[EL] The Electoral College & NPV / “a guarantee of corruption"

[John Koza]

Yesterday’s Election Blog mentioned that the 2012 Republican platform says that electing the President by a national popular vote would be

“a guarantee of corruption as every ballot box in every state would become a chance to steal the Presidency.”

 

Under the current system of electing the President, every vote in every precinct’s ballot box matters inside every battleground state and therefore represents, at the present time, “a chance to steal the Presidency.” If conducting an election in which the candidate receiving the most popular votes wins the office were “a guarantee of corruption,” then we should see evidence of rampant fraud today in every closely divided battleground state in every presidential election. 

 

Similarly, every vote in every precinct also matters in gubernatorial elections in all 50 states. If conducting a popular-vote election is “a guarantee of corruption,” then we should see evidence of rampant fraud today in every gubernatorial election in all 50 states. 

 

At any given time, there are over a thousand Republican and Democratic county prosecuting attorneys and about two dozen Republican and Democratic state attorney generals. Both Republicans and Democrats have occupied the office of Attorney General of the United States for multi-year periods in the recent past. 

 

If conducting an election in which the candidate receiving the most popular votes wins the office is “a guarantee of corruption,” then where are the prosecutions? 

 

The two conditions for effectively executing electoral fraud are that a very small number of people can have a large effect. 

 

Under the current state-by-state winner-take-all system, there are huge incentives and major consequences for fraud and mischief, because a small number of people in a battleground state can affect a sufficient number of popular votes to swing a large number of electoral votes. 

 

As former congressman and presidential candidate Tom Tancredo (R–Colorado) said in an article entitled “Should every vote count?”

“The issue of voter fraud … won't entirely go away with the National Popular Vote plan, but it is harder to mobilize massive voter fraud on the national level without getting caught, than it is to do so in a few key states. Voter fraud is already a problem. The National Popular Vote makes it a smaller one.”

 

Dr. John R. Koza, Chair

National Popular Vote

Box 1441

Los Altos Hills, California 94023 USA

Phone: 650-941-0336

Fax: 650-941-9430

Email: john at johnkoza.com

URL: www.johnkoza.com 

URL: www.NationalPopularVote.com

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20120830/9fb7b096/attachment.html>