Well, not quite. But, if Democrats would have had their way in previous years, and got one of their pet laws in place in a sufficient number of states, it would have been the reality.
In a stunning turn of events, that law that started to be passed around in State Legislative Houses all over the United States in the Obama Era, could have come back to haunt the Democrat Party, and massively so.
The framers and Founding Fathers constructed a very refined and calibrated system of checks and balances, to protect the most amount of people and groups as possible, while making proper rule still possible. Democrats, in their hubris and lust for naked power, decided that only the Popular Vote count mattered: the will of the people is the will of the people, meaning 50%+1 vote. The majority wins, is right, determines everything!
This tyranny of the majority has served them well in the states where they took control, but the US Constitution and its balanced system prevented them from destroying it outright. In an attempt to circumvent the Constitution, the initiative of the National Popular Vote Act was born. Their stated goal: “The National Popular Vote law will guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.”
On their website, they make the statistics very clear:
As of April 15, 2024, the National Popular Vote bill has been enacted into law in 18 jurisdictions possessing 209 electoral votes, including
6 small jurisdictions (District of Columbia, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Rhode Island, Vermont),
9 medium-sized states (Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington), and
3 big states (California, Illinois, New York).
Now that Trump has won not just the Electoral College, but ALSO the Popular Vote, by their own state laws these 18 states would have been required to instruct their state electors to vote for Trump. Which means he would get 520 votes versus only 18 for Harris.
This is textbook example of ‘the law of unintended consequences’. Or, in the words of the inimitable Bard: “they were hoisted upon their own petard.”
If the National Popular Vote Act had been in force (by their own rules, “The National Popular Vote law will take effect when enacted by states with a majority of the electoral votes (270 of 538)”), Trump would have gotten a massive mandate. 520 vs 18.
The narrative to support their ultimate wet dream:
Total power.
They would spin such mandate, if they had gotten it, to mean exactly that: look how the will of the people is respected, and gave us such an overwhelming majority! Narratives. It is all about narratives, to support the media stories and operations to ‘steer’ the people and their thinking along their own intended goals.
Here is the irony: they insist that the National Popular Vote Act would NOT end the Electoral College. Yet it completely hollows it out, as it is irrelevant. Only the national vote totals matters, and all the states, or the majority holders, will determine who becomes president. It renders states and individual electoral votes completely irrelevant. Only the national total counts...
Another perverted contradiction is how they claim to fix a problem: “Winner-take-all is not in the U.S. Constitution, and not mentioned at the Constitutional Convention.” Their aim is to “apply the one-person-one-vote principle to presidential elections, and make every vote equal.” Yet it makes that the votes in a particular state become irrelevant. Say that NJ has a majority R, but the overall Popular Vote is majority D. Now New Jersey’s slate of electors will be assigned according to the party or candidate holding the majority on popular vote level. Winner takes all, yet again, but now on national level. As the website proposing this law explains: “Then, the presidential candidate receiving the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC will get all the electoral votes from all of the enacting states.” ALL of them.
This idea tries to circumvent the constitution, tries to subvert the power of states, by making the will of their own population subject to the majority of the whole country. They don’t care about individual voters, they care about the collective, and raw numbers and raw power. This law, presented as a desire to have every vote count, gives states the authority to override the sovereignty of their own voters!
It replaces one ‘winner takes all’ with another ‘winner takes all’, they only changed the rules to determine the winner from ‘win a state level majority’ to ‘win the federal level majority’. It is much easier to shoot for a federal majority than it is to get enough majorities in enough states to properly carry the Electoral College. There is a reason the Founding Fathers gave us that system, and wanted the top offices to be as representative as possible.
Another calculation, no doubt, was the reliance on having a majority of voters in the US identifying as Democrat. Yet an October 9, 2024 article by Aaron Zitner, for the Wall Street Journal, quoted Bill McInturff , a GOP pollster working on NBC News surveys. “Wow, the biggest deal in polling is when lines cross, and for the first time in decades, Republicans now have the national edge on party ID,’’ he wrote. He called the development “the underrecognized game-changer for 2024.’’
Gallup found a similar advantage of 3 points, and Pew Research Center for a 1 point lead. WSJ continued: “The last time that presidential Election Day exit polls found Republicans on a level playing field with Democrats in party identification was in 2004, when the two were tied. That was also the only year in about three decades that Republicans won the national popular vote.”
With that advantage, as well as their control over the media, shattered by the counter-voice offered by individual people on X, can Democrat states and politicians really be certain that their own initiative won’t come back to haunt them?
What if the states would enact that law? Or if Trump forced them to act that way? Respect the ‘will of the people’ as ‘expressed by the vote totals in the Popular Vote’, and assign ALL their electoral votes to the winner of the Popular Vote, regardless of how their own state voted?
The howling would be immediate and deafening: PROOF THAT TRUMP DOES NOT CARE ABOUT DEMOCRACY! Yet he would simply be pushing the states according to their own schemes.
This is a dangerous vote, that distorts the will of the people into a blind, one-size-fits-all majority rule, more aptly called the ‘tyranny of the majority’.
As usual, this another example of leftist overreach based on well-intentioned and reasonable ‘sounding’ proposals and arguments. Yet even the slightest scrutiny reveals the contradictions and problems. The changing reality now puts them in an increasingly vulnerable and disfavored position. The same vulnerable and disfavored position they had hoped to put the GOP in, without a second thought. Naked power, that is their game.
The senseless and perfidious nature of this argument is clear by using their own arguments, and applying it to their own proposed solution.
They argued:
“Under the National Popular Vote law, no voter will have their vote cancelled out at the state-level because their choice differed from majority sentiment in their state.”
The result would be this:
“Under the National Popular Vote law, voters will have their vote cancelled out at the state-level because their choice differed from majority sentiment in the nation as a whole.”
So which problem does this solve?
Will Democrat states, such as New Jersey, California, Illinois, New York, and so on put their money where their mouths are, and decide on their own to allocate all their Electoral Voters to the winner of the Popular Vote, out of principle?
They should.
Or else they should admit that this law is NOT a fair law, and does not solve the alleged problem it was said to fix. And, if they are consistent, they would strike that law from the books in their own states, as the monstrosity that it is.
This election is showing a lot of problems, first that Democrats still do not understand or do not respect that the United States is not a Nation State, as a single block, but a Union of independent and sovereign states, where the federal level only has those authorities that have expressly and explicitly been delegated to that level. But this hinders any pathway to full control, and must be abolished. Now there are exposed.
If they would be forced to enact that law on their books, their only recourse to prevent that (apart from the stipulation that the law would only be in force once enough other states enacted it, which is not [yet] the case), would be an appeal to Marbury v. Madison, with their powerful ruling: “A Law repugnant to the Constitution is void.” But this precedent would dissolve many more of their attempts to circumvent the constitution… And it would be used to undo their own proposed and championed law! The absolute sweet irony…
They lost a lot more than just the presidency.
It will be quite the ride to see just how much was lost by them, and gained by ‘We the People of these United States of America.’
As always, if you enjoyed reading this article, please share it!
Once I began reading this, I couldn't stop. Thank you for your research & for sharing your knowledge with the rest of us. Although I'm retired, I'm compelled to take a Constitution class, maybe even dive into paralegal studies. I wish more Americans would invest more time into learning about our government, the Founding Fathers' documents, and that they'd study the Bible more as well.
Very interesting. Thank you for this. It is amazing that the founding fathers had such wisdom so long ago. I believe there must have been divine guidance.