What if 2024 were 1824? This is quite a funny story.
In 2009 the Colorado state legislature considered joining the National Popular Vote compact which states that after more than 270 EV (that’s electoral votes, not electric vehicles) worth of states have signed on, it becomes effective. At that point, all the EV of those states go to the winner of the “popular vote,” which, constitutionally, means nothing. A phone call campaign to legislators actually stopped it—then.
But in 2019 the legislature—now under the complete control of radical Democrats—the idea resurfaced. They passed it into law.
This time citizens opposed to it got a petition together to get it repealed via the 2020 ballot: Proposition 113. Proponents of the law said that political campaigns would pay more attention to Colorado. How did that work out in 2024? There are more votes in the city of Los Angeles (9M) than in the entire state of Colorado (4.5M). NPV is a way of end-running around the Electoral College.
It takes power away from small states like Colorado and gives it to big states like New York and California. It’s what the delegates to the Constitutional Convention from New York and Virginia wanted, but they compromised with the smaller states and the uniquely American Electoral College was born.
Another piece of trivia about that initiative: In Colorado, citizens have the right to overturn a law made by the legislature via the initiative process. They’ve had this right since 1910, a progressive reform. It’s Article V of the state constitution. But the NPV recall was the first time the right had ever been exercised.
Nevertheless, it narrowly failed, 52-48%.
Democrats are behind this movement. Democrat-run states have gone for it because they’ve usually won the popular vote in recent years. They want to eliminate the Electoral College because they lost the 2000 election. This has been a Democrat issue ever since Andrew Jackson lost to John Quincy Adams in 1824. What they fail to remember is that Jackson won both the electoral and popular votes, but didn’t achieve a majority due to a very contested 4-way race.
This time Donald Trump proved what Democrats should have known if they engaged in any kind of long-term thinking: a Republican won the popular vote. That means that if NPV had gone into effect, Colorado’s 10 electors would have gone to Donald Trump, even though Harris took the state. And not just Colorado’s. See electoral map above.
You reap what you sow. Would have served them right.
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