Tim Walz, the now-forgotten nominee for vice president, infamously said on the campaign trail, “I think all of us know, the Electoral College needs to go. We need a national popular vote.”
In 2023, Walz signed legislation adding Minnesota to the National Popular Vote interstate compact (NPV). While it hasn’t taken effect, 17 blue states have joined the anti-Electoral College plan.
But why wait? Walz and others who want a national popular vote should act now to give their state’s electoral votes to Donald Trump. If NPV states followed through, Trump would receive 520 electoral votes. Harris would get 18.
The Electoral College was designed by the American Founders to keep states in charge. It makes presidential elections a two-step, state-based democratic process. This creates important checks and balances. It limits how much power any one state or region can have, which spreads power out across our vast country. It also contains any election problems within individual states, reducing lawsuits and eliminating the possibility of a nationwide recount.
The NPV compact is an attempt to undo all this without amending the Constitution. How is this possible? It takes advantage of the power that state legislatures have to decide how presidential electors are selected. Right now, state laws say that voters within each state elect their state’s presidential electors — that’s what last Tuesday was about. The NPV compact would change state laws so that presidential electors are chosen based on nationwide vote totals.
Maryland was the first state to join NPV, in 2007, when it was sponsored by then-Delegate Jamie Raskin. Other blue states have followed, including California in 2011, New York in 2014, and Maine just this year. Together, NPV states have 209 electoral votes. Yet the compact only takes effect if joined by enough states that they control a majority — 270 electoral votes.
The reason for this “trigger” is not clear. If the compact is legal, then individual states must have the power to give away electors unilaterally. And why not, if they really believe in a national popular vote?
If Walz really wants a national popular vote, he should ask the Minnesota Legislature to put NPV into effect now and add 10 electoral votes to Trump’s total. Gov. Jared Polis in Colorado, who signed his state onto NPV in 2019, could do the same thing. Do these politicians really believe in a national popular vote, or were they just seeking partisan advantage?
Every NPV state went for the Harris-Walz ticket. That means that if they all followed through, they would shift all 209 of their electoral votes to the Republicans. Trump-Vance would win with 520 electoral votes. Harris-Walz would get 18.
Of course, NPV states probably can’t change their rules after the election. Voters in those states favored Harris, and so they will elect Democrat-nominated presidential electors. Of course, if any of those Democrat presidential electors believe the popular vote is the right way to choose the president, they could simply choose to cast their votes for Trump and Vance (depending on whether their state has a law to bind presidential electors).
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That none of this will happen simply exposes the truth: the NPV compact is a partisan ploy. When the sour grapes of Al Gore’s 2000 election loss were pressed, NPV was the sour wine that flowed out. The movement was created and is still run and funded by John Koza, one of Gore’s presidential electors in California. It gained support after 2016, when Trump smashed the blue wall and won the presidency according to the Constitution’s rules but without the popular vote.
The Electoral College rewards whichever party reaches out to build a more national coalition. Trump and Vance did that this year, attracting more support from young and minority voters than Republicans have seen in a generation. Their successful strategy to win the Electoral College has also delivered a popular vote majority.
If blue state legislators aren’t willing to throw their support to Trump, the popular vote winner, there is another course of action they can take: Repeal the National Popular Vote interstate compact, stop trying to manipulate the Electoral College, and focus instead on building coalitions capable of winning future elections.
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Trent England is founder and executive director of Save Our States and a producer of the film Safeguard: An Electoral College Story.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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