Say this for Wisconsin Democrats: They never let the Constitution or Rule of Law get in the way of a good subversive plot. Governor-elect David Crowley told the Associated Press Tuesday that he would be open to joining 18 other-Democrat controlled states in the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC), which would effectively abolish the Electoral College.
“I think we can do away with it,” Crowley said. “I am interested in having those conversations with the state Legislature.”
Of course he is: Democrats have been scheming for years to abolish the Electoral College and replace it with a national election–something America’s Founders explicitly rejected. Never ones to care much about what the Founders thought, Democrats have been livid that their presidential candidates in in 2000 and 2016 narrowly won the national popular vote but still lost the presidency.
Those were two of the five total times in American history that has happened, and the first since 1888. To say this is a pressing threat to democracy is such a gross understatement that it reveals the entire plot to be nothing more than yet another liberal scheme to seize permanent control.
The theory is that without having to worry about reaching 270 electoral votes by campaigning in flyover states like Wisconsin, Democrats could simply park in their deep blue cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago and turn out so many votes that Republicans would never have a prayer of winning the presidency again.
Which is precisely why the Founders set up the Electoral College in the first place; to prevent that exact thing from happening.
The Electoral College was thus established in the Constitution itself, and any attempt to abolish it would require a Constitutional amendment (along with either a two-thirds majority vote in both the House and Senate or a constitutional convention approved by two-thirds of all state legislatures). That would never occur, so liberals embittered by Hillary Clinton’s popular vote win but electoral loss conceived of a way to sidestep it: The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
The NPVIC is an agreement amongst the states who have adopted it to award their electoral votes not to the presidential candidate who wins the most votes in their state, but to the candidate who wins the national popular vote. In 2016, for example, Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes would not have gone to Donald Trump–who won the state–but to Hillary Clinton, who won the national popular vote.
18 states, all controlled by Democrats, have already signed on and the NPVIC does not take effect until enough states have signed on to surpass the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. Following last week’s elections, Democrats will hit that threshold if every state (like Wisconsin) signs on.
Legislative Dems like Sen. Kelda Roys were practically giddy outlining their plans to join the NPVIC to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel earlier this week, and now with the Gov.-elect Crowley signaling his support, they think it’s a done deal. The Electoral College is as good as gone.
No one will ever confuse Kelda Roys and David Crowley with constitutional scholars (or any sort of scholar, for that matter), but even they should recognize the obvious problem with the NPVIC: The Constitution expressly forbids agreements or compacts between states without the express permission of Congress.
Article I, Section 10, Clause 3, known as the Compact Clause, expressly provides:
No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.
“No state shall, without the Consent of Congress…enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State” is a pretty direct prohibition of something called the National Popular Vote Interstate COMPACT. The Supreme Court has over the decades interpreted this clause less literally, but it too provides an obvious barrier to Democrats’ scheming.
In Virginia v. Tennesse, the Court held that while states may enter into agreements with one another, they may not do so in a way that usurps the authority of the federal government.
“There are many matters upon which different States may agree that can in no respect concern the United States,” the majority held. “The prohibition is directed to the formation of any combination tending to the increase of political power in the States, which may encroach upon or interfere with the just supremacy of the United States.”
The NPVIC is directly aimed at increasing the political power of the states (notably just the Democrat-controlled ones) and absolutely interferes with the just supremacy of the U.S. Constitution, which established the Electoral College, not the national popular vote, as the manner for selecting the President.
Like most Democrat schemes, the NPVIC is flagrantly and, frankly, hilariously unconstitutional. Did no one seriously think that calling their massive Compact Clause violation a “compact” might pose some problems? It will, but don’t worry: Democrats’ next scheme is to pack the Supreme Court with enough liberals to rubber-stamp even the most obscene abuses of power.
Again, Democrats will never, ever let pesky things like the Constitution or Rule of Law get in the way of a good subversive plot.
