Back in 2017, someone came up with an idea for getting rid of the Electoral College without getting rid of the Electoral College:
If you haven’t heard about the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, it’s a way to get around the requirement to amend the Constitution in order to abolish the Electoral College. Instead, once the winner of the national popular vote is known, states that are part of this Compact will automatically allocate all of their electoral votes to the winner.
It would appear that alarm is finally stirring in the shrinking Republican ranks:
The North Dakota state senate has passed a bill that would prohibit any state or local official from releasing presidential vote results until after the electoral college has voted, only the percentages of votes received.https://t.co/cGCxtikqiJ
(deleted prev tweet to fix) pic.twitter.com/Fhs6Onl9cC
— Derek Willis (@derekwillis) February 26, 2021
That’s an interesting approach to negating working around the Electoral College. It’s one thing to have a secret ballot, it’s quite another to keep the results secret. Goodness, the paranoid might think there’s a fix going in!
And while I’m not particularly worried about North Dakota, the influence of which on Presidential results, with three electoral votes currently, is minimal, there may be more to worry about with more populous Republican States which may decide to take the same strategy. For example, Texas has thirty eight electoral votes pending last year’s Census results, and if it were to withhold its results, then the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact may come to nothing.
But the blowback could be something fierce. Along with the paranoid, who will have legitimate reason to question the voting results for their State, how will the losing candidates know if they have a reason to file for a recount? If candidates are notified of final vote totals prior to the state-level counting, which generally happens by early December, how can anyone seriously expect results will not be leaked? All it takes is, say, the New York Post waving dollars around and some staffer – say, a Trump aide hungry for money – will anonymously upchuck that information.
And the lack of transparency will infuriate groups on both the left and the right.
I expect this will become law, and then North Dakota will spend a lot of coin defending it in Court. And losing.
