Political chaos without Electoral College
One of my favorite intellecutal exercises is to speculate about the unintended consequences of public policy. Professor Robert Hardaway did just that when testified against HB 1299 – the national popular nightmare. Prof Hardaway uses the 1960 election, with its very close popular vote between Kennedy and Nixon, as an example. Had we had a national popular vote rather than the Electoral College in 1960, Hardaway concludes that America would have endured years of lawsuits and no confirmed president until the 1964 election.
This view is shared by an Independence Institute sister think tank the Evergreen Freedom Foundation in Washington, which is also battling anti-Electoral College forces. Trent England predicts political instability under the national popular nightmare.
Hardaway’s and England’s predictions aren’t new. The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) came to the same conclusion in 1979 in his statement about the Electoral College on the floor of the United States Senate.
It would be an election no one understood until the next day or the day after, with recounts that go on forever, and in any event, with no conclusion, and a runoff to come. The drama, the dignity, and decisiveness and finality of the American political system is drained away in an endless sequence of contests, disputed outcomes, and more contests to resolve outcomes already disrupted.
That is how legitimacy is lost. That is how a nation trivializes those solemn events that make for the singlemost important ingredient of a civil society, which is trust.
Imagine Minnesota in 50 states. Imagine the political instability. Imagine a banana republic ruled by a small, wealthy and corrupt clique.
Hardaway refers to the national popular vote as the “Koza scheme.” The name comes from multi-millionaire John Koza, developer of the rub-off lottery ticket , who concocted the scheme to destroy the Electoral College in favor of a national popular vote without a constitutional amendment. According to the New York Times, Koza even acknowledges that he is circumventing the Constitution. “‘When people complain that it’s an end run,’ Dr. Koza said, I just tell them, ‘Hey, an end run is a legal play in football.’”
After speaking with Prof. Hardaway, he believes the national popular nightmare is unconstitutional on both a state and federal level and that advocates of the Koza scheme really just want to generate publicity for their dangerous cause.
We have to stop this assault on one of the foundations of our republic, of federalism. Right now, the future of the Electoral College is in the hands of the Colorado Senate. Contact your state senatorsand tell them how you feel. Also, contact Governor Bill Ritter and tell him the same.
Mail
Bill Ritter, Governor
136 State Capitol
Denver, CO 80203-1792
Phone (303) 866-2471
Fax (303) 866-2003
Email Governor’s spokesman evan.dreyer@state.co.us
Hardaway collaborated with Professor Jim Riley of Regis University to produce much of the information posted to right of my blog under “Pages.”
Questions for state senators to answers
The Electoral College, the Constitution and the case for federalism
March 26th, 2009 at 7:16 pm
[...] Political chaos without Electoral College [...]
April 5th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
[...] Agnos credit for being honest in his blog at the Seattle Weekly. He is the first supporter of the Koza scheme (a.k.a. national popular vote) to admit truthfully the motive behind destroying the Electoral College. Agnos writes, “a [...]