Ahead of the midterm elections, Democrats hold the Pennsylvania governorship and state House of Representatives, while Republicans control the Senate. That balance of power is currently holding back something called the National Popular Vote interstate compact (NPV). But if Democrats take full control, some promise to pass the compact, which would take away Pennsylvania’s important role in presidential elections.
The NPV compact is a sneaky workaround aimed at the Electoral College. It works like this – states pass legislation committing to collect vote totals from other states and give their electoral votes away to the popular vote winner, regardless of who their own state’s voters want. The compact takes effect if enough states join that they have a majority of electoral votes, which would give them control over who wins. Unsurprisingly, this idea was devised by three liberal law professors frustrated by Al Gore’s loss to George W. Bush in 2000.
Eighteen states and Washington, DC have joined the compact. National Popular Vote, Inc., the group lobbying states to join, is hoping that Democrats take over Pennsylvania so they can ram the compact through the legislature, like they did in Virginia earlier this year. They plan to do the same in other swing states with divided legislatures if the midterms go their way.
They have done this over the objections of rural and moderate Democrats who still understand the benefits of checks and balances. The Electoral College makes it impossible to win the presidency without the support of a diverse, nationwide coalition of voters spread across many states. The NPV compact would, for the first time in American history, let candidates with support from just one region or group of giant cities win the White House.
Without the Electoral College, Pennsylvania would lose its status as the Keystone State. Presidential candidates would ignore people in places like Butler and Altoona and instead focus on running up the vote totals in Philadelphia. Bigger cities, like New York and Las Angeles, would be even more important. In the last century, Republican presidential candidates have won Pennsylvania eleven times, while Democrats have won fourteen times. Only three times in modern history has a presidential candidate won the state and lost the presidency – in 1968, 2000 and 2004.
Pennsylvania has a special place in our nation’s history. Beyond its status as an important swing state, it is the state where the Constitutional Convention of 1787 was held, the place where our republic was created, and the place where the Electoral College was first devised. Pennsylvania, of all states, should reject the NPV scheme to nullify this part of our Constitution.
Right now, blue states have committed 222 electoral votes to the NPV compact. If Pennsylvania were to join, that would bring it to 241, just 29 electoral votes short of the 270 that would put it into effect. If that happens, then Pennsylvania voters will lose their power to decide who gets the state’s electoral votes and the voices of suburban, small-town, and rural Pennsylvanians would be drowned out by the big cities.
The Keystone State has been a top target for NPV for years, and for years the legislature has resisted their calls to disenfranchise Pennsylvanians. Let’s hope both Democratic and Republican lawmakers see the NPV compact for what it really is and reject this dangerous scheme.
