Only if you live in certain states will your vote for President count if certain liberals have their way.
Oh, you can vote, all right. It just won't count.
According to Rob Richie, director of FairVote, a national, non-partisan electoral-reform organization, a national popular vote for president can be achieved without the requisite constitutional change. Accomplishing this would eliminate the possibility of one candidate winning a majority of the popular vote while the other candidate wins a majority of Electoral College votes and consequently the presidency.
But there's something radically wrong with what Richie and FairVote as well as groups like the Campaign for the National Popular Vote (NPV)(run by John Anderson, Birch Bayh and John Buchanan, three losers who were defeated in the 1980 Reagan landslide), are doing. They are switching the electoral process from the people to a few of the most populous states.
FairVote and its allies intend to persuade legislatures in states representing at least 270 electoral votes -- a majority of the 538-vote Electoral College -- to pass laws entering their states into a legally enforceable interstate contract. That agreement would bind those states to give all of their electoral votes to whichever presidential ticket wins a majority of the popular vote.
The compact wouldn't become activated until states with at least an electoral-vote majority had entered into it. A bill with bipartisan support already has been introduced in the Illinois Legislature and passed by the California legislature.
The problem with this is, of course, that the "popular" vote winner can be too easily determined by only the voters in the states having the most population: California, New York, Pennsylvania, etc. The purpose of the electoral college as it stands now is to assure that the majority vote -- the most votes from all over the country, not just one or two areas -- prevails.
But the scary thing here is the way they are going about this. They are going around the Constitution (that nasty little document that assures things like liberty and freedom and "old-fashioned stuff" like that): the National Popular Vote campaign does NOT propose to abolish the Electoral College, which would require amending the U.S. Constitution -- their plan is to get states with at least 270 votes in the Electoral College to enact identical bills requiring their own electors to ignore the winner of their state's election and cast all their state's ballots for the candidate who the state believes received more popular votes than the other candidates nationwide, even if he fails to win a majority of the popular vote.
On the surface it almost sounds like electing the President by popular vote. That's the illusion they are creating. But it isn't. Notice the language; they'll vote for "who the State believes..." Not the vote of the people...but the state. (A governor? A legislature? Some undefined person?)
Under this proposal you don't have to vote at all. Just leave it to the State....and what does that sound like?
No, you say? That will never happen in America? Well, guess what. It IS happening and the media isn't reporting it.
The states that are looking at this kind of legislation are California (has already passed the "NATIONAL POPULAR VOTE" bill: http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/npv/index.php), Colorado, Washington, Illinois and more.
This is certainly something that should be widely and nationally reported. Maybe letters to editors would call attention to this in enough communities so that we voters whose votes will be ignored can make enough noise to stop it.
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