Agreat deal of national news coverage concerning Virginia has focused on the attempt by its new Democratic governor, Abigail Spanberger, and her confederates in the General Assembly to circumvent the commonwealth’s constitution in order to radically gerrymander the state’s congressional district map. This maneuver has, however, overshadowed another of their equally dubious legislative actions. A bill proposing that Virginia join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) passed both houses of the General Assembly in February, and Gov. Spanberger signed it into law on April 13.
The NPVIC is a scheme cooked up by the Democrats to avoid the inconvenience of winning presidential elections by garnering a majority of Electoral College votes. They have been selling this boondoggle as a way of neutralizing an “obsolete” institution that allegedly preserves an inequitable provision of the Constitution. In reality, NPVIC is just another effort to endow the heavily populated, Democrat-dominated regions of the country with even more political power than they already wield. Fortunately, it will fail. If you haven’t read the official NPVIC pitch, here’s what it would accomplish, according to its website:
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes across all 50 states and the District of Columbia … Under the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, no voter will have their vote cancelled out at the state-level because their choice differed from plurality sentiment in their state. Instead, every voter’s vote will be added directly, without distortion, into the national count for the candidate of their choice. This will ensure that every voter, in every state, will be politically relevant in every presidential election.
How would NPVIC achieve this miracle? There would be a formal agreement among various states controlling 270 or more presidential electors who would be required to cast their ballots for any candidate receiving the most popular votes across the country — even if some other candidate wins a majority in one or more of the member states. Thus far, 18 states and the District of Columbia have joined the movement, and a brief perusal of the current signatories to this compact will render its true objective all too clear. The National Conference of State Legislatures lists the states that have joined the NPVIC and the electoral votes they now control:
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