[Personal Liberty Digest   04.24.14]

 

A Stealth Threat To The Constitution

April 24, 2014 by Chip Wood  

 

 

 

 

Do you believe the Electoral College should be abolished? 

 

It isn't often that you'll see a large majority of Republicans and Democrats in Congress agree on something. But they did last week, when members of the House and Senate tried to ban an Iranian diplomat from entering this country.

 

In a real "poke us in the eye" move, Iran had announced it was naming Hamid Aboutalebi as its new ambassador to the United Nations. It just so happens that Aboutalebi was one of the leaders of the mob that stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran back in 1979 and took 52 Americans hostage. As you may recall, they were kept in captivity for 444 days and were released only when Ronald Reagan succeeded Jimmy Carter as President.

 

When Iran said it was appointing Aboutalebi as its ambassador to the U.N., Tea Party favorite Ted Cruz (R-Texas) immediately introduced a measure in Congress to ban him from stepping on U.S. soil. The measure passed by voice votes in both the House and Senate, without a single dissenting vote.

 

When the bill got to Barack Obama's desk, the President signed it - then promptly announced that he wasn't going to enforce it. He attached a signing statement that said he would treat the bill "as advisory in circumstances."

 

Of course, this isn't the first time Obama has decided to pick and choose which laws his Administration will enforce and which ones it will ignore. This is just business as usual for the Obama White House.

 

One thing that definitely isn't business as usual is a measure making its way through various State legislatures that will dramatically affect the way this country chooses its President. At least one analyst believes that if enough States pass it, it will mean the end of any chance to ever again elect a Republican as President.

 

I'm referring to the National Popular Vote (NPV) interstate compact. If you've never heard of it, I'm not surprised. The left is keeping this George Soros-sponsored effort very hush-hush. But you need to know about it, since its adoption could render meaningless the votes of you and your friends for a Republican candidate for the Nation's highest office.

 

Basically, the NPV says that a State must award all of its electoral votes to whichever candidate for president wins the national popular vote - regardless of how the citizens of that State vote.

 

In other words, if this measure takes effect and the Republican candidate receives the most votes in your State but his Democrat opponent gets the most votes nationally, then all of your State's electoral votes will go to the Democrat. How's that for making your State election meaningless?

 

Political analyst Dick Morris said, "If this thing passes, Republicans will never again win a presidential race and that's why all the Democrats are lining up behind it."

 

Does the NPV really have a chance of becoming the law of the land in this country? I'm sorry to say the answer is an emphatic "yes." Last week, New York became the 10^th State to pass it. 

 

The measure was approved last month by both branches of New York's State Legislature and was signed into law last week by Governor Andrew Cuomo.

 

"With the passage of this legislation," Cuomo declared, "New York is taking a bold step to fundamentally increase the strength and fairness of our nation's presidential elections."

 

No, what New York has done is take a bold step toward making sure that the Democrats never relinquish control of the White House.

 

Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz is one of the few liberals who have spoken out against NVP. He said that it "certainly violates the spirit of the Constitution." And he added, "Plainly, the founders of the Constitution did not intend for there to be a conspiracy among certain states to essentially abolish the Electoral College."

 

Back in the time when the Founding Fathers created the Electoral College, we didn't have the instant communications we enjoy today. It took a while to learn what happened in another part of the country.

 

That is why the framers of our Constitution decided to have representatives from each State gather together once every four years to elect a President and Vice President. They gave the responsibility of deciding who would be an elector to the individual States, because they were avid believers in limiting the power of the new Federal government as much as possible. Check out the Bill of Rights, and especially the 9th and 10th Amendments, to confirm this.

 

Do we still need an Electoral College to elect the President and Vice President? Maybe not. But if we're going to change a system that's worked for more than 200 years, let's do it the way the Founding Fathers intended, by amending the Constitution. Not by a sneaky end-run around the Constitution.

 

You can tell a lot about which side wants this measure passed by looking at the States that have already ratified it. In addition to New York, the nine other States are California, Illinois, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington. The District of Columbia has also signed the compact.

 

All of them voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012. All of them are a deep, deep blue. All of them have a vested interest in keeping the entitlements coming from the Federal government. Altogether, these jurisdictions control 165 electoral votes.

 

Newsmax reported: "It also has been approved by at least one legislative body in these states: Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Oregon."

 

If all 10 of these States also approve the compact, that will be another 78 electoral votes. Since it takes 270 electoral votes to select the next President, that would leave the measure only 27 electoral votes shy of the number needed to take effect.

 

If your State is one of the 10 where the compact has already been approved in one branch of the Legislature, you'd better get busy. Contact your State representatives and get them to agree to defeat this end run around the Constitution.

 

And if your State hasn't made either list, don't think for a moment that you don't have anything to worry about. Chances are that there are people hard at work behind the scenes in your State capital promoting this measure.

 

If NPV does become the law of the land, it will pretty much let the Northeast, the West Coast and Chicago decide who will occupy the White House.

And all the red States will be effectively disenfranchised.

If you don't want to live in the result, you'd better get busy and stop the NPV.

Until next time, keep some powder dry.

-Chip Wood