Liberals have concocted yet another method to get around the founders’ Constitution. They plan to elect the President in 2012 on the basis of the national popular vote, rather than by a majority of the electoral college.

Although earlier progressive innovations have confused the process, the Constitution is quite clear that the President is chosen by electors, appointed by each state “in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct.” Like the bicameral Congress, the presidency was infused with federalism—the states as states would have a role to play in the choice of the chief executive.

Indeed, the framers expected that, after George Washington, few men would have sufficient stature to command an electoral college majority. Thus the President would be chosen by the House of Representatives, by a special method in which each state delegation would cast one vote. But in time, the political parties produced a system in which the popular vote majority almost always was the electoral vote majority.

More important, the founders wanted to make sure that the President could not claim to embody the people. The presidential election would not be a plebiscite, of the kind that produced Caesar, Napoleon, or other demagogic dictators.

In short, the Electoral College would keep the President a constitutional president—limited and balanced by the other levels and branches of the constitutional system.

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In 2000, when Al Gore out polled George W. Bush in the popular vote but was bested by Bush in the Electoral College to become President, it became clear we need Electoral College reform. In Adams vs.Jackson in 1824, Hayes over Tilden in 1876 and Harrison over Cleveland in 1888, the loser of the Electoral College won more popular votes than the candidate who became President.

The answer is not in direct popular election, which puts a premium on ACORN- style voter fraud and vote buying – staples of big city Democrat machines. I propose we scrap the Electoral College and preserve the electoral count and apportion it based on the popular vote in each state.

The proponents of a constitutional amendment that would mandate a direct popular election would hand our elections over to union-funded operatives who engage in voter fraud and vote stealing. Andrew Breitbart has accurately highlighted the incredible electoral frauds perpetrated by ACORN and I have written extensively about the shady and illegal voter fraud activities of New York’s left-wing Working Families Party (WFP).

Well-meaning reformers who propose a direct popular election will inadvertently put a premium on voter fraud and corruption. There is a better way: the Stone Electoral College Reform Plan which Congress could put on the ballot with a two-thirds vote. Under my electoral reform proposal, each state is first apportioned two votes, one for each Senator – the Federal principle of balancing the rights of big and small states – and then one vote each for each House member, reflecting population size and majority rule. Each state’s total number is divided proportionally in the tally based on percent of the votes received by each candidate.

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CNN, together with Moody’s Investor Services, published a map of the U.S. showing per capita state debt.

This debt map brought to mind another map, this one the Electoral College map from the 2008 election.  President Obama won 28 states and the District of Columbia totaling 365 Electoral College votes, to McCain’s 22 states totaling 173 Electoral College votes.

Now, compare the high-debt states to the states shown in blue that voted for Obama—the linkage between debt and voting behavior is visually clear.

According to Moody’s, the average state per capita debt of the 28 Obama states is $1,728 while the average debt in the 22 McCain states is less than half, at $749.  This information alone says a lot about voters and their attitude towards government and debt.  Voters with a propensity to elect politicians who burden future generations who can’t yet vote with huge debts voted for Obama while fiscally responsible voters generally voted for McCain.

This trend gets starker when you look at the debt in the states that voted overwhelmingly for one candidate.  The six states where Obama received the highest percentage of the vote were: Hawaii, Vermont, New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Maryland.  McCain received his highest percentage of votes in Oklahoma, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, Alabama and Alaska.  The strongest Obama states had a per capita debt high of $4,606 for Massachusetts and a low of $709 for Vermont—remember, the average per capita debt in the McCain states was only $749, barely above the debt level in Vermont, with its “less is more” ethic.  Per capita debt in the strong McCain states ranged from a high of $1,345 in oil-rich Alaska to a low of $77 in coal-rich Wyoming.  The average per capita debt state debt in the strong Obama states: $2,697, almost $1,000 greater than the average debt in the 28 states he won.  McCain’s six strongest states tell the opposite tale with a per capita state debt of $713, a little more than a quarter of the debt load racked up in the states that most enthusiastically went for Obama.

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As a movement conservative, constitutionalist, and believer in the First Amendment, I do believe that Tara Ross and others are entitled to opinions related to the current effort surrounding the National Popular Vote, a state-based plan to reform the Electoral College. They are not, however, entitled to their own set of the facts. I’d like to set the record straight.

First the idea that National Popular Vote “abolishes”, “attacks”, “neuters” or “subverts” the Electoral College, the Constitution or “intent of the founders,” is simply not true.

National Popular Vote preserves the Electoral College and the intent of the Constitution, that is to say, that the states continue to have the right to determine how they award their electoral votes.  This effort is an appropriate approach to reforming the way we elect our President under Article II of the Constitution.

It allows states to replace current winner-take-all rules, the current method of awarding all Electors to the candidate who wins the most popular votes in a given state. Forty-eight states currently use winner-take-all rules, relegating two-thirds of Americans irrelevant when electing their president because they live in a “fly-over” state where the Republican or Democrat candidate for President is comfortably ahead or hopelessly behind.

Our Founding Fathers did not oppose or support a national popular vote or any other method of electing our president, instead leaving it to the states to award electors in a manner that is in the best interest of the people that they serve.  They certainly did not favor the current state-by-state, winner-take-all system we currently use to elect the President, nor would they bless a system that relegated 11 of the 13 original states to “fly-over” status during the 2008 Presidential campaign.

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The latest attack perpetrated by progressive-statists strikes at the republican nature of our constitutional system through the destruction of the electoral college.

No doubt Project Vote, the ACORN spawn and the Secretary of State Project are behind this tyrranical endeavor.  We already know how these groups sought to dilute the vote throught the NVRA and HAVA.  Opposition to Voter ID and a push for Election-Day Registration furthers the agendas of these groups by hijacking the popular vote, especially when the voter-rolls are not purged of fraudulent voters.

We can see the connection between all of these endeavors through the actions of Missouri’s own Secretary of State, Robin Carnahan.  While the current Missouri legislature would never pass the electoral college law being pushed by these groups, Carnahan’s meddling with the state elective process aims at diminishing the conservative vote within the state.  And the DOJ appears complicit in this attack through its failure to prosecute Carnahan for failing to clean the voter rolls, the same rolls she will rely on for her Senate run. (more…)

Today, in 1789, the Electoral College unanimously elected George Washington as the first President of the United States. (Yes, we understand there were a few other “presidents” preceding Washington, but he was the first President under the U.S. Constitution.)