I noticed a few days ago that one of several items Governor Beshear was pushing included abolishing the Electoral College. Of all the things that might help Kentucky, (if by some remarkable path Governor Beshear became President) this one was not anywhere on my bingo card.
Of course this is not a new idea. While I was in the state House serving on the Elections, Constitutional Amendments and Intergovernmental Affairs Committee, several years a group called the National Popular Vote would, with the help of a Democrat Legislator, bring a bill to our committee to attempt to do the same as what Governor Beshear would like to see happen.
However, this group was trying to accomplish this by getting as many states as possible to sign onto an interstate compact. The compact, once enough states agreed to it to ensure 270 Electoral Votes, would commit all their electoral votes to whichever candidate won the overall popular vote regardless of who won their specific state.
If you visit the National Popular Vote website, they indicate they already have 18 states and DC representing 222 electoral votes committed to this interstate compact agreement.
Setting aside the fact that there might be legal challenges if the compact reaches 270 or more and it was actually triggered, the group only needs 48 more electoral votes to reach their goal.
But let’s dig into their reasoning. Beshear says we are a small state with only 8 Presidential Electors and therefore no one is going to pay attention to Kentucky during a Presidential election. But if we were just part of the overall mass of votes, then of course candidates would have to visit us and every other state to drive up the vote in order to cross the finish line with the most popular vote.
First let’s look at the assertion that Kentucky is a small state (Commonwealth) with only 8 electoral votes. But actually with 8 electoral votes we are tied at 25th with 2 other states. So in reality, we are basically dead center.
What probably is a better analysis, and one Governor Beshear offered, is that most of the time, it’s pretty clear who will win Kentucky and that, like many other states, does not make us a battleground state.
I will also assert two things before closing this analysis out.
First, if you remove the Electoral College and only count Kentucky as part of a larger vote, then I think we would be ignored even more because it would make more sense to place all your focus on states that have the largest population.
Secondly, and what is not noted either by the National Popular Vote or by our Governor, is that Kentucky could not have any offsets on voter fraud for other states especially on those on the West Coast whose polls generally close 3 hours or more after ours.
So if you’re in California, Washington, and Oregon, and you see that you only need a million or so more votes, you would have time to “find” that many. Especially since a state like California has been known to be counting votes as long as 3 weeks past an election, that would be a problem.
If you truly wanted to get closer to awarding via popular vote and still allow each state to protect the integrity of their individual states vote, I would suggest getting all 50 states and DC to agree to award Electors via each Congressional District and the overall vote winner per state to receive the 2 electors associated with those awarded for the number of Senators.
In Kentucky, it would probably look like this: The Republican Presidential Candidate would more than likely win 5 of the 6 congressional district electors and the 2 senate electors for a total of 7 of the 8 overall electors for Kentucky. The Democrat would probably get 1.
On the other hand, you would also see some Republican Electors awarded in California and some Democrat Electors awarded in Texas.
The only flaw in my analysis is you could never get all 50 states and DC to agree to this. So, like Governor Beshear suggested, it would still take a Constitutional Amendment.
Our founders were wise in creating a system that balanced the powers between the big states and the little states, or in our case the middle-sized states. Governor Andy Beshear’s proposal to eliminate or bypass the Electoral College would be harmful to Kentucky and this nation.
