by Jonathan Reisman

The Maine chapter of the League of Women Voters (LWV), mewling about “attacks on democracy,” is leading the National Popular Vote (NPV) effort to destroy the remnants of our constitutional Republic, and disenfranchise and neuter every right of center voter in the second congressional district. The NPV push comes after all the election interference damage the League has done in recent years, including taxpayer-financed (“clean”) campaigns and ranked-choice voting. The “non-partisan” League has been making steady and substantial in-kind campaign contributions to the Democratic Party for years.

Since the Presidential election of 2000, when climate alarmist Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the electoral college to George W. Bush (despite the best efforts of progressives to overturn the vote count in Florida), the left has been complaining about various affronts to and attacks on democracy associated with federalism and the Constitution, including the Electoral College and the U.S. Senate. It got worse in 2016 after Donald Trump won the Electoral College but lost the popular vote to the anointed one, Hillary Clinton. The mewling about attacks on democracy is pure demagoguery, because we are not a democracy, but a constitutional republic, and with good reason. Democracies have inherent problems associated with tyrannies of the majority, populist demagoguery (as promoted by the LWV, for example), and bread and circuses. For those reasons, we have a constitutional republic (representative democracy) that parses power (via federalism and checks and balances) and explicitly puts limits on direct democracy and majority rule (the Bill of Rights). The League and progressives might well get a majority to vote to silence conservatives and confiscate guns, but they’d have to amend the 1st and 2nd Amendments of the Constitution first, and that would be difficult. Demagoguery and doing convoluted end arounds the Constitution (like the NPV) is a lot easier,

For over 125 years, progressives have bemoaned those constitutional roadblocks to the rule of experts, bureaucrats, and the anointed. The gradual increase in power of the administrative and deep states is a progressive triumph; the loss of confidence and trust in those agents since their post-covid exposure as incompetent and malign actors is most welcome. It is the short answer to why progressives love Tony Fauci, masks, and the public health authoritarian nannies, and why conservatives loathe them.

The Electoral College is a product of federalism and the parsing of power and sovereignty between states and the federal government. Abolishing the Electoral College would diminish federalism and the protections it gives to a diversity of different states from overarching federal power.

If progressives want to abolish the electoral college, they could pursue a constitutional amendment, but that looks like too steep a hill to climb, even for such august elites. The trouble with the unwashed plebes is they do not follow orders consistently enough.

Instead, the League and Progressives have fashioned a too slick by half work around- the National Popular Vote, which assigns a state’s electoral vote to whatever candidate gets a majority of the national vote- which in Maine would conveniently cancel out the 2nd District’s unfathomable preference for Donald Trump. Of course, assuring that ranked choice voting and other assorted progressive election Rube Goldberg efforts have the desired effect is complicated- thus, LD 1578, An Act to Adopt an Interstate Compact to Elect the President of the United States by National Popular Vote, runs seven pages of dense legalese. 

There is one more constitutional roadblock that the League and Progressives hope to finesse. Article I, section 10, clause 3 of that cursed document says: “No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.” The very title of LD1578 admits that the NPV is an interstate compact. Although the climate alarmists have succeeded in avoiding Congressional approval of their interstate compact taxing carbon dioxide (the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative) (thanks Senator Collins for refusing to introduce legislation to get it approved), the NPV is unlikely to have such forbearance.

LD 1578 has not had a public hearing scheduled yet. Sponsored by both the House Speaker and Senate President, it seems likely to pass. Gov. Mills is not a big defender of the constitution, and it seems unlikely she will pick a fight with the League and her Party. Therefore, the only chance to defend our constitutional Republic is for Senator Collins to submit legislation requiring Congressional approval. I am not holding my breath.