[EL] "Chaos" Under NPV Compact?

[Sean Parnell]

Well, it's obvious that there's another perspective here! ;->

Regarding the potential merits of any given claim, suffice it to say "let
the courts decide all of this" doesn't fill me with a lot of relief. And
while difference in how mail-in ballots might seem relatively easily
disposed of, how about recounts? Each state has its own standards for when a
recount is allowed/required (if it's allowed at all), and many who do
specify specific margins - 1/2 percent or 1 percent is fairly common, or was
the last time I looked. Which is easy to understand when you're just
considering the votes in a particular state. But what if the national margin
is close while the state margin is large? Does, say, Connecticut do a
recount because the national margin is under .25% even though the state
margin was 20 points? I guess the judges will decide. Of course, the
Connecticut judges will decide one thing while the Georgia judges decide
another thing. And while Texas and Tennessee are adding tens/hundreds of
thousands of new votes while California and New York aren't doing recounts
at all... no controversy there, of course, the public will just shrug its
collective shoulders...

I suspect not, actually. Legal and political chaos seem the more likely
outcome. IMO, of course.

Sean


-----Original Message-----
From: Law-election <law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu> On Behalf
Of Steven John Mulroy (smulroy)
Sent: Tuesday, July 16, 2019 3:32 PM
To: law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
Subject: [EL] "Chaos" Under NPV Compact?

Responding to Justin Levitt's query re: criticisms of the National Popular
Vote Interstate Compact, Sean Parnell writes:

"It's no big deal for Oregon to determine Oregon's electors based on
Oregon's laws (which, for example, require that a mailed-in ballot be
received by the elections office by election day in order to count) and
Oregon voters, but now that Oregon's electors are also going to be decided
by Washington's voters as well (which only requires the ballot be postmarked
by election day), you've got no shortage of legal claims about
disenfranchisement and the like. Now do this for every state.

"Also, the fact that the fourth most populous state in the union seems to be
unable to put the right vote tally on the piece of paper that NPV says will
be the official source of vote totals seems problematic." 

Respectfully, I think there's another perspective here.  If we currently
allow each state to have different rules re: counting votes for purposes of
the Electoral College, I don't see why the NPV Compact couldn't just
continue to do so. An NPV  Compact state promises to allocate all its
Electoral votes to whoever wins the national popular vote, using the
existing rules of each state.   There may be litigation over that, like
there is over any electoral reform, but I don't see how such claims would
have much merit. The fact that a particular state or states voluntarily
decides to award its Electors to the national winner, as opposed to its
intra-state winner, doesn't automatically require nationwide uniformity in
rules re such details as mail-in ballots. 

And, if there were errors in a particular state's Certificate of
Ascertainment (like there were in NY), such errors are far less likely to be
outcome-determinative nationwide than they are within that state.   Either
these errors will be detected and corrected using existing procedures, as
they are now,; or they are too small to be outcome-determinative in the
state in question.  If the latter, it is unlikely they'd be large enough to
change the national election outcome.  Rather than multiplying Florida 2000
Bush v. Gore-style debacles, the Compact would reduce their likelihood. 

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