington D.C., New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, etc.), do you really believe your vote would be made to count for more?  Or would restoring the voice of the States, both by maintaining the Electoral College and by repealing the Seventeenth Amendment, bring the national government closer to the people and protect "flyover country," the vast majority of Americans that are, as it stands today, fundamentally powerless?

If the Founders were alive today, they'd be saying, "See, we told you so" more promiscuously than Rush Limbaugh ever dreamed.