On March 15, Colorado Governor Jared Polis signed the National Popular Vote bill, joining a group of states that have pledged to award their electoral votes to whichever presidential candidate wins the national popular vote. The bill only takes effect once the group of pledged states controls more than 270 electoral votes. At that point, the states will award their electoral votes to the popular vote winner, and the electoral college, though still extant, will cease to be relevant.
The popular vote movement has become popular among Democrats in recent years because the last two Republican presidents lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College. The last time a Republican administration came to power with a plurality of the popular vote was 1980, almost forty years ago. The movement is also popular amongst people who think the president should be the candidate who won the most votes or who like systems to be transparent and logical.
Conversely, the Republicans want to preserve the Electoral College. They included it in their party platform in 2016. I presume they support it because it helps Republican candidates win. I have not seen any other arguments that make sense.
In April, I was invited by friends to attend a meeting to protest “this disgraceful” bill that Polis just signed. These friends enjoy watching Fox News and I consider them to be “Fox Republicans”: prone to repeat talking points and arguments they have heard on their favorite channel. As such, I avoid talking politics with them. (On the other hand, I absolutely enjoy talking to ideological conservatives, true libertarians, or anyone else who thinks deeply and carefully about what they believe.) They insisted that preserving the Electoral College is a bipartisan issue, and assumed that, as such, they could break the invisible wall between us in order to talk about it with me. The destruction of the Electoral College, they said, could hurt a Democratic candidate just as much as a Republican. Furthermore, it would destroy the representation of our state. Our voices would no longer matter. We would be drowned out by California.
Mathematically, this made no sense. We would still have our representation, in our individual votes. And yes, California would have more influence on the outcome, but they already do. And yes, we could be vulnerable to sloppy counting or hackable systems in some other state like Florida, but we already are.
Although their arguments did not persuade me, I did walk away with one key detail: an impassioned group of Republicans has organized to resist Colorado’s support for the popular vote.
I did not think more of it until today, when I was accosted by two women at a Memorial Day celebration and asked if I wanted to sign a petition. The petition supported putting the National Popular Vote Bill on the ballot of the next election. The bill is already law. The petition would allow voters to reject it and, more importantly, give wealthy backers time and opportunity to buy ad space and develop deceptive language. I imagine the disinformation campaign will involve something about our electoral votes being given away immediately, or something something Californians. The petition was presented to me with carefully crafted, noble language- “choose the National Popular Vote”- which sounded exactly the opposite of the true intention, which was to remove Colorado from the compact.
Most disturbing to me was that the two women were both African-American. It is a stereotype to assume they are not Republican, or that they do not support the National Popular Vote Bill. But I assumed that anyway. I know who went to those meetings in April, and it was older white men, not younger black women. Many signature gatherers are paid employees. (I know. I have done it myself.) They were doing their job, and I don’t want to get them in trouble by disclosing any additional information that might identify them to their employers. But- and this is what disturbs me- I smell the machinery of cynical political gears grinding, and suspect that there is already big money out there hiring signature gatherers based on race to fool voters in more liberal parts of the state into signing a petition against their own interests.
My conclusion is inflammatory and based on only a few observations. Nothing I have described is illegal- citizens can organize, gather petitions for bills, get paid to help a campaign- but I suspect that support for this movement is coming from somewhere else. I hope that someone with more time and smarts than I have might be able to follow up and trace where the money and influence is flowing in this new campaign.