Activists Attempt to End-Run the Electoral College

A little-noticed group has been toiling for more than a decade to engineer an end-run around the Electoral College and neuter it without the need for an arduous and politically difficult constitutional amendment.

After the second election in 16 years in which the Electoral College winner lost the popular vote, the activists behind the idea hope to kick their push into high gear.

“In that environment, voter fraud would become a feeding frenzy.”

Patrick Rosenstiel, a spokesman for National Popular Vote Inc., said interest in the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact has “intensified” since the November election. But it is nothing new for his group.

“This isn’t about only one presidential election for us,” he said.

Since 2007, 10 states and the District of Columbia have passed legislation to join the compact, which would take effect once enough states have come onboard to control a majority of the Electoral College. All of the participating states would award their electoral votes not to the candidates that win their states but to the candidate with the most popular votes nationally.

So far, the states that have signed on to the compact are all deep-blue states that last voted for a Republican presidential candidate in the 1980s. Advocates for voter integrity said the states have something else in common — weak or nonexistent voter identification laws to safeguard against fraud and, often, high barriers to the public’s access to voter rolls.

“If you look at those 11 states, there are some very disturbing trends,” said Logan Churchwell, a spokesman for the Public Interest Legal Foundation. “The states with the worst election integrity policies, the most red flags, the worst access to voter rolls, those are the 11 states that are National Popular Vote states.”

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Churchwell said it would be unfair if states with lax safeguards impose a radical change on the U.S. electoral system. He said advocates of the idea lately have mimicked the rhetoric of organizations pushing for fraud-free elections.

“We have to be very careful to not be tricked by [organizations] taking up the mantle of election integrity and using the same language,” he said.

Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of the group True the Vote, agreed.

“In that environment, voter fraud would become a feeding frenzy,” he said.

To Rosenstiel, such criticism is misplaced. Concerns over the integrity of the voter rolls are no less salient under the Electoral College, he said.

“It sounds like they don’t know how the Electoral College system works,” he said. “They don’t have any protection under the current system.”

Rosenstiel said the movement is thoroughly bipartisan. He said he is a conservative Republican, while the chairman of the organization is a progressive Democrat. Even though only blue states so far have joined the compact, he said 154 Republican legislators across the country — along with 162 Democrats — have sponsored popular vote legislation.

Rosenstiel said a popular vote system would “right-size” the influence of Ohio, Florida and a handful of other swing states that currently draw most of the attention from candidates. Making the popular vote more important would force candidates to appeal to a broader swath of America, he said.

But Churchwell said swing states are not fixed. Different states at different times are more competitive than others, politically.

“Without having to touch it, the Electoral College shifts and reflects demographic change,” he said.

Churchwell said a popular vote would shift focus to major metropolitan areas while doing nothing to increase attention to Alabama, Oklahoma, and many other states.

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“If you think these places feel forgotten now, you just wait,” he said.

Churchwell said his group will continue to press the case based on concerns about voter fraud and other practical concerns, and leave high-minded philosophical arguments to others.

“We’re not going to be quoting Alexander Hamilton, either,” he said.

Engelbrecht said the Electoral College is an important feature of America’s republican form of government, a “beautiful and enduring and legendary example of government, because we find this balance of representation.”

So far, the national popular vote movement includes states equaling 165 electoral votes, 61 percent of the necessary number. Rosenstiel said his organization plans to keep plugging away, “one or two or three states at a time” until it reaches its goal. He said the Constitution grants states the power to decide how to award their electoral votes. It is the same provision that allows Maine and Nebraska to split up their electoral votes by congressional district rather than the winner-take-all system used by the rest of the country.

But Rosenstiel said he suspects the compact would be contested in court.

“We’re not concerned about legal challenges, because we know there will be legal challenges,” he said. “This is America.”