Voters shouldn’t be fooled by push for National Popular Vote

The Democratic debates this week featured dialogue between 2020 Candidates searching for the best way to reconnect with voters who sent a strong message by electing President Trump in 2016.

One major electoral issue making news recently is the National Popular Vote. After using big gambling money to influence politics as co-founder and CEO of Scientific Games Inc. for 14 years, John Koza turned his efforts to throwing out the Electoral College by starting the National Popular Vote as a 501 C-4 nonprofit that focuses on ensuring big money donors gain even more dominance over public policy.

The fallacy of his argument was evident in his own words after President Barack Obama’s re-election in 2012 when Koza singled out Pennsylvania as a state that was “completely irrelevant in Presidential elections” during a debate.

In the very next election President Trump won, Koza was proven wrong as Pennsylvania did what he implied they would never do and voted Republican. So did Wisconsin and Michigan, other states that were said to be irrelevant and would just be ignored by presidential campaigns. 

The Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign must have believed this theory was correct because she completely ignored campaigning in many critical states and lost the election as a result.

If the National Popular Vote coalition were successful then a winning political strategy would be to focus a campaign’s efforts on a few big population centers like Los Angeles County, which has more people residing in it than some entire states. LA County is also where most of Hollywood figures live creating massive influence on national electoral politics and the media.

The National Popular Vote organized in Nevada to convince legislators on a party-line vote to have Los Angeles County play a bigger role in who gets their electoral votes. As John S. Baker pointed out, almost no one in Nevada or other states to pass this measure has voted to make their own voters irrelevant.

Luckily last May, Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak vetoed a bill that would have added Nevada as part of the National Popular Vote movement. He broke with the legislators of his own party to side with the actual residents of Nevada. He decided to go against the big money of Hollywood, casino owners, pay-for-play big donors and political consultants who want to make elections all about candidates spending all their time in Los Angeles and New York where campaign stops are broadcast to millions of viewers. Now, 2020 candidates need to make those annoying stops in between the coasts where there appearances get a tiny fraction of the free media eyeballs.

Maine also rejected this attempted big money coup of our government, but several state Legislators were duped and have already given away their states electors to big money domination.

Mega-donors continue to push average voters aside and the only push back voters have is for voters in Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, West Virginia and Pennsylvania to revolt if Democrats take them for granted. This is exactly why California and other states decided Republicans had lost touch with them and went deep blue.

If you believed Pennsylvania was irrelevant because of the Electoral College between Obama’s 2012 reelection you now know you were wrong. 

Last month, after Colorado legislators sold out their voters by passing the National Popular Vote, they’re now facing backlash from 185,000 voters who’ve signed a petition to repeal the law. This swift push back involved record mobilization by an incredible 2,200 volunteer petition gathers according to organizers from Coloradans Vote.

So, if the appeal of throwing all big campaign donations to the coasts seems illogical, it appears it may ultimately motivate incredible grassroots uprisings by the voters against the legislators who sold them out.

It’s not too late to keep candidates accountable and leave our Electoral College exactly the way it was created by the Framers.

John Pudner is president of Take Back Action Fund.